Comments on: Friday’s Five: Top Misconceptions by Newspapers Online

By: Grant Blakeman

Grant Blakeman — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:03:53 +0000

Wow – great list – all of these (except, possibly #5) highlight what I find frustrating about my local online daily – while they don’t make you pay for content online, they do make you register for the site to read anything other than the front page and I think that’s a mistake right up there with requiring payment – it is a payment of sorts

By: Aron Pilhofer

Aron Pilhofer — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:30:46 +0000

Yeah, Richard is right on re: 4 and 5. It’s a little more complicated than this, guys. I understand this is throwaway list and all that, but it’s not quite as simple as ripping up your existing site and adopting an open source CMS like Drupal. If it were, we wouldn’t be using the piece of junk we’re using now.

As for number one… c’mon! Maybe five years ago this was true, but not now. Virtually every mainstream media company in the world has recognized the future of their business is the web.

By: Aperfectcirle

Aperfectcirle — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 06:03:25 +0000

I think Erin is spot on, many publication do not pay adequate attention to the Internet. I often wonder as to what will be the future of the newspaper industry in say five or ten years. Already today most people obtain their news online and in a period of 10 years, reading newspapers will be passe with most preferring to get their news either through blogs or rss feeds (or a highly advanced version of it).

By: links for 2007-10-08 « David Black

links for 2007-10-08 « David Black — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 01:32:01 +0000

[...] Friday’s Five: Top Misconceptions by Newspapers Online – The Bivings Report 1. The Internet is the Enemy. 2. We must display all of our site’s content all over the homepage. 3. People will pay for content online. 4. We can’t compete with Craigslist and other classifieds providers. 5. Websites are complicated” (tags: internet newspapers newspapersites) [...]

By: Zac Echola

Zac Echola — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 16:26:03 +0000

Richard, I know how difficult and expensive upgrading a site can be. But, the time and cost of making a better Web product will only reap great rewards as more technology is adopted by the masses.

As a content provider, the last thing you’d want is to not have your content where your former newspaper audience is.

By: Richard Kendall

Richard Kendall — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 15:32:54 +0000

I would agree whole heartedly with 1-3, I am currently balancing this theory whilst re-aligning our own homepage – peterboroughtoday.co.uk.

4. The classified market is a real tough one, where combining the print and online products in an efficient and effective way for the mass audience is the golden ticket.

5. As for the technical side of putting together websites, true there are countless tools online, many free, that can aid and enhance a new newspaper website. But for an existing site, with much aged backend coding and elderly databases, the path to web 2.0 is a long, time consuming and potentially expensive one.

By: Jonathan Trenn

Jonathan Trenn — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:49:49 +0000

While I don’t doubt #5 is true, I’m wondering what media outlets are saying this. Any examples? Do they tend to be smaller weeklies? I mean, that mentality is professionally negligent.