What newspaper do wrong in the Golden Online Age

Well, the new thing for me is, that I return to computer in the night, to do my blogging. The good thing about is, this is the chance, to sit back - and think about the day in a different way. Today I worked on the possible cannibalisation between print and online and on ways, to promote a printed newspaper via the online platform of the newspaper - wirtschaftsblatt.at. Thank you Mario Garcia for your tremendous effort, time and inspiration to get this big thing done. And it is all on one sheet (sse photo): Sell more! :-)

Well, we are not the only ones to think about solutions.

Wolfgang Blau, Editor in Chief of the Online Unit of German weekly Newspaper "Zeit", mentioned today , that Internet is a dangerous rival to newspapers, a rival, that is difficult to understand. New media should not be seen through the "glasses of the old". Biggest Mistakes happen, when Offline-views are transportet to the new media. newspapers tend to put brakes to the Boom of Online, he says. The Internet should be the engine of our economies and democracies. Well, there is basicly few to add, except: Is the Internet really such a dark hole for us? No, it offers new possibilities to communicate with each other - and the danger for printed newspapers is very clear and simple:

1.) It is a question of the personal time budget. Television took away time from newspaper reading. The internet takes time away from television viewing and newspaper reading. 

2.) People are ready to spend more of their budgets on communication than ever. think of your telephone bills, your provider costs, your mobile phone, your wlan-money, your XING-account, all communication-money you leave at hotels al around the world.  Still, newspapers compete with more players than ever.

3.) Newspapers get involved in interaction. They always wanted this to happen. Now it is there. A chance to enhance quality, following the demands of their readers.

So, one day we newspaper-makers might all wake up and have more readers than we ever had. But this was clear to happen: Now it is easy asit never was to access the information of newspapers, it is fast and it is free.

So where is Blau, the Online-Boss of Zeit, and many other mistaken in my view? As the competition for personal time-budgets is harder, than in ever was, it is nonsense to say, that newspapers should become daily magazines. Would you tell a friend, who calls you for a quick answer to a question he has,  well: I have a very good book at home, I will send it to you right now?

No, newspapers do not have to turn into magazines. This is viewing at old media through glasses of very old media. (Or: Viewing at newspapers through the glasses of a weekly newspaper....) Newspapers have to deliver faster, to serve tiny bits of pieces to their audiences., to navigate their audiences through the day. The shorter time we have for reading newspapers, the more we must focus on slicing information into bits and pieces. read, do something else, go back to reading. 

And about the interaction thing? Letting Users post photos into the newspapers in not the solution. The dialog should go into the papers. "Opinion" is the section, where it al begins. But not as users commentary, but right in the leaders text. That is new media. Just the way we would communicate face to face. A new writing has to take place in the papers, not the old writing and presentation of magazine making. But it would be good path to faster dying, as we can see, how the magazines suffer from their lack of interaction.

Thank you for reading!

Alexis