Survival of the Journalists

As a follow-up to my blog post of 27 July, refuting the concept of a "Balkanization of the Web," I must share this excerpt from Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine blog from yesterday:

"It is clear that if journalists want to be supported – let alone have impact and influence and find their days worthwhile – they need more people to spend more time with news. I believe they should be doing the opposite of what is being suggested in many quarters: clamping down controls to try to fight aggregators and search engines, threatening to build pay walls, consolidating content into destinations they’d have to work harder to get people to visit.

"Right now, news organizations should be trying to reach more people and engage with them more deeply. They should seek hyperdistribution.

"Since when did it become OK for media people to shrink their audiences? Since they gave up on the ad model, that’s when. But I am not ready to surrender to the idea that advertising, which has supported mass media since its creation, is over. Yes, ad rates are lower; welcome to competition. That’s all the more reason why publishers must attract larger audiences publics – make it up on volume – as well as more targeted and valuable communities."

(Read Jeff's entire post, by the way. He has some outstanding ideas!)

I completely agree with Jeff. If suppliers of premium content (aka newspapers and journals) want to survive, they have to become universal within their online target markets. Newspapers cannot charge online subscription fees, nor can they "Balkanize" by withholding their news from search engines who refuse to cut them deals. Newspapers cannot afford those tactics - they don't have the market share. (Nielsen Online data shows that newspaper sites currently capture less than 1% of time spent online.)

Essentially, newspapers are starting from scratch. They are not re-inventing their reporting methods, no. But they are releasing a new product within an entirely new marketplace. They do not have the luxury of already dominating online news. They must fight to build their readership - and fight through excellent reporting (through all sorts of media) and exceptional customer value. It is time for news sources to unleash an ideavirus.