You probably are within six degrees of separation to someone who was laid off from the Publishing industry. That industry is not only suffering thanks to a weak economy, it’s also a dinosaur industry that needed an economic shift like this as a wake-up call.
Recently, Hearst Corp. closed the doors on the print version of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a 146-year-old publication with a circulation of 118,000. The print publication would remain as a web-only business (www.seattlepi.com), and would attempt to keep its brand loyalty. One of the struggles they will face is the paradigm shift of advertising revenue. The print version garnered $50,000 for a full-page ad. Whereas the web version, will get about $10 per thousand impressions.That significant drop in revenue will subsequently require a sea change in how the paper will operate.
They will need to embrace technology far more than having a web-based version of a former print paper.
Here are some suggestions. Since advertising revenue is key, enabling any one of the 118,000 readers to create and pay for online advertising is essential. Participating in Google’s AdWords is open to anyone with $10 or $10,000 per month advertising budget. And, configuring your ad is the same for either budget. LinkedIn, the social networking site for business people, allows any user to easily advertise on their system as well. The number of impressions any ad will have is based on how much of a monthly budget has been assigned to it. It can take the average person about 30 minutes to create an advertisement.
The home page of the Seattle P-I site, as of this writing, is like your typical news site, full of way-too-much-information. It is almost too difficult to navigate. Instead, they should consider customization like Google offers with iGoogle.com. Using iGoogle.com requires users to login and enables them to customize the layout of their home page. This type of customization has been available for many years, with Google and with other websites.
And, there should also be a way of having various types of news on the site sent to your email so that it can also arrive on your iPhone or Blackberry. The WSJ site allows you to do this. Instead of being able to read the entire paper online, it is far more convenient to receive only the news you’re typically interested in.
The bottom line for the Seattle P-I, and for other Publishers and non-Publishers alike, is to improve the web experience to include today’s standard goodies. The big buzzword is “Online Community” and Facebook and LinkedIn are excellent testimonies for this. The idea is simply a place, online, in which a group of people (thousands of them) can collect to share ideas and get information. It’s no different than the original promise of the Internet, only repackaged.
Richard Lee
In the News
