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[REDIRECTING A BOUNCED MESSAGE TO THE LIST; PLEASE REPLY TO THE AUTHOR, 
Simon Cook  ]

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On 30 Oct Bob Wyman wrote:

>Even this list has begun to degenerate... Today, there is a great
>deal of discussion on the subject of technical matters while the real
>issues facing the newspaper business are strategic issues. What will
>be the role newspapers in the future? What will be the role of
>today's newspaper publishers? How can the industry preserve its
>revenue streams or create new ones? When the heck is this industry
>going to wake up and start fighting?

Please guys don't give up. We are living in one of the most exciting
times in history - there are still 1000s of unexplored ideas, business
models and opportunites out there.  All it takes is some lateral thought
about customers, core strengths, technology and revenues.

To prove this - here's a completely new business model for online
newspapers to think about, which started by examining what real people
are doing online...they are printing your pages!!!

-65% of users print/save pages at least several times per week (5th GVU
WWW study)
-55% of users print off/save (Motorola Internet survey)
-piles of emails and web page print outs (desks around me)

Why would this be so? Because reading text from 72dpi screens is not as
easy as reading from 300-600dpi printed paper (this is scientifically
supported).  Sure screen technology will get better 'one day', but
printers are getting cheaper, faster, colourful, better today.

How many of you check your online designs by printing them?  You are
probably neglecting a large part of your audience. Look at all that
white space - in newspaper terms this is surely wasted revenue - and
using this space is a core newspaper strength.

Instead of thinking of the net as a network of 20 million computer
screens (a techie view), think of it as 18 million distributed printing
presses! (90% of PCs have a printer attached - higher for office PCs) 
You might even get through to the 'old' newpaper industry guys with this
thinking.

Now lets think about some possible revenue models.  In the old days,
information distribution was a scare resource and thus newspapers could
create value. In the online world this isn't true.  The real scarcity is
people's time - because there will always be only 24 hours in a day.
And the easiest way to get an ongoing slice of that time is through
habit or subscriptions (another core newspaper strength).

Time scarcity is why push models such as Pointcast, Netscape email,
mailing lists, etc are being so successful.  The web pull model wastes
valuable time - especially for daily routines like news reading.

Imagine a push-driven paper-based daily newspaper being delivered to
your printer each morning at the press of a single icon.  Pointcast for
newspapers - and you can read the news away from the screen! Read all
those web sites you'd love to have the time to read each day.  

I estimate that a market for 400 million such pages a day could exist by
the year 2000 (with only 5% of net users). How much advertising could
you sell on that?  And this is real proven sales-generating print
advertising - not unknown banner ads.  And subscriptions - people just
might even subscribe to this service (maybe).

So why doesn't the newspaper industry take the initiative - and create
this new industry which plays to their strengths and the needs of real
people.  A number of companies have suitable technology for this, but
are selling the technology as a box of software unaware of the
opportunities publishers could bring (contact me if you're interested in
who they are).

There are so many new opportunites out there still...don't give in to
the techies just yet.

-- 
Simon Cook
New Media Consultant
Simon.Cook@pobox.com



Turnpike evaluation. For Turnpike information, mailto:info@turnpike.com


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