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Below are excerpts from the Internet chapter of
Winning with the News Media
2005 Edition
Copyright © 2005, 2001, 1999, 1996
By Clarence Jones
The Internet
Future Delivery
System
For Every News Format
I read a newspaper cover-to-cover at breakfast every day. Always have.
But I ask myself these days — do I really need it any more? Is the newspaper providing anything I can't get on the Internet? And on the Internet, the information is available at any hour, updated to the moment I connect.
Well, maybe. In many cities, the newspaper still has ONE unique service. Their display ads (department and grocery stores, service companies). Some newspapers don't put their display ads on the web. The paper is the only place I can shop for bargains locally.
But That's Changing
But that's rapidly changing, too, as some papers include those ads in their websites.
My hometown newspaper is on the web. When I travel, I read it wherever I am. Along with the full content of any major newspaper I choose. Almost all of it free.
I can also flip back through archived stories, indexed for the last 10 to 15 years. Research into recent history is a click away. Wow!
I also have a high-speed cable (2 mb) Internet connection. I'm able to view most NBC Nightly News stories — full sound and video — on the MSNBC website hours before NBC broadcasts them.
One of my local TV stations has its weather radar constantly on the Internet. With my high-speed connection, I watch the storms moving across the map, just as they show them on TV.
Eventually, I believe, virtually all forms of communication will use the Internet as their delivery system.
Everything about the delivery of news and information is in turmoil. The entire financial structure is being reexamined and rebuilt. Some news outlets will die. The survivors will be those who figure out how to use the new medium.
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The chapter continues with a description of "push" technology to deliver news; data and charts on the growth of Internet advertising, and how quickly the Internet emerged.
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1996 '97 '98 '99 2000 '01 '02 '03
Source: Interactive Advertising Bureau
Internet Advertising
Advertising foots the bill, just as it does for virtually all other media. No other advertising medium has ever grown as quickly as the Internet did.
Look at the graph above to see how dramatically it grew. From almost nothing in 1996, it brought in more money than highway billboards in 2002. The 2003 figure above was projected, based on the first half of the year.
Classified Ads
About 40 per cent of gross revenue for the average American newspaper, according to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) came from classified ads in 2000. Take classifieds away, and the newspaper cannot survive.
A survey released at a January, 2004, NAA conference studied 41 companies who hired more than 250,000 new employees. Of those hires, 31.8 per cent were the result of websites who help companies and new employees find each other. Only 3.8 per cent of the hires were the result of newspaper ads.
Newspapers Respond
Some major newspapers are responding to the threat. They are banding together to launch regional classified Internet listings that duplicate the classifieds in their newspapers.
And some newspapers have formed alliances with local realtors and car dealers. Their Internet advertising can be reached through the newspaper's website.
Success Can Be Fatal
Newspapers were dominant so long, they lost their competitive edge. In my seminars, I chart fatal accident rates for commercial airline pilots. Young pilots have a relatively high rate. But then accidents drop to almost zero until pilots have a lot of experience.
Then the crash rate increases. Not because they're old. Because they're successful. They've become complacent. Careless. Too sure of themselves.
Because they had little competition for so long, newspapers lost their edge. In the 1950s, they failed to realize the threat that television posed to their profits. And they were even slower to understand the Internet's potential reach. If they had not been so sure of themselves; if they had been able to adapt to the new technology, they could have dominated the delivery of Internet news and web advertising.
Threat to Television
The Internet threatens television, too. But television was not as slow to recognize what was happening. Perhaps because TV has been so much more competitive than newspapers. Television stations and networks battle each other every day. TV news may be the most competitive business in America.
The networks saw the future and got into the Internet game early. Particularly NBC. With cable channels CNBC (cable NBC) and MSNBC (a partnership with Microsoft), NBC has the ability to cross-plug, expand and rework its stories for every conceivable audience.
The broadcast stories remind you that you can find more detail on their Internet website. Broadcast stories are repeated on the cable channels, which also cross-plug the network and its websites.
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The Blogging Phenomenon
The Worldwide Web today is very much like the American newspaper of the late 1700s. Only more so. In those early days, anybody with access to a printing press thought the world wanted to read his thoughts, fears, political rhetoric and religious ranting.
Blogs — personal diaries and commentaries on the web — are very similar to the meanderings of newspaper columnists. Blog is a contraction of "weblog."
In early 1999, Jesse James Garrett — editor of Infosift and one of the original bloggers — posted a list of other blogging sites like his. He counted 23.
In late 2003, a Harvard Law School conference estimated the number of blogs. Best guess — over 4 million. Their geometric explosion shows the power of the Internet and how quickly it can spread news and ideas worldwide.
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The chapter closes with the problem of customized Internet news preventing access to random information. In reading a newspaper or magazine, we run into stories that we would not have ordered which broaden our knowledge and outlook. It critiques the time pressure the Internet has created, which makes other media quickly publish or broadcast rumors that have not been confirmed so they can say they were first with the story; and the phenomenon of newspapers beating themselves by posting tomorrow's newspaper on their own websites today.