Designers Can Save The Newspaper

Posted by Rowland on July 28 at 4:00 PM The Inspiration
George Louis--Mad Man and Art Director--injected brilliant commentary and controversy into the covers of Esquire in one simple image.  MoMA, under Christian Larsen's curatorial direction (whom I have to thank for opening my ideas to these works' crucial importance), has presented these covers to show how graphic design can simply express complex, topical concepts.

In 1963, this turned Esquire around financially, attracting both readership and advertisers.

The Fate
Newspapers are struggling. Proof is in the declining stock prices (see chart for New York Times tumble), loss of advertising revenue (especially in classifieds heading of course to Google), and now a study showing that young journalists are leaving due to a lack of innovation. The big four newspaper companies have dropped $4 billion in market capitalization in the first ten day of July. And close to $23 billion since the start of the year (causing some to speculate about taking these papers private, and what that might entail.)

What can we learn from George Louis to help solve these problems? While a magazine is not the same medium as a newspaper, the problems facing Esquire at the time were relevancy and revenue; engagement with their audience and influence with advertisers.

The cure imposed by the current management situation in the form of cut backs, decreasing edit, and “the blurb” (where more content is pulled from the AP, and less is original) is worse than the disease. These inspired to appease shareholders, but won’t stem the tide of losses. Without a new vision for the print editions, the paper simply yields less without something new to capture readers attention. If there were a number of market forces that lead people and advertisers away from the paper in the first place, this is certainly going to make it worse.

The Upside
Yet, people are engaged at impressive levels with newspapers, especially local ones. If I were to tell you that people spend, on average, 27 minutes with the paper on weekdays and 57 minutes on Sunday, that would be rather impressive and eclipse most of the online engagement stats. A recent study from Northwestern Readership Institute is saying just that. In addition, the study suggests that the rate of readership among under-24-year-olds is not decreasing as quickly as previously thought. More from the report:

--Readers continue to engage with the newspaper, on average, more than five days a week.

--On average, they complete 60 percent of the paper on weekdays and 62 percent on Sundays – again, stable habits.

--The penetration of newspaper Web sites is still quite low in most communities, though it should be noted that the researchers measured response only to the main site, not to related sites whose ownership consumers might not recognize.

The last point, though, seems to be contradicted by the actual traffic to newspapers.  2007 marked the best year for traffic yet, and 2008 looks to beat those records. Engagement online is increasing too, with more social networking features and other user-generated content. This contradiction between the two statistics may be explained by a crop of new users engaging with the website who don’t engage with the print paper, and vice versa.

And maybe these doldrums are just a symptom of the shaky economy!

The Challenges
Okay, I’ve gone too far. We can’t paint such a rosy picture as to assert that nothing is wrong in newspaper land. My point is, however, that the numbers aren’t as grim as the decline in revenue might suggest. Which indicates a couple things:

1.    A communications challenge

On a basic level, newspapers should be able to articulate these numbers in a better light to advertisers and the market. What gets in the way is how they think about advertising itself: impressions. From the numbers above, it seems that the best thing they have going for them is engagement. Changing the story will also help them compete against Google, Craig’s List and more direct action online mediums that sucked away the classifieds business.

Clearly some advertisers already get it: for the New York Times fully 28% of their advertising revenue comes from luxury brands. Clearly this is about brand recognition, engagement and not just driving traffic.

2.    A real estate challenge

By "real estate" I mean where advertising is placed. In print, the real estate section lacks design focus with editorial (something magazines have known for a long time). Online banners, skyscrapers and the dreaded boxes are stifling brand opportunities for advertisers despite the strong audience numbers. Finally, the coordination between the two media is a disaster; little leverage between placements in print and online, poor coordination of message, and visual cohesion in the creative.

3.    An innovation challenge

Newspapers want to sell units, not solutions. But brand solutions are what advertisers want and fundamentally, their “unit” (i.e., the classified) here has sailed. But as much as innovation has disappeared in the newsroom, driving out young journalists, similar problems are cramping innovation from publishers. True editorial innovation may create more advertising opportunity, and coordination between the media.

The Design Solution
Clearly the problem cuts across editor and publisher, print and online, brand and sales for the newspaper. To reinvent requires more than a redesign of the masthead, or website retooling. It is about creating a newspaper brand that expresses their new advantages, connects across media, and supplies a simple connection between all their various prosperities.

The key word here is “simple”.

Which is why I believe a connection between visual and written, between publisher and editor, between print and online, and between sales and brand is only possible from a designer’s viewpoint.

Designers, like George Louis or others, can create basic, compelling concepts to connect seemingly disparate forces. They create simple communications. Additionally they are capable of rethinking real estate and how advertising can interact with the product. Finally, service design can address innovation in how the selling has to happen at the newspaper moving towards a “solutions” based approach.

Maybe it's all too simple, but it is a start of where newspapers can look beyond the traditional journalists, editor, ad sales rep, or publisher and find a new type of journalist who can work across media and communicate in new ways. For lack of a better term, let’s call them designalists. The designalists created blogs and reinvented how people receive news online; think of what more they can do when they get their hands on this much content, eyeballs, and resources.

Topics: advertising, branding, design, free write, interactive, public relations        SHARE: