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Breaking no ground in breaking news

The calm after the dotcom shakeout a decade earlier was temporary after all. Traditional (read print) media companies are now marching into breaking news terrain and taking a shot at digital riches in store.

America’s former number one daily USA Today joined the bandwagon by announcing last week it was embracing a Web strategy. Bosses at the company do not know how it will pan out and prefer not to sit on the sidelines, if the virtual world finally clicks.

They may well be clutching at straws and hoping that revenues will trickle in through any medium after they were overtaken by the Wall Street Journal recently at the print hustings.

Short-term prospects for branching out online, however, look bright with latest figures on US print advertising showing a trend downhill. Online ad sales remain positive, but not substantial enough to compensate for the rapidly declining print ad revenue.

According to stats from the Newspaper Association of America, print ad spends fell 9 per cent in the third quarter compared to the same period last year to $10.1 billion. Online ad spending, on the other hand, rose to $770 million, but made up just 7.1 per cent of the industry’s ad revenue. It was a sharp rise from 5.4 per cent a year ago, but still inadequate to make up for lack of spending elsewhere. Overall, newspaper ad spending in the US fell 7.4 per cent in the third quarter.

In a recent interview to this writer, Michael Golden, vice-chairman of the New York Times Company, spoke of a balancing act between online and print. The New York Times returned to the black last quarter and 26 per cent of its revenue came from the Web edition, revealed the senior executive of the company.

Golden was talking of a convergence of new and conventional media to keep pace with the changing times. This could mean paywalls for exclusive content to break free from the breaking news clutter of online providers.

But no one is sure if it will eventually pay for media organisations to charge for news online and how much revenues it will generate in the long run.

So, in an age of uncertainty, it pays to speculate on the Net approach for print publications, citing the fall from grace of paper tigers like the Christian Science Monitor, which chose to go online in 2009. Why, even the Pulitzers accept nominations from Web-only publications, giving them the credibility they deserve. In the UAE, Emirates Business 24/7, which did not make much headway in the print space decided to move to cyberspace last month.

These developments are definitely good for the growth and development of quality content in the Twitter age where millions of blogs and independent journalists in remote corners of the world reach out to a larger audience though varied Web applications. Suffice to say that news on the Web is in a state of chaos, with sources sprouting from all over the virtual world — many unfettered, unmonitored and thriving more on rumour than on the facts.

Going back to dotcoms, most went gratefully dead because they lacked viable business models. That was the same year the Y2K bug went astray, betraying the unfounded fears of several million geeks who hoped to watch digital damnation unfold before their eyes and see their bank accounts swell in the process. Everyone and his uncle launched Websites promising instant gratification and money to the gullible. They rode on grand visions of e-commerce and e-content and taunted the humble daily, promising to throw the poor newspaper vendor out of business.

How wrong they were in an age when computer literacy was just past its infancy and Internet access was hard to come by.

Since then, computer and Net penetration have grown exponentially with a broadband thrust. The Web is in your face, thanks to smartphones and devices like the iPad.

What hasn’t changed though is the herd mentality. Many rushed in then and are beginning to do it again with no business models in place.

Agreed, conventional media is going through life-changing times and is struggling to stay above the rising waters of a long drawn out downturn, which threatens to take a second dip.

Back at the USA Today, emphasis will be on breaking news every 30 minutes and on seamless print and Web coordination with an eye on mobile users. It’s a one in a million shot at turning the tide. The daily’s management calls it “a new way of doing business that aligns sales efforts with the content we produce.” Simply put, content is no longer the king, creativity and innovation can wait, while a business bubble grows to a size it may find difficult to sustain.

Read the fine print for the rest of this breaking news story.

*Allan Jacob is Chief Reporter at Khaleej Times, Write to him at allan@khaleejtimes.com