I confess that I still have a fondness for newspapers.  I do hold a Journalism degree with a print specialty.  As such, their demise has troubled me.  Yet, here we are again, watching them take a technology and cheapen it one step further.

We need some history.  Newspapers began spiraling out of control when they took a valuable asset - their content - and gave it away for free on the web.  Not entirely their fault.  Many tried to develop a subscription model for the web, but the web was just not ready for subscriptions.  It remains to be seen if subscription models will make it in the future.

It is true that they did create a revenue stream on the web in the form of banner and pay per click or pay per impression advertising.  Their thinking was they can use their content to attract large volumes of traffic and then it will be ok.  Problem that has been well publicized is the traffic came in droves and left the expensive to produce distribution of content - the printed newspaper.  The second problem is that conversion was not wildly successful and advertising was expensive so advertisers left the web outposts as well.

So what is the latest mistake by the newspapers?  Twitter!  I am sure you can find your local or favorite newspaper on Twitter.  They will be the Twitter accounts with thousand of followers and very few following.  Right there is an issue.  Twitter is a community and two-way communication tool.  The newspapers are not participating - they are just broadcasting.

Twitter could be a great tool for the newspapers to gain commentary and content form the community.  However, they are just not taking the time to listen.

Worse yet.  Check out their tweets.  I don’t need to access their website let alone read the newspaper.  I get the headlines served right up to me from the comfort of my Twitter feed.  If I am interested in the story, I simply click the link and I go directly to the page.  

What is the problem with this?  I bypass a good deal of their advertisers in the process.  Let’s recap.  Web reduced print advertising and reduced sales of a product that costs money to produce.  Twitter reduced web advertising effectiveness, further reducing revenue stream.  My read - newspapers will continue to suffer and go out of business or reduce costs.

In these reduction of costs, the newspapers jeopardize their greatest asset - their people.  It is the talented reporters, researchers, and writers that create all of the great content that they have to sell.  Less reporters, the need to placate advertisers, and all of the other factors means a loss of quality in product.  Reporters just don’t have the time and might not have the incentive to dig out the best possible story.  

You may not think you need a newspaper anymore, but newspapers are a fundamental service of this country.  The service they provide is information and information is key for any individual citizen to participate in their government and their community. Newspapers need a bailout, but not a financial one - a new thinking one.