3 ms·

I don't understand why this matters. Can't the newspaper companies just publish their stories online? Does it really matter whether I read the content in the pa

I don't understand why this matters. Can't the newspaper companies just publish their stories online? Does it really matter whether I read the content in the paper or online? Honestly this seems like a good thing; we're saving resources and moving to a new media. Am I missing something?

russell 18y ago
I suspect the economics of on-line advertising don't support the large editorial staffs that major newspapers have. Are dept. stores going to pay the equivalent of full page print ads for banner ads? If it were true, the NY Times would be rolling in money. People look at the newspaper display ads, but ignore online ads. Classifieds used to be a money maker, but are now essentially dead.
apinstein 18y ago
Yes, you're missing something. :) Even if they publish all of their stories online, you have to realize that newspapers typically have huge CapEx and/or fixed costs. If they want to keep a single print copy out there, there is a huge fixed cost to print the first paper copy. I know that there are ways to reduce the fixed cost, but that increases the marginal cost. Newspapers have optimized their businesses on the assumptions that they'll print lots of copies. The "crisis" in the industry is that they all realize that assumption won't be valid sometime between now and "real soon now". The internet is quite simply a MORE EFFICIENT way to sells news. It costs less to produce, distribute, and sell. So much less, in fact, that for existing businesses (newspaper co's) it's very difficult to make the transition without the entire thing collapsing. The smaller newspapers are having more success at this than the big ones because their investments are lower than the big guys. They also are in a different news business; they do LOCAL news. Thus, they have unique content with less competition. All of the big newspapers are essentially the same national news, and that is very competitive due to the internet. It's also not just a matter of "moving content online". Newspapers get ~75% of revenue from ads (display ads + classifieds, about half & half), ~18% from subscriptions, and a few other sources. The classifieds business kinda got stolen out from under their noses (see craigslist) and that killed about 25% of their revenue. Online ads are more trackable, and work better, so that reduced the VALUE of the same print ads. And subscriptions are down. Take nearly any business and tell them their revenues will drop by at least half and stay that way and see how well they do...

russell 18y ago

I suspect the economics of on-line advertising don't support the large editorial staffs that major newspapers have. Are dept. stores going to pay the equivalent of full page print ads for banner ads? If it were true, the NY Times would be rolling in money. People look at the newspaper display ads, but ignore online ads. Classifieds used to be a money maker, but are now essentially dead.

apinstein 18y ago

Yes, you're missing something. :) Even if they publish all of their stories online, you have to realize that newspapers typically have huge CapEx and/or fixed costs. If they want to keep a single print copy out there, there is a huge fixed cost to print the first paper copy. I know that there are ways to reduce the fixed cost, but that increases the marginal cost. Newspapers have optimized their businesses on the assumptions that they'll print lots of copies. The "crisis" in the industry is that they all realize that assumption won't be valid sometime between now and "real soon now". The internet is quite simply a MORE EFFICIENT way to sells news. It costs less to produce, distribute, and sell. So much less, in fact, that for existing businesses (newspaper co's) it's very difficult to make the transition without the entire thing collapsing. The smaller newspapers are having more success at this than the big ones because their investments are lower than the big guys. They also are in a different news business; they do LOCAL news. Thus, they have unique content with less competition. All of the big newspapers are essentially the same national news, and that is very competitive due to the internet. It's also not just a matter of "moving content online". Newspapers get ~75% of revenue from ads (display ads + classifieds, about half & half), ~18% from subscriptions, and a few other sources. The classifieds business kinda got stolen out from under their noses (see craigslist) and that killed about 25% of their revenue. Online ads are more trackable, and work better, so that reduced the VALUE of the same print ads. And subscriptions are down. Take nearly any business and tell them their revenues will drop by at least half and stay that way and see how well they do...