WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

The Associated Press reports that The New York Times’ newsstand price will go from $1.25 to $1.50.

The increase takes effect Aug. 18.

The Times’ last increase, from $1 to $1.25, came a year ago.

The move comes a week after the Wall Street Journal said it would boost its newsstand price by 50 cents to $2 starting July 28.

Good move.

But late.

The NYT should cost five dollars, right now.

Tell your audience, readers and advertisers, that you are a quality, necessary paper and deliver a great product.

They will pay higher prices and higher rates.

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones) — For a company as secretive about its upcoming products as Apple Inc., comments from Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer might as well have been equal to giving up the launch codes for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Tribune’s COO Randy Michaels (a veteran broadcasting executive with long-term ties to Sam Zell):

“We need to build — especially in markets where we have multiple media outlets — a breaking news center.”

Well, this is what a newspaper used to be.

But when almost all the news is a commodity, the only option for a print newspaper or a local online news service is not to record the news, but to find the news.

We need scoops!

Online and in print.

24/7.

But this is not easy.

Or cheap.

And to find the news, you need more, better news hunters: reporters.

And you explain the news with more, better cooks: editors.

So, if you want to become a “breaking news center” and you are just cutting, cutting, cutting … you will end up with no hunters, no cooks, no reporters, no editors, and no real news.

Scoops, my dear, is what readers want.

Smart explanations of the news are what readers need.

(Watch here the standard speech from Randy to Tribune’s newspapers)

From the most recent interview with NEW YORK TIMES’ Arthur Sulzberger Jr.:

ON COMPETING WITH MURDOCH’S JOURNAL:
“I saw when the Times of London was taken over by Rupert Murdoch.

Those newspapers reacted to it and said, ‘We are going to compete against them.’

And the result is: It didn’t help them, because they stopped remembering who they were. We’re not going to.”

ON NEWSPAPERS’ DECLINE:
“At a time when many of our great competitors are cutting back … and don’t have the fine staffs they used to have and don’t have the national staffs that they used to have — and I could continue on — the Times becomes more critical.”

ON HOW HE WANTS THE TIMES TO CONSIDER HIM:
“As someone who cares desperately about the mission of The New York Times and its core promise to society.”

The “young Sulzberger” is having a rough time.

Not only as the top manager of the New York Times Company, but also in his personal life.

Last May, after 33 years of marriage, Arthur Sulzberger separated from his wife, Gail Gregg.

Again, poor business performance from one of the best newspapers in the world:

The New York Times Company reported today its second quarter net income of $21.14 million or $0.15 per share, compared to $118.3 million or $0.82 per share in the same quarter last year.

Quarterly total revenues declined 6% to $741.9 million from $788.9 million in the comparable quarter last year.

Analysts expected earnings of $0.22 per share and revenue of $753.93 million for the quarter.

What else do the Sulzberger family and the board of directors need in order to review the quality and performance of their own top management — including the family members involved in the operation — and a board that seems unable to stop the sinking of the company?

Chief Executive Janet Robinson said — oh, my God! — that business was hurt by the “U.S. economic slowdown and secular forces playing out across the media industry.”

“Secular forces”?

Outside forces?

No.

Inside weakness.

Roy Greensland writes in today’s Evening Standard about how and why papers are becoming their own newsagents.

Some interesting facts and trends:

The Financial Times was first out of the blocks with its premium delivery service, which began 10 years ago and was pumped up last year.

It offers readers within the M25 and in the Home Counties the chance to have copies delivered to their homes every day before 7am. Though it adds a small delivery charge, this can be offset by cover-price discounts of up to 30%, based on the length of the agreement. There are other benefits too, such as deals on FT.com subscriptions.

The FT has a minority stake in the distributor, 2 The Door, which is also used by the Wall Street Journal to delivery copies of its US edition in central London at £2.50 a day.

A couple of weeks ago, The Independent decided to get in on the act by piggybacking on the FT’s service to give its readers the chance to have Monday-to-Friday copies delivered at a cost of £6.

Across the counter, the joint cost is £4. If you also want the Saturday edition, it will set you back £7.50 (as against the usual £5.40 total).

That is a hefty charge but I am told it is in line with delivery fees in the Greater London area – and arguably a small expense for someone working in the City.

But News International, the Rupert Murdoch company that first launched a cover-price war 15 years ago, has completely undercut both papers by starting a home-delivery service entirely for free.

Readers of The Times and The Sunday Times have the chance to sign up for packages of either weekday, weekend or seven days’ worth of the titles.

The more frequently they agree to purchase papers, the smaller their outlay.

They will even be able to pay in arrears, and it could mean Sunday Times buyers saving as much as £50 a year in delivery charges.

A fascinating issue.

Distribution is the “black hole” of newspapers today.

Paid newspapers need to do much, much more.

The Chicago Tribune “buries news in redesign test.”

Well, this is one of the most stupid headlines I have ever read!

It seems that the new editor is considering “dramatic changes,” with a new front section for consumer and entertainment NEWS; a second one for local, national, international and business NEWS; a third for weather, classifieds and services; and a tabloid for sports.

“Radical changes”?

What the Chicago Tribune is going to test has been done for decades by many European newspapers.

The big difference is that they don’t need sections, because they know that readers want “compact” newspapers.

And then you won’t need this model that still exists in U.S. newspapers, where sections put content into “ghettos.”

U.S. newspapers need to be what the French call “une main journals” or one-section papers.

“Daily-news-magazines” where general assignment editors and reporters rule.

Newspapers where the news is organized according to the NEWS and readers’ interests, not according to your printing presses.

Period.

Read David Sullivan’s comments after another simplistic post about the “death of newspapers.”

He end ends with the solution:

The best way to help print is to Put Ideas on the Table.

Lots of them.

Counterattack can be the best defense.

Yes, more innovation and less status quo.

More change and less status quo.

More new ideas and less status quo.

(Picture by  lkurnarsky/Flickr)

Yesterday, at the earnings talk, Apple promised a product transition by the end of September with “technologies and features that others can’t match.”

The rumor says that the new product will be an Apple tablet:

A MacBook screen, possibly a bit smaller, in glass with iPhone-like, but fuller-featured Multi-Touch.

Gesture library.

Full Mac OS X.

This is why they bought P.A. Semi.

Possibly with Immersion’s haptic tech.

Slot-loading SuperDrive.

Accelerometer.

GPS.

Pretty expensive to produce initially, but sold at “low” price that will reduce margins.

Apple wants to move these babies.

And move they will.

By October at the latest.

It seems that Quanta is busy building a touch product for Apple.

And this would confirm the rumor:

Apple has filed for a European design trademark.

The filing, made in May this year but only published this week, covers a “handheld computer” and contains sketches of what looks like an iBook screen minus the body of the computer.

The pictures are from Gizmodo.

In yesterday’s Independent, Sir Harold Evans brings common sense to the newspaper design discussion:

“Design can’t be considered without the context, the information.

Design is absolutely no substitute for content.”

Amen.

(In the picture, Sir Harold Evans with his wife Tina Brown)

Thanks to Chiqui Esteban.