The old joke goes "What is Black and White and Red all over?"  A newspaper.  While this held true for the past few centuries the newspaper industry today is dying at the hands of the almighty Internet.  While the Black and White are still there, the Red now only shows up on the balance sheet.  Newspapers, like magazines, are able to exist because of advertising and to a lesser extent, paid circulation.  Numerous articles and blogs have been written on the state of the industry and what it should do to survive.  Part of the problem is the consumers expectation for free content which forces newspapers into a corner. Do they try and charge readers for the content or do they offer it for free on their website?  Charging for it generates a revenue stream much like charging for the print edition.  Giving it away for free draws a bigger audience which translates into higher rates for online advertising, but effectively eliminates the business case for the printed version.  So how do printed newspapers survive?

 

Almost all markets have at least one newspaper, usually the amalgamation of the what used to be two or three papers.  They have a Front section, a Local section, a Sports Section, maybe a Business Section and Classified ads.  A vast majority of the front section is usually AP wire stories that you could read in 1,000 other papers across the country.  More importantly, you could find the same stories, but in REAL TIME, on thousands of websites.  The Local section has stories about local schools, nonprofits, crime, etc and that are usually only available in that particular metro area.  The sports section is a few stories about local high school and collegiate teams along with a lot of AP stories, once again, that could be found on thousands of websites in REAL TIME.  The Business section highlights a few local businesses, local publicly traded companies and pages and pages of stock market results that, once again, can be found on thousands of websites in REAL TIME.

So, out of all the content listed above, the Local section is the only part that is unique to a particular paper.  Why not make the entire paper local?  Don't have enough reporters?  Publish the numerous local blogs that exist in every community.  Newsweek magazine is changing from a reporting-the-news reactive format to a opinion based analysis of the news stories.  Or in simpler terms, they are in effect using personal opinion, called blogs on the Internet, as the main part of their content.  I am sure every local paper received ten times more oped pieces and letters to the editor than they publish.  Why not include more of these?

The basic business idea of product differentiation seems to be non-existent at newspapers.  What is the other thing that makes the newspaper different from other forms of media?  They have people that come to your door on a daily basis to deliver something.  Who says they have to be delivering a newspaper?  Team up with local florists and direct mail houses to add a new line of business with very little additional overhead.  Do something, anything other than serving simply as the local AP print house.