Hi.
Well, this is my first blog, and I really don't know the "rules", so kindly bear up with any mistakes I make on the mode of presentation..
Well, one day I was reading in an newspaper, the problems faced by newspapers and magazines due to the free 24x7 news channels and news available on the net. The newspaper went as far ahead as mentioning a need to change the business model used.
Now, this got me thinking, as to why, I still read newspaper. Even though, I am online at least 12 hrs a day, can watch TV whenever I wish to, I still prefer to read newspaper for the news.
I got the following 2 reasons when I asked myself this question:
1. Reading newspaper improves concentration: I believe, while reading a newspaper, you concentrate on what you read. This improves your concentration much more than watching to the news on TV, because, even though you have a lapse of attention, you feel like knowing the news because you can half hear it. This period of concentration doesn't only refresh me, but also increases my productivity.
2. Improves vocabulary: Advertise this. Remember a news reader utter 10 words of which you don't know the meaning? Even if he/she uses them, you won't even try to learn them, because it just flashes off fast. In fact, I don't even bother about this words while watching TV. Now try this with a book or newspaper. You suddenly seem to notice this word. Trust me, some where or the other, having a good command over a language helps a lot in life..
Apart from this, I also get a small advantage over news channels in that I have a record of events till the time I want to keep the newspaper and I can reread it at wish.
Now, how can one use this? The problem which newspaper industry faces is that, in general, people are ignorant of or apathetic to these reasons, they simply don't sit and contemplate over the same.. (or at least I think this is what it reduces to..)
So, a potential solution which I see to this is advertising.. Newspaper industry has to make people sit and think.. A simple advertisement, showing a school boy reading newspaper and another watching news with half concentration, and the first boy doing good in exams (with a snapshot of exam hall with him concentrating better), hopefully will get them a more than linear increase in sales. The point which I want to emphasis is that newspaper industry has to tell people why it is fruitful to spend a few bucks per month on a newspaper and how it will help make their life better.
However this mightn't work against news portal on the net. In order to counter it to some extent, they can put in effort to show it is straining to read stuff on a monitor as compared to a printed paper. You can carry of a newspaper to your bathroom and read it peacefully while brushing or blah blah blah.. Simply an aidvertisement relating the adults' habit of tea and newspaper might be a good deal.
All that I want to convey is that, newspapers need to advertise.
(For those who better prefer to collect data, please try collecting the (dA/dI) data for the same and help me confirm this.. (Okay, I accept you are not gonna care for this blog post then.. :P ) )
By the way, a disclaimer: I am surely not claiming to be an expert at finance or some brilliant statistics holder, I am just another common man, who is looking at the problem from the customer's viewpoint..
