Comments on: Online audience growth: not a solution to newspapers’ problems?

By: Morning Links: December 9, 2008 » Nieman Journalism Lab

Morning Links: December 9, 2008 » Nieman Journalism Lab — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:31:28 +0000

[…] Adrian Monck wonders if newspapers can grow their way out of their problems by boosting online audience […]

By: Adrian Monck

Adrian Monck — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:13:03 +0000

Here's Frederic Filloux on cost structure:

In a typical operation, the biggest costs are industrial ones: around 25%-35% for paper and printing; another 30%-40% for distribution; around 18-25% for editorial; the remaining 10-15% are for administrative and marketing expenditures. It varies from country to country but we can safely assert most of the costs — at least 60% — are industrial in nature.

By: Matt Walsh

Matt Walsh — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:39:20 +0000

Isn’t part of the problem here though the unrealistic manner in which newspaper audiences are measured online which is the basis for advertising CPMs? Imagine if print sales discounted the number of times a reader bought a newspaper and merely reduced them to the status of unique monthly buyer.

By: Rolv Heggenhougen

Rolv Heggenhougen — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:26:31 +0000

Imagine if the newspapers put an interactive letterhead around all the external emails sent by their employees and then charged companies to advertise in this letterhead.

Companies seem to ignore the single largest online branding/advertising venue available: their own regular external emails. Why not use these emails to market the senders company?

You have a website.
You send emails.

Why not multiply your sales-staff by “wrapping” the regular email in an interactive letterhead?

No other marketing or advertising medium is as targeted as an email between people that know each other (as opposed to mass emails). These emails are always read and typically kept.

By: Adrian Monck

Adrian Monck — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:03:24 +0000

Well the NYT has an editorial headcount around 1,200 - compare it to the Telegraph with an editorial headcount currently around 500.

And I think his percentage on abandoning print is way out…

By: Nick Thomas

Nick Thomas — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 13:41:12 +0000

Retrenching on online growth strategies cannot be an option, even if those revenues won’t support the current set-up. Those operating costs are the key here. It’s an interesting exercise to eliminate print costs as it reminds us how much the current newspaper business is about the ‘paper’ bit ($1bn) vs the ‘news’ bit ($200m, by your calculation). But what’s the additional $1.7bn that’s not newsgathering being spent on? And how many of the NYT’s headcount of c. 12000 (can someone correct/update that figure) are actually creating content? How does the NYT’s headcount compare to, say, The Guardian?