5 Ways Newspapers Botched the Web

nicholas.m.carlson writes "Remember Knight-Ridder and AT&T's Viewtron from 1983? With a $900 terminal and $12 a month, you could access news from the Miami Herald and the New York Times, online shopping, banking and food delivery, via a 300-baud modem. After sinking $16 million a year into the project, Knight-Ridder shut it down in 1986. That's just the earliest of the 5 newspaper failures on the Web that Valleywag details in this post, writing: 'each tale ends the same way: A promising start, shuttered amid fear, uncertainty, and doubt.'"

Ha ha!

Your medium is dying!

Re:Ha ha!

Well, its a rare medium that is well done.

Re:Ha ha!

Actually, you'll note that some of these botches of the web actually predate the web. It is easy to mock in hindsight.

In the fall of 1994, I was the first editor of the third daily newspaper to go online daily (the Kansas State Collegian, which followed the Kentucky Kernel (which beat us by a few days as their school year started earlier) and the Raleigh News and Observer (nando.net -- now a McClatchy holding -- which was online with news everyday at some point that summer). In the spring of 1995 I had a newspaper management class and the publisher of the Kansas City Star spoke about how it had invested millions in this new thing that was going to let people read their newspapers at home on their PCs. When he was done, I invited him back to the student newsroom and showed him the Internet. ("It's kinda like AOL," I told him.) What we were doing -- for the cost of two part-time student salaries and one retired yet dedicated Mac SE 30 -- was almost exactly what he described. He was both amazed and pissed. The Star project was canceled months later.

We were originally going to do a Gopher site to archive our newspaper, but some jackass at the ever competitive University of Kansas had done a mock up of the University Daily Kansan as a web page (spring of 1994). Spurred into action, we changed our plans and did that web thing instead. Why? Because it let us display images with the stories. But if Kelly Campbell, our technical brains, hadn't been curiously checking out our options, we'd have done a Gopher site and it would have been complete obscurity. One curious tech was the difference between bleeding edge correct and looking goofy. (Kelly, btw, is a senior programer for Google now.)

When that KU jackass got his degree, he went to work for Knight-Ridder and led its Internet efforts. Then it created the "RealCities" horseshit that the article describes. I witnessed firsthand the RealCities disaster, as I was working at the Wichita Eagle (a Knight-Ridder paper), and called it when I saw it -- but nobody who mattered listened.

Pretty much everything after 1995 is open for mockery. But those early efforts are just bleeding edge research projects that could have gone any direction. The whole idea of open standards just didn't exist for anything but automotive cigarette lighters. We were all just guessing, and some were willing to put their money where their mouths were.

Newspaper is obsolete.

Well not quite. For one, newspapers have a lot of room for things which aren't time sensitive. When it comes to news itself things are a bit different. The days of newspapers being able to stick AP articles into the paper are long over. To maintain relevance, newspapers have to (*gasp*) start researching, thinking about, and producing their own content. Today breaking news is available minutes after it was written, newspapers cannot afford to simply reprint what we've already read the day before. They have to put the effort in to consolidate and analyze all of the available information, as well as gather their own to produce something better.

Newspapers need to accept that all of this NEEDS to be duplicated on the web. The web should be thought of as nothing more than a free digital version of the newspaper. Advertising should be expected to support it.

Newspapers that can't pull it off, should shut down while they can.

Newspapers and SEO

Another way newspapers are failing on the web is the use of terms in headlines that generate high ranking on search engines.

Stories like the iPhone Nano that the Mail ran a few weeks ago, and that was linked to from here are perfect examples of it.

Journalism is second place to the SEO it seems.

Charlie Brooker wrote about it a couple of weeks ago, but the best example he gave was from the Telegraph where journalists wrote: "Young women - such as Britney Spears - are buying more shoes than ever"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/21/charliebrooker.pressandpublishing [guardian.co.uk]

Re:Newspapers and SEO

Charlie Brooker wrote about it a couple of weeks ago, but the best example he gave was from the Telegraph where journalists wrote: "Young women - such as Britney Spears - are buying more shoes than ever"

That one is a bit much but isn't this just the next logical step from the classic headlines on the print edition? An "Extra" that would have large block text of DEATH, SEX, SCANDAL, TRAGEDY, or whatever that could be seen on the newsstand when you were still a block away. It is a way to get attention.

Today it's page hits yesterday it was copies sold.

Re:Newspapers and SEO

Journalism is second place to the SEO it seems.

That's true, but it's really not a reflection on newspapers, but really a reflection on the fact that search is not -- in any way -- good enough. In fact, if anything search is getting worse. There's Google and some also-rans. SEO-spamming Google is what everyone needs to do on the web. That just should not be. It wasn't even that bad before Google, newspapers didn't used to do that. Everyone HAS TO now.

Google needs competition, for the good of us all, including themselves.

Anonymous sources

Well they've sure taken a strong lesson with the anonymity of the web. It seems every headline I read is based on an anonymous submission, a source who detailed events under the protection of anonymity, et cetera.

Not sure how we still call them news agencies.

Viewtron

From TFA:

In 1983, Knight Ridder and AT&T joined to launch videotext service Viewtron. Anybody with a dedicated terminal, phone line, and $12 a month could access news from the Miami Herald and the New York Times, online shopping, banking and food delivery, via a 300-baud modem.

This happened in the mid 1980s so it had nothing to do with the web. It sounds like a brave early attempt to anticipate the web. Good on them. Sorry it failed but they were clearly before their time. I wouldn't call it a botch.

Re:Viewtron

It's true that Viewtron was long before the Web, but it very much affected the way newspaper companies looked at new technology.

Knight-Ridder invested more than $50 million in Viewtron over six years and got nothing back. The money just went away. Gone forever. They could have bought a couple of mid-size daily newspapers at that price and had a solid rate of return.

Memories of Viewtron fed a lot of fear in the 1993-1997 era. That's actually when U.S. newspapers blew their opportunities to be leaders in what became the modern Web. Nobody was willing to place a really big bet. Nobody wanted to flush $50 million down the toilet. So newspapers got all tangled up in complicated, unworkable cooperative deals like New Century Network.

And when the dotbubble burst in 2001, people could say "see, I told you so!"

Life moves on. Suddenly everything changes, and big companies are caught napping.

So there you have it. Newspapers were among the pioneers in the online space, pushing content onto CompuServe and The Source, publishing on Prodigy, building entire national networks like Viewtron. Roll ahead a couple of decades and they're being reviled as a worst-case example of an industry caught sleeping at the switch.

Paper and gasoline-based dinosaurs

Newspapers are paper and gasoline-based dinosaurs. This is what is causing their demise. It will soon cost too much to actually schlep all this stupid paper from the printing plant to the houses.

    Newspapers traditionally do the following things:
    - Inform their readers what is happening in the world.
    - Inform what is happening in their city, town, or neighborhood.
    - Provide a forum for information private sales and rentals, e.g. the classified ads.
    - Provide a network for a common political viewpoints.
    - Provide a central source for commercial ads of local retailers.
    - Provide an accepted 'source of record' for local events and legal notices; weddings, bankruptcies, public legal notices, etc...

    The web does all these things better:
    - CNN, BBC, Digg, and Slashdot tell us what is happening in the world.
    - CraigsList and eBay provide local ads and private sales information.
    - Blog and political websites provide a forum for persons with shared political views.

    Newspapers are still good at local city and neighborhood news and ads for local retailers. And the web has nothing for being a 'source of record' for legal notices, and all that stuff. Newspapers have permanence: once something is printed in the local paper it stays printed and accessable. It can't be changed by some cracker like web site info. Newspapers have credibility for that reason.

    But their dependence on paper and gasoline to move all this paper makes them irrelevant nowdays. Soon it cost too much to distribute all this paper and newspapers will be gone, like typewriters are now. Ever used a typewriter? They were a real pain in the neck.

Re:Paper and gasoline-based dinosaurs

You have some valid points, but there is a distinction which is often overlooked between those who generate hard content by reporting the news, and those who serve as portals or brokers for news content that has already been generated by others.

It's not hard to see how Google, Slashdot, and others can make a good business out of aggregating and selecting the best work of others, some adding value by providing forums such as this one. But who's going to do the original reporting? Some say that the Flikr model works best. Good luck with that for coverage of stuff other than disasters and staged events... how many private citizens will be cultivating sources inside the administration, Congress, and state and local governments so they can report what and how policies are being made, and provide meaningful analysis? Sure there are millions of bloggers out there, but who has time to determine which of them are trustworthy, instead of being misinformed or having an axe to grind?

So I think it's in the interest of all of us to consider ways in which established primary news organizations can continue to thrive.

Re:Paper and gasoline-based dinosaurs

My local paper shut down because it couldn't get enough readers. One of their biggest problems is that they virtually ignored the web, and only put a few stories online. I encourage them to put on relevant content so that advertisers would want to buy in, effectively getting rid of the physical copy and making it virtual. It's too bad they went away, but I didn't want the paper badly enough to want to pay a whole bunch of money to get it.

Re:Paper and gasoline-based dinosaurs

You're ignoring one of the most important jobs of newspapers: investigative reporting. While blogs and news aggregators like Digg and Slashdot do provide a useful service, they don't generate much news. Digg and slashdot primarily link to traditional news sources and would be bereft of content were such organizations to disappear. For an example of the importance of this role, just look at the past few years. If it were not for the investigations carried out by major newspapers (in particular the NY Times and the Washington Post) we would not know about the NSA wiretaps, the Guantanamo abuses, or the role of the Bush Administration in falsifying pre-war intellegence, just to name a few.

In order for a democracy to truly function, a strong, independent press is necessary (look at Russia for a "democracy" where this element is missing). It's hard to see blogs and TV news stations taking over that role from newspapers any time soon.

Re:Paper and gasoline-based dinosaurs

You're right. The value proposition that newspapers bring is the investigative reporting. That is why the online presence of a newspaper shouldn't be powered by wordpress [wordpress.org].

Any newspaper that wants to get their online presence right just needs to study the NY Times. It's really all about the economics of distribution [transitionchoices.com]. Column inches in a paper is expensive. Disk space on a web server is cheap. Use the web site as a searchable archive [transitionchoices.com] for all content but run ads on the site to encourage users to subscribe to the print edition. Also give away banner ads as an incentive to companies to advertise in the print edition.

The same holds true for broadcast media [blogspot.com] and some companies such as NPR and CBS are finally boarding that clue train.

Re:Paper and gasoline-based dinosaurs

I work for a newspaper company.

We have an internet presence, and even though it costs less than our very expensive physical product, we still make far more money off the physical product. Advertisers are still willing to pay more to have a physical insert in the physical paper, and they don't seem very interested in recreating that via PDF or Flash, or whatever online.

We actually drive our paper in all directions, as far as 7 hours away, DAILY. Do you know how much we pay in transportation? Yet, this is still our most profitable model.

I've suggested printing the paper locally in each location, and sending electronic copies to those cities rather than trucking them, but my company is actually more committed to putting out the best product, even at the expense of profit. We have really nice presses in our main facility. If we printed our paper in small towns, rather than deliver it via truck, the quality wouldn't be as good.

No doubt, our company will shift more and more online in the future, but print isn't dead yet if you put out a quality product, cater to your audience, and sell advertising like mad.

Re:Paper and gasoline-based dinosaurs

Newspapers are still good at local city and neighborhood news and ads for local retailers.

I read about things via Google news the day before they're printed in the local paper.

emp. added

Congratulations on living in a major metropolitan area.

If you live in a place with a population < 500,000, most of the local news stories won't make it to Google news - and if they do, it's because the local newspaper did a write-up on it. No one from CNN/ABC/FOX cares about a crime wave in Paduca, or the effect of the local grain elevator closing in Peoria. And the only time you get election coverage for small-town council elections in Google news is if one of the candidates is in a sex scandal.

Sure, LA, SF, DC, and NY will get "local" coverage in Google News, but the only people covering local news here in "flyover country" is the local newspaper - I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Re:Paper and gasoline-based dinosaurs

I live in a little town [wikipedia.org] in Ar and by putting my zip in Google News I get news about two days before the local papers do. Everybody seems to forget all the local TV stations are online now and their reporting is a lot faster than newspapers are,so he doesn't have to be in a big city to get his local new from Google News,because believe me big city I'm not.

I think one of the earlier posters hit the nail on the head when he talked about the need for local papers to do more actual researching and reporting to differentiate themselves from the web. Sadly,I've not been seeing that. Just more of the same wire stories from AP being regurgitated along with "stories" which are just reprinted press releases from the local business or politician when something new opens. I think the death of newspapers is coming more from the death of reporting than from the competition. Folks want something they haven't read before,not old AP stories and press releases rehashed on dead trees. The competition is simply separating the wheat from the chaff,it just turns out there is a whole lot of chaff in the newspaper industry. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Re:Paper and gasoline-based dinosaurs

As someone who worked for one of the bigger newspaper chains in "new media" for two years, I have to agree with this. In theory local information is something that local papers should be able to dominate in online. The reality is the papers spend basically squat on local presence and are centralizing all their web presence. Google, and MSN and Yahoo for that matter, have way too many people all smarter than the people running the online newspaper business. Those companies will eat the newspapers for lunch and they won't know what hit them.

The paper I worked for had just spent 30 million dollars on a new press facility, while online media was me (engineer), my boss, a designer, and an online editor, and we were lucky to have that much. Our servers were handled centrally and we paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars per year for the privilege. For what we got out of that money, we could've bought a couple servers, dropped in a DS3, and hired another person and done way more than what we did. We spent a lot of our time wrestling with their byzantine CMS, when we could've done the whole thing with Drupal or some other decent open source CMS and some customization.

I hear the executives talk the talk about how their industry must transform, but my brief experience indicated that they don't have clue one on how to do it. I wouldn't touch a newspaper stock with a ten foot pole.

They've botched their entire business

Instead of doing a lot of indepth local reporting, many of them are just local syndicated content outlets. If they would do a lot of hard-hitting local journalism, especially on matters like local government corruption and abuse of power, there would be more interest in their product.

Your daily newspaper by radio facsimile - in 1939

Newspapers were very much afraid that their markets would be eroded by the immediacy and emotional impact of the nesreel, radio and television. Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from London. William L. Shirer from Berlin.
.

In March of 1939 The St. Louis Post Dispatch began experimental public broadcasts of a nine page facsimile newspaper to the home using technology developed by RCA.

"So far as the transmitting equipment is concerned, it is the standard scanner manufactured by RCA, the output of which is fed into a 100-watt transmitter operating on 31,600 kc. We selected the ultra-high frequency band because it offered the opportunity of broadcasting facsimile during the day time--in fact any time we desire.

We have not experienced nearly as much trouble with interference on the ultra-high frequency band as was expected. The characteristics of the recorders are such that far more interference can be tolerated than is the case in the reception of sound broadcasting an these frequencies."

Within the next month RCA expects to be able to supply receivers at a cost of about $260. Several will be placed in public places for demonstration. The range of Station W9XZY is from 20 to 30 miles.

"On the first page of this "radio newspaper," now being received in every home in the St. Louis service area of W9XZY equipped with a facsimile receiver, are the leading news articles of the day. Then following sports news, several pages of pictures, Fitzpatrick's editorial cartoon, a summary of radio programs and radio gossip, and a page of financial news and stock market quotations."

The antenna of the receiver set in the home picks up these waves. The receiver, a closed cabinet with no dials to be operated or adjustments to be made by the owner, contains continuously-feeding rolls of paper and carbon paper which pass over a revolving metal cylinder from which a small stylus projects.

Pressure, varying with the intensity of the radio waves, is exerted on a metal bar, parallel to the axis of the cylinder, beneath which the paper and carbon is fed. Thus the black and white of the original copy scanned by the "electric eye" is duplicated on the paper passing over the cylinder of the receiving set which is synchronized with that of the sending mechanism.

It is unnecessary for the reader to be on hand when a broadcast begin since a clock, set for the scheduled time, will automatically start the receiving set and stop it at conclusion of broadcasting. It requires 15 minutes to transmit one page.

First Daily Newspaper by RADIO FACSIMILE [antiqueradios.com]
[as published in Radio-Craft, March 1939]

These are off the mark, IMO

The #1 way newspapers screwed up was by trying to charge for stuff you can get for free. They tried to cram their existing model of paying for news on a medium where you can get a lot of good news for free and without a lot of hassle. Charging for their version of the same story, making non-home subscribers register or pay, the hoops we were made to jump through, all led to most newspapers taking a giant dump on the internet. Most of those schemes have been scaled back or done away with for many of the dailies I read online. I don't know if its too little, too late, but lots of newspapers are hurting and failing to correctly embrace the web had something to do with it.

Re:most screwed up

Newspapers are not going bankrupt. They just have to refocus.

It's not that simple. A few big newspapers are losing lots of money, millions of dollars a month. But most smaller newspapers continue to make money with operating margins that look good by most traditional business standards.

Newspaper operating margins traditionally have run between 10 and 45 percent of gross revenues (yes, really). A margin of 10 percent is just fine, unless you borrowed money under an assumption of 25. Then you're in big trouble. That is the core of the problem facing newspaper companies today.

If you bought stock in a publicly held newspaper company and assumed you'd retire on the earnings, you can forget about it. The McClatchy Company, which bought Knight-Ridder, was worth over $74 a share about three years ago. Today it's worth less than $4. Shareholders are abandoning newspaper stocks. Why? Loans and bonds come before shareholders. A company with a lot of debt and a suddenly sinking line of business is one that shareholders quickly abandon, especially if the news is full of chatter about how the Internet is destroying its business model.

If things get bad enough, a company could go into bankruptcy -- leaving shareholders with nothing -- even while it's still making a profit on regular operations. Debt service can kill you.

The Internet really is changing the world, but that's not the biggest reason U.S. newspaper companies are hurting right now. It's the economy. Local advertisers, which are the big sources of revenue, are cutting back. Employment ads, real estate ads, used-car ads are suddenly way down.

So what's unfolding right now is largely an ownership crisis. In the long term, smearing ink on paper is a bad idea, the Internet is a better way to distribute news and information, and old business models have been disintegrated. All that stuff is true. But the crisis right now is one of ownership and finance, not continued operation.

And I will not be surprised to see one or more bankruptcies in the next year.

Re:1 Way Slashdot is Turning Into Digg

I'd think if he was trying to suck up to the moderators, he wouldn't have posted anonymously.

Re:LA Times

Absolutely wrong. It's unfortunate that people who make things up get modded up on Slashdot.

Liberty Media is a TV company. It has nothing to do with the Tribune Company, [tribune.com] which owns the Los Angeles Times. The Tribune Company was taken private in a buyout led by Sam Zell, a real estate entrepreneur.

The Times has not "fired most of the staff." It has cut about 20 percent of its news staff. That's less than its circulation decline from 983,727 in 2004 to 773,884 in the most recent reports. It still has plenty of good people on its payroll.

The new publisher is Eddy Hartenstein, [forbes.com] who is not from the newspaper business. He's the former CEO of DirecTV.