Detroit Gets To Work on Next Year's Model

While most coverage of the announcement of the plan to revamp the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News has focused on the newspapers' decision to drastically cut back on home delivery, there's been less attention paid to how the papers plan to replace their print editions.

Like their Detroit automaker neighbors finally junking tailfins and gas-guzzling V8s in favor of smaller, leaner (and greener) alternatives, the Motown papers have set the stage for a fundamental rethinking of what it means to be a local news provider. In many ways, that's even more dramatic and unprecedented than their decision to park their delivery trucks a few days a week.

The future, the Free Press and News are saying, is moving online. That seems self-evident, but no major newspaper (exception: the Christian Science Monitor) has taken such a bold step into the future.

We've seen "Web-first" lip service (and more) from newspapers before, but the Detroit papers have to be serious this time, if only because of the cutbacks on the print side. So far, they're saying all the right things about how they now want to expand online. "The bold changes include a focus on more robust and more engaging digital delivery methods," the papers' press release says. "We have to change the way we deliver that news, not just in subtle ways but in fundamental ways." 

The release cites several online efforts now in place, including the Detroit versions of Gannett's innovative MomsLikeMe.com mother-focused sites and the Metromix entertainment site, along with budding niche sites for high school sports and the environment. 

That's a start, though the Motown papers will have to be much more aggressive about launching additional digital initiatives. The release promises "a vigorous planning process that will result in new digital offerings, greater use of audio and video technology, Web sites targets at audiences with special interests, easier access to news as it happens, as well as more effective ways to access news from mobile devices." Check, check and check. All good. Hopefully, this commitment to innovation will apply to new forms of digital advertising, as well. 

Out of all of this, Detroit could become a very interesting testbed for Gannett's growing efforts at digital experimentation, which in addition to the moms' sites and high school sports product include some strong community features that are being tested at sites operated by some of the chain's smaller papers. Detroit News owner/Gannett Motown partner MediaNews has been less aggressive in this area, but seems to be going along for the ride. 

The shift of focus away from print also provides a test for the intriguing recent suggestion from Netscape co-founder Marc Andreesen that papers would be better off focusing all their thinking on developing their online products rather than continuing to bail out print. Detroit hasn't gone all the way there, but clearly, not having to worry as much about getting the printed paper out a few days a week should free up resources to concentrate on improving the online product, especially in the advertising/revenue department.

Of course, newspaper people are all too capable of taking an opportunity like this to rethink and redesign their product—and coming up with a Pinto or Gremlin. Let's hope not. Because as of this week, Detroit may be the nation's most interesting laboratory for online news. With any luck, the papers there will come up with the newspaper equivalent of the Prius.

PS–Speaking of the Prius hybrid, there is one caveat here. The Detroit papers also have announced that they will be producing a peculiar odd sort of hybrid: an "electronic edition" that allows readers to download and read–and even, gasp, print out–a facsimile version of the newspaper. Blecch. These horrible things have been tried at papers all over the country, with a uniform pattern of failure. That's because this sort of hybrid is neither fish nor fowl. It tries to present a product (a newspaper) that works in one medium (print, with pages that turn and vertical layout) in a different medium (a computer screen, where pages scroll and the orientation is horizontal, just for starters). 

Many "printie" newspaper executives, unable to bear to part with tradition, seem to love these Frankenstein creations. Readers, however, don't. There are far, far better ways to exploit the digital medium for fun and profit. Let's hope the Detroit papers quickly figure that out.

Comments

[Steve Outing]

Mark: I'm feeling a bit more pessimistic than you, I think. The only savings are from delivery 4 days a week; they're still producing a paper every single day. The "off" days I believe will be 32 pages, so that's a lighter load than before, but papers have been thinning for a while so perhaps not all that much difference for the editorial staff. And since they are charging for the off-day editions (a decision I think is a mistake), they have to be good enough that people will actually buy them. So I question where this money and extra time to seriously develop all the promised new online and mobile services will come from. The corporate treasure chests of Gannett and MediaNews?

If Detroit's executives truly put digital first and at the center, and make the off-day papers fairly simple to produce by making them secondary to the websites and pulling content from the digital core, then there may be room for some progress with online and mobile innovations. But if the print editions still take up too much organizational bandwidth, expect to see a Pinto and not a Prius. The companies made this move out of desperation, after all, more so than because they have a bold vision of the future and can't wait to get there! They're financially challenged, so it's difficult to feel hopeful.

The official announcement says, "These bold changes include a focus on more robust and more engaging digital delivery methods, and support the continued publication of two daily newspapers." That's "A focus...", which does not fill me with confidence.

I'd love to see Detroit lead the way. My guess is that some other city will take that honor.

[Mark Potts]

Gee, Steve, I'm so rarely accused of being optimistic (or at least not pessimistic) about the newspaper industry!

In this case, I guess it's a glass half-empty/half-full thing. Yes, the Detroit papers still will be publishing, albeit in a reduced form, seven days a week. But I still think this is going to help focus their efforts on what needs to be done online.

Will it be enough? Probably not. But compared to the rest of the industry, it may be fairly dramatic (which is probably damning with faint praise).

Will the answer to the industry's problems emerge from Detroit? Maybe, even probably, not, as you say. But at the moment--and there will doubtless be events over the next weeks and months to change the handicapping of this equation--Detroit looks like a revolution. Which says a lot, unfortunately, about the rest of the industry.

[Chris M.]

Newspapers in Europe have seen quite a spike in people who download the PDF of the printed version of their newspaper. Look it up.

You may not like the format, I may not like the format, but don't look past a certain segment that still wants the news this way. When the U.S. metro newspaper I worked at offered the PDF, it had a surprisingly high download rate, too. And it cost us nothing. And we had a nice (albeit short) story to tell print advertisers.

What's so wrong with offering yet another way to view the content? Just so long as this isn't the only way.

[Charles Barthold]

What I don't see in all this is a realization that they need to think about their content. In other words -- write about stuff people care to read about. What the Detroit papers are doing is a smart first step but until they provide article that readers can't get anywhere else they're doomed.

[Mark Potts]

There are two types of "electronic editions": printable PDFs and electronic facsimiles where you can "turn the page" on the screen. I've never seen hard evidence of a successful launch of either one. They garner hundreds of users, maybe a couple thousand, but that's it. If you've got hard numbers, here or in Europe, please pass them along. And I'd caution against drawing parallels with overseas experiences--cultural differences, market size and other local factors make those comparisons apples and oranges. Britain, for instance, supports a raft of national newspapers, in part because of its size. Minitel was an enormous (subsidized) hit in France. Both were unique situations that could not be replicated in the U.S.