That race, however torturous, has been run in the arena of slow economic growth. If, in fact, we do dip or tumble head over heels into another recession, all bets are off. The wheels may come off the wobbling [newspaper] industry.
I just don't understand why all analysis of the "newspaper industry" (such as the clip of the above piece posted on Niemanlab.org) is tightly focused on the big newspaper companies. So much of what's really working in the business is getting ignored. Also, for some reason the trend is to examine a newspaper company's "success" in the digital space to forecast whether it will be successful.
Many newspaper companies are still doing just fine - indeed thriving - in the print space alone.
At Elauwit Media, we have about 300 advertisers on any given week. Many of them - local restaurants, mom-and-pop shops - don't even have a Web site, or not one worth mentioning. Digital advertising isn't useful to them. They need a print outlet that can get them meaningful market share.
The problem with the big newspaper companies isn't that they haven't embraced "digital" (whatever that means on any given day). Fact is, "digital" in its current form cannot fetch the advertising dollars to support a real news organization anyway, even if said news organization is successful. The problem with the big newspaper companies is that they haven't focused on the core of what they're supposed to do: Capture big, desirable markets of minds and then rent those minds and those audiences to advertisers.
There still are great ways to do that in print products. And, there's a lot of advertisers who still need this. For instance, our newspapers aren't alone in delivering quality, readable products to large market shares in the communities that local advertisers want to reach. In the towns where we go up against Patch, for instance, our estimates suggest that we have at least a 10x revenue advantage on them. That will not change anytime soon, no matter how cool AOL can make Patch. We'll simply deliver more of the market for quite some time, and in a way that will remain useful to our advertisers.
I agree that digital is the future. And to ignore it is foolish. But, just the same, putting all your investment dollars in digital is foolish. Redevelop your print products and change your ways to capture meaningful markets with print, and then figure out how to do the same with digital. That's been the strategy for Elauwit Media. And that strategy is working well for our stakeholders - our advertisers, our readers and our shareholders.
