Owning the Community

One of the most important assets of a newspaper is the access to the community. For years, the newspaper has been the dominate communication medium to nearly every house in the community. Unfortunately, this asset is slipping through the industry's fingers, or more appropriately vanishing into online 'air'.

Owning the market: the newspaper is still the premier product to reach the greater market - both in major metros or small markets. That is why Google and Yahoo is so anxious to partner with the newspaper industry - it isn't because we are such nice people, it's because we have a path to the people they want to reach. I recently heard someone say that if the newspaper industry could organize their customer data base and the distribution of information and content to the market, they couldn't be touched.... or something to that affect. The newspaper industry owns the market, and has for years. Step back 20 years, if the newspaper would have become the regional online ISP, they would have both print and online customer links wrapped up!

The industry has always been in the best position to define the market, but has rarely, if ever, capitalized on their knowledge and access to the market...we should own the consumer and customer database, but have never made the move to secure it,...in my opinion, we have let one of the most valuable assets we could own, slip through our fingers...