Stopping The Presses: Online news sites (including our own), free from print's constraints of time and space, are using the medium to aggregate and deliver information tailored to each user in a way a newspaper never can.
Where does that leave the printed word? [...]
The combined weekday circulation of all U.S. dailies has dropped from 62.8 million in 1985 to 55.2 million in 2002. That gives it the lowest penetration of any medium.
Worse for newspaper publishers, that trend is accelerating as the Internet has become embedded in the daily lives of so many potential readers both young and old. The top 20 news sites drew an average of 5 million individuals each month in early 2002. That figure has risen to more than 8.5 million, with the top sites drawing more than 20 million unique visitors a month. [...]
Print publications will also have to find stronger tones of voice, along the lines of the European press, or like 19th-century American newspapers. Another option for serious journalism is that it will become the domain of nonprofits--or be reader, not advertiser, supported, along the public broadcasting model.
Can The Tabloid Format Save Newspapers? A publisher can use a format change as a catalyst for revamping business processes throughout the newspaper--from editorial to sales and distribution--cutting costs and modernizing wherever necessary. A format change affects the entire value chain of a newspaper and therefore provides a rare opportunity to prepare it for today's tougher operating environment. But if the newspaper merely alters its layout without changing its editorial operations, advertising sales, pricing and other practices, whatever gains it achieves may not endure.
