Natalie Myers

What’s In Store For Newspapers?

January 29th, 2009

While talking to Gary Meo, Senior VP at Scarborough Research, about new metrics for measuring newspaper audiences, I couldn’t help but ask: What are his thoughts about the future of newspapers and what they need to do to survive.

Gary’s job is to oversee consumer behavior surveys in 81 local markets. His company works with 241 major newspapers in the industry to determine audience size and demographics.

His reply wasn’t surprising: “My personal opinion is that the newspaper industry will continue to evolve in the way it’s evolving. There will be less emphasis on the daily printed product and more emphasis on the online offerings.”

That’s the reality of the way people consume media, he says.

Newspapers will continue to develop niche publications and products that speak to specific audiences, he added. “In that way, they are doing the right thing.”

“The emphasis in advertising has shifted from a mass reach mentality to getting the most value out of each of your touch points or potential customers,” Gary says.

Natalie Myers

About Natalie Myers

Natalie Myers writes for MarketingSherpa’s Great Minds and Content Biz newsletters. She covers a broad array of topics for Great Minds, regularly interviewing thought leaders and experienced marketers about innovative or highly successful marketing strategies. For Content Biz she focuses specifically on online subscriptions models, including anything you pay for to read, listen to, watch, rent (as in Software as a Service models), etc.

She writes blog posts about topics relating to her beats, including useful information from interviews that doesn’t make it into an article.

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  1. Ekaterina
    February 27th, 2009 at 09:07 | #1

    Natalie, as a person who deals with media buying, I can certainly say that newspapers not only have to claim that they speak to specific audiences, they also have to prove it. Here it comes back to measurement, circulation auditing and other accountability strategies. I’ve been working with the Buy Safe Media campaign and they have some interesting things to say on their blog about this sort of thing:www.BuySafeMedia.com

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