E&P reports that the Cincinnati Post will shut down at the end of the year, when its joint operating agreement with the Cincinnati Inquirer expires. The Post's circulation has declined from 188,000 some 30 years ago to 27,000 weekdays today. For whatever reasons, E.W. Scripps Co. won't attempt to keep the brand alive by continuing to operate the newspaper's website.
A thoughtful contrarian voice is always useful, and I'm enjoying keeping an eye on the Inksniffer, the weblog of British newspaper consultant John Duncan. Two recent posts stand out.
Every day, millions of pieces of information stream through the newsrooms of every newspaper in the world.
Some of them land on paper, to be quickly discarded or recycled. Some of them land on websites where they're quickly shoved aside by newer information. Yesterday's information is relegated to poorly searchable archives.
Very little is put to good long-term use.
Newspapers should be the experts on their communities, but the typical newspaper website provides almost no useful background information.
An editor for Ifra's magazine, Newspaper Techniques, interviewed me via email. Here's my response:
How can newspapers implement community sites?
I think the first step is to recognize the nature of community, and the constructive role played by journalism.
We typically don't do that. We typically think our job begins and ends with "covering the news," and we don't think carefully enough about what effects we have in the community.
Jay Rosen's Twilight of the Curmudgeon Class deserves linkage just for the delightful title, but also for his synthesis of viewpoints and reactions to Neil Henry's recent "you kids get off my lawn" op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Journalists are chronically confused about why people read newspapers. As Clayton Christensen has pointed out, the best way to understand product-market relationships is this: People don't buy products; they hire products to get specific jobs done.
Editors Weblog cites a study from the Newspaper Audience Databank that shows baby boomers in Canada still consume print (56% weekdays, 78% weekly cume): "Their readership habits have changed little over the past 20 years."
