Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders

How Newspapers Can Use the Internet to Maximize Profit

Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on August 4, 2007

If you would like to learn how newspapers can maximize profits and meet the challenges of the Internet, this interview is for you.

Our guest today is Bill Ostendorf who is the founder of Creative Circle Media Consulting. His clients include some of the most prominent metropolitan dailies in the country. More recently, Creative Circle started doing business with broadcasters as well.

Anyone who has not been stranded on a desert island for the past decade knows that the Internet is profoundly changing the newspaper industry. Their circulation numbers are declining as their readers move to the Web. Although they have set-up their own websites, most are only gaining a fraction of the ad revenue at those sites to offset what is being lost in the print editions.

Our guest believes that one of the key things the newspapers need to do is to invest in their content to make it better and more relevant to the Web consumer. For example, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today are doing good jobs in getting some of their reporters and columnists to create video for the websites.

Another key strategy is to get the small advertiser back to the newspaper industry which has traditionally dominated classified ads. One way to do this is to make it easy for the consumer to create their own ads by merely filling out forms at a website. The production process automatically access the ads to put them in both the print and online editions. The approach can sharply reduce the cost to the newspapers of creating the ads. It also enables the consumer to create the ads that is suitable to his time schedule. However, it is important that the software be easy to use because today two-thirds of the people who try it drop out before they complete the ad owing to the complexity of the software.

Length: This audio interview is covered in about 21 minutes.