Liquidation or Reinvention (What Do You Do With A Newspaper When It Stops Being A Newspaper)
If you’re the owner of a dying newspaper, should you milk it for all it’s worth, upping charges and cutting services, or should you make the transition to the web? In his 2004 book, The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age, Philip Meyer argues that the former option threatens the goodwill of customers, a crucial asset for newspaper products. Therefore, the decision to raise prices and eliminate quality content is effectually a liquidation of the newspaper company.To liquidate or to reinvent, that is the question many publishers of small newspapers are facing. GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram advocates for reinvention in a digital space, though he recognizes that the leap to web can alienate loyal customers and force a print paper into competition with larger aggregators and conglomerates. It is not enough to adapt. Migrating print content onto a digital platform is not a guarantee of success, and in fact, newspaper publishers will need to reevaluate their shifting readership. Clearly, liquidation strategies will foreclose long-term profitability, but reinvention may pose too many risks to a struggling publishing company. “Online Newspaper” is, necessarily, a paradox—the reinvention of newspapers online will cause the media category “newspaper” to disappear. Those newspapers that do succeed in transitioning will have developed new content and interfaces that capitalize on untapped demand. Large, digitally savvy newspapers and news aggregators have supplanted small papers, at least in national and international news reporting. For those smaller publications, the digital transition will demand the identification of new markets for content delivery.
