Earlier I wrote about the challenges that old media were having developing a strategy to attract a younger, more social audience. John Battelle today highlighted a recent article by Tom Mohr in Editor & Publisher. Part of Tom’s comments were that:
It is instructive that after twelve years of the consumer web, not a single example of breakthrough online innovation has emerged out of a newspaper company. Not in recruitment. Not in auto. Not in classifieds. Not in shopping, directory, new ad models, or content aggregation.
Tom is so on target here. The newspaper industry has been glacial in their response to the Internet, with the Wall Street Journal being the only newspaper to execute a successful online strategy.
So what should a newspaper do if they want to attract this younger, more social audience? Well Heather Hopkins over at Hitwise has some good ideas based upon some UK clickstream data. Based on the data Heather concluded that:
In order to attract the 18-34 year old audience, websites such as This is London and The London Paper should consider not just entertainment news and celebrity gossip, but a social aspect or links to social networks such as MySpace, content on wedding planning, reviews of videos and games, and a job board”
I really like Hitwise for the clickstream data that they give you. If you are a newspaper executive you can take this information and start to pull together a viable online strategy to target the 18-34 year old audience now.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Its interesting that Tom Mohr pointed out the dearth of online innovation in newspapers, particularly recruitment, automotive, and classifieds, but what about sports?
Boston.com for example, while certainly not innovative, would seem to be a good exampe of newspaper innovation in the sports sphere, integrating traditional content with blogs (both in-house blogs as well as links tagged linking), messageboards, video, journalist Q&A’s, and partnerships with sites such as bostondirtdogs.com.
This not only applies to sports-specific content, but business news content as well. Wouldn’t this seem to be a transition towards more social media?
Good comment Jason. Would you consider boston.com a newspaper though or a Boston area web portal?
I agree that sports portals (add ESPN to your example) have done a terrific job integrating social aspects into their content. Outside of music and technology, sports is probably the best example of how to successfully use social media today.