These institutions may pluck a nostalgic chord in the minds of consumers and although emerging technology still hasn’t been able to duplicate certain aspects of print media (to this day, I cannot abide an e-reader due to the inability to leave marginalia as I read), pithy attachments don’t keep the coffers full. These media facets continue to try to find a way to survive yet it’s possible that it may be too late for any of them to avoiding a daisy-pushing future in the next twenty (or less!) years. To illustrate the dire straits of traditional media, the aptly titled website Totalbankruptcy.com put together the following inforgraphic. Given the steady decline evident from this graphic, the forecast appears to hold few if any sunny skies for traditional media outlets.

The National Newspaper Association didn’t post current numbers regarding circulation revenue, contract printing or event and social media assistance to businesses, but Rick Edmonds of Poynter estimates an extra $10 billion.

This would put the U.S. newspaper industry as a whole at roughly $34 billion, which is less than Google, who posted $37.09 billion in revenues in 2011.

The NAA site also reported that digital newspapers saw a quarterly traffic increase, with 110 million unique visitors, with smartphone and tablet use bolstering readership.

This trend has publishers scrambling to design media that is friendly to readers where traditional web content has focused on videos, interactive graphs, and podcasts. Part of that design will be aesthetic but there is more to it than that.

Imagine tablet news as a source that is continually upgraded right in front of your eyes. All related products and events can appear on your screen.

Mario Garcia has spent over forty years designing newspaper layouts and scrutinizing ways to make things more appealing and now he is faced with the new challenge of tablet computers.

“The tablet is a very unique medium, and you simply do not dump content from the newspaper into it,” says Garcia.

He continues,”Print is designed for the brain and the eye – the tablet is designed for the brain, eye and finger.”

For Garcia it more than just aesthetic design, its about the psychology of the user and creating an experience on the tablet that other mediums don’t provide.

He explains, “People expect more of a relaxing experience there, but every time we go for a total lean-back experience, we discover that people also want to lean forward, for news updates before bed, or whenever they want to get that last update of the day”.

When asked about who he thinks is getting it right with tablet computer editions of news he says The Orange County (Calif.) Register has got his vote. In magazines he claims that Readers Digest has really caught his attention.

It will be interesting to see how tablets continue to change the way we read, dicepher information, and subscribe to periodicals. It’s something I haven’t given much thought to until now.

Ian Dennis Miller runs a site called localshow.tv, a nifty music video player. He also writes on a personal blog, of which he released an article titled – “Petite Lap Giraffes: Real?” In the article, he writes about research he conducted to find out if Petite Lap Giraffes are real or not. He cites some specific research, concerning the Petite Lap Giraffe site’s URL registration, by way of a WHOIS query, and this photo which originated from a stock photo website.

The story becomes particularly interesting when Miller discovers that LongIslandPress.com used his research to release their own article , without a creditable link directed towards Miller’s website. As any blog owner would do in his situation, he called LongIslandPress out on their exclusion. He did so by posting a comment on the article, getting straight to point without being nasty.

Let’s see if you can guess what LongIslandPress did next, after Miller called them out. Did they:

A.) Admit to the link exclusion, apologize, and keep the story up on their site since it’s sort of funny in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way.

B.) Retract enough information from the original article so they could use information that is attainable through easy means.

C.) Take the article offline, and wash their hands of any wrong doing. Even after search engines crawled their site for content.

Sorry, it’s a trick multiple choice test. Answers B.) and C.) are both correct. The original article written by LongIslandPress included Miller’s research regarding the stock photo image. However, Miller kept up with the article and discovered the stock photo information was taken down. However, the WHOIS domain information, which can be discovered easily by anyone was left up.

Miller’s story caught a bit of steam, and was eventually posted on Slashdot. All the negative attention lead LongIslandPress to take down the story.

Go ahead and file this story under “Newspaper sites that aren’t ready for the internet“. While LongIslandPress is a regional paper and doesn’t have the attention of other major newspaper sites, it paints a portrait of how the needless fight between newspaper sites and blogs rages on. Miller could have really made more of his story, but instead had a bit of fun with it and kept everyone updated with the proceedings. The remarkable part of the story is all of this could have been avoided if they just posted a single link to Miller’s site.

If you haven’t seen the latest DirecTV commercial with the Petite Lap Giraffe being featured, here’s the YouTube video. It’s really quite genius.

UPDATE: It looks as though LongIslandPress.com has seen enough heat from the internet, and have now posted the article with creditable links attached.

UPDATE (04/18): The official Petite Lap Giraffe website has received a rather interesting update. The original video posted on the front page featured a recording, which could have easily have been doctored. They’ve now added a live feed, which has an up-to-the second time code in the top left corner.

The caption below the feed reads: See what our Bull Vladimir do around farm! If not see him, don’t worry he come back.

If people were ready to believe in Petite Lap Giraffes before, imagine how they’ll be fooled by a seemingly live video feed.

That was my reaction to a Reuters article that I came across. I am still a little taken aback, as they say, about the even the threat of the US government looking into ways to bailout the struggling newspaper / old school media industry. Right now it’s more talk than anything else but if someone said it in a public forum then you know there are greater rumblings going through Washington with a similar stink on them. I guess you can guess where I stand on this one, huh?

The Reuters article starts off

A top Democratic lawmaker predicted on Wednesday that the government will be involved in shaping the future for struggling U.S. media organizations.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, saying quality journalism was essential to U.S. democracy, said eventually government would have to help resolve the problems caused by a failing business model.

Waxman, other U.S. lawmakers and regulators are looking into various options to help a newspaper industry hurt by the shift in advertising revenues to online platforms.

Can you see me shaking my head now? Did the government bailout the horse and buggy industry when the automobile was invented? Did the government bailout the radio industry when TV came along? Did anyone bailout the transcribers of the world when the Gutenberg press started producing the printed word?

If journalism is essential to the US democracy then let the free market system that has built this democracy into one of the greatest powers of the modern age (at least until recently that is) take care of how this plays out! The last thing we need is the government handing tax benefits and even worse, more deficit funded handouts to the likes of the Washington Post, New York Times and anything that Rupert Murdoch is whining about these days.

So who will profit from this concept more: our democracy or the likes of Rupert Murdoch? Hey let’s just go out and figure out which failing business model victim looks the most like AIG, Bank of America or Government General Motors and throw money at their executives business and see just how much better it gets. WTF!

This is not a government issue for goodness sake. This is a paradigm shift issue. The world is changing and not everything survives change. Why are we so obsessed with keeping something alive that may not have a place in the new world media order? And if it does have a place let the free market principles that allowed it to thrive for so long determine what piece or pieces will move forward as we boldly go further in the digital age.

Of course there is some press constituency that thinks this a great idea. Wonder who pays their bills?

Free Press, a public interest group, said the search for solutions to the crisis in journalism should be premised on the idea that news-gathering is a public service, not a commodity.

Waxman’s “indication that government has a role to play is both bold and soberly sensible,” said Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott on the sidelines of the FTC conference.

I call BS on this one. Honestly, if the newspapers were truly a public service shouldn’t they have acted more responsibly to the change that very public is undergoing in how it consumes news? Business change is not always about failure; it’s usually more about progress and smarts or lack thereof. If the newspapers have ignored the myriad tell tale signs that have been written on the wall for years now why should MY TAX dollars save them from their own arrogance and stupidity? What have they done for me and my business?

Geesh, just the rumor of this happening really ticks me off! Hey, Senator Waxman and anyone else who thinks this is a good idea! Shut up and go read your Washington Post while it’s still here!

Phew! That felt great because I am part of the new free press and I plan on being around in the digital age as long as I can identify what people really want. Will it last forever? Probably not but if I am not smart enough to get on board the next train that is heading for the future don’t bail me out. That’ll be my problem not yours.

UPDATE: Google CEO Eric Schmidt gives the WSJ his ideas for fixing the “crisis” in the newspaper industry.

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The Center for Media Research is reporting

According to a survey conducted for the American Press Institute, reported in Media Buyer/Planner, more than half of newspaper publishers believe readers will pay to access online newspaper content. 51% of publishers say they believe they can successfully charge for content, while 49% either aren’t sure or believe paying for content will not work.

So half of the these folks say they believe it can happen which is not quite the same as saying that it is definitely the way to go and that the industry will be saved. The following bit if data from the survey shows just how out of touch this group may be over all though.

68% of publishers said they thought that, even if readers object to paying for content, they would have a difficult time finding that information in other places, while 52% said they thought it would be either very easy or somewhat easy for readers to find replacement content.

Hard to find information elsewhere? We’re talking about the Internet, right? There are always options.

There’s more in the details and, of course, it’s more fun to talk tough than to be tough.

• 58% of publishers said they are considering charging for content
• 49% said they have no timetable in mind for how that will play out

Right now we are in the all talk phase of this next generation of newspapers and everyone can sound ready to go but who will be the first to really make the move and step out as the guinea pig? That is the online equivalent of ‘breaking through to the other side’ or ‘walking the plank’. There will be no halfway reactions on this subject, so who will have the stones to be the poster child for paid content? Any thoughts?

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The sad thing is that even of the economy comes back strong at some point this century newspapers may not even see improvement because it’s the medium, not the economy, which is the biggest culprit in the agonizing demise of a once vibrant industry. The chart below shows just how bad things are for the newspaper industry and there is little hope for recovery.

Only one category saw a revenue bump in over the 5 year span studied and that was the smallest of the small papers. There are many possible reasons for this including the lack of online hyperlocal content thus allowing the paper to still be relevant as well as the lower overhead. But is this just delaying the inevitable?

One major reason for the little guys still holding some ground is the classifieds. I personally never look at the classifieds for much of anything so I am a little surprised by this

Another sign of hope: small papers still have a hold on classifieds. Average classified sales for small papers have actually gone up, at a time when they have been declining for most papers. Inland cites an example of a daily newspaper with a circulation of less than 15,000, which posted a 210.4% increase in classified revenue from 2004 to 2008. But it didn’t do much good. The paper’s profits were down by almost 30%.

Now the paper’s profits were down 30% which still means that they were profitable. Now, we’re getting somewhere. This data, however, is just like most where it can be a bit misleading. Considering the sources were the papers themselves and the information was offered voluntarily and with anonymity there may be room for some fudging. Also, there was no recognition of who suffered tremendous losses and who fared OK. The numbers can best be seen as an average.

Who really knows the real deal but there is certainly not a lot of room for celebration. When you have to concentrate on who suffered the least then you have to figure that no matter where a paper is on the scale of size there is not a tremendous amount of hope for the future.

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I totally agree!

Hinton must have been bitten by a vampire. How else do you explain such nonsense coming from the man responsible for one of the largest publishing companies–and owners of The Wall Street Journal.

He continues his deluded rhetoric:

[Google] didn’t actually begin life in a cave as a digital vampire per se. The charitable view of Google is that the news business itself fed Google’s taste for this kind of blood.”

By offering its content free on the Web, the newspaper industry “gave Google’s fangs a great place to bite,” he continued. “We will never know what might have happened had newspapers taken a different approach.”

I tell you what would have happened. Without Google sending millions of daily visitors to newspaper web sites–for FREE–the newspaper industry would have being snuggling up to the Dodo a long time ago. It drives me batty (pun intended) when I read about newspaper execs blaming their demise on Google. They seem to believe that the newspaper industry would still be thriving, if it weren’t for the search engine making it easy to serve up their content.

Let’s think about that, shall we? As a publisher, you’re placing your content on your web site, right? If you didn’t want your online content to cannibalize your printed daily offering, why post it to the web? Oh, I see. You have to, because that’s where people prefer to get their news these days. OK, you want people to find your news story and not your rivals’ right? How are you going to do that? Hmm, seems like there’s one channel that hundreds of millions of people use to find new content each day? Do you remember the name of that place? Ah, yes, Google!

OK, you get my point, so I’ll stop the sarcasm and get back to the facts.

People want to read news online. They don’t want to pay for it. They use Google. Google sends you the bulk of your daily web site visitors. Either figure out how to monitize those visitors–like the rest of the world–or block Google via your robots.txt file and shut up!

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Henry Blodget penned a column over at Ad Age that can be summed up neatly in its headline “Sorry, There’s No Way to Save the TV Business; It Should Take Its Cues From What Happened to Newspapers”.

The traditional TV industry — cable companies, networks and broadcasters — is where the newspaper industry was about five years ago: in denial.

If this is even half true the folks on the TV side of the ledger better wake up and smell the erosion. The erosion of their leverage, profits and influence is taking place but it is believed that the arrogance that led to the dismantling of the newspaper industry is just as active in the TV world.

Specifically, the TV industry’s attitude is the same as the newspaper industry’s attitude was circa 2002 to 2003: Stop calling us dinosaurs. We get digital; we’re growing our digital businesses; we’re investing in digital platforms; people still recall ads even when they fast-forward through them on DVRs; there’s no substitute for TV ads. And traditional TV isn’t going away: Just look at our revenue and profits!

Blodget posits that the Internet still represents such a small percentage of profits and revenue of TV today but as it continues to grow the tide will quickly turn. As a result, the traditional broadcast industry will buckle and eventually crumble under the weight of its own in cost structure. Sounds painful.

So why is TV still successful? The old model may still have some legs but it is certainly aging out fast. Less and less people are dependent on TV of their information and entertainment. A quick comparison shows the following:

Television Depends On

1. Few options at home other than TV
2. No way to get video content other than TV
3. Only broadcast, cable and satellite options to get TV content
4. Choke points for delivery give inordinate control to those who own the access points

Reality Is

1. More and more simple fun options including games, Internet, social media etc.
2. New ways to get traditional TV content like Hulu, YouTube, iTunes etc.
3. More options for video content including telcos and cable companies providing broadband
4. The Internet is everywhere. You can connect more easily, more often than ever and that will only get better

So how has the TV industry responded?

Thus far, the TV industry has reacted to these changes the way most people would: by trying to port its existing model to the new world and maintain its hold on power and money. This is why we’re getting so many ridiculous, consumer-unfriendly TV solutions

These solutions include, but are not exclusive to, market-based control over what can or can’t be watched, single episode downloads that expire after 24 hours and time shifting of popular shows.

So Blodget’s conclusion is as you may have guessed; TV is headed for the gallows and a slow death from their own ignorance and arrogance.

You won’t have five channels, or 50 channels, or 500 channels. You’ll have millions of channels. You’ll be able to watch anything you want, live or taped. You’ll be able to watch it wherever you want — TV, computer, mobile device. You won’t have to sorry about “slinging” video content around or programming your DVR. You’ll just plug a pipe (internet) into a box (device) and watch.

So all of folks in TV land better take heed. The same day that you reach for your morning paper that no longer exists at your desk in the corporate office could be the same day that your control is handed over your viewers and they leave you for greener pastures. Then what?

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TechCrunch says

The sharp decline is caused by the lousy state of both digital and dead tree ad sales: the stats posted on the Newspaper Association of America website show that print sales fell by 29.7% in the first three months of this year (to $5.9 billion), while online sales dropped a record 13.4% (to $696.3 million).

Now it almost feels like dog piling on newspapers. With papers closing and the threats of closings being thrown around the kind of graph you see below almost seems unfair. It’s almost like you want the industry to cry “Uncle!” and just throw in the towel.

While most would say that newspapers aren’t going to vanish those same folks would say that the newspaper’s reach and influence will be determined by how well they move their offerings online and if they can get subscribers to pay for their content. The theory is that you pay for paper delivery then you should pay for online. Makes sense but most end users don’t see it that way at all unless there is a specific niche that will support the information that makes their jobs easier with most being related to business.

So is this the bottom yet for the industry? Not likely.

Annual ad sales for American newspapers came in at a grand total of nearly $49.5 billion in 2005 and dropped to about $37.8 billion in 2008. If the decline rate keeps accelerating the way these first quarter results suggest, we could be looking at somewhere in between $26 billion and $30 billion in total ad sales revenue for this year.

The momentum that the deconstruction of the newspaper industry has gained makes it unlikely that newspapers will ever see their heyday numbers again. The new era of ‘newspapers’ is going to need to get underway now if there is to be any papers of note in the future.

So let’s fast forward 10 years from now. It’s 2019. What does the newspaper industry look like. Is it relegated to museum displays or is there still a remnant remaining. Is it possible to see a bounce back by the industry? If so what could that look like? Feel free to jump in the time machine and take a look. Tell everyone what you see – if anything.

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