Somewhere out there, the people who thought up Craigslist are
sitting pretty. It’s no secret that the independent, interactive
online services site dealt a blow to the lucrative classified
ads sections of many major daily newspapers, sending the business
into a tailspin, scrambling to restructure and stay relevant.
This phenomenon has created a niche market for companies like
The
American Press Institute. The “old, monolithic newspaper
model is in disruption,” they say, knowing that they are
tapping into a psychography of businesses that are reacting
to sustained losses of both revenue and readership, and are
trying to figure out how to recover. The newspaper business
is, after all, a business.
API has come up with a proposed solution called “Newspaper
Next.” It’s a workshop led by Marketing Director
Elaine Clisham that tours major urban beats and university campuses
preaching a premise that would send chills down the spine of
any journalist with a spark of creative fervour left.
AMANDA STUTT is a graduate student at the UBC School
of Journalism. She completed a B.A. in English Literature and
Sociology. Her writing has appeared in the Ubyssey, The Seed
and the Tyee. She specializes in investigative and human- interest
journalism.
“Your
vision needs to be: Connect local customers with local businesses…developing
products for people who have decided, for whatever reason, not
to read,” said Clisham told leading local editors at a
recent seminar at the University of British Columbia co-hosted
by the UBC School of Journalism.
Instead of figuring out why core readers aren’t reading
anymore, API proposes a shift in the critical mindset: Don’t
worry about the reader — focus instead on the consumer.
Other, more interactive forms of media such as Google, Wikipedia,
Netflix, and the like are thriving, and have largely replaced
hardcopy daily newspapers for advertising and reference materials.
Clisham referred to these sites as ‘disruptive innovators’
to the old newspaper model, and offered tips on how to stay
competitive.
The “new” way is that news is not enough; rather,
“we need to be everything you need to live in this community…We
used to be the dominant source of information in our community…
and we aren’t reaching as many people anymore,”
Clisham said.
API’s biggest success model is The
Desert Sun,
a 22,000 daily circulation paper in Palm Springs, California.
Clisham called The Desert Sun a good case study “because
they were focused on organizational structure…in terms
of building new audience, they’ve figured out the whole
database thing very well.”
Steve Silberman, executive editor of The Desert Sun
spoke at the seminar via a videotaped interview. “I was
thinking too much about the reader and not enough about the
consumer,” he said, explaining how implementing Newspaper
Next’s model of restructuring worked for his newspaper.
Any mention of how to address public scepticism that may have
turned readers’ eyes in other directions was conspicuously
absent, but the point was not lost on some audience members.
Kirk LaPointe, managing editor of the Vancouver
Sun
said, “the core question for a lot of us still seems to
be in the newsrooms, which we really refer to as the high-end
quality of our business…Are we covering too much, and
uncovering too little?”
LaPointe is concerned about dipping into a “finite talent
pool” of investigative journalists, and the hazards of
placing too much emphasis on feedback to a market.
“We will not have the resources to break ground and investigate
matters that raise public awareness and mobilize their interest
and passion…You can’t take your eye off the ball,”
he said. “We are coming from a model where, it’s
not that we didn’t ask people what they wanted, we thought
that part of the beauty of journalism was that we could, in
fact, create a market for something. That you could lead the
public experience and raise their awareness”.
But Chisholm maintained that newspapers no longer have the ability
to create a market. “For better or worse, those days are
over,” she responded, reiterating that the newspaper business
must focus instead on tapping into “what the consumer
wants.”
“No journalist…can survive in this media environment
without understanding how business works and how a journalism
organization can make money,” said Clisham. “We’re
focused on the future and how to pay for that journalism.”
She agreed there is a strong market for investigative journalism,
but rather than addressing ways to get the reader engaged in
that journalism she asked, “how do we engage people who
might not pick up the paper but still need access to information?”
Chisholm advised newspapers to nuance and digitalize the local
telephone directory, tapping into consumers’ unmet needs
— such as late night pizza-cravings. She suggested an
online service directory with entertainment options and advertisements
for “low-end pizza restaurants.”
“Local information [that is] easily accessible is a huge
resource for building local audiences,” she said. “We
need to get out of the mindset of creating content, and into
the mindset of creating a platform.”
Clisham emphasized focusing energy on putting out “light
versions of daily newspapers.” Examples of this model
in Vancouver are 24hrs and the youth-oriented
online Dose.
“Circulation” will become “distribution”
said Clisham, referring to the guy who stands on the street
corner handing out newspapers to passers-by.
At the end of the day, critical ethical questions resonate.
What has happened to the readers? Spending the morning coffee
or transit commute immersed in a hardcopy of the local daily
is rapidly becoming a vanquished pastime. So why aren’t
readers reading anymore?
These questions have broad societal implications that Newspaper
Next failed to address. Should the dominant paradigm in journalism
shift from a focus on conveying messages to the reader and creating
a market for consciousness-raising to a model that focuses on
advertising products and services to a consumer? It’s
these questions that haunt the sparsely populated hallways of
the world of investigative journalism, and that anyone concerned
with the future of newspapers should be asking.
