Neil Heyside, senior executive with CRG Partners
PBS.org/mediashift
Newspapers can be saved and they can get back to delivering a consistent return on capital to investors, but this can't be achieved using old methods. At CRG Partners, our experience working with newspaper companies in the U.S. and U.K. has shown us that publishers and their executive management seem to believe that traditional cost-cutting methods of layoffs, smaller and thinner papers and lower salaries represent all of the savings that they can generate out of their operations. That's not the case.
One of the myriad problems facing publishers and editors is that, while their resources have been halved or more and they have drastically cut staff and operations, they still face the need to create valuable, compelling and most importantly, local news and features.
One publisher told our firm, "In order to survive we have to be able to generate non-commodity hyper-local content that is relevant and at a cost that allows us to remain competitive and profitable."
Content costs represent between 35 and 45 percent of the cost of producing a newspaper, so the question becomes: How can we cut costs in content and still deliver quality? In order to approach the question correctly, publishers need better information about how they source content -- which content comes from what sources, how it is used, and how much it costs. Content sourcing is one of the area where newspaper publishers and other content-driven organizations can realize real cost savings and prepare their organizations for the new world of publishing.
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