Thanks to two students who did my work for me, wrt this post:
Casey forwards this link to a piece from Fortune that explains why bankruptcy -- now the billion dollar buzzword, thanks to yesterday's news about Chrysler -- may work to save the car biz, but not the news biz. It's all about alternatives: Sooner or later, we will all need to buy a car, at least until something better comes along. As for ink on paper, however, thanks to the web, that ship has sailed. At least according to this theory.
On a more hopeful note, Jackson forwards this link to a plan for ramping up n/p revenues courtesy of a most unlikely source: Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks. His plan? Turn the newspaper into a mini-Amazon, where you can buy whatever the paper advertises -- expanded sports sections, roses for mom, the Jonas Bros DVD -- with a point and click thru the newspaper itself once your credit card is on file. Genius? Possibly. bk
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j.linx: news, connections and conversations on the future of journalism
- barbara kelley
- I teach journalism and direct the journalism emphasis at Santa Clara University. As a freelance journalist, i have written for daily newspapers and their Sunday magazine sections as well as a variety of regional and national magazines. Among them: Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Los Angeles Times, salon.com, California Magazine, San Francisco Magazine, Utne Reader, Health Magazine, Parenting Magazine, Redbook, Bay Area Parent and Pacific News Service. This blog is for students -- and anyone else who wants to join the conversation about the future of journalism.
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Mark Cuban is stating the obvious, which is probably why the newspaper industry hasn't thought of it already. The fact is very few people read newspapers out of a burning desire to get the news, unless some momentous event had occurred. I'm generalizing, but they read the news because it was there after they read the baseball standings, looked for coupons, read their horoscope, did the crossword, checked the movie times, etc. Many of those things have been taken away from papers by places like craigslist. Instead of endlessly trying to figure out how to repackage the news, media companies should be figuring out new ways — as Cuban suggests — to get people to their sites...where they'll end up reading the news as a byproduct. It's a humbling thing for journalists to accept, which may be why they aren't doing it.
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