Welcome to the Sea of Echoes

We had a visit from Chris O’Brien of the Mercury News today, and it was very insightful.  He talked mostly about the efforts they are making to transform the way the newspaper works, with lots of slides showing practices at Ideo and other new newsrooms around the globe.

As I was listening to this I picked out a couple big pain points:

• Newspapers are saddled with debt from acquisitions, which puts them at a competetive disadvantage with newer media.  They are also weighed down with union contracts and physical capital that isn’t an asset today.  It seems clear that a new player that isn’t hemmed in by old commitments and rules will destroy these older organizations in a few years.
• In my view it’s not the internet that is hurting the Mercury as much as a combination of the internet and CNN.  US Newpaper circulation actually peaked in the eighties, well before the advent of the browser.
• Print side advertising dollars are still 10x what online ads are.  It now seems more likely to me that print rates will gradually decline to current internet rates.  This represents a problem for the newspaper business, who have lost their oligopoly on information, but it is a boon for advertisers who now can narrow-cast their message to particular users, track which users receive that message, and know exactly where their advertising dollars are going.

Let’s stop lamenting the decline of traditional newspapers and figure out how to do something completely new.

Who wins in the new information economy:

• CNN
• Google
• The Daily Show (News as entertainment)
• Thousands of bloggers

And oh yes, readers…