Newspapers have invested far more in advertising than in their audiences, a path from which they'll need to diverge to ensure their futures, cautions media analyst Ken Doctor.
Opening this year's Key Executives Mega-Conference, a joint meeting of the Local Media Association, Inland Press Association and Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, Doctor says newspapers need to invest in "relation newsonomics," or "deep, wide, data-laden relationships with customers" that focus on knowing and producing products that their customers actually want.
As newspapers fall deeper into a hole from which they can't dig out – they're about $1.4 billion away from being able to grow as fast as the economy, by his calculation – they need to reclaim their original role as a kind of village center for readers.
The only way to do that is with a more attuned audit of their most loyal consumers – namely their subscribers – who have stuck with them despite being confronted with thinner papers at increasing prices. Amazingly so far, Doctor says, that model has worked, "but it's hitting the ceiling."