Newspaper Next Has New 'Jobs to Do' for Industry

By: Mark Fitzgerald In a follow-up to the 2006 report that urged newspapers to add multiple products for niche audiences, Newspaper Next Tuesday released a study that says, in essence, forget that advice -- and aim higher.

"Many of the industry's recent innovations are features added to the core products -- news, newspaper and news Web sites -- that don't target new consumers," says the new report, "Newspaper Next 2.0: Making the Leap Beyond 'Newspaper Companies."

"Even when today's innovations efforts do target new audiences -- as most N2 products do -- many are fairly small and incremental," it adds. "Progress must come more quickly."

And many of the products developed after Newspaper Next workshops rely on tired business plans: using the existing sales force to sell space in niche print or banner ads online.

"They're not tapping the fastest-growing local revenue streams in most markets, which are in other forms of online advertising," says the report, principally authored by Stephen T. Gray, managing director of N2, an American Press Institute (API) project.

To get to this next step -- where bigger rather than narrower products and services encompass niche audiences -- newspapers must stop thinking of themselves as newspaper companies, the report argues.

Instead, they should consider themselves their "local information and connection utility."

And their "job to do" -- to use the famous N2 theme from its original report -- is to adopt the audacious goals for consumers and businesses.

For consumers, it must no longer just present news and information, but become the first choice for customers and non-customers alike "to help me know or do whatever it takes to live here."

Newspapers must do that by using all the tools available from social networking, databases, localized wikipedia, "knowledge repositories," and more.

For all the businesses in the market, advertisers or not, the job newspapers must "own" is "help me connect with anyone who lives here, in the most effective way possible."

"Underlying these strategies is an important realization: To engage more consumers and win more business customers, we can't just sell the old products harder," the report says. "We have to identify new jobs among consumers and businesses, and create the products required to fulfill them. That's the key to creating new revenue streams."

So what, specifically, does the study recommend newspapers do? It presents a four-step product development process adapted from the work of Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen it calls the "N2 Innovation Method" to help newspapers identify opportunities.

And it proposes a "N2 Game Plan" to guide that brainstorming by concentrating on four "leading opportunities and challenges": Maximizing the core business model; building new audience by fulfilling "jobs" beyond news; using new business models to fulfill "jobs" of current and new business customers; and creating "innovation structures and enablers" within the company.

The report includes 24 cases studies of products developed under the original N2 workshops. It concludes that nearly without exception they have worked to a certain extent but still depend on old audience-targeting and business models.

The 110-page report ends with an analysis of market data by Borrell Associates Inc. that analyzes trends in online advertising spending -- and documents how newspaper companies are not gaining their share of the fastest-growing sectors of search, e-mail, and video.

"If newspaper companies stay on their present path, the future is clear -- the core business model will keep shrinking, along with circulation, advertising and profit margins," Gray said. "It's time to make the leap -- a mental leap, a leap of vision and leadership -- beyond newspaper companies, to a larger, more diverse kind of company."

API is making the report available for free here.

A Webcast announcing the report, which includes video footage of two of the case studies, can also be viewed at the site.