Google plans to kill NY Times, Washington Post

The decision by Web editors to rely on Google to drive traffic to their sites was among the fatal mistakes that newspapers made in establishing their Web sites.

1. It diluted their brands. Google searchers associate the useful information with Google, not the newspaper.

2. It diluted their advertising base. The newspaper's Web site became a second stop. As an advertiser, why not just advertise on Google and attract 100 percent of readers? What's the point of advertising on a newspaper Web site, when it captures only a segment of the readers?

3. It gave newspaper Web sites a class of readers who jump into the site, read a single article and then leave. Google traffic isn't high quality traffic. News Web sites need readers who make the site a destination.

But search engine optimization was an easy way to get hits, and Web editors could ensure they would hit their targets and get their bonuses if they got search engine optimization right.

Allowing Google to drive traffic also prevented newspapers from innovating and optimizing the way readers get news online. Why weren't newspapers have been hiring computer science PhDs to develop killer search algorithms? Why weren't newspapers creating technology to serve up stories to readers based on readers' preferences and habits?

Newspapers did none of these things, because it was easier to rely on Google. Newspapers therefore lost the opportunity to become the leading source of news and information online.

 

Because those things cost a lot more money than there is to be made from them.

 

Tell that to Google. What newspapers didn't realize when they launched Web sites is that they were entering the information management business. Failure to realize the changing nature of the business and a lack of willingness to invest in the right talent to address those changes was a fatal mistake.

And, really, half a dozen CS PhDs would have cost considerably less than those shiny new presses and delivered a much larger return.

 

Google is only making money because they don't pay reporters and they are dividing the cost of those half a dozen CS PhDs over the entirety of the news world.

No individual newspaper or even chain of newspapers could have made a positive return on that investment.

There was no failure to realize the changing nature of the business. Newspapers have known about it and have been changing constantly for a dozen years now.

 

It would seem as if the NYT is in the process of killing itself via self-immolation. There is a LOT of debt to service there at HIGH interest rates and revenues are not soaring. Perhpas there is no need for Google to be part of the demise here...

Wash Post has a cash cow in its corporate structure so it isn't killing itself. It may take someone or something with the size and power of Google to pull that off.