The New York Times offers an insight into its plans for online versus print in the announcements on Friday as analysed by Scott Karp. They are adjusting their quality focus to build online relevance and traffic. They are also shrinking the size of their print product – Fairfax here a couple of weeks ago announced that their Australian broadsheets would shrink and cited the (current) New York Times. Karp sources the NYT announcement to a post at Gawker which included this:
Then it was time for questions. Someone asked how the Times plans to make money off the web. “I heartily believe we will,” Keller said. “How, is a lot more complicated.” He talked about Wall Street, and doing PowerPoint presentations. “There’s a phrase they use in drug and alcohol rehab—’fake it til you make it.’ That’s basically what we’re doing.”
The new reality for publishers and indeed any business which relies on publishers – including newsagencies – is that faking it is an appropriate business model. There is no time to analyse the impact of the shift of revenue from print to online: when, how much and where. We, publishers, newsagents and others, have to start playing (faking) in a range of fields in pursuit of the revenue for our future.
Memo to newsagents: no one will deliver revenue of a new model on a platter. Now is the era of the entrepreneurial newsagent.
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