The Death of the Rocky Mountain News: It Didn’t Have to Happen
The Rocky Mountain News published a lengthy, heartbreaking video obituary of itself today, its final day of publication.
What is most poignant about the piece is that it demonstrates how powerful — and potentially, profitable — newspaper websites can be when they embrace new media, in this case, broadcast-quality video.
Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.
The economics are compelling: Despite the recession, research firm eMarketer predicts spending on online video advertising in the U.S. will grow 45% in 2009. 15-second video ads can command CPMs (cost per thousand viewers) of $25 to $35, while the display ads found on news sites are typically priced at no more than $5 to $10. (And ad space the newspapers can’t sell is filled by ad networks at even lower rates.)
Local news organizations (formerly known as newspapers) that want to survive need to make their websites the #1 Internet destination in their region — a place the audience (formerly known as readers) will spend more time and national and local advertisers will want to sponsor.
That means not articles with a handful of amateurish videos (typical of newspaper websites) nor TV with a little text (typical of local TV affiliates’ sites). It is a third animal altogether, combining the power and immediacy of video, where appropriate, with the depth and analysis found in the best newspapers.
It is a site that has a multimedia tool chest and uses those tools in the most appropriate way to tell the story: Event stories (parades, community celebrations) may be best told as videos or photo slideshows. For more complex stories (e.g., the economy) video adds little if the only pictures are B-roll footage. (Does anyone need to see what a gas pump or a supermarket checkout line looks like?). For these stories, print or audio combined with charts and graphics, particularly interactive graphics (e.g., a calculator showing how the new tax law will affect you), can be extremely effective.
Local news websites will never generate the revenue newspapers did in the monopoly days before the Net. They will be smaller. They will be less ambitious. (Foreign reporting will be the province of national publications; lengthy investigative projects will require some form of non-profit model.) They will be less profitable. But there is a business model to be created here.
