Where do we go from here?

We asked some of the news industry's leading thinkers to identify the most pressing issues we will face in the coming year. Here are their thoughts:

FROM Earl J. Wilkinson
Executive Director
International Newspaper Marketing Association

"The fundamental question for the newspaper industry is whether owners, publishers, and corporate managers can marshal the vision to separate issues that require long-term thinking, commitment, and strategic management from issues that require short-term industrial management.

"Some issues require much greater industry-level discussions and, perhaps, industry-level actions through national press associations. Given current trends, are we prepared for newspapers to be positioned as a niche medium in local markets? To what degree are newspapers about to become The Baby Boom Industry, with older, wealthier demographics to the near exclusion of young people (and what will this mean for future circulation)? What are the defining metrics of success for newspapers - circulation, lineage, and profits this quarter, or market share, customer share, and profits over time? What combination of moves, nationally and locally, can newspapers make to assure recruitment advertising stays within our industry? To what degree can the consumer pay a larger share of product costs, and what is the value to advertisers of a paid customer versus a non-paid customer?

"Other issues are more cultural. How can we engage the market more through entrepreneurialism and risk-taking and less through money management and legal means? When will operational costs within a newspaper be significantly shifted to marketing and communications? When will communications with customers - readers and advertisers - become uniform and centralized? How quickly will we see capital expenditures migrate from print processes aimed at geographies to multimedia communications aimed at individuals … wherever they are? How can we entice potential readers (markets for advertisers) with products and services outside the core print product?

"We are masters at industrial management. If growth is our goal, the question becomes how we infuse market-based management - including entrepreneurialism and risk-taking - into the everyday conduct of newspapers. Our ability to separate long-term issues, deal with them accordingly, and fund them will determine our industry's success in the next decade."

FROM Leo Bogart
Former Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau
Author, Strategy in Advertising

"The biggest challenge newspapers will face in 2002 is to avoid preoccupation with the short-term decline of advertising in the present downturn of the business cycle to the point where they neglect to invest in attacking their fundamental, ongoing problem -- the decline of the regular reading habit among young people. Cutting back and trivializing the editorial product may be easy outs, but they are suicidal strategies. Better newspapers are the only way to a better bottom line."

FROM Kerry J. Northrup
Executive Director, Centre for Advanced News Operations
IFRA

"A flurry of editorial convergence activities will erupt worldwide around third or fourth quarters 2002 and extending well into 2003. It will be unleashed by an easing of cross-ownership rules first in the USA, spurring an intense period of selling and buying newspaper and broadcast properties in this country as the major groups try to create combines in significant metropolitan areas.

"The American media will initially concentrate on maximizing the financial gains of editorial convergence. In so doing, they will provide the case studies and ROI justifications for an increased effort at convergence in other countries. The UK and Australia will pick up the trend quickly -- actually, unless the UK beats the U.S. to the starting line as its politicians seem to be doing. Compared to the U.S., though, convergence projects in these other countries will give greater priority to organizational and journalistic aspects of the process. Then Scandinavian media will step in to revolutionize and streamline the technology of convergence, which advancements will eventually work their way back to the USA."