Yesterday (26-sep-2012) I was at the eReading Event in Gent and Jo Caudron summarized very well the problem of media today.
“The package is broken”.
You can find the slides of his presentation here : Fixing the Media
Here is how I would re-phrase what Jo Caudron said:
In the past, the newspaper was the perfect media package for everything you wanted to know : news, jobs, sudoku, sport, tv schedule…
Today you don’t get all this from the newspaper, you just go online using your computer or phone : google news, vacature.be,eurosport.com, app store, belgacomtv.be…Without even mentioning Facebook and Twitter.
Everybody has a composed of new mix of information sources, and paper is becoming one of many technical solution to consume information.
When publishers make a 1:1 digital version of the newspaper they try to reproduce the same package as before. Unfortunately it doesn’t correspond to people’s approach to information anymore…
Publishers need to re-package their content if they want to be able to sell it at a decent price. And this means providing a new service that better matches their customers needs and wants.
Via my eLinea prospecting experience, I know publishers hate to split their newspapers in pieces, they consider they loose their soul and their editorial line. But nowadays people consume information differently: piece by piece, online, with friends, with followers…. That’s why “There is an app for that” works so well…