Newspapers have lost at least two generations of newspaper readers. If you are over 45 you probably obtain great pleasure from making coffee in the morning and unfolding your newspaper, being the first person to actually sort through the sections and start the day with the Sports or National section of your local newspaper. Many of us read more than one newspaper per day but your ?home delivered? paper no doubt holds a special relationship for you, if you have lived in your home for at least five years and have children. But if you are under 45 you probably get your news from Google, and RSS feeds,blogs and news websites.
This reader relationship was the foundation of the American newspaper business. They call it many things but I most recall it being referred to as the ?daily habit.? The editorial departments count on these readers to keep them honest and aggressive in their news reporting. These readers are the ones that call or write in ?corrections? for spelling, grammar or factual mistakes and contribute to the OpEd pages with Letters to the Editor. They do not hesitate to state their opinion when the paper drops a column or replaces a favorite comic strip. These readers are very involved with the newspaper; they look at the advertisements and inserts and have raised children that most likely do not read the paper daily. These readers are the baby boomers and are aunts, uncles and parents- a big generation that doesn?t get much ink anymore. This is also the generation that built the Internet, a fact most often overlooked by market researchers today. However, the main point is the daily newspaper reader is no longer raising readers that subscribe to the ?daily habit.? Why? Newspapers are no longer an important media source for the family.
News has become a commodity. Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, (insert your favorite site here) and other portals have been providing news feeds that are found in most morning newspapers across the country. Reuters was first to give news access to these portals and then everyone followed with better news feeds and then the best – Associated Press (owned as a co-operative by the daily newspapers in America) sold their news to the portals, with the exception of their State wire which is reserved for newspaper members only. It was the right decision. However, it did give the portals the ability to dis-intermediate the relationship between newspaper and reader. The younger generation found it easier to sort and filter the news and interact. In fact, a lot of technologists feel that the profiling of news and information is superior by applying ranking algorithms that help folks with selection, interpretation and spelling. The popular ranking of information, the Google effect, has captured the news and is naively blind to the issues of journalism. (it justifies its neutrality by telling us they are just providing aggregated news, no credibility required)
The search engines and portals began modifying the selection of news, preferring to provide a customized approach to filter out information based on profiles created by the user. This approach has proved acceptable for the non-newspaper reader because they have no way of judging what they are missing. For example, the articles they read in the paper that do not fit their profile always amaze the habitual daily newspaper reader. These stories become the nuggets of the daily read that often lead their ?water cooler conversations? during the work day because thoughtful editors have chosen to position design newspaper pages based on over two hundred years of eye tracking experience.
Modern technology gives the reader more ways to filter out the relevance of reading news and it rarely provides attribution and treats all sources equal. In fact the ranking algorithms? of Google are based on popularity of websites not credibility or authenticity-two principles of modern journalism. Let me demonstrate how authenticity has been a second tier requirement: search on Martin Luther King[1]
Now note that the first link after the sponsored link in light grey is: Martin Luther King Jr. A true Historical Examination. If you go to this link you find:
If you follow the copyright information link you arrive at StormFront.org a White Nationalist organization that promotes racial separation and Ku Klux Klan slogans and borrowed logos like their banner:
Logo from Stormfront.org
This illustrates the issue with ranking algorithms based on popularity rather than credibility and authority- two standards of modern journalism.
The newspaper has been replaced by an information source (search engines) that rank based on popularity of the number of links to a website rather than selection by an editor. This approach of obtaining information about Martin Luther King Jr. may be a more normative computer-to-computer methodology but not a better evaluation process for information. This computer to computer ranking does not provide confidence in creditability, being popular on the world wide web does not provide good news or research sources that we want our children using in their school projects. The newspaper reader would never accept this kind of ?rank? if it appeared in a daily newspaper. No daily newspaper today would be allowed to print an article with reference to Storm Front as their information source for an article.
Now, teachers and educators are trying to instruct and teach ‘search literacy’ and becoming a mandatory course in our College and Universities but what about the high schools, middle schools and elementary schools? Ask the search engines to filter and sort based on accuracy and credibility and they quickly become defenders of “safe harbor” and copyright stating that all the search results are automatically calculated by algorithms and therefore more objective.
So a generation or two of online users are growing up with the habit of going to search engines: Google or Yahoo! or Ask.com to find information about their community and history. These same users may also be going to portals like Google MSN, AOLand soon to social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn but not primary newspaper brands. The main reason, in my opinion, is newspapers have not changed the paradigm and still provide ?shovel ware? websites rather than the recognition that the web is a new publishing platform, requiring new products. There are no barriers to entry in the web space for news and since the majority of news in any regional newspaper is wire news, portals can easily compete with Newspapers online and in fact are offering more news products than traditional newspaper websites.
Where is the daily newspaper? Second tier websites delivering news just like the portals and in many cases not as well as the portals. Some charge for access-Wall Street Journal, New York Times, almost all charge for access to their archives. Most are now making money with advertising but the core product-the daily print product is seeing their advertising base erode because the younger generation is going to the Internet for news. Some publishers I have spoken with contend that the newspapers will be prepared to evolve into the online space exclusively when the advertising market moves. I believe the opportunity exists today to build IP based products that will re-connect with the community by acting locally, now, before the portals and search engines get around to buying ?Craigs List? and building local digital news products. The strength of newspapers as historical sources of information is extremely difficult for dot coms to match. Perhaps that is one primary reason why Google is in the process of converting libraries and news sources.[2] These news sources are co-operating because of the market size of Google hoping that traffic will find or be re-redirected to them. Perhaps then they can sell access to their archives on a per article transaction. This may be worthwhile for the New York Times but for regional newspapers it won?t amount to much money and certainly won?t compensate for the declining print revenues! This marketing alliance with Google is a mistake.
Dis-intermediate the newspaper from the information, (search and news) and you have generations of readers that have forgotten why newspapers should be part of their daily life. So how do we change and make the newspaper part of their search for information?
We go back to the schools with products that teach and educate. Newspapers need to provide the history of their community. We must digitize the newspaper archive and make available to every school FREE access to our history as reported and collected by their local newspaper. In most regional daily newspapers this means a collection dating back to the mid 19th century or 1850 forward. Newspapers need to remember early education and readership has an ancient pedigree:
Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man? St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491 -1557)
We must re-establish the value of newspapers as part of the information and research role for our children?s life at school so when they grow up they remember the value of newspapers for history, community, news and most importantly for research. This means contributing to the community with our historical materials so everyone can freely access the community?s history. Infact, you could argue because the newspaper has been covering the community and reporting community events and news the community has a right to ownership of their historical events.
Newspaper publishers today are no longer private companies but public institutions with stockholders and analysts who are critical of any new product or development that doesn?t impact quickly and bring positive results to the bottom line through quarterly returns/profit. The idea of digitizing the newspaper has been around for over thirty years and newspapers have been making money from the resale of access to newspapers through third party re-sellers. However, the microfilm of newspapers has proven to be an ancient barrier to obtaining relevance for historical research by the online reader of today. No ?born digital? reader is going to be satisfied with a citation that sends them to the library to a specific Newspaper Title on a microfilm roll. The student today does not understand the value of research or the process of research. That is why we must start by introducing research at the elementary school level and we do this through technology and historical newspapers content. If you grow up using your newspaper digital archive you will understand the value of newspapers both for their historical record and the cultural anthropology of fashion, trends and social norms from our societies of the past. The newspaper is a primary source for research. Will this solve the revenue problems stalking the newspaper industry? No, but it will start to address the declining readership in newspapers. It will provide another connection with the family.
Children bring technology into the home. We have replaced the Encyclopedia in the home with Google. Elementary students are comfortable with the computer and encouraged by most parents to play games and interact in the digital world. We know children will spend more time online with a computer engaged so newspapers need to be part of their formal education curriculum. Newspapers in Education programs (NIE) have been very successful in working with local teachers and schools to build programs using the newspaper as a source for early and middle education. We need to build on this program by offering more services to the local schools. The historical newspaper and free access can become a primary source new readers. It is also, a barrier from which portals and search engines may not be able to compete. (Unless the newspapers industry keeps pursuing a resale relationship with Google and others in there mistaken belief that the archives are primarily a new revenue product.) Newspapers need to use the product-archives- as a method to reconnect with future newspaper researchers and readers. This will result in more protection for the community based advertisers because the daily paper will remain anchored and part of the community.
In conclusion, the newspaper publishers today should be focusing on bringing back readership. A primary vehicle is to create more digital relationships with their community. First giving to the children and allowing them to bring the technology into their home best serves these digital relationships. The newspaper archive is a rich historic and cultural treasure that will never become a revenue source to replace print advertising. It will be a valuable asset for the community and will play a formative role in showing children, students and researchers the cornucopia of value the newspaper plays in society. Today is not too late to start building digital products but newspaper publishers must stop chasing the latest online fade and must build to their strengths. The newspaper archive is a strength controlled by the publishing industry. The primary research source for genealogists is the newspaper, most often in microfilm. It is not hard to envision researches working genealogy into school curriculums if their local newspaper is digitized and available for free. So, give the kids the Morgue and celebrate the history of your community.
[1] This example comes from a Speech I attended by at The Library of Congress Spring 2006, if you search Google today you will see it has dropped from its first position but is still on the first page of search returns.
[2] Google Books, Google News, Google Scholar
