Balancing Print & Digital

I remember in driver's ed class years ago, my driving instructor telling me not to look at the pot holes in the road because you'd be less likely hit them. As I see it, you're as likely to hit them if you don't look at them and better off seeing them in order to steer around them - and living in the pot-hole capital of California for several years, this seemed to work well. (Google search for yourself if you're wondering where that is)

The same principle is at work in the newspaper industry today, newspapers and media companies are focused on developing the Internet and digital media, which is essential to the future of media. Therefore, newspapers are looking only at the pot-hole -- and with nearly all corporate initiatives focusing in digital media, they will likely hit it squarely.

However, the problem as I see it, this is occuring at the detriment of the print product. Expanding or maintaining the print product isn't an initiative; though it is still the core product in the market and corner stone for the relationship the newspaper has with the community. Not to mention that 85-90% of the revenue is still from print.

Michael G. Kane, President and Publisher at the Democrat & Chronicle in Rochester, NY was the keynote speaker at RIT's School of Print Media Industry Day last week. He has a vision of the changing newspaper industry and the changing customers. He said there is a new generation of media users and shorter life cycles for media products; and newspapers need to have a media aggregation strategy to all platforms to deciminate content 24/7 to their audience. But Mr. Kane was clear that amongst all the niche products, socal networking and digital connections - the core product can't be ignored. The core product for most people is still the printed newspaper, that is on the driveway or in the news rack, that must remain a strong and healthy product with improvements. Smart improvements, like moving stock pages to the web, and strong local connection, such as investigative reporting. The newspaper markets are requiring a digital platform and an integrated reach, but must also maintain the community strength of the banner product. Mr. Kane said he doesn't have a love affair with paper and ink, but 78% of the population reads newspapers and identify with the print product. In Rochester, the Democrat and Chronicle has 33 print and digital (web, text, networking) products, and both digital and niche print products have been successfully developed and launched in the past few years.