More vulnerable to decline: national or local print media?

The constant theme in the discussion of new media continues to be that print newspapers are on their way out with shielding readers from the falling sky as the only use for the modern broadsheet.

Jeff Jarvis’ post titled Fitted for coffin, flowers now ordered points to an article on the views of Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, who discusses local newspapers’ susceptibility to what’s made out to be an inevitable decline.

“For at least ten years we are going to have to have an act of faith and pump money into digital markets without significant return… and we will do it with the expectation that things will change,” he told the committee.

He speculated that the newspaper industry could have an ‘Ipod moment’ where a devise is developed with the potential to consign printed newspapers to the history books.

Regardless of this, he added, the situation for local papers was more worrying than for national papers. . . .

“Because societies need news, web-based models will spring up, and are springing up in most countries including America, that are much more local and originate from citizens.

“They are really interesting things which may be more reflective of the communities than the local papers… I don’t think the printed local newspaper has an optimistic future.”

National newspapers currently have the ability to generate more revenue via advertising and subscriptions but I’m not sure they’re better suited for survival.

Think about this: when was the last time you found out about a national news story in a print newspaper first? Now when was the last time you heard of a local news story in a print newspaper first? The latter should be more recent.

At LexBlog, we recommend that our lawyers grab a niche to blog on. For a newspaper, that needs to be on hyperlocal coverage. People will get the national news and nationwide feature stories from TV and other outlets. For many small non tech savvy towns where ‘blog’ is an antonym for credibility, all the news comes from a local paper.

As papers shift into hyperlocal mode, advertisers should do so as well. I was recently shown a product  — I believe it was Marketing Force — that allows large corporations to use local retailer ads to sell their product. The corporation creates an ad template for their product, the local retailer slaps their logo on there and the two split the coast of putting it in the local paper. Imagine the boost a system like this would give to local papers starving for ad revenue.

Once newspapers and advertisers see that people are looking for the news and editorials that most pertains to them, the local print newspaper might just make it.