WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

The French national press is in real trouble.

And now the regional press is too.

Le Monde has very disturbing news about Sud Ouest, France’s third regional title.

“I am convinced that the decrease in circulation isn’t in any case a fatality,” says Jean-Claude Bonnaud, president of the Sapeso branch, which publishes the daily.

Sud Ouest has resisted to sharply declining circulations so far: it distributed 313,000 copies through 2005-2006 (314,000 in 2005) and its Sunday edition, Sud Ouest dimanche, still sold 288,416 copies.

Management is also working on a new design for 2008, six years after it switched to tabloid format. It could also review the efficiency of its multiple regional editions (divided into 23 separate editions including four that focus on urban areas).

Sud Ouest has also engaged in two major work-projects, such as developing a solid online edition (still inexistent!) and a new corporate office.

Perhaps some of newspapers’ problems come from unbalanced budget allocations: Sud Ouest will spend some €450,000 on its much-needed online edition, as opposed to €20 million for its brand new office.

Well, if the future of online news services is hyper-local, the directors of Sud Ouest must start to change faster.

Less bricks.

Less cosmetic changes.

And more online and off-line integration.

If any newspaper model has a future, it is the hyper-local regional newspaper model.

But you will not succed in the local, local, local newspaper market with a mono-media mentality.

This is online myopia.

A very expensive one.

Top ten beaches with Wi-fi Internet access.

The New York Times reports today:

In an effort to survive industrywide financial straits, many newspapers have made cuts both large and small, reducing newsroom staff, paper sizes and even the daily printed stock listings that are readily available online.

But after torrents of reader complaints, two major papers said last week that they would restore some of those listings.

The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal both said last week that they would bring back some of the stock market tables to their papers.

They and several other dailies, including The New York Times, have recently trimmed those listings in their financial sections to reduce newsprint costs.

Wait a minute…

Could you please tell me exactly how many reader complaints constitutes “torrents?”

Is 20 a torrent?

Is 200 a torrent?

Is 2000 a torrent?

You better be more specific or, as I suspect, you are going to lose a lot of money in order to please an insignificant number of readers.

Perhaps it’s time to consider “jumps” as part of the complaint, too.

Readers around the world hate them!

But newspapers keep them.

No.

No.

And no.

No.

No.

And no.

A brilliant piece by Daniel Gross on Slate on How to Buy the New York Times Co.

If the Sulzbergers want to take their company private, here’s a plan.

Very interesting numbers.

Not a stupid proposition.

But a serious one.

The Sulzberger family can’t ignore the pressures of Wall Street.

You’ll see…

Stay tuned!

Listen to these podcasts “Correct Me If I’m Wrong” with reader messages to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.

They could be more effective than traditional letters or new e-mails.

And funnier.

Like this great one.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, after the first session of the International Media Council at Davos:

There have been many such discussions over the years – but few with such a concentration of high-level engagement from the people running so-called old media organisations.

The discussion was unfocussed and (as always) inconclusive.

But it’s a bit like climate change.

Five years ago a lot of time was wasted listening to the deniers.

Now there are very few: The nature of the problem has dawned on everyone – and an industry which is notoriously uncollaborative is actually getting together to find some solutions.

I am not sure.

The deniers are still in control of many media groups.

You will not find many publishers and editors like the ones at The Daily Telegraph and Los Angeles Times.

They are ready to change and they are changing.

Dramatically!

Give me more examples and I’ll believe you.

Every year, the editors of the Harvard Business Review select 20 breakthrough ideas.

This year, one of them is from Linda Stone a former senior executive at Apple and Microsoft based in Seattle, USA:

Living with Continuous Partial Attention

We all know the phenomenon: You’re in a conference room, and all the people around the table are glancing—frequently and surreptitiously—at the cell phones or BlackBerrys they’re holding just below table level.

They may be checking their e-mail, looking to see who is trying to reach them on muted incoming calls, sending text messages, scanning stock quotes, making dinner reservations—or, more likely, doing several things at once.

Such activities don’t only draw participants’ attention away from the business being conducted at the table; they also compete with one another—sometimes even generating small alerts that suddenly appear and then dissolve on the screen, silently begging, “Look at me!”

This constant checking of handheld electronic devices has become epidemic, and it illustrates what I call “continuous partial attention.”

Although continuous partial attention appears to mimic that much discussed behavior, multitasking, it springs from a different impulse…

Continuous partial attention, by contrast, involves constantly scanning for opportunities and staying on top of contacts, events, and activities in an effort to miss nothing.

It’s an adaptive behavior that has emerged over the past two decades, in stride with Web-based and mobile computing, and it connects us to a galaxy of possibilities all day every day.

The assumption behind the behavior is that personal bandwidth can match the endless bandwidth technology offers.

Continuous partial attention in itself is neither good nor bad. Like many things, it’s fine up to a point—but in excess it can cause harm.

In a study of the use of BlackBerrys, Gayle Porter, an associate professor at Rutgers University, concluded that addiction to these devices, in the form of constant checking for messages, is deeply entrenched.

TNS Research, in a study commissioned by Hewlett-Packard, found that people who attempted to deal with a barrage of messages while working experienced a temporary ten-point drop in IQ over a day’s time…

As businesses respond to this backlash—as they consider management styles and marketing messages that effectively meet people’s needs for relief from continuous partial attention and the sensory overload it creates—they can differentiate themselves by offering what their employees and customers increasingly crave: discriminating choices and quality of life.

Read the full report here (free until February 26).

Reading takes concentration, so this is not a good trend for newspapers and magazines.

The future, as I said yesterday, could lead to the “McDonaldization” of information, but as Einstein said, simplicity is one thing, being simplistic is another.

Hubert Burda Media Research did an online survey of the 228 participants of its annual DLD Conference (the world’s new media elite) and asked the question:

How important will the following subjects/topics be in 2007?

The results were:

USER GENERATED CONTENT: Very important 67%

COMMUNITIES, SOCIAL NETWORKS: Very important 51%

ONLINE VIDEO CONTENT: Very important 44%

For the DLDs the most innovative entrepreneurs were Chad Hurley and Steve Chen (YouTube) (29%) and Steve Jones (Apple) (18%).

They also said that Google (35%), Apple (31%), YouTube (18%) and MySpace (2%) were the leading brands or companies of the year.

And www.secondlife.com (12%), www.youtube.com (8%), www.wikipedia.org (6%), www.netvibes.com (5%) and www.xing.com (3%) the most fascinating sites

Click here for the full survey.