Photo by Faeryboots; licensed under Creative Commons.
The reasons for the P-I’s seemingly imminent demise will undoubtedly be debated and discussed for months or years, but I want to throw out a couple of thoughts that P-I managing editor David McCumber alluded to in a blog post a couple of days ago. McCumber wrote:
I think as an industry we started our slide from a place of arrogance and self-importance. I think that nationally and locally, we’ve been slow to respond to changes in the market, in readers’ needs and in technology. I think larger papers, like the P-I, gradually ossified by demanding years of experience for any opening, and paid too little attention to diversifying, in terms of age, ethnicity and gender, to better reflect the communities they serve. I think we haven’t done a good job of marketing ourselves, of making sure people understand that what we do actually is valuable. I think we got trapped between serving the readers we wanted to attract and the readers we actually had. And we haven’t done a very thorough job of continuing to research our readership and our potential readership.
As I see it, that assessment’s only partly right. The P-I didn’t fail because it diversified too little but because it diversified too much—and in the wrong directions. The paper invested heavily in areas where the market was already saturated—like celebrity gossip and photos from fashion shows—instead of choosing one area to really focus on (local politics, perhaps?) and making itself indispensible. I’m not going to second-guess the P-I’s business strategy, but I do think their media (and, specifically, online) strategy—trying to be everything to everyone, instead of choosing one identity and owning it—was a key to their failure. A few examples:
Too many blogs. On the P-I’s blog page, there are currently 26 separate blogs by P-I staff. Many overlap (are seven separate sports blogs really necessary? What if I’m interested in more than one team?); many have names that tell me next to nothing about what the blog is about (would you guess that “Secret Ingredients” was about public health? Or “Royal Brougham’s Baby” about baseball?). A few are called out on the main page (the Big Blog, SPI, and Strange Bedfellows), but it’s not clear why—does the P-I consider these their best blogs, the most important, the most read? Or are they chosen more or less at random?
If the staff blogs are an overcrowded marketplace of ideas, the reader blogs are a Super Wal-Mart, with something for every micro-interest. There’s a blog on cakes and a blog on “fashion for moms”; one on charitable giving and one on pet health. If you’re into cats, there’s a specific blog for you—and them—too. There are blogs for aviation geeks, people interested in “haute happenings on the Eastside,” and those who want to “age gracefully.” Many haven’t been updated for months.
I’m not saying the Slog model (one or two blogs that cover a wide range of subjects with a wide range of voices) is the only one that works, but you do want to strike a balance between allowing readers to choose what they want to read about and overwhelming them with more options than they can possibly explore. The P-I would have been wise to limit itself to fewer general topics—say, sports, news, opinion, entertainment, and food—instead of giving every micro-subject a blog of its own. (That’s what Blogspot and Livejournal were made for). The reader blogs, meanwhile, are an uncurated mishmash of smart commentary and useless drivel, with no way to tell between the two without clicking on 100 links. If newspapers are going to let their readers blog (rather than just comment on blogs), they might want to make them audition and demonstrate some dedication; blogs that go dark for more than a few weeks should be shut down.
Too much frivolity. If there’s one thing the Internet is not short on, it’s celebrity gossip. And unless the P-I’s market research reveals something dramatically counter to my own experience, people aren’t getting their news about Naomi Campbell’s latest outburst or Michelle Obama’s inauguration gown from daily newspapers. But the P-I’s busy front page looks more like a gossip rag than a daily newspaper. There’s a roundup of photos from movie premieres; galleries for Fashion Week in Hong Kong AND the Fashion Rio show; a page of “First Lady Fashion”; a page full of “amazing animals“; a guide to TV listings; a gallery of readers’ photos of their pets and another, below it, for photos of their kids; and on and on and on. The site is packed, but it’s packed with stuff I can find better versions of elsewhere. If I’m going to a newspaper web site, I expect it to be dominated by news, with “soft” or “feature” content on a separate page, not splashed all over the main site. It looks unserious, and not in a good way.
Too much reader participation. At the P-I’s web site, in addition to blogging about pretty much any topic under the sun, you can also submit an essay about “What the Inauguration Means to Me,” upload your photos to MySeattlePix, take part in a forum about being a Seattle mom, become Facebook friends (and go to meetups) with various P-I reporters, and “Sound Off” in the comments to any story. Most of the blogs, perhaps under some managerial directive, incessantly direct questions at readers—e.g., “What do YOU think of Hearst’s decision to sell the P-I”—in a way that comes off as desperate trolling for comments.
I’m not saying writers should wall themselves off from readers, but there comes a point when, as my mom would say, you need to hide more than you show. Instead of providing three dozen different points of contact, the P-I should have limited it to a few—say, the Sound Offs, the photo page, and the blogs. I’m willing to bet more people would be interested in giving feedback if they had fewer points of entry that were more obvious.
“Irreverance” can’t be forced. The P-I’s “youth-oriented” (yes, they really call it that that) blog, SPI, is produced by a horde of unpaid interns—as if handing the reins over to college students automatically results in a product that’s “younger” “hipper” and more “raw.” If the daily papers learned anything from its disastrous experiments with back pages produced by and for young adults (remember NEXT?), it’s that “young” doesn’t automatically mean “readable”—and that putting headlines in graffiti font doesn’t fool kids into thinking daily newspapers are cool.
All of this isn’t to slag on the things the P-I does well. As I wrote in this week’s column, I’ll miss the paper’s local news reporting, the attention it paid to low-profile events, the fact that it truly has been a paper about Seattle, not the suburbs. But if the paper does have a future online—and that’s a big if—it will have to adapt to survive. Maybe that will mean that instead of being everything to everyone, it will have to learn to do a few things well.
Not to rag on Erica C. Barnett, but…
All this finger-pointing over what the P-I could have done differently content-wise is a bit like blaming the Detroit Lions’ recent 0-16 season on the head coach. But of course, explaining a weakened business model isn’t quite as satisfying as getting to blast your peers over how they don’t do what you do as well as you do it.
Erica couldn’t be further off the mark. To say that content or direction has anything to do with their failure is to ignore one glaring fact: Content is just filler between ads. Ad revenue is down. People are buying less print ads and online ads are not generating enough revenue … yet.
Shrinking print ad revenue coupled with higher costs for printing had far more to do with the model being broken. People want their news online. They want it free and they don’t want to look at ads.
Of course all of this is ignoring one very large fact that Erica won’t talk about: The Stranger is not immune to the same struggles.
I don’t know if you have noticed Erica, but Craigslist gives tranny hooker ads away for free.
The PI is just the first to fail in an age when many publications will be going down.
They were top heavy and failed to adapt to an ever changing business model. Subscriptions continue to be come less and less of a revenue driver, Advertising revenues continue to decline (even without a down market). While have ABSOLUTELY no idea what their name brand reporters and columnists make, I would hazard a guess it’s significantly more than The Stranger staff’s.
Add to this mix:
Rising print costs and no need to get the paper (their online content is free) with zero flexibility on that contract.
I think there are some valid points Erica is bringing out. However, in a day and age when papers such as the NY Times are facing the same issues and downsizing, publications such as Rolling Stone have shifted to a smaller page size, etc… her points are more bells and whistles not addressing a bigger issue.
BW…
Well said Jeff, you beat me to it.
Yes, focusing on the 2,800,000 suburbanites instead of the 600,000 Seattle residents is clearly suicidal.
I thought it was the color of the box…fuschia?
Jeff… ECB is addressing McCumber’s comments, which are about content, not the P-I’s business model. And she said: “I’m not going to second-guess the P-I’s business strategy, but I do think their media (and, specifically, online) strategy—trying to be everything to everyone, instead of choosing one identity and owning it—was a key to their failure.”
So you ding her for not addressing what she said she wasn’t going to address, and for addressing what McCumber himself credits as part of the P-I’s problem, the entire industry’s problem—it’s product.
And, no, we’re not immune to the same struggles. But we wouldn’t go broke on revenues of $200M a year, either, and we were never as dependent on classified ads or on a few big display advertisers. Things are tough all over, but things are tougher right now for dailies.
Thank you for playing Slog.
And I take no delight in that—I’m a P-I subscriber.
It’s not so much too much reader participation, but too much non-reader participation.
If you go onto their online blogs, most of the commentators don’t even purchase the PI in print.
This could be solved by a simple code in the print edition of the paper for “commenter” access each day, of course, but instead you get mostly neocons posting – which is NOT their target audience.
And they’re mostly really old guys that advertisers don’t want to target.
Just saying.
Sorry but the Stranger exists because it beat out the Seattle Weekly in music coverage and ads for music shows, sex ads, and personal ads. Much of the Stranger is just as frivolous and dispensable as the PI, so lecturing the PI about how to cover local politics, for instance, which doesn’t make anyone money, seems really off point.
I think it’s those purple boxes. That explains everything.
spot on ECB. you really have a great finger on the local heartbeat — national politics, well… not so much.
(and yes, Jeff work on your reddin’ komprehenshen)
“Too much frivolity. If there’s one thing the Internet is not short on, it’s celebrity gossip. And unless the P-I’s market research reveals something dramatically counter to my own experience, people aren’t getting their news about Naomi Campbell’s latest outburst or Michelle Obama’s inauguration gown from daily newspapers. But the P-I’s busy front page looks more like a gossip rag than a daily newspaper. There’s a roundup of photos from movie premieres; galleries for Fashion Week in Hong Kong AND the Fashion Rio show; a page of “First Lady Fashion”; a page full of “amazing animals”; a guide to TV listings; a gallery of readers’ photos of their pets and another, below it, for photos of their kids; and on and on and on. The site is packed, but it’s packed with stuff I can find better versions of elsewhere. If I’m going to a newspaper web site, I expect it to be dominated by news, with “soft” or “feature” content on a separate page, not splashed all over the main site. It looks unserious, and not in a good way.”
That’s hardly a problem just with the PI.
Pathetic “human interest” garbage and regurgitated press releases are substituted for actual journalism and interesting content.
The flimsy financial state of corporate media may have more to do with the content than the blogonetsphere.
“And they’re mostly really old guys that advertisers don’t want to target.
Just saying.”
You’ll see just as many morons on sites that require physical subscribers, believe me.
could me, maus, I never did do the online WSJ subscription, just the print edition – and it’s true about the WaPo boards so you may have a point.
Actually, the first paper to go down here in recent years was the Journal American aka Bellevue Journal American and Eastside Journal and who knows what else. They couldn’t figure out their suburban readership when the demographics and politics started to change on them.
The Ad Revenue problem is huge for every daily in the country. Saw this afternoon that a Tucson paper will also close in 60 days. There is going to be an epidemic of failed papers. This is a very sad development.
Yes, Erica, you must be right. This must be why the P-I’s web site regularly ranks in the top 15 newspaper web sites nationally in the Nielsen ratings. Obviously, EVERYTHING they are doing is wrong.
No, they get lots of hits, but they can’t sell ad impressions for enough to cover the costs.
Really constructive criticism!
Really constructive criticism!
Rattling off a litany of your personal pet peeves about the P-I’s Web site doesn’t do a whole lot to explain why the print product is going away.
On the part of your analysis that does pertain to the print product — “The paper invested heavily in areas where the market was already saturated—like celebrity gossip and photos from fashion shows—instead of choosing one area to really focus on (local politics, perhaps?) and making itself indispensible” — what you’re missing is that running celebrity gossip, etc., doesn’t take much investment at all. Covering the hell out of local politics does, and unfortunately, the question remains: indispensible to whom? Certainly not to advertisers.
Dan thanks for defending Erica (I’m sure she might think that’s sexist), but …
Erica says:
“I’m not going to second-guess the P-I’s business strategy, but I do think their media (and, specifically, online) strategy—trying to be everything to everyone, instead of choosing one identity and owning it—was a key to their failure.”
Huh? Their content was a key to their failure?
My comment stands.
For christsakes, Erica is more right than wrong. To read any local news on the PI site you have to wade through a barrage of celebrity bullshit and old news that I’m reading on the NY Times each day, etc. It’s either not interesting or it’s annoying or it’s been read about elsewhere. The only reason I bother to read the PI is for the local news and local business section!
Why doesn’t the PI give up and just do 100% local news, local entertainment (& local celebrities), local sports, and local business? Makes sense to me to carve out a niche… (and cut their staff in half) to cover news that wouldn’t be totally covered by anyone else.
They sure as hell weren’t ever going to survive by trying to be the next USA Today/Walmart of newspapers bullshit.
Jeff, your comment stands. As that of an asshat.
Thank you for playing Slog Comments.
So let me get this straight: She’s right when she says the PI was wrong to do too much of everything and even more right when she chastises the Times for not doing enough?
Impressive.
Erica’s way off the mark. The P-I was doing the right things online — experimenting, handing readers the keys to the site, pushing for interaction, and giving the people what they want.
And the elitism of this whole anti-celebrity photo thing is off too. You can give a horse a copy of The Nation, but you can’t make him read it.
The P-I failed because despite all their attempts to evolve, they were still a newspaper, with a guild, and overhead, and a business model that wasn’t nimble enough to let them turn.
The good news, honestly, is that a post-print, all-online could work. Multiple bloggers, including me, have run the numbers, and we all think it’ll work — provided whomever owns them is willing to give them enough bridge capital to get to a place where the business model does work.
Erica, your complaints don’t sound like someone bitching about the P-I. They sound like someone bitching about the Internet. The P-I was just trying to squeeze value out of the Long Tail with all these niches. Remember, you’re in a niche, too. Will people still pay for your city coverage if the worst happens? It’s a public good, but it doesn’t have the value to advertisers the way a Drunk Lindsey Lohan photo gallery does.
Oh my, dw has run the numbers. Like, I’ll make sure to get local and national news content from the P-I Bloggers. Isn’t that what Pajamas Media is for?
I agree with Erica. The P-I morphed into Toon Town.
@26, I’ve read your blog about saving the P-I, and the blogs it links to, and the blogs they link to. All y’all have lots of ideas about what the content of a resuscitated P-I ought to be. And that’s fine. But none of you – not one, that I found – has come up with any way for it to pay for itself, other than hope there’ll be more money around in 5 years, depend on some fairy godfather in the meantime, and find people willing to live on ramen. If that’s the business model of the future, then it’s no wonder that no one’s done it yet.
The challenge isn’t so much to make a new P-I more appealing to readers. It’s how to make it more appealing to advertisers. No one’s showed how to do that yet. Discussing whether x uniques will pay for one versus 5 paid ramen-eating staffers misses the point. Here’s why print readers are worth so much more to an advertiser than online readers in today’s world: they paid to read the product. Period. And the fact that they paid means they’re more likely to pay attention to the ads that come with it. That’s all. The big question isn’t what kind of content should be on the site. It’s what kind of content will get you to pay to read it.
Owning local content, for example, is meaningful for the P-I’s (or Times’) survival not only because it gives the paper a niche and a local role to play. It’s that it gives it corner on hard news content that can’t be as easily commodified. And that means it’s easier to ask you to pay for it. How can they ask you to pay to download music? Because it’s not a commodity. There’s only one (legal) source.
So ask yourself – what kind of online P-I content would you be willing to pay for?
Sorry for going on, but it’s dollars and cents that the PI and Times need right now. Readership is not the challenge.
Isn’t that what Pajamas Media is for?
Funny you should mention them — they made money last year, even if most of their content writers were free. They made enough to send “Joe” “the” “Plumber” to get a sunburn in Israel. Kos made money, too. I’ve talked to a number of people across town, and we all think it could work. But the P-I is like WaMu right now — it’ll be cheaper to buy the assets once it’s collapsed than to attempt to touch them right now.
But none of you – not one, that I found – has come up with any way for it to pay for itself, other than hope there’ll be more money around in 5 years, depend on some fairy godfather in the meantime, and find people willing to live on ramen. If that’s the business model of the future, then it’s no wonder that no one’s done it yet.
Yeah, except that it does work as a business model for startups. Countless startups, in fact. Of course, startups are doing it in order to get venture cap or get bought out, but there have been some ground level startups that are turning a nice profit.
But this has never been attempted for a newspaper. The main problem is that newspapers require a lot of overhead; a startup mentality means running with a handful of people, non-union, of course.
Here’s why print readers are worth so much more to an advertiser than online readers in today’s world: they paid to read the product. Period.
But they never paid full price. Ever. Ads have been subsidizing the news from the beginning of ads.
Here’s the thing: Print readers pay a subsidized price for the paper. It’s an economic cost. Web readers pay full price — their time and attention. If you believe that in the long term a fragmenting delivery system will require people to limit their consumption (after all, they can’t read everything online), that attention is going to be more valuable than whether or not they paid.
I think time is as valuable as money. You target the niches right, you get to people who will buy your products.
Sorry for going on, but it’s dollars and cents that the PI and Times need right now. Readership is not the challenge.
Hearst lost $14M last year on the P-I. $14M could fund a startup online-only newspaper for three years, roughly, more with ramen salaries, less if you bought too many big guns. And that assumes $0 in ad revenue.
The reason the business model isn’t there for an online newspaper comes down to a granular problem. Neighborhood blogs in this town are generating revenue, but by themselves they’re not making enough to get on the screen of any big corporation. If you find a way to efficiently combine hundreds of these niches into a system where the $10K apiece average becomes $1M total, then you have something. But right now it’s overcoming the immenseness of trying to do that. It’s like trying to individually market every single item in Target.
I think it’ll be overcome. But it will take time. Meanwhile, the old model continues to fail. We’re just in that awkward period where we’re waiting for the new model to arise and displace the old one. Hearst or an investor willing to take the long view could profit immensely. But it’s going to take time.
News, after all, is free. It’s journalism that’s expensive — and the real reason why the model is failing.
Obviously, the P-I is going under due to their failure to use bold type in place of persuasive writing, and their archaic absence of articles that don’t bother with those pesky canons of journalism.
Of course, a slog post taking up a 1/4 of the page, and 9 f*cking links HAS to be written about why the PI should eat shit and die. Of course ECB wrote it…
@29: I’ll only say that print readers pay just as much time and attention as online readers. And to the extent that online readers’ time clearly isn’t important enough for advertisers to pay the full cost yet, it’s print ad revenue that’s subsidizing online readers, actually. The online operations don’t even handle their own ad billing.
Erica goes on at length about all the reasons the P-I website has failed. When in fact, more people are reading the content of the P-I (and the Times, and the NYT, etc.) than ever, between print and online. 300,000 people a day pay to read the Times and P-I combined. They get millions more hits online.
Once more, the problem is getting someone to pay for all this content. Advertising isn’t enough. Print subscriptions obviously are not, either.
The idea that Erica (or Dan, with his switch-to-tabloid-and-just-say-fuck advice) has the solution to the business problems of daily newspapers is laughable. Yet they keep on pontificating.
1. This applies to other dailies too: they shrink their paper year after year and then wonder why I don’t buy it anymore.
2. I’m a paper-reading guy of a paper-reading age and when I see the initials “SPI” I immediately think “superindentent of public instruction.” Somehow they mighta better balanced the young stuff vs. the new.
3. That said, I can’t blame P-I mgmt for trying a lot of things that didn’t work. If there’s a right way to keep a city daily in business, I’m sure every other daily would love to know what it is.
4. Won’t ever forget the globe that used to soar above 5th and Wall.
COMMENT DELETED: Sock-puppetry
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If the content of the PI’s web site was such a problem, why are their Alexa scores orders of magnitude higher than thestranger.com?
See for yourself: http://www.alexa.com.
Both Eric and McCumber are wrong. Mountains of debt and overhead killed the PI, not content.
I miss The Rocket.
I am resigned to the fact that the P-I will be gone but I am wondering what charitable organizations or public events that the P-I contributed heavily too. Every time one of these companies fail, like WaMu, the charities take a big hit.