The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it. - Benjamin Disraeli

Why RSS and mobile internet matter to newspapers

by Jason Preston

A few days ago the New York Times wrote about the Madison, WI based paper The Capital Times (and, I’m happy to say, the NYT actually linked out in their article).

Last Saturday The Capital Times joined the ranks of newspapers that have cut their print edition entirely and moved their operations entirely online.

While I’m excited to see newspapers taking this leap and moving their operations completely online, this is a worrisome statistic:

In its account of The Capital Times’s last daily press run, The State Journal reported that it had “succeeded in garnering most of The Capital Times’s former subscribers and will see its average daily circulation rise from 89,000 to at least 104,000 starting Monday.”

What the internet is really lacking thus far is a strong, mainstream subscription based service. I think that the two tools most likely to “save” the newspaper industry are RSS and phone-based internet access.

RSS

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a tool that allows people to become subscribers in the digital space. The real genius of RSS is it’s ability to become the invisible framework for delivery. Like the USPS, you don’t want to know it was there, you just want your mail in your mailbox.

Once RSS becomes enough of an infrastructure technology, those 15,000 migratory subscriptions would be people moving to an online subscription model instead of to another paper subscription.

But for that to happen, we need to get to the point where there is a suitable digital alternative to good old fashioned paper. We need to divorce “online” from “personal computer.”

Phone-based internet

Edge. 3G. Whatever it’s called, the most important thing is that you are able to send and receive data from almost anywhere. I don’t think that the way news is presented now on the internet is where online news will see big success.

I think newspapers need to see “digital distribution” with a bigger lens. I’m amazed at how few newspapers are available on the Kindle, for example, and how poorly they have been implemented. I’m sure that it’s at least 50% Amazon’s fault for not supporting it well.

I think that subscription (RSS-based) digital, real-time delivery to portable, hand held personal devices is how news will be primarily consumed in the coming years.

May 1, 2008 | Filed Under Observations 

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One comment so far:

  1. On June 3rd, 2008, Seth Godin asks: What are you defending? : Eat Sleep Publish wrote:

    [...] trying to defend the practice of printing and delivering, instead of discovering new ways to deliver and monetize your content, you are wasting your [...]

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