Wednesday 15 September, 2010

How can digital revenues for newspapers be increased?

Terry Maguire is more optimistic than Christof Reiss about the revenue that newspapers could get from the net. Especially if they can get their act together. In his presentation at the WAN-IFRA conference in Jaipur, he gave several examples of how disfunctional the Indian newspaper websites are when it comes to helping out a business visitor to Jaipur who might have an extra day to look around the city. He even had a hard time getting the weather forecast and gave another example of a news story about an American citizen who was accused of killing his mother in Rajasthan. He couldn't find a news follow up as to what happened in that case in court, and lamented the lack off attention to the continuing life of a story that newspapers and their web sites can provide. "Keep that story going," he said and suggested that more newspapers could follow the Wikepedia model of constant updatation.

Using the tagline,"First with the best, and the last with the most," Maguire essentially said that although newspapers could be quick and or comprehensive, they are, too often, missing the boat on the internet where they could be bringing together a host of information or be the entry point to stuff that people need to live their lives. Newspaper sites could easily include the connections that people need on a daily basis such as their food needs or even education in a far more dynamic way than they are presently doing.

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