The Catalyst Code

Last week, The Capital Times, Madison Wisconsin’s 90-year old daily newspaper, stopped publishing the print version of its newspaper and announced that it will instead publish all of its news to the web. This move was made after it watched its circulation dwindle by more than half over recent years and its advertising revenue shrink as well. Its publisher lamented, “We felt that our audience was shrinking so that we were not relevant.”

The Economist also profiled a piece this week on this beleaguered industry. The article posited that the future of the industry depends on the “scope” of the paper’s coverage – national, metropolitan or local, suggesting that it is the metropolitan papers that have the most to lose by their inability to bridge both national and local coverage. And as we know, being “stuck in the middle” is a particularly bad place to be, especially if you are a newspaper. The article also went on to describe a few efforts that papers have made to reinvent themselves in the face of more news outlets and changing reader preferences.

The wildcard with any of these strategies is determining whether the revenue will follow. Being a “niche” or an “information connector” may save a paper from oblivion, but it might not be enough to pump up its bank account either. It’s a fact that ad revenue on the web is about 15x less than it is in print – meaning that relying on an ad strategy alone may not be enough to save the day. And, the jury is out on whether people will pay for content, even if they say they value it.

For more on what we’ve written on this topic, check out these links:
People Don’t Read Newspapers Anymore
The Gray Lady Staggers
Newspaper Next is Newspaper Not