The world of news has been in a turbulent place for a few years now, and it is undoubted that the boom of the Internet has been partly to blame. Despite the many advantages of worldwide connections from computer to computer for the newsgathering process, newspaper sales have been heavily in decline – resulting in many professionals losing their jobs in an already competitive environment.
However, the iPad has come into save the day, and now with apps such as The Daily (the new newspaper exclusively for the tablet device from Rupert Murdoch), media outlets are getting the confidence to explore this platform with more vigor. The only problem now is this: how can these new pieces of technology be monetized effectively?
Well, many newspaper organizations are being to follow the suit of TV news programs by immersing themselves into email marketing. A recent iContact promo was testimony to the advantages that a daily message to avid readers of a newspaper could have, giving them behind-the-scenes information about how a publication was produced, the ethical dilemmas that the editors may have faced, as well as a teasing promotion about the feature stories and investigative journalism pieces which were coming up in the days ahead.
Should independent blogs and websites, as well as the large media organizations, use this approach to gaining public awareness and exposure more, it could be said that the world of journalism would be in safe hands. Indeed, the sale of the Huffington Post the other day for a staggering $315m to Arianna Huffington showed that there is still money left in the world of news – it is just down to media organizations to find it.
The future of online news also depends on the strength of a website – and its ability to give consumers video, audio and text quickly, even when traffic is high because of a developing news story. A good example of a company that was publicizing their ability to cater to the needs of news organizations was the IX web hosting promo, which showed that different sub-domains could be created for different sections of a news organization – such as their news, sport, entertainment and business coverage. For time-pressured readers, a clear categorization of the content they are looking for has countless advantages.
As you can see, news organizations that want to have a future in the industry need to consider more than the quality of their content – but how the public is made aware of their coverage through marketing, and how it is made available to the mainstream market.
Guest article written by: Connor Sephton is an award-winning journalist who has written extensively for a variety of companies around the world.
I would imagine the newspapers faced similar issues as they were gaining popularity too. It would be an interesting study to see how newspaper publications handled some of the same issues as they started up.
Print news (newspapers) have been in free fall in the USA for many years now.
My brother is the Managing Editor for a large paper in Virginia and they are on a skeleton staff and all working like 15 hours a day, for a low salary.
Newspapers needs to find ways to reach their consumers or the public. Proper online marketing will make them survive.
I rarely read newspapers anymore, but I do read online news as with anything times have just changed from actual printed material to online readers. Their income is now from a combination of online advertising traditional advertising.