Raucous fanfare has been given over the purchase of the Washington Post by the founder of Amazon.com; Jeff Bezos. One would believe the messiah has come to the printed word. I am not sure what Mr. Bezos will do to revitalize ‘The Post’, and by association and imitation the the entire news print industry. I have expressed some of my insight on how to save newspapers in part, piecemeal over my various blogs. Let me tell you clearly how I think it should be done. If Mr. Bezos wants to steal my ideas, though I find it hard to believe they are beyond the perceptions of most men, there is nothing I can do about it. I would hope you would at least buy my book Mr. Bezos. Some of these ideas and concepts may be advancing in various newspapers but I have seen nothing that even closely resembles the totality of my vision.
It is painfully obvious to me why newspapers are failing every time I go to one of their websites; advertisements front and center and too much clutter. The painful part of the equation is that a good old fashioned newspaper is the very form of every website. You have the front page with just the highlights. When you read what is on the front page you are directed to another site for the conclusion of the article; a section and page. You serf through the rest of the paper to discover news of lesser significance or of more particular interest.
In the past, for some, one would snap a mass of large unruly layers of wood pulp, searching through the sheets, folding and snapping again to get to a story of interest or value front and center in a acceptably flat form trying to position one’s arms so as not to tire too quickly but still achieve proper lighting. On the Internet the stories are set before you on a flat backlit screen and with an insignificant slide of the mouse and a click one can navigate smoothly through an entire paper.
So why are web pages not modeled after the printed news page? No one wants an ad flashed in their face from the get go. Printed news is the masthead and headlines. The headlines are the attraction; the art of the draw. Advertisements come later. With the headlines one subsequently gets a good chunk of the story before having to turn a page. Now, on the Internet, you get maybe two sentences under a title, if any. In a paper their are a few choice number of stories on the front page. Internet papers list their entire content on their home page. I have come across several commentaries on designing web pages claiming that clutter kills a site. I went to many top newspapers webpages last night. The least cluttered design was ‘The Washington Examiner’ which I believe has no print version. Yahoo and Google customizable home pages look more like the printed newspaper than newspaper Internet sites and they provide many of the services people once turned to the newspaper for; TV and movie listings, weather etc. as well as news.
People will search through a newspaper. They will navigate to the sports or business sections. Some table of contexts are important on the bottom of the main page but Internet papers need fewer stories with more substance front and center.
How does one do advertisement? Small animated adds with no audio in a small box that run 3-5 seconds highlighting a companies familiar logo. It runs once and then sits inanimate. Then, according to the number of words in the story, it animates again when most people would be about to finish reading. For those who do not subscribe to the Internet newspaper, when they click to read the expanded story they get a 15 second full on commercial before they advance to the next page.
Why would people subscribe to an Internet newspaper? To get fewer commercials. Also to get services such as coupons they can print out. They can go to a page with the most popular coupons for that particular city. If the page holds eight coupons make six the most popular and add two, for a fee from the product promoter. A Sunday print version is a definite attraction for many.
The Internet provides many opportunities for newspapers to attract subscribers. Facebook is now a platform to login to other sites, such as Freedom Works, without having to remember or create another login and password. I do not see why newspapers cannot provide the same convenience for subscribers. It is an issue front and center for anyone who uses the Internet. Blogging services and a more local social media circle would be winners and a way to uncover news. Protected e-mail accounts are becoming more popular. If the NSA is illegally monitoring your e-mails wouldn’t you want a local paper standing behind you? Other services such as a monthly best selling free e-book can also be an attraction for subscribers.
Including limited or full online encyclopedia services would also be a plus. Why do we all need to depend on the questionable Wikipedia. An Encyclopedia Britannica subscription runs nineteen-cents a day. A newspaper could throw them nineteen-cents a year; they would have hundreds of thousands of encyclopedia subscribers versus maybe thousands without the paper and continue their prestigious public presence.
The Search Engine
Here is where the newspapers have failed. Search engines drive the Internet and the newspapers hold a gold mine. Most have well over one-hundred years of material and with text recognition technology it can all become easily accessible. I often search the Internet looking for references to the Cold War to relate with today’s issues. I cannot find anything reliable. The Internet’s potential was just becoming understood as the Cold War, in regards to the Soviet Union, ended.
I could search newspaper archives for ‘Senator Joseph McCarthy’ and select whether I want articles with his name or some variation thereof in the title only, or search all articles in which his name appears, once, twice or as many times as I would choose. I could access possibly thousands of articles and then could select or drag the articles I wish to read into a folder and then access them at my leisure. The search of my local papers archive gives me results that appear unrelated to my search and they want a fee to look at each link. Though the search goes back a few decades it did not look like they had any scanned sources.
In elementary school and high school we were taught how to use a library for research. We learned how to access microfilm and other sources. Many od these sources are not available on the Internet. A gold mine I say that requires a local touch to dig it up.
Some will say, and rightly so, that content makes the difference. Newspapers have mountains of past content but maybe it does not promote the mainstream’s modern views of the world. A simpler search application newspapers can offer is locally focused searches. How often do you look for a store, click on a link and find it is for a location in South Carolina? That’s fine if you live in south Carolina; I don’t. Where the Internet and sites such as Yahoo and Google offer a world stage, a more local and familiar platform has it’s own attractions and can be more potent; reaching out to a smaller but far more personable audience.
We are in what is being called the information age. Newspapers are in an ideal position to dominate. So why are they completely incompetent in taking advantage? Maybe it is all about content.
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