Content Sharing: I'm Skeptical
I see that a bunch of newspapers are banding together in regional compacts to share content:
The latest iteration of the new content-sharing model brings together The Record of Hackensack, New Jersey, The Star-Ledger of Newark, the Times Union of Albany, the Buffalo News, and New York Daily News, which apparently organized the consortium.
I didn't realize it, but the WashPo and the Baltimore Sun were already doing this. Sounds like a reasonable cost cutting measure, so why am I skeptical? Well, it boils down to what I wrote here - newspapers are trying to be generalists in an era of niche specialization. I just don't know that there's a market niche available for the "we carry it all" business. Online news isn't just driving paper out of news - it's driving hyper-specialization.
Technorati Tags: media, print, newspapers
Comments
[Carl Gundel] February 19, 2009 12:45:22.294
If there was a local paper that brought me really useful local news that I can't get anywhere else I'd buy a subscription in a heartbeat.
And Timely, Too
[W^L+] February 19, 2009 13:57:02.212
Yes, but it also has to be timely. I have too much going on to obsess on local news for curiosity's sake. I need news that helps me make decisions. That news is only good if it is timely AND exclusive.
Should I stop at the supermarket in "felony flats"? Or should I go the other direction and stop at a different store? Should I buy/rent in this part of town, or another part? Should I try to get Junior into a school across town, or stay with the one closer to home? What store has a better price on yogurt this week? What events are happening this weekend ot our local museum? Where is the nearest church of my particular brand, and when do they meet? This is the kind of thing that makes local stories useful. Even though I still want to know about other local events, I have limited time for them.
As much as I like the dead-tree form factor, I won't dig through pages of wire service stories and older (36 to 48+ hours) events to get to the nuggets of value to me.
Even in a niche I value, I will not bother if I cannot use the content. So while WSJ may be prospering now, most of its content is interesting but not particularly useful to most people. I have a pile of unread Eweek for the same reason.