Peoria Pundit

GateHouse media is an easy target for criticism these days. God knows I’ve criticized them for their cheapskate approach to news. Their stock price is in the crapper. They’re suing the New York Times over a linking policy, which has made them the target of allegedly forward thinking New Media advocates.

But while the elite snicker, GateHouse has quietly been at the forefront of the inevitable next step in the mainstream media: Evolving into an online only model of providing news. There are dozens if not hundreds of Websites out there that purport to be news sources. But there are relatively few online only organizations actually have a staff of reporters, editors and photographers who seek to do what daily newspapers do: Provide meat-and-potatoes journalism for a community. GateHouse started The Batavian several months ago to do just that. This online news organization is competing against a traditional newspaper without a Web presense.

And now GateHouse had taken the next step: Moving from print to online. The Kansas City Kansan, owned by the GateHouse, will end its 87-year history as a print newspaper and go entirely digital on January 10:

Without the cumbersome tasks of page design and layout, and other duties associated with print, the online staff will be free to find more and varied stories to post online. Without press deadlines to contend with, the staff will be able to keep up a continual flow of news every day, publishing breaking news and information as it comes in.

“The approach we’re taking with the new Kansan site is a proven method for making news more interesting and engaging online,” said Howard Owens, director of digital publishing for GateHouse Media, the parent company of the Kansan. “We’ve found that readers really enjoy this format and will visit the site more frequently because of it.”

The Kansan staff is being reduced from eight people to four as a cost savings measure during the transition.

Owens will work closely with the staff over the coming months to help with the transition to an online-only approach to news. He said the new site should quickly see its audience double within months of the switch.

Naturally, commenters are complaining about losing the Kansan. Some people will be unable to grasp the idea of a newspaper that doesn’t double as birdcage liner. There are fewer and fewer of these people every day, and more and more people who expect to get their news online. More importantly, there are more and more business willing to pay to advertise online.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The value of a newsppaer isn’t the paper it’s printed on, it’s the news that is printed on the paper. The computer is making newsprint and ink increasingly irrelevant to the news business, much like the automobile made horse and buggy irrlevant in the transportation business. Online is just incredibly less costly that print. It delivers news almost immediately after it is gathered. The news you read with your morning coffee was written 12 hours earlier.

Folks, people who need to know what is going on in their communities will turn to the online news organizations to get their local news. People who say today they love the feel of a fresh newspaper and the smell of fresh ink will go out and buy a laptop. You can get one for less than the cost of the smallest flat-screen television. And in the end, the biggest critics will be the biggest fans because it will be more complete and easier to use.

Eventually, there will not be any newspapers. They will either die or evolve into online only. And to the consternation of many, it is a GateHouse Media publication that is among the first to raise from the primordial ooze onto dry land.

Meanwhile, the elite New York Times contents itself with establishing online news portals built entirely other companies’ headlines.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis — one of the critics of GateHouse’s suit against the NYT — provides the snark:

I would say this is a forward-thinking act of innovation, except it comes from link-hating Gatehouse, whose stock is stuck at $0.04 and so it could be an act of desperation; I don’t know which. This is a paper that earlier sold its building, shifted its printing, and cut back from daily to twice-weekly in print.

Would Jarvis prefer that the Kansan go out of business entirely by trying to continue to pay for printing on dead trees? Apparently so. And by moving online, the Kansan has gone from twice weekly to 24/7, which is a step UP from daily.

I’m beginning to wonder if Jarvis has the intellectual capacity to grasp that what the NYT is doing isn’t the same as ordinary deep linking, but is essentially using a competitor’s intellectual property to take away their advertisers. It’s not fair comment, which is what allows people like Jarvis and myself to link to and comment on other people’s work. 

This entry was posted on January 1, 2009 at 5:55 am and is filed under On the Media with tags GateHouse Media, Kansan, media, online only. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Both comments and pings are currently closed.