Changing the Online Newspaper Model

While we were enjoying a lovely 4th out in the wilderness with the family, we spied an insightful take on modern journalism from Timothy Egan (a favorite of The Baron's brother, if that matters at all). Writing for one of The New York Times blogs -- oh, the irony -- Egan points out that as newspapers reach more and more readers online, they continue to slash jobs. While he seems to veer off topic a bit at the end of the blog post, Egan's point is a good one.

So how do newspapers make money when online ad revenue is so puny compared to print ad revenue? One way is to get past the homepage model. The homepage should be a vehicle to the major stories a paper has to offer. Most papers, though -- and the Times is particularly guilty of this -- cram as much as they can on the homepage because they know readers won't go particularly deep. I think they need to change that model and flesh out the main stories ever more deeply with extra analysis and other content, while using the homepage as a gateway to the rest of the paper. Streamline the sites and make the content easily accessible through search and menus. That would offer a chance for readers to get deeper into the site, spend more time there and see more ads, mimicking the print experience. Of course, RSS feeds bypass this solution, but those are still only very popular with the tech savvy crowd.

Another problem -- and this is constantly being debated -- is what determines online engagement. Egan quotes a Nielsen stat about visitors, but visitors are no longer viewed as the default measurement in the digital research world. Folks there also focus on page views, time spent on the site and page views per visit. If newspaper sites looked at this information and created some sort of combined rating, they could determine how their sites are being used and they could optimize for that. It's a lot easier to say than to do, but there are a lot of people who care about this -- just look at how many comments his post received -- and the print industry should look for creative solutions from passionate readers, shareholders and staff members.