Its no secret that newspapers and print publications are having a rough time adapting to social media and citizen journalism. Its fairly simple to see the equation to get better (but a whole lot difficult to implement) from a business standpoint. Thanks to market forces the revenues are lower and expenses are higher.

How does a newspaper get revenues higher? – diversify sources of it -besides advertising (print or online) and classifieds.

How do you cut costs? – remove print and reduce staff (journalists).

So what changes can we expect in 2009? Newspapers will:

1a. Partner with bloggers (experts) to create highly specific content for niche reader and layoff reporters / journalists. The bloggers themselves will be initially “paid” for with increased “readership” and a “platform to create their personal brand”. I expect it will be 2011 or 2012 before these bloggers they recruit will actually be paid for in cash.

1b. Create regional networks of citizen-reporters ( a-la About.com circa 1999) to source local content from local providers. This is a no brainer. The outsourcing of local content is already taking place to highly sub-regional or mini-metro self-employed or unemployed citizen reporters.

2. Abandon the print edition for subscribers and make print only for off-the-rack purchases (albeit more expensive). Print is on its way out. I expect more publications to abandon print (citing green credentials, high costs, etc). The ones that will print will take their “best of online content OR create a custom bind for racks – which will be distributed primarily to airlines, hotels, etc. for off rack purchases.

3. Remove wire service (AP, Business Wire). This also already happening in the “cut costs” bucket.

4. Use their “objective” nature to rate local providers and adopt the “Angie’s list” type model for recommending local services. This falls in the increase revenue bucket. Another example of such a service is Yelp (restaurant recommendations). I expect newspapers to start partnering with crowd sourcing content providers to generate hyperlocal “community of interest or location” type services.

Really understanding what services are required by “local” users that they are willing to pay for and provide those. “Pay per action” model will be a big beneficiary.

5. Be a provider of demographic data and detailed local information to marketers. Newspapers will be more willing to sell their treasure-trove of information about local readers and help marketers in their campaigns.

What do you think? Am I a missing something?

Image credit: J Fortune on Photobucket

Most people compare blog sites and bloggers to main stream media. I am not sure I agree 100%, but lets go with that assumption. The top 20 US newspapers, or main stream media newspapers with the largest circulation currently (and also mostly by website statistics) are listed below and their blogs.

Side note: In the top 20 newspapers worldwide, USA Today does not appear in the top 15, so keep that in mind. But on the flip side, these are print circulation numbers NOT web traffic.

Movable Type and Wordpress rule the roost at 30% and 25%. Typepad (Also owned by Six Apart) if included will clearly put Six Apart at #1 for the top 20 blogs.

In the top 100 newspapers in the US, Six Apart is still #1 at 37% marketshare to 28% for Wordpress.

First some interesting numbers on newspapers and blogs.

1. We currently track about 12,393 world wide main stream news sources of which 8848 are newspapers. Of our newspaper sources, 81% have blogs written by their staff or columnists.

2. The average number of bloggers in the top 20 newspapers is 17and the average number of blogs is 29.

3. Outside the US, the % of blogs with newspapers drops a from a dramatic 81% to 37%. (Note: this is English language newspapers only).

What do I take away from this:

1. If 81% of newspapers worldwide have blogs, you have a huge target rich set of folks who are looking for new content, interesting ideas and new companies. You can go beyond Walt Mossberg and Sarah Lacy folks. It will yield you good results.

2. Take a look at Movable type 4.2 release notes from my friend Anil. Read it carefully and you’ll see community capability and social networks. I was especially impressed with the small feature ranking and rating. Why? We have to evolve from a Alexa site visits and pageviews set of metrics to engagement as a measure for measuring media (all media, social and otherwise).

3. If you are targeting newspapers outside the US, as part of your PR launch, realize most editors & journalists will still prefer the email and phone followed by a personal pitch (as in face to face). Schedule your time for those appropriately.

Questions:

1. Anyone has experience with Pluck which is used by USA Today? What’s your impression?

2. As part of your effort do you still “segregate” main stream media and social media targets? Why?

P.S. If you are further interested in reading about the topic of main stream media in general, I’d highly recommend Scott Karp’s Publishing 2.0 Blog.