Ken Doctor: Data, relationships key for newspapers' survival

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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."

Read more at NetNewsCheck

Mega-Conference, Doctor, newsonomics