Comments on: Who are your customers? http://burden.ca/blog/2008/02/who-are-your-customers/ Newspapers, their websites, and their future Wed, 30 Jun 2010 22:53:15 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Tim http://burden.ca/blog/2008/02/who-are-your-customers/comment-page-1/#comment-8 Tim Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:11:07 +0000 http://burden.ca/blog/?p=10#comment-8 Peer pressure definitely helps explain why publishers would put money into something that doesn't make money. They know (and they're right) that Internet will be the platform of the future...even if they don't know exactly when that will happen, or how they can best capitalize on it. They see other people doing video, including some of the best websites in the industry, and say, "Hey, we should do that too." They think, hey, maybe we can sell ads around it, embed ads into the video, and so on, just like on TV. They're not broadcasters, they don't have people with experience in broadcast, and they don't have sales people who could sell it either. The overriding sentiment is something like, "Well, we don't know how to make money out of this web thing, and none of my peers seem to either, so lets just try stuff until something shakes out and the mud clears." Which would be fine if newspapers were in a position to experiment, but with profits and readership in such rampant decline, it's not at all clear to me that money should be spent on experiments at this point without a clear business strategy. To make matters even worse, the associations that newspapers belong to, such as community newspaper associations like the CCNA and OCNA, have taken it upon themselves to decide what is the best strategy for the web. How? By offering prizes for video and the like. It completely sideswipes the whole discussion of whether doing video is a good thing for print organizations to invest in, giving it a sort of automatic cachet. "It must be good, there's an industry prize for it." And we all know how much publishers like to get prizes. As I will argue soon, video is the absolute worst place for a print news organization to invest its resources. Peer pressure definitely helps explain why publishers would put money into something that doesn’t make money. They know (and they’re right) that Internet will be the platform of the future…even if they don’t know exactly when that will happen, or how they can best capitalize on it.

They see other people doing video, including some of the best websites in the industry, and say, “Hey, we should do that too.” They think, hey, maybe we can sell ads around it, embed ads into the video, and so on, just like on TV. They’re not broadcasters, they don’t have people with experience in broadcast, and they don’t have sales people who could sell it either. The overriding sentiment is something like, “Well, we don’t know how to make money out of this web thing, and none of my peers seem to either, so lets just try stuff until something shakes out and the mud clears.”

Which would be fine if newspapers were in a position to experiment, but with profits and readership in such rampant decline, it’s not at all clear to me that money should be spent on experiments at this point without a clear business strategy.

To make matters even worse, the associations that newspapers belong to, such as community newspaper associations like the CCNA and OCNA, have taken it upon themselves to decide what is the best strategy for the web. How? By offering prizes for video and the like. It completely sideswipes the whole discussion of whether doing video is a good thing for print organizations to invest in, giving it a sort of automatic cachet. “It must be good, there’s an industry prize for it.”

And we all know how much publishers like to get prizes.

As I will argue soon, video is the absolute worst place for a print news organization to invest its resources.

]]> By: Kim http://burden.ca/blog/2008/02/who-are-your-customers/comment-page-1/#comment-7 Kim Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:10:00 +0000 http://burden.ca/blog/?p=10#comment-7 I'll tell you why publishers are falling in line behind the so-called online news stars: peer pressure. I mean, come on! You've heard this before: all of us are cutting math. Who wants to go to that boring class? Let's go to the mall instead. "Let's go!" says the coolest kid in your class. Do you do what you know is right and go to math, and take that pop quiz? Or do you give in and go with them? Some publishers give in to peer pressure for the same reasons our young people do: to fit in. Others may go along because they are curious to try something new that others are doing. The idea that everyone's doing it may influence some publishers and, if I may add, editors and other senior managers charged with online duties, to leave their better judgment, or their common sense, behind. Sure, you may scoff at this for being simplistic and sophomoric, but consider this: It is tough to be the only one who says no. Publisher's aren't paying attention to their own experience and business savvy about what is right and wrong for their websites. Hey, the coolest kid wants you to drop trough and piss up against the wall? Hell yeah! You're not going to be the only weenie who slinks back to class saying, "This just isn't right". That being said, it can be powerful for one publisher to join another by simply saying, "I'm with you, fuck video, let's go". I’ll tell you why publishers are falling in line behind the so-called online news stars: peer pressure. I mean, come on! You’ve heard this before: all of us are cutting math. Who wants to go to that boring class? Let’s go to the mall instead. “Let’s go!” says the coolest kid in your class. Do you do what you know is right and go to math, and take that pop quiz? Or do you give in and go with them?
Some publishers give in to peer pressure for the same reasons our young people do: to fit in. Others may go along because they are curious to try something new that others are doing. The idea that everyone’s doing it may influence some publishers and, if I may add, editors and other senior managers charged with online duties, to leave their better judgment, or their common sense, behind.
Sure, you may scoff at this for being simplistic and sophomoric, but consider this: It is tough to be the only one who says no. Publisher’s aren’t paying attention to their own experience and business savvy about what is right and wrong for their websites. Hey, the coolest kid wants you to drop trough and piss up against the wall? Hell yeah!

You’re not going to be the only weenie who slinks back to class saying, “This just isn’t right”.
That being said, it can be powerful for one publisher to join another by simply saying, “I’m with you, fuck video, let’s go”.

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