Perspective

This past week I had the privilege to participate in a group of meetings focused on the newspaper industry. If you have not read the "papers"-no pun intended- the newspaper business is in a state of turmoil. Readership is down, large papers are going out of business and as you would expect much of the decline is the result of the internet.

The group was friendly and professional. You could feel the malaise that was surrounding their industry and business. I kept wondering who their real competition was. Almost all of them were one paper towns, no competitor doing what they did. They were all active on the web as well. It leads to a discussion of competing. One of my favorite subjects.

When you compete; you need to have a game plan and execute it. If you listen to a newspaper talk it is confusing to figure out who their real competition is. Who do they compete against? Who is the "bad guy" in their scenario. If you are not careful you might pick the "internet" as their competitor. That would be a mistake. You can't compete with something that has no real owner nor can you compete with something that is so big you could not possibly come up with a strategy to overcome it an finally each one of them is already invested in the internet as well.

You need to know who your competition is and what your plan is. Maybe its a union when it comes to the EFCA. Maybe it is your congressman that is voting for it. Maybe it is a call center down the street that is stealing your people. Maybe it is a couple of employees that are steering the rest of your employees to be organized.

Do you have a list of who you compete against? You compete for your employees everyday. You compete against advertisements in the very newspapers we are talking about here. You compete for their focus with texting, emails, web browsing, etc. You compete for your customers everyday with the other companies they connect with by phone, web, in person each day. Don't think that your customers are comparing you against other firms like you. They compare you against the bank, the cable company, the retailer or whoever they do business with that day, week or month. Don't miss this. You are not competing only against the company you think you are.

Being able to know who your competitor is helps you to focus and make a plan. Without one you will fail.

Stop here if you could care less about newspapers.

So who does the newspaper industry compete with? In my humble opinino it is the following;
1. The truth- The internet is "great" yet we have no idea whether any of it is true at all. Newspapers have built a history of telling the truth. One of the reasons that they are slow is because they get it right. I would be pitching;" News you can depend on to be right and researched."Make your business and personal decisions based on what we tell you; you can count on it."
2. Speed of information- News has turned into a speed deal. Who can report it first becomes more important than what is reported. Headlines of newspapers should shift from being about what happened last night and more about what is important to people for a longer period of time.
3. Personalities and familiarity counts- Individual make a difference on the web and they do in newspapers as well. Columnists often make news. Columnists in your paper should have less access on the web. At worst case, slow down access. In Texas, I will read Randy Galloway a sports reporter for the Fort Worth Star telegram. Today, I can read him on the web at the same time I can read him in the newspaper. If it took a day to read him on line, I might be more pre-disposed to read him in the paper first. Speed can work against you as well. Newspapers will never be faster than the web but they can be faster with their own information.
4. Local is okay. The web has driven us to get as much access as we can as quick as we can. In other words what we say locally can effectively be broadcast to the world almost immediately. Who cares? If we have local information that is valuable locally. Hold onto it. Make it come out when you are ready after you have gained value from it. Then release it. In reality who cares if the rest of the world knows anyway.
5. Change the name,- Just the fact that it says news-paper is bad enough. On my Kindle, I can get the Austin American statesman. Very cool.

Clark Kent would be proud.