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Re: Monday, April 9, 2007
I think the separation between editorial and publishing gets wider every day. Both want to save papers, but with different motivations and in different ways. Both parties (to varying degrees and in varying ways at different papers) misunderstand (IMHO) what the Web is good for, but for different reasons. The publishing side wants to leverage print business onto the Web. The editorial side stays away from the whole thing because the publishing side is running the show. That's a bit of insight I got yesterday from an insider, for what it's worth. I also don't think the choice is between innovation and profit. It's between engagement and isolation, with editorial prefering the former and publishing prefering the latter. Again, that's a huge generalization, but pretty much how things line up. The reason it's hard to get funding for an online/offprint newspaper is that the online advertising sells for a tiny fraction of what print advertising sells for. Combinations of the two sell best. Or so I'm told. Start-up costs aren't cheap. And professional print reporters would rather write for print. Or for print AND online. Look at Santa Barbara Newsroom. It's a bunch of excellent reporters, all cast out of their newspaper, working hard with union help to get back on the inside. Oddly, they would much rather do that than start a new paper. They're like sailors on land who would much rather return to sea than drive a car. Anyway, expect no big funding for online papers. Also few in any position are imagining what will be required to succeed in a world where advertising itself becomes obsolete. Right now we're back in 1999 again, thinking advertising is going to make everybody rich. So far it's just made Google rich. Time for Plan C, and nobody has it yet. There are responses to this message:
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