John Houghton's New Media Blog

Sad but true. Times are changing and with the rise of Craig’s List and online advertising, there are few big revenue streams available to newspapers. If they consider that they are in the news delivery business and proceed on that model, they might have an easier time. As we know old habits die hard as do old ways of thinking. Big three auto didn’t change their strategy quickly enough and look at the mess they’re in. I think newspaper companies needed to go digital a long time ago.

I get the Wall Street Journal every day, but only electronically. I was tired of newspapers piling up in my living room. I would love to get the Economist electronically, but they force you to get the physical version as well, so I don’t subscribe. It seems that a lot of these folks are interested in “pushing paper” to us, rather than pushing the news. If they gave it to me in electronic form (with ads) then they could have me as a customer. That probably has something to do with the Audit Bureau of Circulations and how they count “copies served.”

I love that WSJ is available in PDF version because a lot of my business associates read the print version, and with the PDF version (an exact copy of the headline pages for each section) I can see which important articles are prominently placed and are likely to be read by them. Without seeing that “ranking” everything is on a level playing field and I can’t cover it. It’s always nice to have read the same article and comment on it.

WSJ has been podcasting for a while and publishing video, however, they need to put more editorial effort into it before I start watching. I can tell that a lot of the effort/research has gone into the written word, so that’s what I focus on.