Newspaper Next

This blog isn’t intended as a comprehensive record of what we’re doing in the N² project. That would simply take too much time, and we have a project to complete. Rather, I’m hoping to offer up slices from our work that will be thought-provoking, useful or just plain interesting to other people wrestling with the same conundrum as N². Which is, basically: How can newspaper companies evolve into new models of relevance and value in a world where people consume fewer newspapers but much more information?

If newspaper companies want to figure out how to be indispensable to the growing ranks of their non-customers, they need to start with the lives people are living, and the information jobs they’re trying to get done. It’s been amazing to me how much more opportunity I see for newspaper companies when I take that point of view.

A new Pew study of online news usage is loaded with interesting information for anyone who’s trying to figure out the future of news. It points out that broadband access produces very different and stronger consumption patterns, even among young adults.

What's a newspaper website supposed to do, anyway -- attract move old readers to a new medium, or attract new readers? By replicating print content online, It appears we've done both, but it's time to look beyond "cramming."

"Convergence" takes on new meaning in a new twice-daily Naples Daily News online news broadcast. It's more like TV news than either newspaper or website, and yet the journalistic values are more like newspaper than TV. Like most things N2 Task Force member Rob Curley and his team do, it deserves a close look.

A MediaPost piece by Jason Weidner gives a fascinating glimpse of how mobile phone search is weaving itself into the life of at least one early adopter. The "Jobs-To-Be-Done" approach is exactly what Newspaper Next prescribes -- and newspaper companies need to be exploring this new frontier as quickly as they can.

Newspaper companies are realizing that local information is the heart of the franchise -- but which local information? The answer has to begin with a different set of questions.

Self-serve advertising could be a great way for newspaper companies to open their websites to businesses too small to advertise in the newspaper -- and now there's a way to get started simply, quickly, and with no up-front costs.

One of the most common questions about Newspaper Next’s unique take on innovation is, “How can I establish this kind of thinking and action in my organization?”

Here’s a practical approach from a company that’s making it happen.

On Feb. 18, The New York Times Magazine included an article about Toyota (registration required; there may be a charge for those not members of TimesSelect) on the occasion of the introduction of its new Tundra full-size pickup truck. Toyota is poised to surpass General Motors soon as the world's largest car company. How is it possible that a mainstay of the American economy for a over century is about to cede its position to an organization that has only been in this country 30 years?

It's striking how many of the same principles of disruptive innovation and of the Newspaper Next Method and Game Plan Toyota has used to build its success. Here are some of the things the article mentioned that can work for us just as they worked for Toyota.

The Economist has an article about Apple, a company the magazine calls "California's master of innovation." Their success comes at least in part from their ability to hew closely to the classic principles of disruptive innovation, including:

• A relentless focus on the customer -- what you might call an obsession with "Jobs" to be done (sorry);


• No corporate ego about where good ideas come from. "Not invented here? No problem."


• A willingness to start small and look to future growth ("earn a little, learn a lot");


• The ability to "fail wisely," or, in Newspaper Next terms, "fail fast and cheap."

If you're a local newspaper, this Mediapost report should be chilling.

Marchex, a search and ad network company, announced that it has launched 200,000 local websites providing user reviews on local businesses.

Databases are an important tool for media companies to use in doing more jobs for our communities.

The primary job newspapers have done for generations has been to tell the news of the community, the nation and the world. News remains an important job, but as we seek to build larger audiences we need to do more jobs. Steve Gray, managing director of Newspaper Next, expresses one of those key jobs as "Help me get answers about this place."

One of the most encouraging signs that media companies understand the expanded role they need to play is the growing use of databases to provide answers about communities.

At a recent reception, a colleague scorned efforts by the newspaper industry in the mid-1990s to appeal to young adults.

I could join that colleague (a former newspaper editor) in criticism of many things newspapers have tried in pursuit of young readers, but he was way off in one point that he made: He said newspapers were crazy to pursue nonconsumers. Who, he asked, ever succeeded by trying to sell to nonconsumers?

"Can you imagine the automobile industry targeting people who don't drive?" he asked.

In a social setting where I didn't feel like arguing, I let the comment pass. But it's a point of view that inhibits innovation.

The Newspaper Next concept of "good enough" has proven to be one of the most troublesome for many newspaper organizations to grasp. Doesn't this mean we're compromising our commitment to quality and excellence? Dumbing down the newspaper? Sanctioning less-than-meticulous work?

No, in a word, it doesn't. The term "good enough" should be applied at two points during the new product development process. There appears to be a greater understanding of one of these points than the other, so below is an attempt to shed some additional light on both.

You wouldn't think Apple was a company that needed to worry about reinventing itself, but yes, apparently so. MediaPost's editor-at-large, Diane Mermigas, has this to say about how Apple "is morphing from a nimble electronic power into a formidable digital lifestyle company."

You wouldn't think Apple was a company that needed to worry about reinventing itself, but yes, apparently so. MediaPost's editor-at-large, Diane Mermigas, has this to say about how Apple "is morphing from a nimble electronic power into a formidable digital lifestyle company."

One of the things we talk about a lot here at Newspaper Next Central is how new technology allows information that has always existed to be collected, "mashed up," and disseminated in new and much more meaningful ways. The example we always use is the map.

Consider my colleague Steve Gray's point: Latitudes and longitudes for every location on Earth have existed for centuries. But only in the last 10 years have we seen people traveling to every tiny intersection in every small town to geocode it. Why now? Because, through new technology, all these codes can be amassed into a huge database and voilà! We can represent spatially anything we want, in a way we never could before.

Maps are all around us so we tend to take them for granted, and lots of newspapers are starting to capitalize on the power of maps to provide various kinds of information (see the list below). But a couple of recent events reminded me of how powerful different kinds of maps can be in a local community, and how easy it is for newspapers to create them.

Read Steve Gray's post on the NAA Future of Newspapers blog, about what an expanded vision can mean for newspaper organizations.

Some questions about journalism innovation stump me. This one didn't.

A person who's trying to help journalists move into the digital world was trying to persuade some newspaper editors and writers to "build credibility with their users by having the courage to send users elsewhere for info when they can't meet the need." The editors were appalled and asked for "hard data to take home to convince their legacy managers this is a good idea."

You want hard data? Here's some hard data: Google.

The New York Times had an article recently about how the cost of continuing to send reporters out to travel with the campaigns has become steep enough that some news organizations, particularly newspapers, are deciding to pull their reporters back as a cost-cutting measure. Like that's a bad thing.

I think it's a good thing.

Heresy, I know, but hear me out. One of the hard decisions newspapers have to make in order to liberate resources for new growth is, as Bill Watson from the Pocono Record says, "what to stop doing."

Steve Outing's latest E&P column sounds a theme that resonates with Newspaper Next 2.0 and should be required reading for everyone who's trying to figure out the future of newspaper companies.

His headline says, "Newspapers First Need to Redefine 'News' to Move Forward Online." Redefine it how? By realizing that, for consumers, the "micropersonal" is a very important part of the news they want and need.

Providing social networking tools enabling local people to stay in touch with their friends is a perfect fit with the core message of Newspaper Next 2.0: There are huge opportunities in local communities for newspaper companies beyond the traditional boundaries of news.

Newspaper companies are trying hard to create new growth, but many have trouble grasping that this will be virtually impossible to achieve with news alone. The fact is, to continue providing the kind of newsgathering that communities need, they'll have to expand far beyond news to support it.

If you have doubts about this fundamental fact, check out this piece by Frederic Filloux, an editor for the Norwegian group Schibsted, and Jean Louis Gassee, a partner for Allegis Capital in Palo Alto, CA. It lays out the truth in black and white, showing why doing news online won't be enough to sustain our newsgathering operations.

it's a sobering read. But that's mainly because the authors see clearly what won't work, but they don't seem to see the vast areas of opportunity for new audiences and new revenues beyond news.

The biggest challenge facing virtually all newspaper companies right now is creating new revenue. Even among the most innovative companies -- those that are quickly diversifying their offerings and creating innovative new products and services for consumers -- the revenue performance often isn't as good as they hope.

That's why the Newspaper Next 2.0 report urges newspaper companies to redouble their focus on non-consumption among businesses, not just consumers. The revenue opportunities are huge, especially in two categories: small and medium enterprises that rarely advertise in newspapers, and larger businesses that have advertising objectives a newspaper can't meet very well. There's a lot of money in those two zones for newspaper companies that figure out how to meet these needs.

A new case study from NAA provides a great example of how to do it. Here, as so often before, the Bakersfield Californian is leading the way. You can download the excellent NAA report, written by Stacy Lynch.