WashingtonPost Now to Editor&Publisher Then

Earlier this week Sara Kehaulani Goo, Washington Post staff writer, reported that research confirms the reality that newspapers that want to reach 18-24 year-old readers need to move their news content online where the readers are. Ms. Kehaulani Goo cites the recent Newspaper Association of America (NAA) report and a study by the market research firm, Scarborough Research, as evidence that this sought after audience is keenly interested in news, however not interested in newsprint.

“People who are not necessarily engaged with the print product are increasingly using the newspaper Web site for news and information in their local market,” said Randy Bennett, senior vice president of audience and business development at the newspaper association. “Blogs, video and other multimedia content beyond what appears in the newspaper are all having an impact on usage of newspaper Web sites.”

The Washington Post already knew this. They’ve been in the more forward-thinking cadre of the mainstream media, establishing online connections and embracing online audiences when others have stood back watching skeptically. The Washington Post links each article through Technorati, the blog search engine, to allow WAPO readers to see who is blogging about the article and what’s being said. In other words, The Washington Post understands that the news doesn’t END when it’s printed. That’s when the conversation BEGINS.

On November 28, 2005, Jennifer Saba, associate editor at Editor&Publisher, wrote about the same topic. In her article, Dispelling the Myth of Readership Decline, she pointed out that stories of newspaper circulation losses consistently counted only print readership and that significant gains were being made by traditional newspapers online. She, too, quoted the NAA.

“We have for years allowed ourselves to be held hostage to one metric only,” says Jay R. Smith, chairman of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) and president of Cox Newspapers Inc. “Newspapers have for the last couple of years been finding whole new pockets of audiences for which they get no credit.”

and Scarborough Research.

While some in the industry feel the new accounting may be too “cutting edge” (in the words of one) for advertisers to comprehend, Gary Meo, a vice president at Scarborough Research, says local numbers are proving that newspapers have a strong market footprint. “The perception that newspapers are losing readers in droves isn’t true,” he asserts. “They’re losing them in a trickle. We do see newspaper Web site audiences growing, and we see them being younger. So the myth that newspapers are not reaching younger people needs to be dispelled.”

Ms. Sabo’s story took the story deeper to explain how newspapers need to reframe their thinking, find a new way to articulate their story to advertisers, to readers, and to themselves, in order to meet the challenges of the future. She laid out both the potential and the problems that print newspapers face.

The mainstream media (MSM), newspapers in this case, has a problem and an opportunity. Editor&Publisher fills out the story that the Washington Post strarted. Ms. Sabo’s article continues the analysis of the situation. It’s well worth the read.

Sometimes the most compelling thoughts on the Internet work backwards.

–Liz Strauss