Inside Word: Where Aggregators Fall Short
The Inside Word is a weekly feature that looks at compelling industry debates and discussions unfolding on the blogs of employees at digital-media companies.
Blogger: Mathew Ingram
Position: Blogger and communities editor at Toronto’s The Globe and Mail
Blog name: Mathew Ingram
Backstory: Online news aggregators continue to proliferate and draw attention, while print newspapers continue to suffer. This week, the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations report showed that top daily newspapers lost a staggering 10.6 percent of their circulation over the last six months.
Blog post: So what might be keeping some of the other 89.4 percent of newspaper readers around? In a blog post, Ingram argues that print newspapers serve a unique function as aggregators that hasn’t been replicated online — yet. “Maybe I
What I've found working in the advertising industry is that newspapers have been on the decline for the past 10 years (that I've been in the business). Other sources, like the SRDS Circulation (Circulation 2009®) show that circulations have been declining since the 1980's. So, your coverage, of Matthew's blog is fatally flawed in that 89% of several MILLION readers is a much more significant number than 89% of one million, (or several hundred thousand) readers.
Even if aggregators aren't perfect yet, they can be augmented by the online sites CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, CNBC, etc. For instance, I can set up iGoogle to feed me the aggregators and the news sites of my choosing. Plus, with Twitter on iGoogle, I can also follow these sites for up-to-the-minute breaking news.
While the large metro and national papers have been in decline, my unscientific (and unmeasured) small-town newspapers have actually started to gain subscriptions as well as online readership. To me, this points to a trend that supports localized news (in a big city, maybe neighborhood sites, or sites for certain zip codes, rather than online or print subscriptions to the Chicago Sun-Times or the NYTimes. While readers want to be informed of global events, they also want to know about things in their respective living areas; crime rates, building permits, candidates for Alderman or City Councilman, restaurant reviews, etc. Sites such as Chicago's Everyblock.com reviews crime statistics, permits, home sales, restaurant inspections, new business openings, business permits, housing permits, and even local events. (There is a drawback to EveryBlock: their main news feed often comes from the Sun-Times or the Tribune, but I believe they are working to move away from reprinting stories from the local papers–both of which are currently in bankruptcy).
I'm not trying to be critical; rather, I am trying to provide a point of view from someone that works with clients that have, for as long as I've been in advertising, been steering their money away from the papers. Part of it has to do with the outrageous cost (comparatively) newspapers charge for both print and online services, declining circulations, and honestly, years of poor service from most of the nation's metro papers. For years the newspaper conglomerates sat in the cat bird seat and were unwilling to negotiate costs (other than volume discounts) while TV, Radio, Online, and Out-of-Home providers dictated their sales by how the advertising market fared. In a way, the papers are now reaping what they sowed.
Plus, newspapers (print) and now online are extremely cluttered with advertisers and they're unwilling to separate competitors (like hospitals) from one another.
So, that's my .02 cents. Hope that it made sense and provides some perspective.