La Vanguardia of Barcelona (Spain) launches this special supplement with the best speeches by Obama.
Instead offering less and less, good newspapers invest in new products and new ideas.
You heard the bad news from Detroit.
First things first.
You have to change when things are going well.
When papers – like our loved ones in Detroit – are doing extremely badly, these radical changes make everything worse.
I have great respect for IDEO, but like when the Toyota design team was hired to revamp the Los Angeles Times, or when any general management consultant is called to save the life of any newspaper in trouble, you cannot succeed without some knowledge of this industry.
Consultants don’t perform miracles.
All these wonderful prototypes and innovative research ignore one basic fact: Detroit is a city that doesn’t exist anymore.
As INNOVATION’s Leo Bogart used to say: the death of a city is the death of the newspapers.
Only vibrant and lively cities have and will continue to have healthy newspapers.
Go to the headquarters of the Detroit papers and you will see a dead city.
People left downtown Detroit many years ago and now they live and work in the suburbs.
So, just like the Christian Science Monitor’s case, it’s a wrong assumption to present these bold changes (going from print to online, etc.) as the path for the future.
They are not.
And as an old resident of downtown Detroit, where I still have some of my best friends, I am very sorry to say this :
These are not signs of the future, but of the end of these newspapers.
Today these two newspapers combined sell less than 500,000 copies.
A few years ago, they were selling three times this number!
So…
It’s not the Internet.
It’s not Gannett.
It’s not Singleton.
It’s not the financial crisis.
It is simply the tragic death of a city and its newspaper market.
And, I’m sorry, but just as the IDEO’s of this world cannot resurrect a city, they also will not be able to save these papers.
And one last comment: the Detroit Media Partnership is going to fire a lot of people.
My feeling, and my sources, tell me that IDEO is going to be the perfect scapegoat for this mess.
Yes, sometimes you hire external consultants and you blame to them for the firings and the final mistakes.
The Detroit papers have great newsrooms and great journalists.
What they don’t have is a market.
As simple as that.
The rest is bullshit.
An Iraqi reporter called U.S. President George W. Bush a “dog” and threw his shoes at him.
“This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog,” he said.
Well, well, this is not the best way to end his presidency.
Not the best way to say goodbye to Iraq.
And not the best way to screen journalists.
What a shame for the Iraq (mis)government.
What a mess!
So, today more than ever, please, Bush, go home!
Go to Texas.
Leave the White House.
Obama, please, we need you.
Investment manager Bernard Madoff was in a bathrobe when two FBI agents arrived at his door unannounced at 8:30 a.m. on Dec. 11.
He invited them in, then confessed after being asked “if there’s an innocent explanation,” the complaint said.
And Madoff said: “There is no innocent explanation.”
He was one of the “most sophisticated investors” on Wall Street.
Another “Master of the Universe” who at the end of the day was just a buffoon.
Madoff’s scheme shows how poor our media’s financial coverage is.
Watchdog journalism is needed here more than ever.
I laughed at what the FT reported this weekend:
“It was a measure of Mr. Madoff’s appeal that when news of his arrest hit well-heeled Palm Beach, Florida, one of his investors – a retiree from New York who had put $20m in Mr. Madoff’s hands – sought treatment from his cardiologist rather than advice from a financial professional, according to one of his relatives.”
FT reports today that Banco Santander could have lost €2.33 billion.
Just try opening a savings account at any branch of what is considered to be the best Spanish bank.
You will be presented with dozens and dozens of forms to sign, with hundreds of provisions, exceptions and conditions.
It seems, though, that they only make people like you and me go through this, and that they go quite informally with all these (poor) rich people!
Yes, a very smart bank.
Run by buffoons, too.
So, let’s see if we can find out the names of all these smart, sophisticated investors around the world.
Next Monday, the cost of buying The Washington Post will rise to 75 cents per copy, an increase of 25 cents.
The average American newspaper still costs a third of what the European ones do.
Good move.
And expect one USD per copy very soon.
Richard Curtis, managing editor for graphics and photo at USA Today — since before the paper’s launch — announced today that he is retiring. His last day on the job will be Dec. 23.
From the memo that Richard sent this afternoon to his staff:
I can well remember my first day at USA TODAY in January 1982. It was filled with so much promise and wonderment. Finally, journalists, artists, photographers and designers would get an opportunity to create the newspaper of their dreams. It was a day for which we all had dreamed. Thanks to Neuharth’s vision, the deep pockets of Gannett and the creative talents of many (including many of you now reading this memo), we did just that, having produced a newspaper that smartly defied the critics and continues to serve millions of readers each and every day. Years from now, when we’re sitting on park benches remembering what it was like in the good old days, we’ll remind ourselves that we made this newspaper Number One. I am confident it will remain so.
So it is with some reluctance but also much anticipation of what the future holds that I announce I’m leaving USAT at the end of December. Retirement is something I’ve contemplated for over a year, and while it has to come at some point, many factors make this the right time.
…This has been a journey well worth taking, and the rewards have been immense. You, and this place, have given me fond memories of these 27 years, enough for a lifetime. I can never repay the debt I owe for this experience, so I’ll just say thanks for what you’ve contributed to those memories.
Please know that working with you and leading this department has been the highlight of my career. I shall always look upon our accomplishments with pride and great fondness. It has been a privilege and a distinct honor to have served you and to have served with you.
Richard Curtis, an old friend who helped me launch the SND Spanish Chapter, has been one of the most influential and humble newspaper designers in this country.
For many pundits, his USA Today was a cheap newspaper — the “McPaper” — but today nobody would dispute the success and quality of this amazing paper. It now sells more copies than any other newspaper in the US.
USA Today is perhaps the most European newspaper published in the United States.
Compact and compelling, well organized, easy to read, visually oriented, full of color, good printing, and very popular around the world.
Many of these achievements are due to Richard Curtis, who, though he never wanted to be in the spotlight as a design guru, at the end of the day has led one of the country’s best newspaper design departments.
As one of the founders of the Society of Newspaper Design (SND) he will get the credit that he deserves more than anybody else: he was one of the best of the best.
More about Richard Curtis here in Charles Apple’s blog.
The rumors could be a sad reality very soon:
The Gannett-controlled publisher of the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News (2,000 employees) would end home delivery entirely, except for perhaps two or three days a week: Thursday, Friday and Sunday editions.
Readers would be encouraged to subscribe to already-available electronic pdf editions of the Freep and The News.
It seems that the adviser on this whole mess is a Silicon Valley consulting firm called IDEO.
More details of this madness are here and here.
The idea is not new.
Yesterday, I had a conference call with a group of executives from a large U.S. newspaper chain and they posed the same question:
There will come a day, let’s say 10 to 15 years from now, when it’s no longer economically feasible to print and deliver a daily newspaper to subscribers’ homes. How will we operate? What should we be doing today to prepare for that eventuality? Should we be attempting to accelerate it?
During our discussion, one of the questions that came up was: what if we publish print editions only a few days a week?
This was my response:
You cannot survive by offering the print product only a few days a week.
Reading a print newspaper is a daily habit.
If you want to survive, you need to produce a “necessary newspaper” not an “occasional newspaper.”
U.S. newspapers are lost, confused and in the hands of publishers and managers who don’t want to invest in the future.
Don’t want to invest in journalism.
Don’t want to innovate.
Don’t want to compete.
This is lack of vision.
Lack of faith in change.
Just greed, greed, greed.
In a few hours I’ll post this in English, but for now, here is my analysis of the U.S. newspaper crisis in an essay written three months ago and published in the journal of the Newspaper Press Association of Madrid.
The Guardian is moving to its new office in King’s Cross, London.
“We are changing absolutely everything. So it is not just a relocation, it’s a reorganisation,” said Sheila Fitzsimons, the Guardian’s head of editorial development.
“Commercial have already completed their reorganisation ahead of their move while we will start with entirely new teams, new workflow processes and new editorial systems.”
Here is an example of how the design team have applied the look of the newspaper to the navigation of the new multimedia facilities.
I like the blue and red colors.
Many years ago, working in Guayaquil, Ecuador, my old friend the publisher of El Universo, Carlos Perez Perasso, showed me his paper’s new building and I was amazed by the vivid colors on the walls.
“Well, why should a newsroom have to look gloomy when there is so much color and light in our country?” he said.
I always remember how proud he was.
And how much I learned from him and his great paper.
The CEO and Publisher of The Washington Post, a granddaughter of Katharine Graham, sent this memo to the whole staff today (bold emphasis added):
From: Katharine Weymouth
Re: The Road Forward
12/10/08
This has been an eventful –and difficult—year for the news business, in print and online. Since becoming publisher of The Washington Post and our web site earlier this year, I have made a concerted effort to assess the state of our business, and with the help of all of you, to develop a strategic framework to guide our future direction. My goal is to ensure
that The Post remains strong, at a time when our mission of making sense of Washington has never been more important, both for members of our local community, and for those in our large national online audience who are impacted by what happens in the nation’s capital.
Over the course of the summer, a team of forty staff members, drawn from every department of the newspaper and the web site, conducted a detailed analysis of our business, evaluating how well we serve our audience’s needs and interests, how effective our products are in creating value for advertisers, how cost-effective we are in the way we publish, and where we hold unique competitive advantage when compared with the many alternative sources of news, information, and e-commerce made possible by the new digital economy. Underlying this effort has been our realization that while our online business is growing steadily, that growth is not enough to offset the larger declines in print revenue and profitability that we are experiencing.The purpose of our strategy review was not to answer with great precision how to “fix” our business model overnight—there is no quick, easy response to the sea changes already disrupting our industry before the financial meltdown of this Fall. Our goal was to propose an integrated set of choices that will allow us to preserve our commitment to journalistic excellence while also positioning the company to generate strong financial returns over the long run. By setting forth a common framework for decision-making, we hope we are providing your departments with the tools for prioritizing what we do as an organization, so that we focus our increasingly scarce resources on things that will make us indispensable to our customers, and thus create value for our business, while eliminating efforts that no longer make a difference to our readers.
At the heart of our strategy is the fact that our home market is not only an affluent, highly educated, growing market, but that it is, of course uniquely, the nation’s capital and the seat of government. More than ever, The Washington Post must be the indispensable guide to Washington. In the capital and beyond the Beltway, The Washington Post delivers news and understanding about the politics, policies, personalities and institutions that make Washington the world’s seat of power. For people in the metropolitan area, The Post must also inform, engage, entertain and facilitate their handling of practical, everyday problem solving.The three pillars of our strategy are:
Being about Washington, for Washingtonians, and those affected by it
Providing utility, engagement, and convenience for our local readers
Extending our brand with new products and new platforms
Being for, and about Washington, means addressing our local readers’ core needs. Strong news coverage, enterprise and investigative reporting, expert analysis and informed commentary will continue to be important tools in making sense for local readers of the world around them. On washingtonpost.com, we will need to up our efforts to cover breaking news, and to use video in that coverage, if video is how our viewers wish to follow the story.
We must also make our local readers’ lives easier by increasing the practical utility of our site, and make the paper and washingtonpost.com go-to places for local information such as entertainment listings, weather and traffic, job postings, real estate and auto listings, and other classified services and marketplaces. We must make it possible for local consumers not only to find the kind of practical information that can aid a purchase decision, but make it possible for them to complete many of these transactions on the site itself.
To expand our revenue base and diversify our business model, we must look for opportunities to create new products, especially in the areas where business and policy intersect. These may include the hosting of specialized conferences for business decision makers with a stake in Washington policy-making, and the development of premium subscription products for business clients.
To achieve the goals outlined above, we must make fundamental changes to our business culture. We must focus better on what the consumer indicates they want, and be less quick to emphasize only what we think is important. We must create a nimble, high-performance culture. And we must realign our cost structure to match this strategy. This realignment of our cost structure must be fast. The decline in our revenue base, particularly in classified advertising, requires decisive action. But cutting our cost structure must be done in a way that protects our brand, and lays the foundation for future growth.
One thing this strategy does not change is our bedrock principles. We will always be committed to producing great journalism, building a strong business, serving our readers, being an exceptional place to work and a responsible member of our community. To be faithful to these principles at a time of great change, we will need to be creative, adaptive, and resourceful in the way we position our business going forward. I know of no better group to meet these challenges than our team today, and I couldn’t be more excited about working with you to forge this future.
INNOVATION
