Content Marketing Today

Newspapers say: "We’re Not Dead Yet." Michael Wolff Disagrees.

Although a November 2007 Vanity Fair article signals newspaper doom, content marketers can find infinite opportunity by filling their role.

Michael Wolf is a veteran journalist who had a brief and self-confessed painful Dotcom interlude, chronicled in Burn Rate. His experience paralleled mine at CMP Media when we were trying to design the future, but never got it quite right.

Although he has returned to his reportorial roots, his pessimism about the newspaper industry–and of news itself is chilling:

The news is technologically obsolete—information envelops us, competing for our attention, hence fewer and fewer people (read: younger people) feel any need to seek it out. This has resulted in a rapidly aging audience for all news media—the adult-diaper crowd—which is sending advertisers scurrying to find more energetic buyers.

Newspaper Mudslide Accelerating

He suggests that what had been a slow but steady decline is now accelerating like a mudslide down a mountainside:

In the last three years, however, that gradual decline has turned into a mud slide. It’s suddenly almost 10 percent a year and growing. We won’t make it.

Wolff adds that that young people, in particular, aren’t browsing as old fogie newspaper readers still do. They search for exactly what they want. A leisurely read of the New York Times or their local rage just isn’t happening for the under 30s.

Newspapers Exit Stage Right. Content Marketers Enter Stage Left.

Young people-and let’s face it,even boomers–are looking for content that matches up precisely with their immediate information needs. Although this seems to spell doom for newspapers, it presents infinite opportunities for content marketers. By determining what your prospects really need to know, you become the trusted source, ready to serve those needs as they come to the surface.