Newspapers Are Not the Answer

An old-media juggernaut recently saw that its market was changing more rapidly than it liked. Young people were not reading its flagship publication any more.

It's not a new occurrence - it's happening all over the country as readership numbers plummet, mostly in favor of online publications.

The subject of this story, however, is the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Founded with the merger of the Arkansas Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat, the Demozette, as some have dubbed it, claims to be one of the oldest newspapers west of the mighty Mississippi.

Partially in an attempt to corner the youth market in greater Little Rock and partially in an attempt to take down the biggest thorn in its side, the free Arkansas Times weekly tab, the Demozette launched a free weekly tab geared toward young people called Sync.

Sync, whose website is www.syncweekly.com, is ran mostly by teenagers fresh out of college. As such, most of the newspaper exhibits relatively poor writing and very little relevant content. It does, however, have an abundance of pictures of young people at Little Rock nightspots who look very clearly drunk.

Society and culture magazines like the Arkansas Times work because well-off businesspeople like to see pictures of themselves in print. Sync has pictures of people at nightclubs who may not even remember that they had their picture taken.

Plus, the only people interested in these type of pictures are the people pictured. In society magazines, there are typically interesting angles to why these people are shown - people pictured having a party saying farewell to a solider going to Iraq, a $500-a-plate dinner with proceeds going to cancer research, etc. With nightclubs, the story is always the same - wanted a fun night out on the town, 21st birthday, new person in town, etc.

The Times also has interesting and witty political columnists and cartoonists and local news and features. Sync's perspective is always from that of a 20-something - very little local information, very little substance, and lots of partying.

While Sync will not take down the Times as its parent publication planned, I will concede one thing - it is possible that Sync could appeal to young people and somehow sell enough advertisements to support itself. If young people actually still picked up newspapers, then this kind of thing might be a great idea.

But they don't. The times are changing. In 20 years, newspapers are going to be phased out in many communities and markets, and those newspapers that remain are going to struggle.

The internet is the future.

The Times is on the road to getting this right, too. Their web product, www.arktimes.com, has several niche blogs of interest to Arkansans. That won't be enough when print products are phased out, but it's a good start.

Another Times, this time the New York Times, has it figured out. If you haven't tried Times Reader, it's time to go see the future of the news business. Times Reader is a desktop application that presents the news just like a newspaper, and when used in conjunction with a tablet PC, it's easy to write off print products and accept this as the future.

There are drawbacks to Times Reader, namely the fact that it isn't yet Mac compatible. But it is the start of the future, so get acquainted with it.

For the record, I like reading print newspapers and I've made a living writing for them. But it's time for the old media to let go of it's past and embrace it's future.