What Newspapers Do, Have Done and Will Do

"If the Internet is putting us out of business, who cares? It matters....."

The Demise of the News Industry

Heavy debt has dragged several newspaper companies into bankruptcy. The industry’s dwindling revenues have forced some money-losing papers to close, and papers that are for sale are having trouble finding buyers. Circulation is also going down (Here's an eloquent picture) Experts say that before long, a major American city could be left without a daily paper (e.g. read this Times' Related Article). Many newspapers, including the Journal and the Times, are considering charging their customers (Here's the article). So why is this and what can we do about it?

Bill Wayman has an excellent, insider take on why the industry is facing though times (thanks Joshua for the pointer!!). He blames editors and journalists for resisting the internet revolution. Some others argue that if Internet is the problem then a coordinated "exit" strategy might be a solution (thanks Joshua for the pointer!!). Dive out

Future of news: Hyperlocal

Here two links on this new phenomenon: Cnn.com and New York Times. Also YouTube is going Hyperlocal using information hidden in your Ip-Address.

Count me if you can!

Assessing actual audiences has always been a tricky task. "Until the new technologies will make it possible to literally count eyeballs," everybody thought. Apparently such new estimates are even more controversial: The NYT reported on this in late 2007 (Click here). In 2009, the controversy still goes strong (Read here).

Behavioral Targeting

If you visited those websites in the past few days chances are that you are interested in their content. So the ads showed now on this website depend on the content of the websites you visited yesterday. This is behavioral targeting. The economist has two nice articles here (Watching while you surf) and here (Behavioral Targeting) on this technique.