Why Print, and Why Now?
It's been more than a week since the Knight News Challenge winners were announced, which included our Printcasting project and many other cool ideas. It's been really interesting to learn more about all the projects, many of which are about new delivery mechanisms for local news and community.
So now that the dust has settled, it's a good time to address the unspoken question that I know is on many peoples' minds.
I'm someone who has been involved in digital media innovation for 13 years, and one of the early people in the newspaper industry to bring user-contributed content and social networking into the fold. I know that online social media is redefining the entire media business model, and have even done my part to accelerate that.
So why in the world am I supposedly leaving online media to go back to print, which many techies (and not just a few traditional journalists) consider a dying medium? And why at a time when every month we see new reports of falling newspaper print circulation?
And the answer is that I'm not. On the contrary, I'm seeking to bring all of the energy and excitement of social media into the world of print, and make local print distribution of online content an integral part of the fabric of Web 2.0.
In all the justified euphoria surrounding the emergence of the social Web, I fear that the newspaper industry has developed some unhealthy biases about its native print medium that are based on the assumption that the print-to-digital transition is a zero-sum game. As a result, we see continued innovation around pure-play online content (good) and almost no true innovation in the print model (bad!)
Yes, there are plenty of redesigns and creations of new niche print publications, but those don't count as true innovation of the model in my opinion. Just as we've done with user-contributed content, we need to think about fundamental changes in how print products are produced, and by whom, so that print is part of the social media revolution.
Arianna Huffington, the Huffington Post editor who spoke at this year's Editor and Publisher Interactive Media Conference, put it best in her keynote speech. Said Huffington, "I don’t believe for a moment that print is dead. I think newspapers, and media in general, have a tendency to think about everything in terms of the delivery mechanism."
And lately, in terms of innovation, we seem to be focusing mostly on the Web, a little on mobile and not at all on print.
I suspect this bias is partly to blame for why most newspapers still have "print people" and "online people" after more than a decade since the advent of the consumer Internet. With a few exceptions, anything new and cool tends to be focused 100% on the Web and completely ignore print. Newspapers seem to increasingly hire people who are focused on digital media, and lose people who focus only on print -- which is a shame since both of those camps can, should and must come together.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the social networking forum that is either getting lost in the new-media hubbub, or intentionally ignored. While we see more and more activity in local online social networks, all of the real revenue growth is still in print. And it's coming through the back door in new niche print products which contain content that's submitted online by local consumers.
The concept of Printcasting really started in 2004 after the launch of The Northwest Voice, the first so-called "citizen journalism" product created by a U.S. newspaper. This is the now-familiar approach of letting people write stories about their neighborhood, which are then reviewed by an editor and placed in printed publications that are delivered to everyone on the block.
We see this with the Voice, others like it such as the Denver Newspaper Agency’s YourHub.com and magazines like New West and 8020. All of these work because they have print editions.
There are two reasons for that. First – and I know that this will shock some of the digerati – average people love the idea of seeing their content printed and locally delivered. That's the primary reason they spend time writing their stories. I have no way to test this, but I would bet that the quality of content in citizen media products that include print editions is higher because people know that once it's printed, everyone will see it and it can't be changed.
And second, local advertisers also like print when they can afford it. When you see that newspaper advertising is faltering, it's not because local businesses are saying they don't want to advertise. They're saying that they can't afford the high rates required to print 70,000, 120,000 or 200,000 copies of the same ad in the hopes that it will reach the much smaller number of people it was intended for. Because we have not solved this problem, they increasingly avoid the newspaper and turn to more targeted local delivery mechanisms, such as direct mail (hello – a print medium!) which costs less to get a message out to locals who are more likely to want their products.
The bitter irony for newspapers is that of all industries, we have more experience around creating and delivering local news and information in print than anyone. And yet, even the U.S. Postal service, with it’s snazzy Click2Mail service, is doing a better job than we are at delivering customized information and advertising in print. Let me restate that for emphasis: an institution that is part of the bureaucracy-laden federal government is doing more around personalized print delivery than newspapers.
With all due respect to the post office, that's just pathetic.
At The Bakersfield Californian, we've had a lot of success with local niche-focused social networks that include print editions. We're very good at identifying an audience with unmet information needs, creating a publication and Web site, and leveraging peoples' online contributions for printed magazines. And we’re getting better at selling ads in those publications.
But the challenge is that for every audience we identify, there are 100 others that we miss and may never identify, and even if we did we could never hire enough people to manage those publications and Web sites. That's the nature of todays fragmented media world, where less time and more choices naturally eat away at traditional aggregation-centered media models. That's where automation and citizen publishing tools come in – the very heart of the Printcasting concept. We want to, and really need to, tap into peoples’ passions so that they can create new niche publications all on their own which local advertisers can afford.
If this idea sounds interesting to you, I hope you will join our growing community of interested individuals at our Web site: http://www.printcasting.com. It’s a place to review our ideas and participate in discussions that will help ensure this project is a success. And I hope it also has another effect of breaking down the self-inflicted, anti-print stigma that has developed over the years.
The attitudes about print aren't all bad, by the way. Over the last few months I've been happy to discover that there are many people and companies out there that are orbiting around the same basic ideas. Thanks to MediaNews Group’s Peter Vandevanter, there’s even a global personalized print conference (in which I'll be a participant). Thanks to the convergence of good ideas and promising new print technologies, we may be at the beginning of a new global movement around personalized print creation – the child of the Zine explosion of the 1990s. It couldn't come at a better time, or a moment too soon.
printcasting, 
newspaper industry, 
the bakersfield californian, 
knight news challenge
So now that the dust has settled, it's a good time to address the unspoken question that I know is on many peoples' minds.
I'm someone who has been involved in digital media innovation for 13 years, and one of the early people in the newspaper industry to bring user-contributed content and social networking into the fold. I know that online social media is redefining the entire media business model, and have even done my part to accelerate that.
So why in the world am I supposedly leaving online media to go back to print, which many techies (and not just a few traditional journalists) consider a dying medium? And why at a time when every month we see new reports of falling newspaper print circulation?
And the answer is that I'm not. On the contrary, I'm seeking to bring all of the energy and excitement of social media into the world of print, and make local print distribution of online content an integral part of the fabric of Web 2.0.
In all the justified euphoria surrounding the emergence of the social Web, I fear that the newspaper industry has developed some unhealthy biases about its native print medium that are based on the assumption that the print-to-digital transition is a zero-sum game. As a result, we see continued innovation around pure-play online content (good) and almost no true innovation in the print model (bad!)
Yes, there are plenty of redesigns and creations of new niche print publications, but those don't count as true innovation of the model in my opinion. Just as we've done with user-contributed content, we need to think about fundamental changes in how print products are produced, and by whom, so that print is part of the social media revolution.
Arianna Huffington, the Huffington Post editor who spoke at this year's Editor and Publisher Interactive Media Conference, put it best in her keynote speech. Said Huffington, "I don’t believe for a moment that print is dead. I think newspapers, and media in general, have a tendency to think about everything in terms of the delivery mechanism."
And lately, in terms of innovation, we seem to be focusing mostly on the Web, a little on mobile and not at all on print.
I suspect this bias is partly to blame for why most newspapers still have "print people" and "online people" after more than a decade since the advent of the consumer Internet. With a few exceptions, anything new and cool tends to be focused 100% on the Web and completely ignore print. Newspapers seem to increasingly hire people who are focused on digital media, and lose people who focus only on print -- which is a shame since both of those camps can, should and must come together.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the social networking forum that is either getting lost in the new-media hubbub, or intentionally ignored. While we see more and more activity in local online social networks, all of the real revenue growth is still in print. And it's coming through the back door in new niche print products which contain content that's submitted online by local consumers.
The concept of Printcasting really started in 2004 after the launch of The Northwest Voice, the first so-called "citizen journalism" product created by a U.S. newspaper. This is the now-familiar approach of letting people write stories about their neighborhood, which are then reviewed by an editor and placed in printed publications that are delivered to everyone on the block.
We see this with the Voice, others like it such as the Denver Newspaper Agency’s YourHub.com and magazines like New West and 8020. All of these work because they have print editions.
There are two reasons for that. First – and I know that this will shock some of the digerati – average people love the idea of seeing their content printed and locally delivered. That's the primary reason they spend time writing their stories. I have no way to test this, but I would bet that the quality of content in citizen media products that include print editions is higher because people know that once it's printed, everyone will see it and it can't be changed.
And second, local advertisers also like print when they can afford it. When you see that newspaper advertising is faltering, it's not because local businesses are saying they don't want to advertise. They're saying that they can't afford the high rates required to print 70,000, 120,000 or 200,000 copies of the same ad in the hopes that it will reach the much smaller number of people it was intended for. Because we have not solved this problem, they increasingly avoid the newspaper and turn to more targeted local delivery mechanisms, such as direct mail (hello – a print medium!) which costs less to get a message out to locals who are more likely to want their products.
The bitter irony for newspapers is that of all industries, we have more experience around creating and delivering local news and information in print than anyone. And yet, even the U.S. Postal service, with it’s snazzy Click2Mail service, is doing a better job than we are at delivering customized information and advertising in print. Let me restate that for emphasis: an institution that is part of the bureaucracy-laden federal government is doing more around personalized print delivery than newspapers.
With all due respect to the post office, that's just pathetic.
At The Bakersfield Californian, we've had a lot of success with local niche-focused social networks that include print editions. We're very good at identifying an audience with unmet information needs, creating a publication and Web site, and leveraging peoples' online contributions for printed magazines. And we’re getting better at selling ads in those publications.
But the challenge is that for every audience we identify, there are 100 others that we miss and may never identify, and even if we did we could never hire enough people to manage those publications and Web sites. That's the nature of todays fragmented media world, where less time and more choices naturally eat away at traditional aggregation-centered media models. That's where automation and citizen publishing tools come in – the very heart of the Printcasting concept. We want to, and really need to, tap into peoples’ passions so that they can create new niche publications all on their own which local advertisers can afford.
If this idea sounds interesting to you, I hope you will join our growing community of interested individuals at our Web site: http://www.printcasting.com. It’s a place to review our ideas and participate in discussions that will help ensure this project is a success. And I hope it also has another effect of breaking down the self-inflicted, anti-print stigma that has developed over the years.
The attitudes about print aren't all bad, by the way. Over the last few months I've been happy to discover that there are many people and companies out there that are orbiting around the same basic ideas. Thanks to MediaNews Group’s Peter Vandevanter, there’s even a global personalized print conference (in which I'll be a participant). Thanks to the convergence of good ideas and promising new print technologies, we may be at the beginning of a new global movement around personalized print creation – the child of the Zine explosion of the 1990s. It couldn't come at a better time, or a moment too soon.
printcasting, newspaper industry, the bakersfield californian, knight news challengeLabels: knight news challenge, newspapers, printcasting
posted by Dan at
5/27/2008 04:33:00 PM
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