It turns out that news, like politics, is local. Or at least that’s the way some of the largest news media organizations see it when it comes to coexisting with new media.
The February issue of Red Herring has an article on the new rules of engagement between old and new media. Newspapers in particular are taking at hit at the hands of citizen journalism and person-to-person classifieds like Digg and Craigslist. At first the old school journalists stuck their collective heads in the sand and decried the importance of these newcomers. Now they’ve passed into the second stage, from denial to acquisition. The large media companies realize that these new media outlets are an opportunity to engage readers in multi-dimensional relationships, and therefore to increase revenue. And with 2005 revenue increases like 54.5% for Knight Ridder Digital, the strategy is hard to question.
The article goes on to make the critical point that it’s not just about the revenue, it’s also about keeping and growing their audiences. The largest chunk of online readers is the 35 – 44-year-old group, an important demographic for nearly every marketer. As these active consumers adopt new media habits (from podcasts to blogs) the industry needs to follow suit.
But last week’s Yahoo story is a cautionary note to all of the old media gang looking to get into this new business. Lesson learned? You can’t just shoe-horn the old ideas onto the new media. You need to adapt your thinking, your strategies as well as your technologies to the rapidly changing Web 2.0 environment. And be prepared for some bumps in the road. Just ask Jim Brady at the WashingtonPost.com about his problems with the ombudsman column in January.
Change isn’t easy, especially when you have to redirect large, mature, old-line organizations. However, if Knight Ridder and the New York Times are any indication, it’s the promise of a new world of news media choices, one built by and for consumers.
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Media, Journalism, Web2.0, Yahoo!
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