Karin Dryhurst

Content Wants to be Free…and Focused

Two opposing media business models were advocated this week by two often opposing media camps—the founder of an online news site and the publishers of a local newspaper. But as young media properties with creative models, they share more similarities with each other than with the media conglomerates.

One succeeds with wide print circulation, one with specialized news. Both recognize that content wants to be free and focused.

Two community newspaper publishers weigh in on the struggling newspaper storyline, pointing to the success of their four-year-old company, Elauwit Media. The publishers acknowledge readers don’t want to pay for news anymore, so they deliver their papers free-of-charge to every address in their area. Their advice to the mainstream media: rethink circulation, focus content and “charge the advertisers, not the readers.”

But the moguls continue to deny reality. Rupert Murdoch said the days of free content are numbered.

Meanwhile The Business Insider founder Henry Blodgett argues that with painful changes to the newsroom, The New York Times could survive as an online-only publication. While I am hesitant to agree that the Times should cut half its editorial staff, he might be onto something.

Both Elauwit Media and The Business Insider have focused their content—to local news and finance, respectively—and have filled gaps in coverage. Much of what the Times publishes serves a unique purpose, but much of it can be found in a number of other sources. The Internet makes all of these sources readily available and makes much of this repeated coverage unnecessary.

Does New York need the Post, the Observer, the Daily News and the Times to cover the Mayor playing the bongos?

The new media landscape requires newspapers to rethink their content and focus on their competitive advantages—not to just take what would have been in the paper and put it online with an interactive map.

This will be more difficult for the New York papers, whose competitive advantages have more to do with reputation than content—the gotcha stories at the Daily News compared to the institutional integrity of the Times.

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Posted at 5:02 PM, May 08, 2009 in Media
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