The Information Revolution

Posted on | November 14, 2007 | Comments Off on The Information Revolution

And Health Care thinks it has problemsAnd you think you have problems? How would you like to be in the newspaper business right now? The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle had decreases in paid circulation over the past year by anywhere from 1.5% to 4.5% Over the past six months, there has been an average 2.6% circulation slide in the 538 major dailies nationwide. Waking up to a brave new world, the print journalists are now measuring overall “reach” — that is, the combined circulation of both print readership and online page views. The new “readership” measure is hoped to reassure advertisers.The Washington Post, for example, had only 635,000 average readers, but when it added online readers, it bumped its total to 3 million in the greater Washington area. The next battle is demographics: the familiarity of the nightly news and black-ink print is less valued down the generational ladder. Communicating to American parents and grandparents in the formats that they like, while servicing children and grandchildren in the platforms they embrace, has required a parallel build-out in traditional and online formats. Granted — it’s all the same information, whether online, on TV, or in print. But the pace, presentation, level of interactivity, participant sense of ownership, value proposition and funding mechanisms are worlds apart. As we all “Wring (as much value as possible) out (of) the Old”, we’re frantically struggling (with few guidelines) to “Bring in the New”.