Thursday, January 24, 2008

Evolution in Print Journalism | Why I ended my Pacific Business News subscription.

An open letter tothe editor of Pacific Business News, explaining why I ended my subscription and how this relates to the fate of print news periodicals everywhere.

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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Attn: Jim Kelly, Editor Pacific Business News
1833 Kalakaua Avenue, 7th Floor

Honolulu, HI 96815


Re: Reason for ending my subscription


Dear Mr. Kelly,


I am taking the time to provide you with the reason why I am ending my subscription to your paper because I know, as a marketing professional, that this kind of direct candid customer feedback is something, unfortunately, many organizations are not privy to—without great effort and expense. Certainly, I am aware that I represent only one unsatisfied customer, but perhaps my opinion and point of view is indicative of a larger group of readers, in which case, it could prove somewhat more useful to you.


The Pacific Business News, is (or at least, was) one of those publications that, as in many cities across the country, holds a unique position as the leading periodical dedicated to covering all the relevant business activity within their community, a job often done with astonishing clarity, detail, and insight, especially in comparison to the level of reporting done by other local print publications. In Seattle that publication was the Seattle Business Journal, now the Puget Sound Business Journal, which is no longer independently owned, but a subsidiary of a larger national network of business journals that you are also affiliated with, namely American City Business Journals, whose parent company is Advance Publications, a Newhouse family owned and controlled enterprise.


That is all very well and interesting, but I am not telling you anything you don't already know. This, however, might be.


I am not ending my subscription because I can no longer possibly brook the information and articles in your weekly publication, but rather, because I have noticed a consistent and continuing drop in the amount of “real” in-depth, insightful, reports and articles relative to “fluff” pieces. By no means, do I find that the Pacific Business News has so little of substantive value that I refuse to read your periodical all together. What interests me in your publication, I can quickly find and read on-line. The drop in quality, in my humble opinion, simply doesn't warrant purchasing an annual subscription. As much as I do enjoy consulting a hard copy of the Book of Lists, I can easily buy it separately if I desire.


Almost every one in your business knows the problems that newspapers, large and small, and to a varying degree local weekly magazines as well, are facing in the wake of the rise in power and influence of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Efforts to somehow stem or reverse this trend become even more daunting, if not futile, when you bother to read the demographic writing on the wall—that the bulk of people who still regularly read papers belong to the older generations, whose numbers are diminishing with predictable regularity. Though not as well known as newspapers, wrist watches share a similar ignoble plight. The growth of personal cell phones with their multiple useful functions, such as the constant display of the current time, rendered watches a “non-essential” fashion accessory, particularly among the group who adopted the cell phones in large numbers, your kids.

It would be smart to realize, however, that the Internet and the Web, in themselves, are not the enemy of local news publications, in the sense that they don't somehow generate better local news content out of thin air, or somehow seem to be able to reveal insight into what's really happening at the local level. This is pure hogwash! The Internet and the Web are merely a more convenient and faster conduit for that content. Newspapers and other print operations have yet to fully understand the basis of this new communication vehicle, and haven't quite figured out how to adapt to it—in a way that sustains their accounting bottom line. Many newspaper's took big financial hits as a direct result in the growth in popularity of web sites like Craigslist.com and eBay.com, because of the impact these web sites have had on one of their traditional sources of revenue, their “want ads” sections.

At the risk of employing one of those horrid “seminar” words, the secret to success for the business of modern print publications, who are by now simultaneously both in print and on-line, lays with being able to make changes that are relevant. That particular observation, of course, begs the ultimate questions. Does the “print” version, or as technophiles refer to it, the “dead tree” version, have any real future? The answer to that question is “no”, essentially because the costs associated with producing a printed copy will at some point, sooner or later, become cost prohibitive.

In the end, however, the true value of your publication, will be expressed by the desire of a reader to print for themselves information or an article that originated from Pacific Business News—who somehow, after reading it, thought it was good enough to actually make a print for him/or herself, even perhaps to show others. This reader's reaction bespeaks the bigger picture of your future financial success, if you accept, comprehend and adapt to the changes that are happening right now.

When you understand that there is one thing that the Web and Internet has not changed, nor can it, that there remains a select audience (though no longer merely locally) that has a distinct interest in what you have to report, and that there is a price they are willing to pay for that information. How that translates into those dollars that currently come from print subscriptions is yet unclear; whether it should come from a direct on-line subscription instead (which seems to be more and more unlikely), or some place else?


Because the communication revolution is still underway and new developments are happening at an alarming pace makes it difficult to form reliable predictions, but the astounding growth in RSS feeds does provide insight in one aspect of this change that pertains directly to news publications—that readers prefer to have information, particularly from sources they trust, sent to them, rather than having to consciously make the effort to go out and routinely pick that information up. In turn, that aspect would seem to suggest where new methods of generating revenue will be found.

As just one speculative example, revenue could be produced indirectly through a “privilege-access” fee process, whereby a fee would be paid for the right to access your content by a specialized secondary content delivery service, who will bundle, even repackage, and then deliver your news content to users according to their preselected preferences. That sort of process could also sustain the same sort of ad-generated revenue that accompanies your content in print form currently. Moreover, the change toward a wider dispersed audience will actually broaden your list of interested advertisers, whose ads would accompany your content as it is disseminated digitally.

That aspect of change, the revenue side, pales in comparison to the one most news organizations have yet to fully grasp and utilize, specifically, the way in which news and information is gathered. The use of independent reporting, either through blogging or images and eye-witness reports sent from private cell users who happen to be at the location of an event, has the power to change the very rules of the game.


It is only a matter of time before a local news station will realize the benefits of out-sourcing part of their news coverage capability by offering a unique opportunity to the public, which will say something to the effect, “We will pay $50 to the first person who sends us a photo of a breaking news event from their phone, provided... blah blah blah.” If you comprehend the relative costs associated with sending a camera and crew to a location, it makes that kind of alternative, the ability to cover an event as quickly as possible something very hard to argue with.


That is one small example that serves to illustrate the potential that this new type of news gathering ability has, if properly harnessed. In a larger sense, this partial shift in the news gathering process would almost certainly make the editorial capacity and, concomitantly, the reputation for quality and accuracy of an organization much more critically important, than it is today.


This brings me full circle, to the point of why I decided to write this letter. I regret that I feel compelled to discontinue my yearly subscription because, from my point of view, the quality has fallen to a level making it not worth the money. Frankly, it is an event that would have occurred somewhere on down the road, regardless. The drop in quality is something that, if I were you your shoes, I would be would be very conscious of, not because of what in means in terms on my single subscription, but because it is something that speaks directly to the future of your success and longevity in general—something which, I assure you, I will remain very much interested in.


Yours most sincerely,


Sterling Kekoa

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Research & References


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