Cross-posted from Ad Week

Newspaper Business Model: Unsustainable in Any Form
The ‘newspapers are dying’ story line is hardly novel

U.S. newspapers as we know them will be extinct by 2017.

So says Ross Dawson, a self-proclaimed “futurist” from Australia who released a global newspaper extinction time line in October. Dawson’s latest time line makes country-by-country predictions based on factors including a nation’s demographics, consumer behaviors and technological capacities. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. newspaper empire is predicted to crumble first, given Americans’ widespread adoption of handheld technology and the declining state of the nation’s newspaper industry. The newspaper will apparently endure a slow and painful death around the globe, spanning from 2017 to 2040—and, perhaps, beyond. (He predicted that Australian newspapers would meet their demise by 2022.)

The “newspapers are dying” story line is hardly novel. Most media gurus agree that the paper-and-ink newspaper is on the decline and will eventually become a relic. Yet many, including Dawson, believe that the news organizations themselves will survive in some transformed state. Forbes’ media columnist Dirk Smilie, for instance, is another one who argues that newspapers will stage a comeback after widespread efforts to cut costs and staff. In some cases, he expects that new management will provide much-needed energy to the dying organizations.

The rationale: people have to get their news from somewhere, right? If a market for news content still exists, it’s believed, newspaper organizations will just have to adapt their methods of delivery. Specifically, they’ll have to abandon newsstands and paperboys in favor of Web sites, blogs and mobile apps.

But this confidence in the newspaper industry’s ability to adapt is misplaced. The newspaper business model is simply not flexible enough to undergo such a dramatic transformation—especially given the increasingly competitive online news industry.

One example is The Huffington Post, which now trails only The New York Times in monthly Web traffic.Some reports note that it regularly outperforms other major dailies like USA Today, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. Yes, The Huffington Post is primarily an aggregator. It produces little original content and certainly nothing on the scale of a major daily’s investigative reporting. But the growing Web site maintains a full-time staff of approximately 185 employees. More importantly, after struggling to monetize its popularity for the past several years, Forbes magazine expects HuffPo to triple its revenues in 2010.

If—or, according to Dawson, when—The  New York Times stops printing newspapers, it will be able to eliminate an incredible amount in overhead costs: no more paper, no more ink, no more delivery trucks, no more production staff. Yet even a streamlined, paperless New York Times will have operating costs that are simply unsustainable. In particular, it’s difficult to envision how the organization—which had 1,332 newsroom employees alone in 2008—will ever be able to operate on a shoestring staff of 200.

And HuffPo is only the tip of the iceberg of competition. National newspapers once dominant in niche areas no longer enjoy monopolies. For example, Politico’s coverage has forced The Washington Post to fight for its once faithful political audience. In-depth investigative reporting is increasingly being performed by nonprofit organizations.

Even regional dailies’ classic areas of coverage are in jeopardy. ESPN.com, for instance, has launched a series of Web sites providing localized coverage in regional sports markets.

A lot can happen in the next seven years. New technologies could present entirely new challenges to newspapers and their upstart competitors. Creative solutions could emerge. But today it seems unrealistic to expect that newspaper organizations will be able find a profitable business model to support the type of dramatic transformation that is necessary to compete.

The newspaper business model appears financially unsustainable, both in its current form and any conceivable future variation. From a business perspective, 2017 may be too generous a prediction.

This is my first post here, so I’m still getting the lay of the land as to what kinds of topics will interest K Street readers. I am an avid blog reader and definitely consider myself a “content curator”; Here’s the kind of stuff I read and write about on my blog.

So I thought I’d do two things. First, I want point you to a few PR/Public Affairs/Advocacy related blog posts I’ve found very interesting recently – and ask you to tell me if these float your boat or not. Check ‘em out.

1. HARO Gets Serious About Crowd Sourced Journalism (Convince and Convert)

I assume you know about HARO (Help a Reporter out), the email service started by Peter Shankman that matches reporters to sources. I used it for a while until I found the overload of irrelevant emails to be too much to handle – but they have finally got their act together and put together a nice looking site where it looks like you will be able to self-select what inquiries you get (as a source, obviously). Is this kind of sort-of tech news of interest?

2. Integrating Communication: PR-Driven Social Media (CopyWrite, Ink.)

The author proposes a model for marrying traditional PR duties and social media tasks. Check out the nice debate in the comments to the post. I have plenty of ideas about this (and the changing role of PR in general) – but I won’t say what side I fall on unless you tell me you want to talk about it!

3. 2010 Public Relations: Looking at the Past to Succeed in the Future (Conversation Agent)

Along the same lines, this is a fantastic guest post by Beth Harte on how to create “truly social public relations”. This is obviously a very hot topic (the Is PR Dead? debate)- let me know if you’re thinking about these kind of issues.

4. Matrix: Breakdown of Advocacy Marketing (Jeremiah Owyang)

Here’s a chart by Jeremiah Owyang where he dissects the layers involved in advocacy marketing – meaning, to him, activities “focused on the goal of spreading, and word of mouth, and viral”. What do you think?

5. Getting Started: Brands and Cause Marketing (Lauren Fernandez)

I’m putting this one in really to highlight a really great blog by a rising star in the PR world. Lauren is also heavily involved in the #u30pro (PR professionals under 30) community on Twitter and I think her crew has a lot of interesting stuff to say about PR and social media.

So please do tell me if these are the kinds of topics/analysis you’d want to read about from me!

The second thing I’d like to do is ask you to introduce yourselves in the comments. I’m new here, I’ve just walked into the cocktail party, heading to the bar first for a Makers and Coke (no lime), maybe a little nervous… someone please say hi and tell me what you’re all about! Then we’ll see if we can’t find some great connections to be made and conversations to be had…