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Vast wasteland of newspaper web sites finally repositions
"If newspapers are to break into the top tier of sites, they must learn to become more than just the print product on a computer."
PC Data, a company known for tracking sales of software, recently started tracking web usage, too. Its report for May bodes poorly for those of us who happen to like newspapers.
Of the 100 most-visited web sites, zero were run by newspapers. Zero.
When PC Data expanded the numbers to include visitors to web properties -- a network of related sites -- USA Today moved into No. 98, the highest rank for any newspaper group.
It's not news that keeps papers out of the Internet's big leagues. NBC and Time Warner both made it into the top 10, with News Corp. and CBS also faring well.
Newspapers' dismal showing should not be unexpected. Most newspapers, after all, long ago gave up any claim to international and national coverage, staking their turf by how far their trucks could go, so it's probably a bit much to expect more from their web sites.
But maybe we should expect more. That huge sucking sound you may hear is the Internet siphoning off advertising dollars at an ever-increasing rate, advertising dollars needed to sustain newspaper print and web products. Although banner ads, the display ad of the Internet, remain unsatisfactory beasts, classifieds are perfect for searching across the Web.
There are signs, though, that some in the vast wasteland of newspaper web sites are reacting, repositioning themselves in the Internet world.
The New York Times, the Washington Post and Knight Ridder have each announced plans to reorganize their myriad web sites under each company's corporate umbrella, giving each the opportunity to change a scattered hodgepodge of sites into portals, presumably improving quality and increasing traffic in the process.
The New York Times Co. has almost 50 sites, now being brought into the fold run by the company's Electronic Media Group, newly renamed Times Co. Digital -- the company's third major initiative since going on-line with AOL in the mid-'90s.
These sites have little in common. They are all over the map in quality, with the better sites coming from the papers with more resources to devote to the Web. For example, the company's main site (http://www.nytimes.com/) routinely has information not available in the print product, as well as the occasional interactive or multimedia feature.
Ditto for the site run by the far smaller Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune (http://www.newscoast.com/), which has both a web site and TV studio being run out of a print newsroom. Unfortunately, about all that the sister site run by the Daily World in Opelousas, La., has in common with newscoast.com is an NYT corporate logo and a link to a common millennium web site.
In the case of the Times, the sites that work are those that expand on or surpass the work done by the print shop. Limit a site to shovelware -- or less -- and you end up with an unattractive, poorly visited site.
Analysts on and off Wall Street have long complained about that, saying newspapers needed to take a different view of their web sites, doing more with them and making them more nimble than their print products in an effort to reach the market share -- and valuations -- of their web-based competitors.
That approach was cited by executives from all three companies as they outlined their plans. Arthur Sulzberger, publisher and CEO of the New York Times, put it succinctly: "We will sharpen our strategic focus and gain the flexibility to bring our digital future to scale."
(What he also gets is the opportunity to sell stock in an Internet-only unit, something Knight Ridder has said it is considering doing. That in turn opens yet another can of worms: Internet-only stock leads to Internet valuations. Although those valuations allow for rapid expansion, employees at Internet companies tend to want a slice of the pie.
(Analysts have pegged an NYT Internet spin-off as worth anywhere from $10 billion to $20 billion, which is not bad for a print company worth about $6 billion. Give a slice of that pie to the web staff and you open another rift between the print and web sides of the house. Don't give it, and personnel move across the hall to your competitors. In an industry already strapped for workers, you can't afford to lose them.)
The Washington Post is pursuing that strategy with its properties, tying them together in an effort to create a portal that is larger than its parts. Ditto for Knight Ridder, where the interim president of Knight Ridder New Media, Kathy Yates, was recently quoted as saying these portals would allow them to bring a lot of additional, non-news information forward for readers.
If newspapers are to break into the top tier of sites, they must learn to become more than just the print product on a computer. Adding value -- for reader and advertiser alike -- is imperative.
-- Steven E. Brier
From NEWSINC., July 5, 1999, Copyright © 1999, All Rights Reserved.
