In my post yesterday, I talked about how newspaper sites ought to be thinking about creating a Google-like paradigm with their free content â€" offer free content to sell something else (other than just advertising).
Howard Owens makes a case in a post today as to why that may be asking too much for some newspapers. Howard was on the closing panel, along with Anil Dash and Josh Cohn of Google, of the Online News Association conference that took place in Toronto last week.
He makes the case based on a observation from Anil Dash that "journalism is the culture of infallibility."
It's easy to see how this observation can be true. Being the dominant player for so long, even getting things right for so long, its not hard to see why some news(paper) sites miss the fact that something new is eroding their dominance, that there's another way of delivering the news, and that this new way needs to be taken seriously. It's a paradigm shock that's taken hold over the years in a series of tiny jolts that's managed to seemingly immobilize most of the industry.
We can see some news(paper) sites like NYTimes.com starting to recognize some of the necessary changes that need to be made to revitalize the industry. But what do sites do after they free their content? What are the next steps?
Howard concludes:
"If true innovation means a willingness to risk failure, then we'll produce more mistakes than successes, which means if we want to guarantee the survival of this industry, we better get busy. We need big ideas. We need small ideas. We need to try all we can, then change, discard or embrace them as required."
I agree with Howard. If you're not sure what to do next, try anything. Anything is better than nothing. Anything is better than being immobilized.
