|
|
The past decade has brought the journalism industry some of its darkest moments. On the business side, management could not react swiftly enough to protect their market share as thousands of online competitors emerged. Revenue tanked, readership declined and layoffs became a seasonal task at many newspapers.
Welcome to the world of online journalism – the new age media.
A rise in alternative channels (radio, TV, wap, web, mobile) has reduced newspapers’ market share of advertising. Their case isn’t helped by declining readerships and new media channels that offer access to more specific audiences.
Newspapers have done very well at protecting generous profits despite increasing competition on a number of platforms, and declining readership - but the changes in consumption patterns enabled by the websites, and the migration of advertising online, represents a massive challenge to existing print business models.
How can you make money out of content that fewer people are prepared to pay for?
How can you justify paying printing and distribution costs when online distribution is not only vastly cheaper, but more effective? How can you sell readers to advertisers when there are fewer of them, and you know less about them than your online competitors?
If each online reader is worth 60% less than a print reader, it helps to have, say, 80% more of them. Online media and website platform is the next biggest thing in reaching out to the people.
Few days back one of my colleague argued with me about the print media of journalism and online media of journalism – well not to argue for print will always remain where it was but lets accept the new age generation:
Recently one of my boss shared a comprehensive study about where the big print media across the world heading and stands at this junction. Here is thought to share:
The New York Times (Average daily circulation 1,007,256) (Compete online audience: 12,188,886) NYTimes.com is the single best daily newspaper site in the country. NYTimes.com not only carries a significant amount of content from the print paper's news hole, it also has many features built just for the online version.
The Los Angeles Times (Average daily circulation: 773,884) (Compete online audience: 3,917,054) The Latimes.com is part of the largest newspaper on the West Coast, owned by the beleaguered Tribune Company. The website is relatively primitive compared to many of the others run by large papers. Navigation, which runs down the left hand side of the pages, is clumsy.
The New York Daily News (Average daily circulation: 703,137) (Compete online audience: 1,729,407) The size of the NYDailynews.com web audience is only a little more than two times its paid print circulation. That is a smaller ratio than with other large papers. This may be due to the fact that much of the NY Daily News readership is blue collar.
The New York Post (Average daily circulation: 702,488) (Compete online audience: 1,899,003) NYPost.com is too close to simply being a copy of the daily paper scanned and put online. Since the property is owned by News Corp. which has a large internet business and also WSJ.com, it is disappointing that almost none of this expertise has been applied to the daily paper. The website's video and picture sections look like an afterthought. The best navigation bar for finding site content is at the very bottom of the homepage and is hard to locate.
The Washington Post (Average daily circulation: 673,180) (Compete online: 6,548,678) The figures from the WPO 10-Q indicate that revenue for the company's online business is relatively small and represents only a modest part of the sales for the newspaper group. That is unfortunate. If any company should be right behind The New York Times in internet revenue it is the Post.
The Chicago Tribune (Average daily paid circulation: 541,663) (Compete online audience: 1,954,491) Chicagotribune.com is mediocre, especially for a paper the size of the Trib, the flagship of The Tribune Company. Some of the local coverage is quite good, such as it political column, Clout Street. "The Swamp" from the paper's DC bureau is one of the site's strengths.
The Boston Globe (Average daily paid circulation: 350,605) (Compete online audience: 2,757,866) The newspaper site, known as Boston.com, clearly has a large following in New England. It has an impressive ratio of online visitors to paid print subscribers. It is too bad the product does not deliver more. It is odd that NYTimes.com is such a good website and Boston.com has such a long way to go. Both are part of the same parent company. The top part of the home pages is a strange collection of stories which do not seem to bear any relationship to one another.
The Chicago Sun Times (Average daily paid circulation: 321,274) (Compete online audience: 1,454,791) Suntimes.com has a remarkably simple lay-out and it plays to its strength, local news, from the top to the bottom of the homepage. National and world news are moved off to the right, well down the page. The metro section is as complete as any 24/7 reviewed. Readers who want to know what the Chicago area news is can find virtually all of it on one place.
What do you think about the new age media. Share your thoughts. write in to at: mrbibhu@gmail.com
|
TRACKBACK URL: http://blog.mid-day.com/trackback/328
|
|
