An article on TechCrunch caught my eye during my flight back to LA. http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/02/apple-google-newsstand/
After a quick point about old media’s shady marketing practices, the article makes a couple of interesting points about the need for “digital newsstands” but stops short of asking why such newsstands would need digital newspapers or magazines on them.
This begs an important question that I haven’t heard anyone ask yet:
Why not just get content directly from the authors and skip the unnecessary middlemen of the actual papers or magazines.
When I say “middlemen” I’m talking about those involved in the process whose job isn’t to actually create the content, but to print it on paper or mail it to your home. You know, the job that no longer needs to be done in a digital world.
Think about it, If it’s all in one place, why would it need to be organized by the now-obsolete delivery mechanisms of the past vs. something useful in the present, like author and category?
People today don’t really care about the delivery mechanism that provides the content to them, and with just a few exceptions I’m not sure they ever did.
I’m not sure the publishers even realize this. Most of the ones I’ve worked with personally don’t seem to.
Some perspective:
Consumers don’t seem to have a whole lot of respect for the great institution of the newspaper. I’m not sure how it was before my time, but for as long as I remember it’s worked like this:
After being purchased for less than a dollar and usually only partially consumed maybe one time, most copies of the newspaper kept a standing appointment with the recycling bin, perhaps with a side trip lining the cage of Max, little Timmy’s new puppy in the process of being housebroken.
Newsprint (or a magazine) was simply the accepted method for distributing information to people on a regular basis. Of course specific papers (employing specific writers and editors) achieved a certain reputation and respect among their readers, but never enough to stop this morning’s copy from a rather inglorious denouement at the hands (well, paws, with one held aloft) of man’s best friend.
What consumers do care about are actual people who create content, like for example Oprah, Jon Stewart, and Howard Stern. They care far less about, if at all, the actual pipe the content comes in on, such as Comedy Central, Sirius/XM, or and virtually every single radio channel, TV channel, and newspaper in existence.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take an example from recent history:
TV content has even more middlemen than the newspaper, who enjoy even less respect from the consumer. Look no further than last year’s Conan/Leno debacle for proof.
Brands involved: NBC, Your local NBC affiliate, and the 50 year old late night institution, “The Tonight Show.”
Humans involved: Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien.
I don’t recall anyone coming up with catchy slogans like “I’m with Channel 5,” ”I’m with NBC,” or even “I’m with The Tonight Show.” The truth is, anyone who cared followed the host they were attached to. The people who didn’t simply left the TV where it was while they fell asleep.
The lesson here is that in most cases consumers just do not care about the vast majority of the brands involved in delivering the content to them. If they don’t care about those brands in print or on TV, why would they care about them on an iPad?
So with that I’ll make my first bold prediction of 2011, though there’s way too much momentum for the change to finish taking place this year.
The successful digital newsstand will not focus on newspapers or magazines. It will focus on authors, topics and articles. Do you think anyone cares if the “Los Angeles” category on such a newsstand is branded “LA Times” or just “LA News?”
Perhaps brands will rise around specific authors that organize by ideology or a credible source, but they probably won’t be the legacy players. They’re far more likely to be personality driven brands, like say, Michael Arrington on TechCrunch.
Why? The publishers will be too busy trying to milk the last drops out of their dying business models and whining about how it’s not like the good old days to notice that the name at the top of the masthead isn’t the reason people used to subscribe.
I think, at the end there, with “credible source” you were just starting to touch on curation. I think brands and magazines in the digital world will serve the purpose of collating and curating the content so that a reader gains trust in what to expect from that magazine as a source point for the content.
I agree completely, but they need to decide to actually do the job of validating facts and confirming the information they print instead of phoning it in the way they do now!