1.31.2008

Tennessean Editor Says Newspapers Aren't Dying

I have been meaning to comment on this since the weekend...

In Sunday's paper, Tennessean editor Mark Silverman stated: "Fact is, newspapers aren't dying. Indeed, many newspapers are succeeding at keeping up with the changing needs of their audiences. Consider The Tennessean."

I'm withholding some of my thoughts on this for next week's episode of The New Mediology, but I'm curious if the editorial strikes anyone as a bit desperate sounding? The rationale seems shaky despite the "quantified" research he cites. I'll update this post when the podcast goes live and may elaborate a bit more.

One more thing...irony of ironies, I actually saw this article in a copy of the Sunday paper I purchased. I think it's the second or third Tennessean I've bought in five years.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I only buy a paper when I go to breakfast by myself to somewhere that doesn't have wifi. I have to be bored out of my mind to read a paper.

Anonymous said...

Easy. Just compare the growing demographics of the nashville area to the stats he quotes. I guarantee the paper sales are not keeping pace with the growth of metro nashville.
Mark

Anonymous said...

Newspapers are working overtime to screw up their web opportunity without understanding how they are doing this. It's really pretty simple. Shift the high majority of their Ad dollars to online readership. For expample I would guess the Tennessean gets 20% of its Ad dollars from its website. Agreessively reverse this to 80% web/20% print over the next year and they will experience unprecedented growth. Right now the Tennessean website is clunky and extremly hard to navigate even after the recent upgrade. If they put money into having a "CNN" type of website then their online readership will grow. They should also have maybe a 6 page newspaper that highlights links/articles to read on their website. The need to train their readership. People still want the news, just not in print. If they want print then let them print it off on their printer.

Seems pretty simple to me. Of course they fighting change that has already occured.