Mark Cuban: your saviour?

I hear this a lot, but it seems to me that The Press as an unbiased, independent, ethical and objective entity is a relatively modern idea. What about the days nearly 50 years ago when a Washington publisher basically helped choose JFK's running mate -- over his brother's objections? What about the days 70 years ago when reporters' tabs were picked up by ballclubs as they rode on trains with teams from town to town? What about the days 110 years ago when yellow journalism was at its peak in the Pulitzer and Hearst newspaper wars?

Why would THIS be the end of the American press as we know it? When were the lines ever truly unblurred? There has always been a blurring, and there have always been reporters who strove to be unbiased in spite of it. Tribune has owned the Cubs since 1981 -- has that really stopped ChiTrib reporters from covering the team with a sense of professionalism and ethics?

I find it hard to believe that an idea like Cuban's would make any more of a difference in stifling objectivity than some of the so-called ethical dilemmas that reporters found themselves in, in the past.

 

Reading over Mark Cuban's idea some more, what he's describing is something like taking the MLB.com writers and having their stuff appear in the Dallas Morning News instead of the team site.

Here's the bigger problem, though, even if this idea were put into action. The whole concept of mass media as we know it is disappearing. The idea of a casual fan, in anything, is slipping away because media is so diffuse that you don't NEED to look at anything you're not interested in. I'll use my 11-year-old son, a frequent media consumer, as an example.

What he watches on TV:

-- Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.
-- G4, particularly the video game reviews on demand (Comcast)
-- Music videos on demand (Comcast)

What he does online:

-- Goes to YouTube and bounces around, looking at roller-coaster POVs, video-game clips, music and whatever other stuff catches his fancy.
-- Same action on Wikipedia.
-- Goes to Theme Park Review, and reads the message board and looks around the video portion of that site.

His reading is far more varied, including everything from historical nonfiction to humorous fiction to photo magazines he sees in the doctor's office (he's way into photography).

My 11-year-old plays basketball and volleyball, but he has NEVER had the wherewithal to sit in front of the TV and watch a sporting event. When I took him to White Sox games when he was younger, he wanted to play around in the Fundamentals fan deck area, not sit and watch a game. (On the other hand, my 12-year-old nephew, a huge Dallas sports fan, doesn't move once the game starts, which I witnessed when we went with him to AA Arena once for a Mavs game.)

If my son reads or absorbs anything about sports, it's from the Chicago Sun-Times sitting on our kitchen table. But he doesn't seek it out. By the way, he doesn't listen to the radio, either. The concept of sitting through songs and commercials you don't like is crazy to someone who can listen to songs he likes when he wants to on his iPod. (He finds new songs through me, or through video games, or through the rollercoaster sites, or through YouTube.)

So, basically, my 11-year-old is nerding out on whatever he is interested in, and not showing any inclination to be "casual" about anything. I wouldn't say he's typical of Everyboy, but I've seen with my other kids and their friends that their tastes are not shaped by everyone in the family sitting around the TV at the same time.

The decline of the "casual" fan is disturbing to anyone who wants to pack 20,000 fans in 41 nights a year, because there is no way, in any market, that that many hardcore fans exist. At least, not at these prices. And Mark Cuban and other owners could pay newspapers all they want for the coverage, but it's only a band-aid for them as printed papers themselves continue to circle the drain.

 

You make a lot of good points, Buck.

 

You people who blast my position on newspapers can eat crow now that Cuban agrees with me. YES people (even Cuban) want to read takes of the local reporters who cover the teams. He realizes people want the opinions of the local newspaper columnist and will pay to wait until the morning to read the columnists' take. This industry has ruined itself. Cuban realizes newspapers are great.

 

Telling Cuban to buy more ads is entirely unrealistic. Just as his blog says, the fans are getting their information, like game times, player bios, etc., off the web. Advertising dollars are falling daily for this reason, because organizations and companies want to use their money effectively.

My question to Monsieur Cuban would be whether he could see a future in newspapers making money off the net. Steve Rubel says that all readable media will be in digital form by 2014.

There has to be a way for newspapers to move onto an all-digital format and make business sense ... but how?

 

newspapers can easily be 100pct digital. Online, mobile, delivered on TV, bits are bits and can go anywhere. But then you are not newspapers. You are digital aggregators like the Huffington Post. Then, just like any other media outlet, you will specialize and grovel for ratings and or unique users. Then you will struggle to figure out how to deal with the ups and downs of digital media monetization.

The problem with newspapers is that they want both. They want to be able to support the infrastructures they have evolved to, but cant figure out how to make money from, and they want to use digital to cover up the inefficiensies of their current business models. Cant happen anymore.

If newspapers want to survive in any semblance of today's form. They have to either declare bankruptcy and start completely from scratch, with a cost structure that matches their revenues and can survive dramatic revenue swings. Or, they have to find a new paradigm that delivers revenue and profits and makes the newspaper an attractive purchase for consumers

Personally, I think amazon.com is a better model for newspapers than traditional websites. Amazon delivers physical product to the home. That is their primary business. Newspapers deliver information in physical form to homes and to newstands. With this in mind, what can complement the newspaper and be delivered to the home and newstands that will be perceived as such a significant value its a no brainer for anyone from age 12 to 100 to buy.

In britain they packaged a prince CD. cost per newspaper for the CD itself was how much  ? What can be bundled, other than newsprint with the paper that is perceived as significant value? A movie service ? Have the homes pay 25 bucks 1 time for an 8gbs usb drive , every week they swap that device for another with 8 to 10 new movies. Or maybe its videos of all the games of all the major sports teams in the market. Maybe its 1k songs from statewide artists. Maybe its a free book in kindle or PDF format. If the Dallas Morning News gave me 250k dollars per year, I would supply them with at lest one movie per week. Barter me a page a month, they can have all the videos of mavs games. Would that sell another 5k subscribers ? If they want to give me a full page ad in the DMN 1x a month. I will give them free passes to the local Landmark theaters to use during our slow times and pay them every time someone used the pass. Im sure there are far better ideas than what i can come up with off the top of my head. But you get the idea. How do you create compelling consumer value that makes people want to subscribe.


I have always felt that delivery to the home of media, things that take a lot of bits and consume far too much time to download, or cost too much to download, could be delivered better on a USB drive by your paper boy.



Think of it as a netflix type service for content that the paper either owns or can license that is of perceived value in its market.

Then there is the use of the papers advertising. Why not a Cost Per Action, Cost Per Lead or Cost per inquiry or sale mode ? Again, I dont know what the marginal cost of 1 more page in the nwspaper is, but Im sure there is a lawyer in your town willing to try to sell mesothelenonia (sp?) or some other hard to spell disease services that would pay per lead. Just like they do on TV. Think that PC Professor guy could sell enough software on an ongoing basis to more than cover the pricing of ads ? You can even draw the line at Girls Gone Wild.

BOttom line is that papers have to realize that they make it to the front door of people's homes. There is a value proposition out there somewhere that would compel consumers to want to have a newspaper subscription

 

Perhaps those ideas would work from an advertising perspective, but they don't address what (most of us on this site feel) is the core of the news business: unbiased, accurate, original reporting on topics of newsworthiness. I can get movies and songs and all that entertainment stuff elsewhere. But from whom and how am I going to learn about the day's events?

How can we ensure that credible news-gathering organizations remain a viable operation? I think the answer lies more in creating an educated, media literate public than in value-added packaging.

 

But that's how we can ensure it: by making the product financially viable again, so that papers can concentrate on the newsgathering. It's advertising that pays the bills. Newsgathering has never been the moneymaker, and probably never will be.

 

Ah ... I remember having that point driven home by the advertising staff. The year the creative side (reporters, ad design, production) certified under CEP Local 2000, several of our salesmen told me they didn't think I deserved to make any more money than I did (about $24K), because I wasn't physically bringing money into the building like they were.

They didn't understand the argument, either, that if it weren't for me and the other writers, they wouldn't have a product to sell.

And isn't that one of the key issues ... the divide between the business side and the creative?

 

No, but it should be the draw. I don't go to cnn.com for the Google ads.

 

"
Ah ... I remember having that point driven home by the advertising staff. The year the creative side (reporters, ad design, production) certified under CEP Local 2000, several of our salesmen told me they didn't think I deserved to make any more money than I did (about $24K), because I wasn't physically bringing money into the building like they were.

They didn't understand the argument, either, that if it weren't for me and the other writers, they wouldn't have a product to sell.

And isn't that one of the key issues ... the divide between the business side and the creative?"

thats a leadership issue. Everyone needs toknow who contributes and how. No business lives without sales. No sales happen without a good product

 

Sorry, but there are likely very few newspapers who don't undervalue the work of their writers.