Papers finally warming up to the web

Posted by on Nov 7, 2006 in Marketing, Tech | Comments Off

Two stories coming out in the past two days about how old media is finally adapting and growing with new media. The USA Today is going to be using user created content to fill some of their pages with what should be more local, true to the street content. Also, coming out yesterday was news that 50 papers have signed on to serve Google AdWords on their pages.

First off, USA today will be going the way of digg, Reddit, Techmeme, and Tailrank and will be using user created content. The idea is to add more diverse stories and stories that would come from other sources that they do not have. There so much news out there and that is why blogs are so popular these days. Especially through the services listed above, being able to help users navigate the long tail of good content. This has proved successful in the online world, lets see how it works in a daily printed paper. I’m excited to see it, and who knows, maybe it will be a way to save the paper for another few years.

On the Advertising side of things, 50 different papers will begin testing selling their extra ad inventory to people who choose to allow Google to serve their ad’s in this print form. It’s a win win in my opinion, Newspapers sell all their inventory, Google gets more ads sold, and advertisers get a good deal on newspaper ads that they receive the day before. I like it, and I think smart online advertisers will start to allow Google to sell their ads in the local paper as their are still so many people reading their ads everyday, although I don’t know how a ad can stand out in that format. It works though.