Video Conference Story 3 (Goodbye Newspapers)

Goodbye Newspapes

February 17, 2009

Mark Potts, a consultant for advice on new media projects, gave George Mason online journalism students a great presentation. Potts, who worked in the Washington Post “16 years something like that,” and is co-founder of backfence.com (which is a business directory for many of the major cities in the country) knows a lot about journalism. Potts started the online division of the Washington Post in 1993, so he knows a lot about online journalism. He also has a great blog called Recovering Journalist.

The core of Potts’ presentation was about what is happening to journalism (especially written newspapers). News organizations are cutting staff and as he put it, “newspapers will die this year.” According to Potts what is happening is a “perfect perfect storm” (also because of the economy). The “web has come flying in here and changed everything,” and everyone is on real time with “millions of different ways to get information.”

So, there are thousands of competitors, not only for content but also for advertisement. The biggest source of revenue for newspapers (around 50 percent) was classified advertising. Potts also emphasized that “gigantic one fits all advertising does not work anymore.” People are looking for specific adds and information and this spells “death” for newspapers.

If newspapers start charging for their online content, people will find other alternatives. Now it is way to late to start online subscriptions and if a newspaper decides to charge for online content, it has to be so much better.

Potts stated that “if newspapers go on strike the world will go on.” Potts thinks that by 2010 the news landscape will change dramatically. A lot of papers are not only laying off employeesand bankrupting, they are also starting to cut down production and distribution. The concept of a daily newspaper is going away.

George Mason student James Thompson stated, “I think that for newspapers to survive they would have to find some way to adapt by expanding the internet themselves and using their print newspapers as extension of their internet somehow. I agree with Potts that if newspapers can not adapt then in five years many will be out of business as competition continues to increase on the internet and the younger generations continue to grow accustomed to getting news from the internet more than newspapers.”

Potts stated that because there are so many sources of information, the general interest model does not work anymore. Next generation newspapers will be really local and probably have no paper product.

New forms of writing, blogs for example, are just another writing form. Blogs break news and there is also twitter and facebook.

Potts ended by saying that newspapers will mainly not exist in five years. He finished off by stating that our generation will determine what happens next.