Good overview over the state of the news industry.

All the jokes from newspaper production departments or ad sales reps about how news articles are “to keep the ads from bumping into each other” have more than just a grain of truth to them.

Summary/excerpts:

• “a digital newspaper becomes just another online information source among thousands of others, and that kind of competition isn’t something most publishers are used to dealing with.”
• “the foundation of most newspaper business models — that is, the monopoly over information delivery — was doomed as soon as the internet came along, with its virtually frictionless distribution model and non-existent barriers to access.”
• “The monopoly was on the delivery of printed advertising messages into homes in a given city or (better) metropolitan area: department store ads, supermarket ads, car dealer ads, and, most of all, classifieds. Notice that I didn’t mention news. That’s because, once a monopoly was established, the editorial content of a newspaper had no detectable impact on its financial success.”
• Newspapers’ monopoly on news distribution is eroding quickly, and advertisers now have an almost unlimited field in which to play.
• “newspapers are being forced to confront the fact that the financial model that supported their news and journalism is crumbling. And simply cutting costs […] without investing anything on the digital side is a recipe for disaster.”
• “how does a former monopoly survive in a market — for both news and advertising — that has become almost hyper-competitive?”

Link: The hard truth: Newspaper monopolies are gone forever — Tech News and Analysis via gigaom.com