Newspapers have a channel conflict
I love Seth Godin. Well, I love to read his blog and books, anyway.
I learn something every time I read a paragraph.
In his latest post, he explains why ignorance of accepted standards or user experience will result in death of a relationship.
Here, , I equate his frustration with the forced registration on Newspaper sites. “Nope,” is the answer that a large percentage of users will give.
Seth is speaking about channel conflict. The problem with newspapers is they still have a channel conflict. It’s between their own two channels, print and web.
I have an analogy.
Could you sell a car that required you to get out and crank the engine, once the battery had been introduced for equal or lesser price.
Of course not.
But, since newspapers (in print) are a very special thing since they are the only people in town that have a press, they figure they have some special status on the web.
They try to justify it by saying that the journalism is the value of their business, but nothing can shake the fact that advertising fuels journalism, and on the web advertising doesn’t care about journalism, only relationships. It was always the distribution channel that held the value.
And pepsi and mentos videos can fuel that fire as well.
Sorry, the world is changed.
As always, I’m not saying that good journalism has no value, but the user is now in control. Period.
Please them and they will reward you. Try to control them and they will ignore you.