Traditionally, the newspaper business was about delivering unique information quicker than other newspapers (or, in the case of local newspapers, delivering unique information that wasn't available elsewhere). Newspapers are dying because in an environment where instantaneous content delivery is done at essentially zero cost, fewer and fewer people are willing to pay for undifferentiated content. The author is confusing cause and effect - circumventing popup blockers and failing to invest into content formatting is most definitely the effect, not the cause.
Publications that have differentiated content (e.g. Wall Street Journal, NYT, Economist) seem to be doing just fine, but having thousands of papers that rehash the same content without any edge on each other whatsoever is just not sustainable given the current state of information technology.
EDIT: I only considered revenue from the subscribers, and ignored downward pressure on advertising revenue. The point still stands - the market can no longer sustain undifferentiated content (people don't pay for it anymore, and advertisers will pay less than before because they have better options), and differentiated content is probably a worse business than it used to be (people will pay for it, but the revenue from advertisers is still being diverted to Google).
subscriber revenue only accounts for 15-25% of total revenues...
i definitely agree that bland, undifferentiated content is killing the newspapers. what happens when revenues are down? fire the newsroom, get content from AP.
unfortunately, i am the one who is to blame for all the share buttons.
What happens when revenues are down? fire the newsroom, get content from AP. So true, It reminds me of:
"Cutting funding for bike lanes because there isn't enough demand is like cutting literacy funding because not enough people are reading. Bike lanes are not built to satisfy demand. They're meant to serve as an incentive to encourage more cycling by increasing safety." -- Dave Meslin
subscriber revenue only accounts for 15-25% of total revenues
Ah, that's incredible, I didn't know that. I think it's really easy to connect the dots here. Since news is a commodity and global distribution is cheap, journalism becomes a business of extremes, much like books and startups. A tiny percentage of journalists who are really good at writing will be in huge demand, while the overwhelming majority will barely be able to sell anything. If you couple that with downward pressure on advertising prices, local papers cannot be "saved" - there's just not enough revenue for them in the market to sustain them at all. I don't think the total market size is shrinking, just that small newspapers can't effectively compete.
That means a few big brands will emerge and take the lion's share of the revenue. Or perhaps even one brand that will take everything, "the facebook (or paypal) of news". It was supposed to be Digg, but I guess not...
I suspect that the vacuum left behind by dead local newspapers will be filled by local blogs. I haven't researched this but I wonder if the markets that lost their local paper if blogs have made up the loss. Knoxville, TN has to really nice local blogs even though we have both an alternative weekly (Metropulse) and a paper.
If you do research it, I'd appreciate it if you'd write up a guide to finding good local blogs and submit it to HN. I don't know of any in my area, and aside from googling my city name, I can't think of many ways to find them.
Publications that have differentiated content (e.g. Wall Street Journal, NYT, Economist) seem to be doing just fine, but having thousands of papers that rehash the same content without any edge on each other whatsoever is just not sustainable given the current state of information technology.
EDIT: I only considered revenue from the subscribers, and ignored downward pressure on advertising revenue. The point still stands - the market can no longer sustain undifferentiated content (people don't pay for it anymore, and advertisers will pay less than before because they have better options), and differentiated content is probably a worse business than it used to be (people will pay for it, but the revenue from advertisers is still being diverted to Google).