Mr. Temple? One question, if I may
John Temple, former editor of the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News, gave a presentation earlier this week that some have praised as a tour de force in explaining where his newspaper went wrong in its digital strategy.
You can find his thoughts in this Sept. 30 posting on his blog: Lessons from the Rocky Mountain News.
After reading it (it’s long), ask yourself if Temple addressed the following question satisfactorily:
If the RMN had done everything right digitally, would it still be in business today?
The paper went under on Feb. 27, 2009 — 55 days short of its 150th birthday.
A few online startups materialized in the wake of the RMN’s demise. Read this to see how well things went for them (short answer? So far, not very).
Here’s an excerpt from the Denver Business Journal article, posted Thursday:
The Rocky Mountain Independent, the second attempt by former Rocky Mountain News staffers to start an online news publication, announced Thursday that it will stop producing new content on Monday.
In a letter sent to “members” who had purchased an online subscription that
allowed them access to certain features, owners of the website said they could not continue producing their product with their current revenues.
“Our experiment has ended, and we would like to thank all of you who became members of the website to support us,” said the note, signed Rocky Mountain Independent owners. “We have put everything we’ve made into producing content, but the economic reality is that we cannot produce enough content on that budget to justify charging a membership fee.”
The site, which began in July, will live on, but by aggregating other content (What Would Google Do?).
An earlier post-RMN site also continues: INDenverTimes. Most of the ex-journo staff have fled, according to the story. It continues by “fusing original content, contributed content and aggregation of information on other websites.”
Seems to me that trying to run a business by generating original local content for the Web is a tough go.
I didn’t see any blog posts or tweets of advice by Mr. Temple to his former colleagues, but personally, the tough go experienced by the new Web sites just reinforces my view that the RMN had bigger problems than just its Web strategy.
From a Feb. 28 blog posting, quoting Temple in a Globe and Mail story:
Mr. Temple paints a similar picture of decline in Denver, where the Rocky and its crosstown rival, the Denver Post, once sold more than 1.1 million copies combined on a Sunday. By 2001, the papers had to join forces to cope with flagging financials and formed a joint company to run their
business operations while keeping the newsrooms separate. But that didn’t stop the bleeding.
Weekday circulation for both papers sunk to 210,000 from
300,000 and the Sunday circulation fell to 600,000. As the economy sank last year, advertisers cut back or shifted their spending, resulting in a
$100-million drop in help wanted and real estate ads. Last year the Rocky lost $16-million and in December, Scripps put it up for sale.
“We knew that closure was the most likely option and that it was a very real possibility,” Mr. Temple said. “It’s a very complicated business situation and it’s just not an attractive situation for a buyer to get involved with.”