What It Takes

How many newspapers have a sizable staff responsible for managing print circulation? All of them of course. Now, how many have even one staff member responsible for managing online distribution via RSS, e-mail or Facebook? Damn few.

How many newspapers have a department devoted to fixing and painting news boxes? Just about all newspapers of any size. Now, how many have any staff devoted to thinking about how to optimize their site's placement in Web searches? Not many.

How many newspapers have an advertising production staff that can churn out a good-looking ad for any advertiser? It's essential, of course. Now, how many have anybody thinking about new forms of Web advertising that take advantage of tools like search, widgets, Flash, interactivity, data-mining, etc.? Very few.

How many newspapers have copy desks that work hard at presenting news to readers in a clear, understandable form? 100 percent. Now, how many have even one staff member whose job it is to find ways to place the newspaper's content on other Web sites, for maximum visibility and to create incoming links? Or to aggregate content from multiple sources into a one-stop local news portal? Almost none.

I could go on, but you get my point. Newspapers are still almost entirely focused on the print product, and still aren't devoting sufficient resources to optimizing and maximizing their online offerings. Yeah, they've got Web producers, but all they're doing to wrangling print content onto the paper's Web site. Sure, there are newspaper Web ad sales reps, but they're calling on the same advertisers that have been feeding the print side for years, trying to sell banner ads that are little more than online versions of print ads. Yes, there are (maybe) Web technical and marketing and (maybe) business development staffs in newspaper companies, but invariably they're overwhelmed and undermanned–token efforts compared to their equivalents on the print side.

This is why Marc Andreesen's daring recent suggestion that The New York Times dump its print edition and focusits efforts entirely online is so intriguing to many of us who've been watching the newspaper industry founder for years. Until newspapers put a laser focus on growing and improving their Web business–the same kind of focus, and more, that they're currently putting on their legacy business–they're going to fall farther and farther behind, to the point of extinction. 

The Internet-related jobs and skills I mentioned above are absolutely essential to success on the Web, as much so as the traditional ones I compared them to are essential to print success. But resource allocation, management focus and internal culture at newspaper companies still are largely–overwhelmingly–print-oriented. Regardless of high-minded proclamations about being "Web-first" or lip service paid to attempting to truly compete online, virtually all newspapers still aren't taking their new media operations seriously enough. At best, it's probably a 90-10 split in favor of print these days. It needs to shift in the other direction, and pronto. 

Newspaper Web sites need more people thinking about optimizing content, about finding new advertisers and types of advertising, about creating niche products to target specific audiences and advertisers, about aggregation, search, social networks, behavioral targeting and all of the other buzzwords that seem exotic to many print people but employ legions of people at competitors like Google and Yahoo and the Web startup you've never heard of that's coming after the papers' local news, information and advertising business. These upstart competitors think about this stuff all the time; newspaper people don't. And that's why newspapers, by continuing to fight the old battles, are losing the online war.

PS–Seth Godin suggests three essential more job types for any company that wants to be successful online. The first two–community organizer and stats fiend–are completely alien to newspapers. The third, manager of freelancers, sounds familiar, but really isn't. These are the sorts of skills newspaper Web sites need to get, and soon. And Alexandre Gamela updates the skills needed by journalists.

Update: Steve Outing has some similar thoughts.

Comments

[Marc Matteo]

YES!

I've said over and over that newspapers "aren't even trying" online and clearly they aren't.

I wonder what will happen when faced with a far bleaker revenue picture than ever before newspapers, under the "print is 80% of our revenue" excuse, decide to cut the meager online resources they have now (in fact I've already seen this happen).

How long will newspapers survive when, in addition to their other problems, they lay themselves open to attack from other non-print-burdened news operations that won't have such an anemic approach to the web?

[Sam Shepherd]

It's funny you should say this today - it feels supremely relevant to why my working day has been so rubbish.
I was hired to be what has been unfortunately termed 'web champion. I spend a large part of my day do all these things - rewriting already uploadied headlines and first pars for better SEO and more interesting RSS (a bit 'after the horse had bolted' but still.) I'm sending news out via Twitter, I try and be part of as many local online communities as possible so when I have links to post them it doesn't seem like spam. I've started a related-but-not ents blog because our blog software doesn't allow trackbacks and so we can pull together all local ents content in one place, from which all providers will benefit. I'm also the only person from the newsroom involved in our burgeoning FLickr community, the only person who regularly reads and responds to story and forum comments... all this sounds like a 'poor me' rant but my point is that while it's just me doing all these things, we've got no chance.
We still have a system set up for a four-edition daily when really we're a single edition, much smaller, paper. The web is ghettoised by almost everyone as being something I and my two colleagues handle and changing this perception is proving extremely tricky...
Add that to the restrictions placed on us by our group - no embedding (so all my google maps or slideshows or timelines are technically illegal) a riduculously small display screen and a homogenous front page and some days it feels like a losing battle.
It's very frustrating, like swimming against a tide of treacle - and especially when I know there's so much that COULD be done.

[Sam Shepherd]

Sorry, that's a very poorly written comment! Hope you take my point though...

[Dean Miller]

Well, kids, there is the small matter of a thing called revenue...As bad as things are in the printing-on-dead-trees business, that's still where newspapers get the vast majority of their dollars.
The whole point of online publishing is cheapness, not quality. The reason you still have newspaper box-painting departments is because people we call customers place something we call money in those boxes. Online readers will not pay for content and are in fact offended by the notion. Advertisers like online advertising because it's cheaper.
So, when someone creates a revenue stream that supports something more than a handful of paid-by-the-piece offshore reporters trying to figure out why Pasadena residents care about an agriculatural event called the Rose Bowl Parade (see Maureen Dowd's column), then the folks who lead newsrooms will get religion.
We see the potential in online tools, but the business models are destructive of the good things newspapers have done.

[Mark Potts]

Thanks for the condescension, Dean. How are things working out for you in your ivory tower of print? Perhaps you should learn a bit more about what it takes to run an online operation. Then you'd understand that several of the roles I describe are designed expressly to increase audience and revenue, which are vital to the inevitable transition from print to online. Until newspapers start getting serious about those things, online revenue growth is going to lag–while print revenue continues to decline precipitously.

[Tom Altman]

Couldn't agree more with:
"Until newspapers put a laser focus on growing and improving their Web business"

I think this really starts in the sales department. I believe the newsroom wants to change - but are afraid...but the sales department is petrified, they are scared to tell the client that they may need to look at the web.

[Paul Balcerak]

Newspapers need to take the ol' Yoda route — do, or do not — because going at the Web halfway is going to show in the product (or should I say "does show") more than they think.

Great post.