I assumed NYT's offerings stemmed from audience research via ad sales. I used the same to help figure out what premiums or giveaways to offer our listeners during pledge drive. I can almost map out NPR's (Chicago-based, anyway) audience onto the NYT bundling services. Listeners who tune into our NPR member station tend to over index on these qualities:
- Enjoy the experience of eating: trying out the newest restaurant hot spot, cooking at home with interesting ingredients, trying new recipes, hosting dinner parties, etc. (Cooking)
- Love brain play, enjoy passing the time with puzzles that tickle the brain (Games)
- Are not particularly early adopters, moreso follow the crowd (Wirecutter)
- Enjoy travelling; are adventurous and love new experiences (I've been wondering if the NYT is looking to acquire some kind of travel agency)
Today’s excellent column reminds me of a framing that left a big impression on me; an “aha moment,” if you will (and I think I may owe Jeff Jarvis a h/t for this one). The reason Kodak blew it in the digital age, the explanation goes, is because they didn’t really understand what business they were in. They thought they were in the film business. What they didn’t realize is that they were actually in the “moments” business. Their customers (“audience”) loved them for providing multiple ways to document and preserve moments in life; not because they provided film. And so they totally missed the boat and dug in on film, when digital moments were the future. They did not understand their audience.
Interesting article! Had two thoughts: 1) The NYT strategy seems like a modern update on how in the print era A.M. Rosenthal subsidized news coverage through the creation of separate lifestyle-oriented daily sections geared to higher-income readers (as well as Sports Monday). That seems like a smart strategy for the big news organizations in terms of bottom line consideration; I wonder though whether the more inspiring and perhaps civically useful success story at the NYT (and others) is getting so many people to actually pay online for news, increasing readership tenfold and creating a revenue stream that more directly subsidizes the end goal of news coverage. I know it's not either-or, but in my experience sometimes publishers can lose sight of the core goal when spending so much effort on other editorial goals. 2) To your question about finding other interests that core readers have: I wonder if local arts and culture coverage, pursued as event-driven reporting (and analysis), can be folded into more conventionally defined news coverage as a core strategy -- broadening the definition of news (something that happens that matters and often taps into our broader collective search for meaning and community) to put a community's government decisions and court proceedings and concerts and exhibition openings in one pool.
So interesting! I just talked about this in a class I'm taking in business school on the "media" industry. Sometimes hard to even start thinking that creatively, especially when the editorial side is what got most folks into the business in the first place.
A timely and smart column, Dick. I like the way you frame how newspapers should think, and where they should look, to bring in more readers (and revenue): "interests beyond news that unite your particular audience."
Alas, lots of the obvious opportunities - the low-hanging fruit as it were - have now been taken. Fantasy baseball, as you note. Or a movie/entertainment database - think IMDb - that the LA Times could have done.
Having said that, I agree that there still are opportunities - probably even in online games - that no one has thought of. The challenge in spotting these opportunities is that newsrooms generally speaking aren't entrepreneurial, at least when it comes to ideas for generating new revenue sources.
But what about this: Thinking a little outside the box, could Apple's App Store be a model for the news media? There is no way that Apple itself, even with its many creative employees, could have conceived of the countless brilliant apps now available to Apple customers. But Apple and the entrepreneurs who developed successful apps have both benefited from Apple opening the store - giving developers access to a large customer base in return for Apple taking a percentage of their revenue. It's a win-win.
Could some smart person in the media world try to recreate a version of that? Let local entrepreneurs come up with revenue-generating ideas that would be shared on newspapers' platforms, for which the newspapers would get a piece of the revenue? Most newspapers don't have money to make acquisitions, like the NYT did with Wirecutter and Wordle, but the App Store approach wouldn't require nearly as much up-front capital. Maybe there are too many technical issues to be resolved - Apple has a big team vetting apps, to make sure they work and to avoid scams, for instance. But perhaps some smart mind could set up an app clearing house of sorts for all media that want to participate. Open the gates, and good ideas might come.
I assumed NYT's offerings stemmed from audience research via ad sales. I used the same to help figure out what premiums or giveaways to offer our listeners during pledge drive. I can almost map out NPR's (Chicago-based, anyway) audience onto the NYT bundling services. Listeners who tune into our NPR member station tend to over index on these qualities:
- Enjoy the experience of eating: trying out the newest restaurant hot spot, cooking at home with interesting ingredients, trying new recipes, hosting dinner parties, etc. (Cooking)
- Love brain play, enjoy passing the time with puzzles that tickle the brain (Games)
- Are not particularly early adopters, moreso follow the crowd (Wirecutter)
- Enjoy travelling; are adventurous and love new experiences (I've been wondering if the NYT is looking to acquire some kind of travel agency)
Today’s excellent column reminds me of a framing that left a big impression on me; an “aha moment,” if you will (and I think I may owe Jeff Jarvis a h/t for this one). The reason Kodak blew it in the digital age, the explanation goes, is because they didn’t really understand what business they were in. They thought they were in the film business. What they didn’t realize is that they were actually in the “moments” business. Their customers (“audience”) loved them for providing multiple ways to document and preserve moments in life; not because they provided film. And so they totally missed the boat and dug in on film, when digital moments were the future. They did not understand their audience.
Interesting article! Had two thoughts: 1) The NYT strategy seems like a modern update on how in the print era A.M. Rosenthal subsidized news coverage through the creation of separate lifestyle-oriented daily sections geared to higher-income readers (as well as Sports Monday). That seems like a smart strategy for the big news organizations in terms of bottom line consideration; I wonder though whether the more inspiring and perhaps civically useful success story at the NYT (and others) is getting so many people to actually pay online for news, increasing readership tenfold and creating a revenue stream that more directly subsidizes the end goal of news coverage. I know it's not either-or, but in my experience sometimes publishers can lose sight of the core goal when spending so much effort on other editorial goals. 2) To your question about finding other interests that core readers have: I wonder if local arts and culture coverage, pursued as event-driven reporting (and analysis), can be folded into more conventionally defined news coverage as a core strategy -- broadening the definition of news (something that happens that matters and often taps into our broader collective search for meaning and community) to put a community's government decisions and court proceedings and concerts and exhibition openings in one pool.
Gannett is in the grips not of Alden (their takeover bid was rejected), but rather Fortress. It may well be a distinction without a difference.
So interesting! I just talked about this in a class I'm taking in business school on the "media" industry. Sometimes hard to even start thinking that creatively, especially when the editorial side is what got most folks into the business in the first place.
A timely and smart column, Dick. I like the way you frame how newspapers should think, and where they should look, to bring in more readers (and revenue): "interests beyond news that unite your particular audience."
Alas, lots of the obvious opportunities - the low-hanging fruit as it were - have now been taken. Fantasy baseball, as you note. Or a movie/entertainment database - think IMDb - that the LA Times could have done.
Having said that, I agree that there still are opportunities - probably even in online games - that no one has thought of. The challenge in spotting these opportunities is that newsrooms generally speaking aren't entrepreneurial, at least when it comes to ideas for generating new revenue sources.
But what about this: Thinking a little outside the box, could Apple's App Store be a model for the news media? There is no way that Apple itself, even with its many creative employees, could have conceived of the countless brilliant apps now available to Apple customers. But Apple and the entrepreneurs who developed successful apps have both benefited from Apple opening the store - giving developers access to a large customer base in return for Apple taking a percentage of their revenue. It's a win-win.
Could some smart person in the media world try to recreate a version of that? Let local entrepreneurs come up with revenue-generating ideas that would be shared on newspapers' platforms, for which the newspapers would get a piece of the revenue? Most newspapers don't have money to make acquisitions, like the NYT did with Wirecutter and Wordle, but the App Store approach wouldn't require nearly as much up-front capital. Maybe there are too many technical issues to be resolved - Apple has a big team vetting apps, to make sure they work and to avoid scams, for instance. But perhaps some smart mind could set up an app clearing house of sorts for all media that want to participate. Open the gates, and good ideas might come.
Mind expanding.
A preventative partial answer for a community newspaper? Never start a website or social media accounts in the first place, if you haven't yet.