Hoosier PRSA Blog

Give me the daily paper, please!

The Indianapolis Star ran--at least, in its online version--an alarming story about declining circulation among newspapers generally and the Star in particular. Here's the lead:

INDIANAPOLIS -- Most large U.S. newspapers, including The Indianapolis Star, posted declines in circulation for the six months ending March 31 as readers continued to migrate to the Internet for news and information and as publishers took steps to shed unprofitable circulation.

None of this surprised me, but I felt moved to comment as follows:

While recognizing that people's needs and preferences change, as well as the impact that economics and technology have on traditional media, I can't imagine life without the daily paper. Not online updates; the get-it-in-the-driveway, fold-under-your-arm, read-circle-and-clip kind of publication that plays an irreplaceable role in our society. I've been reading the Star since I delivered it (inside your storm door and I won't walk on your lawn, for two cents a day, thank you) in the early 60s.

The Star was hideously conservative then (remember the daily Joe Crow feature? Dr Crane's column "The Worry Clinic"?) As our paper struggles like every other, I hope they keep trying to deliver the product, keep trying to hold public officials accountable, keep turning up the untold story. Checking facts. Applying standards of journalism. Some of that rigor is missing in our Wild, Wild West of blogs and tweets.

It's fascinating to watch the drama unfold as newspapers fight to stay alive.

          

iContent? Pay-per-article to Generate Lost Revenue

Comes today Liz Joss, PR Director for Hetrick, asking -- should we pay for content? Interesting treatment about coagulating the newspaper revenue bloodletting of recent.

By Liz Joss, PR Director

So along comes another media “expert” saying that newspapers are dying because people don’t want to pay for content.

But newspapers are dying because many of the people in charge of them haven’t accepted that they need to change their thinking.

Publications have traditionally made their money from three sources: newsstand sales, subscription sales and advertising (definitely not in that order). Predictors of the demise of newspapers say that the loss of ad revenue means newspapers can’t afford to stay in business; the three-legged stool will fall over.

So maybe it’s time to build a new third leg, one that replaces advertising revenue with paying-for-content revenue.

The New York Times, for example, e-mails me a list of the week’s travel articles every Friday—for free. I can open an article I’m interested in and read it—for free. I can print it, send it to a friend, comment on it, forward it to my phone—all for free.

Newspapers are trying to support this service by selling online ads. But do you ever look at those ads? I sure don’t. And advertisers know it.

Instead, let’s say the Times sends me that list, but asks me to pay for each article I want to read. I’m not making a trip to Laos or Uruguay anytime soon, so I ignore those stories, but I do want the Times’ tips on pubs in a Sydney neighborhood, what’s going on with airfare to Europe, where to see live volcanoes, and how to protect my credit cards when I travel. If I were asked to pay 50 cents or so to “buy” each of those articles, I’d happily do so. (Just like I pay 99 cents for a song on iTunes.) And when I do actually make that trip to Australia, I’ll pay for access to the Times archives on that country, too.

Even with circulation on the decline, the Times still reaches well over a million paying customers every day—and that’s just the print edition. The Times itself estimates that at least that many people are also reading it online—for free. If the Times convinced just 1 percent of those 2 million readers to pay 50 cents for just one article, the Times would earn $10,000 that day per article. And the Times produces hundreds of stories every day. To read articles that interest me, I might wind up spending spending five or 10 bucks a month for content produced by some of the world’s best reporters, photographers and editors. That sounds like a bargain to me—and represents much more income than the Times sees from me now.

Likewise, I’d pay to read my local newspapers’ take on local subjects, a business paper’s articles concerning my industry, and maybe my college paper’s front page.

Am I the only one?

Juicing My Social Media with Ping.FM

Okay, so I should have been using Ping.FM. I knew about it. Yes, I did. But never carved out time to "really" look at it. At least not until today. I learned about it at the very social media boot camp I coordinated. Stay tuned for outtakes form Boot Camp 09.

If great PR falls alone in the forest, does it make a sound?

When was the last time you were rewarded? And we’re not talking about a slap on the back or a company-wide thumbs-up e-mail, we mean, really rewarded, for a job well done?

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?

WE thought so.

That’s why now, more than ever, you need recognition from your peers for a stellar project or campaign. We know you exceeded goals, out-performed your competitors and reached new audiences. But do your
potential clients, employees and consumers know that? Does your boss?

Help us, help you. Apply for a Hoosier Chapter PRSA Pinnacle Award,and you might just get the recognition you deserve. The deadline is April 22, and only $75 for PRSA and IABC members. Find out more at www.hoosierprsa.org.

Online for everything?

By Kallie Bonnell, Marketing Coordinator, Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP

Anyone who follows the news has seen newspapers themselves making headlines and not in the positive-press way. Every week another paper is announcing cut backs, salary reductions, and in the worst cases bankruptcy.

However, print news media is not the only medium losing traction to the Web and online sources.  The February numbers for online video streaming are beginning to show the same trends that online news exhibited many, many months ago. Hulu for example grew its viewership by 42% and streaming by 33% and according to Neilson is the second largest video streamer in the U.S.

Yesterday, @comScore released findings on the demographics of Twitter, a digital network that is being touted as the fastest breaking news medium on the Web today. Who is using Twitter to monitor the content of live conversation - the demographics are a little shocking. ComScore cites 45-54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter, making them the highest indexing age group, followed by 25-34 year olds, who are 30 percent more likely.

Speculation and rumors of Google purchasing Twitter, to increase the availability of “real time” search, ran rampant in the past week.  Regardless of whether the M&A comes to fruition, you can bet Google is figuring out a way to get its share of the “live search” action.

Point being, with live search becoming a reality, online news replacing the traditional print version plus eliminating the antiquated idea of a news cycle, and broadcast being moved to video streaming, are major broadcast corps the next to be affected by attrition and possibly demise in the marketplace? Will the broadcast world find a way to adapt?