Positioning for the future

Here are some scary numbers from the venerable Boston Globe, beloved newspaper of Bostonites:

• It is estimated that the newspaper will lose $85 million this year alone
• Its ad revenue fell 18% last year
• Since 2004, its ad revenue declined 34%
• Its weekday readership during the same period fell 28%

A lot of this can be attributed to the economy and probably is. I tend to think this is more of a natural trend that is occuring, and that bad economic times have merely accelerated and dramatized the shift.

Just as this news is important for those in and around the newspaper publishing business, it is also important to those who are in the business of marketing. Things are changing. Rapidly.

We can brace ourselves for the changes yet to come. Or we can embrace the changes. I say, choose the latter. We will not only be positioning ourselves better for the future. We will be ready for the new opportunities that will come our way.

If you thought the above was scary, here is another one for you. Dan Kennedy, Boston media columnist and blogger of Media Nation is also an assistant professor for journalism at Northeastern U and writes for the Guardian. By the way, I got all these Boston related tidbits, ironically enough from an article in the NY Times (online). Mr Kennedy was quoted in the same article regarding a freshman journalism course he taught there. He said - “one of the things that really struck me was these students had basically no experience reading a newspaper of any kind.”

So, if these Boston Globe (and many, many other newspapers) numbers look bad today, can you imagine what they will look like in the future?

Change is inevitable, folks. The question is will it be voluntary, strategic, well-planned and embraced - or will it be forced on you? I am guessing that we all agree on which the preferred alternative is...