All the News That's Fit to... Aggregate, Download, Blog: Are Newspapers Yesterday's News? daily newspapers will have to strengthen their efforts to attract younger readers, make more imaginative use of the Internet, and develop stories, mostly local in nature, that better meet the needs of readers who have thousands of news and information sources at their fingertips. [...]
Perhaps more than anything else, appealing to younger consumers is essential to the future of newspapers, but those readers are more likely to be more attracted by the newspapers' websites than by their traditional print editions. "If you look at data on readership, you can go back 100 years and each generation has read newspapers less than the generation that came before it," according to Gordon. "When I got into the business in the early 1980s, we recognized that younger people read less, but we felt it was a life-stage issue, and that as they got older [and had to pay] mortgages and taxes, they would increase their readership. But that's not the way things occurred. Usage patterns are set by the early 20s and they don't change over time."
Despite the transformation of the newspaper business, not many people think broadsheets and tabloids will disappear. Even if many hard-news stories have become commoditized, daily papers have few competitors in providing thoughtful analysis and opinion. And even in the digital age, there remains a hunger on the part of readers for stories -- told well with powerful narrative force -- that help explain the world they live in. [...]
And a good narrative can hold a reader's attention regardless of whether the medium used is newsprint, a website or podcasting. Says [Michele Weldon, author of Everyman News: How and Why American Newspapers Changed Forever]: "We've got to stop worrying about how the news is delivered."
Media content, à la carte: In a world where à la carte can describe a way to choose online content, it was only a matter of time until an on- demand news syndication service for audio and video, in addition to text and pictures, landed on the menu.
This weekend, Mochila, an international service that calls itself a media marketplace, will be introduced in Chicago at Nexpo, an annual U.S. newspaper industry conference.
Mochila will be a place where newspapers, magazines, Web sites and broadcasters can sell content to other publications. Initially, Mochila will allow the exchange only of text and photos, but it plans to add audio and video.
