The Decline of Newspaper Revenue and the Promise of the Human Network

• April 5, 2009
• 10 Comments

It’s not news that newspaper revenue derived from advertising and subscriptions is rapidly eroding. While Madison Avenue worries about the recession and its impact on advertising in general, numbers recently published by the Newspaper Association of America indicate online advertising only continues to rise.

Perhaps most interesting is the impending intersection between the decline of a 200 year old institution and a new medium competing for the same precious ad dollars for only the last 15 years. According to this chart, the collision could occur as soon as the end of next year.

The fate of newspapers, and journalism, is tied to the publisher’s adeptness and mastery to reinvent the model for the creation, distribution, and promotion of information as it identifies and connects to the shift in social consumption. Content must migrate to the individual attention dashboard in order to trigger a reaction and reverberate across the social graph, and in turn, lead viewers, friends, and friends of friends back to the source of information.

It’s a value cycle that warrants ongoing sustenance in order to build a thriving community. It also injects a new formula that humanizes content and lays a foundation for contextual relationship building (online and in real life), linking the people who write to the people who read, share and respond, where they congregate online.

The human network can help traditional media effectively adapt to the social Web.

Tracking the Newspaper Fallout:
Paper Cuts
TheMediaisDying
Brian McDaniel, “Will Online Ad REvenue Beat Newspapers in 2011?”

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