Why Moleskine Is The Model For Newspaper Survival September 29, 2009
Posted by jonbernstein in Newspapers.trackback
“Get big, get niche or get out” is a hoary old business mantra. For a news media in an increasingly fragmented landscape the middle option seems the obvious one.
Niche publications will be able to survive offline and charge on it. Or so conventional wisdom has it.
When we talk of niche we tend to talk in terms of subjects (business, pharmaceuticals, model railways etc) and not objects.
But what if the desired niche was physical? What if there’s an audience out there who crave the aesthetic of the printed newspaper as much as Moleskine owners crave their little black and bound notebooks?
The Moleskine is a useful analogy for two reasons. Firstly, it is very tribal – the owner, likely urban, liberal and creative*, is saying something about themselves. If you feel alienated as a non-owner, a non-member, well you’re supposed to.
Second, the Moleskine should have been made redundant by the PDA and the smartphone – its portability and functionality both superceded by a digital alternative.
It didn’t because people crave the physicality. There are now 10 million Moleskine notebooks in production each year.
Newspapers, too, are both tribal and threatened by a digital alternative. Could a few carve out a niche as highly desirable, daily objects of desire?
(*No surprise then that many in the tribe were horrified when Fox News anchor Glenn Beck, poster-boy of the American right, was spotted with one.)
Related:
- The Future Of Newspapers, It’s In The Bag
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Hmm! I’m not liberal. I’m creative. I really like my Moleskines. Are you stereotyping?
Guilty as charged, Curt. Sorry!
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I love Moleskines. I use them for everything. I am loyal and committed for life to my Moleskines.
-Sea
http://www.readingwithsea.wordpress.com
Daily news, by its nature, is sensationalised. The content of most dailies is terrible, the New York Times being the possible lone exception (and I’m an Australian living in Adelaide, Australia saying this). By the way, we’re good at rubbish media down here; Adelaide is the city that gave the world News Corporation (it was incorporated in South Australia until 2004).
I can see dailies surviving only in very large cities like London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, etc… They will also survive in the third world; an area where newspapers are not under threat (yet). For the rest of the world, I can’t see them surviving in physical form.
Weekly news will do better. I think decent physical weeklies will survive. I expect these to start incorporating better production in order to differentiate themselves from the web.