Audience-centric model driving newspaper transformation

As a former newspaper publisher, I can empathize when a newspaper's bad news is on their own front page. "Bankruptcy filings", "Revenues down", "Classifieds dying". Amid all the economic doom and gloom, the plight of newspapers seems to have a special ironic place in the news. When you go behind the headlines, too much debt from highly leveraged acquisitions is the root cause. Beyond the balance sheet, we have been slow as an industry to change business models and business processes to adapt to online opportunities.

Newspapers' process-centric approach is understandable. Producing a unique daily product requires a precisely choreographed deadline-driven sequence of steps. When new opportunities emerge, such as the Internet, most newspapers added on new processes to cope. These additional Web-publishing processes guaranteed that the job got done. The business model was a secondary consideration.

There's a need for a dramatic business transformation in our industry. The most extreme view says that "print is dead". My view is that print has a profitable future when combined with the Web in an audience-centric business model. Many newspapers now realize that separate print and Web processes add extra cost and defeat opportunities for creating synergy in the way news is presented and ad campaigns are sold. Most of the latest content management systems know nothing about print - they drive a separate process. And most print systems know nothing about the Web. We think it only makes sense to have one content management system for print or Web or mobile, or on whatever device your target audience chooses.

The revenue is still out there for the taking. Google generates billions of dollars in online ad revenue &mdash not from search per se &mdash but by targeting advertising to their search audience. Newspapers are only getting a small share of the available online revenue &mdash without the benefits of print-Web advertising synergy, and little ability to provide targeted, results-based advertising. Audiences are made up of unique individuals who have varied interests and multiple touch points &mdash whether by mobile, online or print &mdash and to get results, content must be accurately targeted. Advertisements that are simply presented to a mass audience, hoping for a result, are giving way to ads that are targeted to a specific individual's interests.

We are ready with innovative new solutions to help drive the transformation at newspapers. The transformation can begin with a simple change in thinking from process-centric to audience-centric thinking.