Why newspapers should get out of the internet business before it kills us all

Death of newspapers

"Then I'd get another piece of paper over here [next to an empty soda can] and scribble down what I know about the internet, what it's good for, why people like it, what it takes to succeed there, what qualities are at a premium there. I'd ask how people make money there, who they make money from and what permanent trends I could detect there. And who are my competition now and in the future?"

"Then I'd take the two lists, look at how different they are and wonder why anyone would think that I should move my business from here [Chinese food] to here [empty soda can]."

When you think superficially about newspapers and the internet they look the same. There are words, pictures, stories, readers, advertisers. When you look at the skills involved in succeeding, what people want, how you make money, how quickly you have to move and how little geography counts for anything, you realise the internet is a foreign adventure for US newspapers.

It's like being Budget Rent A Car and looking at your company and believing you could start a cab company. Sure, both businesses have cars. People use them to go from one place to another and they pay money to do it. But it doesn't mean Budget could run a great cab company. The skills that make you a success in rental cars - I guess they would include computerised inventory control, demand forecasting, vehicle turnaround speed, location management, risk management, national marketing (and other things that I don't know about because it's not my business) - aren't the same things that make for a successful cab company.

Sure, both businesses are car businesses, but I wouldn't fancy the chances of either group beating the other at their own game. They're competitors. Budget needs to understand why people use cabs rather than rental cars. It should know what's happening in cabs and spot opportunities to steal customers from them. And threats to their business from them. But it shouldn't become a cab company to compete.

Looking the same is not the same as being the same. I think that's the mistake we are making as newspapers on the net right now.

The internet is great. The access it has given consumers like me and you to news and information is great. But becoming commercially successful at distributing information on the internet requires us to completely change who we are and what we do, to compete with completely different people.

Who succeeds there? Inidividuals with a million ideas who execute them quickly and effectively. And some huge global companies with vast resources who snap them up. People who think outside of geographies and inside communities of interest. People who can apply the language of computers to solving real-world information needs. People who want to do something for themselves or others just for the hell of it and don't carry huge costs. People who experiment and fail all the time and just keep on going. People who can gather other people's work and spread it around in a useful way without making much money off it. People who are happy to put something out there and see it used in a completely different way to what they intended. Does that sound like any newspaper company you know. Me neither.

"But," said Mario. "You can't just pretend the internet doesn't exist?"

No. But there's a massive gulf between exploiting the internet's possibilities and becoming an information company that has decided to live or die there. Between accepting it as a competitor and wanting to compete within it. Many publishers don't even think they have made a choice. They think that it is inevitable. That despite all their concerns and unanswered questions, they have no other option but to roll up their sleeves and jump in.

They think this because they won't challenge two central assumptions that have polluted our industry's thinking.

First assumption: the internet is the future. The internet will certainly be in our future. It is a fact of our lives and an important new medium that we have to understand. And it's stolen some of our best clothes. But it won't kill us in any other way than by convincing us to commit suicide and fall on the knife, the shiny pretty knife it is holding right in front of us, the knife we can't quite take our eyes off and which has hypnotized us into making our second false assumption.

The second assumption is that newspapers are as good as dead already. Times are much tougher for newspapers than they used to be. Hell, they're tougher for carmakers and steelmakers and bakers and candlestickmakers too. A lot has changed very quickly and in our industry the internet has driven the pace of that change. But there are sufficient examples of trends being bucked and progress being made to give even a newspaper pessimist reason to think that the medium might be struggling with middle age rather than senility. And if it is, shouldn't we be putting our resources into finding a print solution to the way the world has changed rather than throwing ourselves into a medium where many of our skills are worthless.

If you throw those two assumptions out for a minute and ask instead what people are doing online and why, you'll get a surprise. Have a look at the last research you saw about your newspaper or the industry and ask what it tells you about what we as newspapers aren't giving readers and advertisers. Ask if it is impossible to imagine how we might meet their needs in print. And why we don't. I think you will find that many of the reasons for our declining or flat circulations and revenues are our own fault, and they are things we could do something about if we didn't think that the internet made it all a waste of time.

What I hear a lot is the following: dull presentation, too much content, not enough interesting content, too little interactivity, old-fashioned feel, one-audience-one-product, awkward size, poor design, and the rest of the stuff I bang on about here. None of it is easy or cheap, none of it is intractable either. All of it requires us to use skills and assets that we actually have already and which other people don't.

In case there is any confiusion I am not an internet Luddite. I don't wish the internet would go away. I love it. There are great things going to happen online, but very few of them are likely to happen because of newspaper websites. It's a different game. We won't start the next YouTube or a Facebook or Flickr or Twitter or LastFM, but we will find our online strategy destroyed again and again by the people who do. We won't come up with revolutionary new ways of recruiting, or buying cars, or making friends online. But we'll be competing for ad dollars online with the people who do.

Is the answer to that problem to try and fight with those companies head to head on their terms in their space despite our competitive weakness? To try to be like them? Sure it is, if you believe that the internet is the future and newspapers are dead.

But if you believe that it's possible to improve the printed newspaper to compete more effectively with inevitable developments online, to adapt our medium to a new reality rather than kill it, and if you believe that the internet can be a useful tool for newspapers rather than its executioner, then packing your furniture and betting your house on online is an absurd and inefficient strategy.

Of course, all of this avoids a direct answer to Mario's question. What would you actually do tomorrow if you had to do something ... not in a blog but in the real world. Well, I need to find a Chinese restaurant and a can of soda first .... come back this afternoon....

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