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.
Your headline is not borne out by what follows it, most of all your last paragraph.
As Jay Rosen noted yesterday on Twitter, RMN was one paper in a rare two-newspaper town situation and could have failed for that reason any time in the past decade or so.
If you are saying that RMN could have survived in a form where its revenue and staff were radically shrunken for online-only production, sure. They didn’t want that, why should they?
Look for the business model at the dawn of newspapers and newspaper-like products starting in the 1500s. It may shock you. It was a bloody course of centuries in which “the news” evolved.
Comment by Dan Knauss — February 27, 2009 @ 2:11 pm
Dan:
No, it would not be the Rocky as it was. And yes, it’s unrealistic to expect any city of Denver’s size to support two newspapers. Scripps’ action was a rational business decision given the Rocky’s heavy losses and the stranglehold the Post’s owner had on them through the JOA. (As the Journal reported today, any purchaser of the Rocky would have entered the market without a printing press, advertiser list or distribution capabilities.)
But I guarantee you that most of the editorial staff would choose to continue publishing — even if online only — rather than dying altogether.
You can “radically shrink” a newspaper by eliminating the circulation and pressroom costs and still put out a credible, respected product. Had Scripps attempted this bitter medicine sooner, the Rocky might be alive in some form today.
It’s sad, yes. But this is a prescription that other imperiled newspapers should try before it’s too late for them as well.
Comment by Rich Heidorn — February 27, 2009 @ 2:43 pm