By: E&P Staff After decades of shaping strategy around the products they churn out, newspapers must shift to a focus on audiences, concludes a new International Newspaper Marketing Association (INMA) report released Thursday.
"Newspaper Outlook 2008: Creating Value In a Multi-Media Landscape," the seventh annual such report by INMA Executive Director Earl J. Wilkinson.
As technology and abundance fragment the news and information universe, the report says, newspaper companies must integrate audiences across platforms, match products with audience needs, and commercially develop those audiences.
The report, according to its launch announcement, combines data from numerous sources and case studies to "reveal hidden assets for newspaper companies to exploit in the year ahead."
Among its topics are using audience management as a new organizing principal; finding the drivers of shareholder value for newspaper companies; how leading-edge papers are moving to multi-media; emerging strategies to manage print circulation over the next years; and how to balance print and online pricing.
The report also makes the case that technology is not the only disruptive factor newspapers face. ?Abundance," -- paradoxically, as newspapers remain proud of their generally higher demographics -- is another.
"Consumer abundance creates a disconnect between news and success, especially among lower middle-class people who typically are marginal newspaper readers," Wilkinson writes. "Rising service standards, over-choice in retailing, and cheap consumer goods raise the bar for newspapers to provide something unique. For example, 2005 marked the first year in the United States where there were more television sets in households than people."
First pages of all 10 chapters in "Newspaper Outlook 2008" are available for viewing
here.
The digital report is available at INMA.org at US$95 for INMA members and US$195 for non-members.
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