Is Analysis the new News?

Sidin Vadukut — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:52:00 GMT

Today my inbox was bombarded by a number of links all of which, after sifting and sorting, appeared to come as the fallout of two stories on the Internet. Both stories had to do with the precarious future of newspapers in the context of the challenges posed by the platform that is the Internet.

The first was a blog post by Guardian’s Jeff Jarvis dated January 12th on the news that the LA Times had just managed to create news history: revenues from the online operations for that newspaper had finally reached a level high enough to pay for all editorial costs. (My colleague Krish Raghav has talked about it in a blogpost here.)

Jarvis, and rightly so, highlights the monumental nature of this development:

What this tells me is that we are on the cusp of the moment when online revenue could sustain a substantial digital journalistic enterprise without the onerous cost of printing and distribution. Hallelujah.

He goes on to explain how this hope of a sea change in the journalistic business comes with various caveats. (More here.)

Also in my inbox were links to a column by David Carr on the New York Times, dated January 12th as well, on how the news business probably needs a business-disruptor in the mould of Steve Jobs to help it make money. Carr wonders: Why not have an iTunes for news? Where people can buy bite-sized news pieces?

Carr’s piece was immediately ripped to shreds by detractors: 1, 2, 3.

Both articles are worth thinking and worrying about.

Many globally known papers are in trouble. The Christian Science Monitor is now an online only operation, the NY Times may be in a serious liquidity crisis, the LA Times is broke and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a two-month deadline to find a buyer.

As far as I know there is a challenge facing newspapers and magazines in India as well but possibly due to different reasons.

Jarvis’s perspective is interesting at a time when many people think that the Internet is killing the newspaper. Why read a paper in the morning when a quick morning browse of Google News with a cup of coffee crunches in more information in less time? And not only that, a reasonably savvy internet user can even set up RSS feeds and email newsletters that can deliver the exact content he wants, when he wants it, on a platform he wants.

(Wait for the day that Internet access and browsing gets seamlessly integrated into a TV screen. There’s no telling how TV channels will cope with that. The innovations are already in motion.)

But rather than cursing the Internet, Jarvis’s take on the LA Times achievement seems to state that the Internet may be an opportunity rather than a curse. David Carr is asking for a messiah in a black turtleneck. But before conjuring up new business models for newspapers the first question we need to answer is simple: Why do people read newspapers?

Forget people.

Why do you read a newspaper?

Not for the breaking news because you get that from your TV channel. Not for the stock prices. You get those on your mobile phone or your computer.

In fact, coming to think of it, the only real news you get from the newspaper is the local news and sordid scandals that none of the other media channels carry.

Comics strips? Internet!

That, in all probability, leaves only the analysis of news, views and feature stories which is really what makes each paper unique. That and the Sudoku puzzle for the commute.

I have no market research to prove this of course, but in my mind the real dilemma facing media outlets is the question of how to sell their analysis. The LA Times’ online success, which they somewhat attribute to a huge spurt in blog traffic, is a case in point.

What do those LA Times blogs deliver that are unique? Analysis, comment, opinion… Call it what you want, but it is anything but breaking news. It is not a matter of speed alone but also depth. The readers seem to be saying: Yes we know this happened. So what? What do you think? What do you think we should think? The blogs are the easiest way to get these answers so they go there.

Perhaps all newspapers, Mint included of course, needs to think about this basic challenge: How do we generate, position and sell analysis as profitably as possible? What size of newsroom do we need? What type of writers? What sectors can we report and analyze efficiently? Do we need to cover, say, Technology, when the reader can fire up Engadget, Gizmodo or the other specialist technology blogs? Can we be market leaders when it comes to commenting on the Indian Economy? Yes we can excel at the SME sector. But does the paying reader care?

The internet, newsprint, mobile phone all then become just platforms for analysis. Each of them may have their own importance and amenability to content but they are not, then, game changers in themselves.

Does this mean that every newspaper should aspire to become the New Yorker?

You are the reader. You tell me.

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Making the Internet Pay the Bills

Krish Raghav — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:11:00 GMT

History has been made today, if buzz on the Internet is to be believed.

American journalist Jeff Jarvis, writing for the Guardian, writes that the L.A.Times, the much beleagured paper seeing cuts in circulation, a strained buyout, and criticism in the wake of layoffs, now earns enough through online ad revenue to cover it's 'entire editorial payroll - print and online.'

Jarvis cites an 'email' and Russ Stanton, the editor of the paper, as the source for this information, which apparently, and rather boisterously, says: 'Given where we were five years ago, I don't think anyone thought that would ever happen.'

Of course, it's hard to say if the L.A.Times has reinvented the wheel here until more information pours in - it's been forced to cut editorial staff drastically (and is hence a much smaller operation), and, since a lot of advertising packages bundle print and web together, it won't be that easy to cleanly cleave the two (just yet), even at a time when the Internet is overtaking print as a 'primary news source'

The L.A.Times website itself doesn't really look too different - it has a clean, clear design, with (unavoidably) garish ads liberally sprinkled all over, and clicking on a story replaces the top banner with another ad, like above. (Yes, very much aware of the irony, thank you)

In fact, what's telling here is that the L.A.Times approach is not so much cutting-edge and radical, but smart and reasoned. They've been quietly pushing for change and tweaking things around since 2006's infamous internal memo that called it a 'web-stupid' organization. A conference talk by Jason Oberfest, head of Product Strategy and Business Development at the paper highlights some of their key approaches, and some are very interesting in their sheer common-senseness:

” The first thing that was really clear to us is that newspaper articles online frankly just don't cut it. We knew we had to change that paradigm -we had to build a more functional product, a more utility oriented product.”

Newspaper websites, in India atleast, have till now largely functioned as large, inglorious dumps of all their print articles - an approach made worse by a clunky, ancient search capability and a poorly organized database. Small first step this, but perhaps the most difficult.

“We recognized the extent of the local opportunity… There are many categories of news and information where a one-size fits all approach to developing products works ok (like classifieds)"

Few Indian papers do this, but that could also be because very few daily papers can indeed be called 'local'.

(From the LAtimes website)

“Content aggregation is as important as content creation.

Probably the most important of them all: recognizing that readers will rarely, if ever, rely solely on YOU and your website for all their information, especially when the idea is to greedily hoard all your content in a keep and charge for entry (metaphorically speaking, of course)

It is indeed good news that a digital operation can help pay the bills in such a significant manner, but whether we have, in the L.A.Times, a model of efficiency and cleverness, or merely an affect of drastic and ruthless cost-cutting - we'll have to wait and see. But Jarvis, on the other hand, is positively buoyant:

'So in the LA Times revelation, I see hope: the possibility that online revenue could support digital journalism for a city. The enterprise will be smaller, but it could well be more profitable than its print forebears today and - here's the real news - it would grow from there. Imagine that: news as a growth industry again.'

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Play Things : journalism

Is Analysis the new News?

Making the Internet Pay the Bills