March 8th, 2008
Why I Subscribed To The Washington Post Sunday Print Edition
The Washington Post didn’t respond to my print circulation marketing challenge, but I just subscribed to The Washington Post Sunday print edition anyway. Why?
I don’t think print newspapers are dead — they just need to radically evolve.
But evolution is a process that has to start somewhere, and I want to understand better where print newspapers actually are. And the only way to do that is to read a print newspaper on a regular basis.
I’ve been thinking about ways to frame the evolutionary process for print newspapers — one that states the goal, not just the problem.
In a recent Charlie Rose interview with Chris Anderson of Wired, I was struck by the following exchange (see 11:12 in the embedded video below):
Charlie: Do you have to be a print publication? [Holding up an issue of Wired magazine]
Chris: What we’re learning now, in an era where people have choices, is that the job of every print publication is to add value to the web. If you’re a newspaper, and I say this as someone who loves newspapers, arguably you are a value-subtracting medium. The same product, 18 hours later, that leaves smudgy ink on your fingers.
This is not an indictment of the value of print newspapers conceptually — it’s an indictment of newspapers that are still publishing the same content on paper as they are publishing on the web.Newspapers used to see the web as a complement, a value add to the print edition. Now they have to flip the equation.
The web is at the center, and the print newspaper must add value, as a complement.
But that doesn’t mean the print newspaper should become merely a reference point or marketing vehicle for the web.
(Click cartoon to see the whole thing. More Arlo & Janis cartoons, via Comics.com)
It means making sure that all of the precious, expensive, resource intensive column inches in the print product complement what is more easily and efficiently published on the web.
Craig Stoltz (a former Washington Post editor) recently offered a “modest proposal” to tax newspapers that still insist on printing daily stock tables:
Any other daily newspaper that publishes daily closing prices of individual stocks should pay a tax equal to one-half the cost of the newsprint required to publish them. (I’m told this cost can range from $500 to $5,000 per page per day, depending on size of print run, page, stock used and other factors.)
This new tax will have two salutary effects:
It will provide newsroom management with incentive to quit a counterproductive old habit. Nothing else seems to be working. Each paper that has done buyouts or layoffs before cutting stock tables should be ashamed of itself. It needs a financial gun to the head–and a moment when they have to make the case to the newsroom staff for continuing a counterproductive practice at the expense of headcount.
It will make some money available to the paper for newer kinds of dynamic, multimedia, user-centered business coverage that may drive revenue for the website and other distribution platforms
The future of print newspapers is a zero sum game — column inches, staff resources, and capacity to print and distribute are all limited. Nothing in the paper can be there because it’s always been there — everything needs to be rejustified, or reinvented.
(I realized I keep using the oddly redundant phrase “print newspapers” to distinguish from the equally odd web-based newsPAPERs — there’s the problem in a nutshell.)
Each week when I receive the Sunday Post, I’ll be offering comments on what actually complemented my reading of WashingtonPost.com, what was duplicative, what was a complete waste of resources and, ideas about what’s missing.
I’m just one reader, of course — but my intent is to bring the debate about the future of print newspapers out of closed editorial meetings and into the open.
Speaking of wasted resources, when I told my wife that I was subscribing to the Post Sunday as part of writing about the future of print newspapers, her first reaction was, “What a waste of paper.”
To be clear, this is isn’t an anti-print publication attitude — our house is filled with magazines. And it certainly isn’t anti-Washington Post — my wife is a very avid reader of WashingtonPost.com.
But I share her sentiment about the paper — in fact, I hesitated on subscribing for several days because I had so much trouble justifying the paper. Certainly it wasn’t the $12.74 (which interestingly is never actually displayed as a total price when you subscribe, just $0.49 for 26 weeks, you do the math.)
So I was surprised to discover, when I was placing my order online, this pitch for “upgrading” to a daily subscription, with its larger volume of paper:
Now there’s a circ marketing idea — subscribe (not just the upgrade) and we’ll plant a tree. Of course, that doesn’t compensate for the barrels of ink, or the gas for the delivery trucks, or the exhaust from those trucks… etc.
And the final irony would be delivering such an subscription offer by postal mail — on a piece of paper.
Oh well — despite all that, I’m eagerly looking forward to my first issue of the Sunday paper, which I plan to read on the couch, with the laptop shut down and the Blackberry off (OK, well, maybe not that… got to take this one step a at a time).
And I intend to plant a tree.
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the reason i subscribe to the sunday edition of the NYT (and i will subscribe to it as long as i can get it) is that i actually want to read it. the web is a great way to scan headlines but rarely do i actually read stories. screens and the position you sit in front of them are just not made for it, even not when you take the laptop on your lap and sit on a couch. it is just much more comfortable to sit on a couch with a paper and read it.
getting only the sunday edition i definitely know that i read it while i never really read (only scan) the weekly editions on the nyt web site. this is actually quite sad since i think it is important to go beyond headlines and try to understand stories, headlines dumb us down.
I tried subscribing to the Chicago Sun-Times a while back. They could never manage to deliver it to me on a daily basis. After a couple of months of frustration, I canceled the thing.
[…] Why I Subscribed To The Washington Post Sunday Print EditionMeanwhile, we finally unsubscribed from the LA Times. The Sunday LAT is pure torture. digg_url=’http://www.medialoper.com/columns/the-daily-loper/daily-loper-576/’; digg_skin = ”; digg_bgcolor = ‘#FFFFFF’; digg_title = ‘The+Daily+Loper+-+March+9%2C+2008′; digg_bodytext = ”; digg_topic = ”; Powered by Gregarious (21) […]
Stock tables of course. But how about the sports section, which eats up tons of news-budget money (all those sports writers traveling all the time, all writing the same boring blather over and over). A print sports section is over. (Look at the lack of ads). Sports reporting is a TV medium (also radio, for analysis) and has been for a long time. Newspapers can easily post the box scores and other statistical data on their Web sites.
from what I know about the European sports market, I know that newspapers have the most knowledgeable people in the business, and when you talk to TV guys they get a lot of their stuff from the papers. yes, TV is good at showing what happened, but they are far behind in providing insightful commentary on the future or a coach or team …
sports sections in europe are a major draw, especially for papers like The Sun or Bild, but even for higher quality papers like Sueddeutsche or FAZ and the Times. Plus don’t forget that in Italy one of the most profitable and most successful daily papers is a sports only paper.
just like with business the raw data (results or stock prices) are not something papers need to publish, but both areas have need to good analysis and insight (something which TV can’t offer with its 30 second soundbites), and which i think the Internet is weak on too since people more or less have only 30 second attention spans on the net.
[…] il lavoro di ogni pubblicazione a stampa è di aggiungere valore al web. Chris Anderson, di Wired, citato da Scott Karp, che […]
I wanted to read this story and give it some thought. What’s the first thing I did? Printed it out, of course. Is it just because I’m old?
[…] Why newspapers make bad decisions There are a hundred reasons why newspapers are in such poor shape. I’ve discussed some of them here and here: an outdated view of what’s news; an outdated view of readers; major inefficiencies in use of newsroom resources, as seen in the current roles of copy editors, reporters, and line editors. In a great post calling for a tax on newspapers that still publish stock tables, Craig Stoltz points to an often overlooked factor: newspapers seem to be institutionally clueless about how to plan for change. (Hat tip: Publishing 2.0.) […]
You know, when I was riffing with some interviewers a few years ago, they asked me what the future of journalism might look like in about 10 years. I speculated that maybe the web would be the destination and newspapers would end up being the complement, publishing summaries and more “take with you” type information. They did not look comfortable with that suggestion.
Scott,
A friend of mine just pointed me to this post, and I am instantly a fan of the blog. I have been doing a lot of thinking about the future of news media and publishing in general when it comes to web 2.0. I think it’s a fascinating topic.
I suspect that as you get your paper newspaper, you’ll *enjoy* reading it more when it’s physically in your hands. I also suspect that reading in online will continue to be *more convenient* (and, of course, free).
This is the real problem that newspapers face. I don’t think that in the long term, a physical daily delivery is going to be viable, unless there is some added value beyond a nebulous “enjoyment” factor.
In other words “adding value to the web” is a great concept, but I doubt it will take the form of anything daily.
I subscribe to the WP because I want to READ IT; in your article, you forgot an important factor. I am sure that NYT, WP and all other newspaper have precise data on how much time it is spent in their sites and for each article. Probably seconds (not minutes).
Also, to think that the newspaper is a waste of paper is hypocritical. For instance, look at how many bags (paper and plastic) the supermarkets give you; when you shop if you ask for ‘just one, please” they don’t even understand. You have actually need to spell it out. “Please put all items in one bag only!”
Newspaper should change, because of the web version, but also because change is good and needed.
So your efforts should be on better prints, less papers (all those adds/coupons); but do not take away the joy of reading, please.
Severina, I totally agree with you. the problem with the internet is that it is hard to read. people only scan headlines and newsstories. that is the reason i bought the sony ebook reader because i find so many interesting stories on the net but never actually read them. if i do then i print out the stories. the one thing i really read is the NYT sunday edition because i have it in my hands.
Also, let’s make a distinction: Breaking news = fantastic on the web and Blackberry; News Analysis = you need the paper!