Turning Distribution Into Revenue

The thing about journalism is this: reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.

People continue to want news. They just don't necessarily want it in print form.

It's too slow. It's about what happened yesterday, after all.

It's not convenient. You can have it delivered to your home or office or pick it up from a newsstand -- but the printed newspaper isn't available on your smart phone, your iPod, etc.

It's too expensive.

What's interesting is that technology has transformed the first two complaints: you can now get real-time news updates and you can access it on your smart phone, on e-readers like Kindle, etc.

Technology has improved distribution of the news. But while it has brought some costs down significantly, technology still hasn't generated revenue streams to pay for the news.

Even providing an iPhone App hasn't solved the revenue question, as reported in the New York Times, "There’s an App for That. But a Revenue Stream?" Check out "For Murdoch, It’s Try, Try Again" by the Times' David Carr, which looks at ways Murdoch, the Times, Boston Globe and others are thinking about getting consumers to pay for news content.

As Murdoch told the Times, "Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting. The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news Web sites.”

By doing so, Murdoch and others will establish a wall that will prevent search engines from finding the content, and reduce the number of people able to access that content. Then it will become more important for PR functions to use social media to raise awareness of the coverage about their client or organization.

Still, the first challenge is to get people to pay for general news. Check out a New York Times article from today about the Financial Times, "Financial Times Feels Vindicated by Web Strategy," which looks at how the FT's strategy of putting its content behind a pay wall has been paying off. Up next for the FT is a system of micropayments.

Seattle Times Doing Well Since Seattle P-I Went Online

One of the important questions for the future of newspapers is whether the online-only model can generate enough revenue to sustain newspaper operations.

In the five months since the Seattle Post-Intelligencer shifted to online-only mode, with a much smaller staff (now at 20, down from 165) and more than 200 unpaid bloggers, kept much of the reader traffic it had as a newspaper site. According to its owner, Hearst Corp., audience and revenue are "ahead of projection."

So a scaled-down version of local news can work.

What's also interesting, according to the New York Times' Richard Perez-Pena, "Seattle Paper Is Resurgent as a Solo Act," the Seattle Times is now profitable.

Which proves that demand for print journalism continues. For now.