In case you haven't seen it yet, the February/March issue of
American Journalism Review has an important article about the
Washington Post's print circulation slide and efforts to stem it (by senior writer
Rachel Smolkin), "
Reversing the Slide." If you care about the future of news, read this.
Here's a significant excerpt about some
Post focus groups of people all under 45, who had moved to the region in the last five years but haven't subscribed to the paper:
"An affable session leader from Boston began by asking about their daily routines and news habits. About an hour and 15 minutes later, he opened a cabinet, removed a stack of Posts and dropped them on a conference table. 'What if I told you that you could have a six-month subscription free?' he asked them.
"'In one session after another, I don't think I saw one person who would take it,' says a Post staffer who watched the focus groups with colleagues from behind a one-way glass. The participants picked up various sections -- Style, Metro -- and stared at them like they were 'Egyptian hieroglyphics.'
"They knew about the Post, of course. How could they not? It's the region's dominant daily and one of the nation's best. They even liked the Post. But they read it online at work. Former subscribers complained unread papers piled up at their homes, making them feel guilty because they hadn't read them. The responses were not 'No, I don't like the Post,' the staffer says. They were 'No, I don't want that hulking thing in my house.'
Smolkin focuses mostly on the print side's efforts to shore up print circulation, by considering such strategies as shorter stories and even making the paper (a broadsheet) smaller.
While that's all good and necessary, I wish that a little more of that energy could be spent on turning the newspaper's website and new-media ventures into revenue generators that will replace some of the print revenues that inevitably will decline in the next few years. (It must be said, the
Post is better than most in terms of investment in new media.)
Any traditional news company needs to split its energy between shoring up the old business model while it's still a cash cow and developing stronger revenue streams on the new-media side. But I can't help but think that more serious lifting is required for the latter -- of planning for the future rather than holding on to the past. Every newspaper executive should be working on finding the right balance between hanging onto the old and creating the new.
