American Press Institute Report Details Potential Solutions to Newspaper Industry Growth Challenges

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Results of Extensive "Newspaper Next" Study Provides Positive and Practical Advice for Industry Transformation

RESTON, Va., Sept. 27 -- The American Press Institute (API) today released a report detailing specific ways for newspapers to reverse the course of declining revenues and shrinking readership and to envisage new and profitable business models. The solutions-based report is the result of API's year-long research project, "Newspaper Next: The Transformation Project," a collaborative effort to develop practical, market-tested tools and processes for achieving long-term industry survival and growth through innovation.

Many of the Newspaper Next Innovation Methods are adapted from the ground-breaking work on disruptive innovation by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen and his consulting group, Innosight. For the past year, API and Innosight have partnered in the Newspaper Next project to research the patterns of disruption specific to the newspaper industry. The result is a strategic game plan for transforming the industry through innovation.

The report contains detailed methods on how newspapers can initiate change, accounts from real-world pilot projects, and an industry-wide survey. Readers of the report will also:

• Discover the key elements that result in successful innovations
• Learn how understanding the jobs that consumers and advertisers are trying to get done in their lives and businesses can result in new growth
• Read about how the Newspaper Next Innovation Method enabled seven pilot projects at newspapers throughout the U.S. to stimulate real and positive changes
• View the results of a survey of newspaper industry leaders' opinions on the need for industry collaboration on the Internet

"We have all been inundated with article after article on the challenges confronting the newspaper industry and its imminent decline in the face of competing technologies, Wall Street pressure and changing customer needs," said Andrew B. Davis, president and executive director of API. "Newspaper Next disregards the doom-and-gloom crescendo and instead provides a strategic framework and concrete tools to transform our industry."

The Newspaper Next challenge was to find ways that the risk-averse and change-resistant newspaper industry could migrate from a centuries-old fixed and monolithic business model to a more nimble and diverse model. The report documents how newspapers must move away from a strategy that relies on just print and online products to one that combines a variety of business models, products and services into a portfolio approach to growth. Newspaper Next accomplishes this through two major components:

• A clear, practical process -- the N2 Innovation Method -- to unlock these opportunities with new products and services while minimizing cost and risk
• A strategic framework -- the N2 Game Plan -- outlining the four major areas of opportunity newspaper companies should pursue and some of the most promising possibilities in each

"Newspaper companies are on the threshold of a huge opportunity," Steve Gray, managing director of the N2 project, said. "If they move now to master the new ways that people can get and give information, they have the opportunity to meet more news and information needs for more consumers and businesses than ever before. What Newspaper Next provides is step-by-step approach."

"Can newspapers accomplish this change?" asked Innosight Managing Director Scott Anthony, who led Innosight's role in Newspaper Next. "The pilot projects using the Newspaper Innovation Method clearly prove this to be the case, but it will take internal courage and commitment to make these dramatic changes if newspapers are to survive and grow."

The report also includes the results of the Newspaper Next Collaboration Survey, the primary goal of which was to determine whether the largest companies and newspapers -- the most likely parties to undertake collaborations -- believe newspapers should join forces to pursue Internet opportunities..

More information and copies of the report can be requested via email here.

NOTE TO EDITORS: A teleconference will be held to discuss this report on Friday, September 29, 2006 at 11 a.m. EST. For more details, please click here.

About the American Press Institute
The American Press Institute (www.americanpressinstitute.org) is an independent educational center for providing skills-training and leadership development in the news industry, offering seminars and onsite programs for newspaper professionals.

About Innosight
Innosight LLC (www.innosight.com) helps companies improve their ability to generate new growth through innovation. Founded by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, author of the seminal book, "The Innovator's Dilemma," Innosight's counter-intuitive concepts, tools and hands-on approach help companies create the disruptive innovations that deliver sustained growth. The company's consulting and training services focus on idea generation, strategy development commercialization and innovation process development to enable others to master innovation and build markets for growth.

Media Contact:
Gayle Armstrong
American Press Institute
11690 Sunrise Valley Drive
Reston, VA 20191-1498
703.715.3322
garmstrong@americanpressinstitute.org