In my marketing class we were recently talking about how a business stays alive by observing new technologies and new trends that could be opportunities…or could put it out of business.
I thought about how the journalism industry is one such model. The internet came in and undercut a lot sources of income for newspapers.
One such way for newspapers to stay alive is to be innovative as well as changing how they achieve profits. One such way is making subscribers pay for content rather than relying on advertisers.
A site we learned about showcases emerging trends:
trendhunter.com
I think it could inspire some creative ideas!
I am thinking about this matter.
But I don’t think that our organization – Beijing Youth Daily – could follow American counterpart. In China there are huge resource of free content. People can easily acquire information free of charge. How a newspaper could survive providing free content?
Easy answer, it won’t. The newspaper as we know it is going to die. It will survive in smaller, more local towns probably through our lifetimes. But the big fat dailies we were used to are long gone.
Why? No one will pay for information if they can get it for free somewhere else. It’s that simple.
This isn’t a bad thing. A better, more efficient product came around. It’s natural for the best product to replace the outdated one. The attached video is a good example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ15vUjgqvw
Newspapers as we know it are dead. But hopefully as we learned during our Friday field trip they’re being resurrected in some new and exciting ways.
The paywall idea (original post) isn’t new of course. Google around and you’ll see the debates go back at least 5 years