newspaper
Customized newspaper web design, programming, development and marketing
The latest reports find that newspapers are being driven out of business by the World Wide Web. No longer is it acceptable, nor feasible, to merely have newspapers and other media outlets compete with the Internet ... they must now be part of it.
The Associated Press writes:
News audiences are ditching television and newspapers and using the Internet as their main source of information, in a trend that could eventually see the demise of local papers, according to a new study."As online use has increased, the audiences of older media have declined," Harvard University professor Thomas Patterson said in a report on the year-long study issued by Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. (See item: Internet Killed the Newspaper Star)
Why newspapers?
First let me welcome you to this website. As you can see, this is the first blog entry for the site, which I am writing about 24 hours before the official launch of the site. Needless to say, myself and the team here at Maine Web FX are excited for the launch, which we hope will in some small well help the newspaper industry come to full stride on the web.
But the question we keep getting from people (in regard to the launch) is, "why newspapers?"
It's true that we have a web design firm that runs the gamut for design and programming already. The firm does everything from e-commerce to real estate. But our passion has always been newspapers.
Starting out as a reporter at the Brattleboro Reformer in Vermont, I had my share of great stories to cover. When the excitement waned, I moved to Phoenix, where I worked for a weekly newspaper covering cops and crime before working at a daily ... covering much of the same.
Newspaper Web War: Come out victorious
Your newspaper has been brought into one of the fiercest turf battles out there. It is under attack from multiple angles. Your readership is falling; along with it, your advertisers are dropping like flies.
Is this the end of the newspaper industry as you know it? Will print editions succumb to the web? Is there nothing to be done about it?
Before you hammer in the last nail to that coffin, here are ways your newspaper can embrace the web. Use it, profit from it and expand your readership and advertising revenue further than you ever thought possible.
The problems that newspapers throughout the United States are facing are very real, but not lost battles unless you go about the issue from a "print only" point of view. If publishers and editors face the problem of declining readership, loss of ad revenue and turf wars on the Internet head on by embracing the new medium, they can accomplish bigger circulations and ad revenue than ever thought possible right within their own markets.
