We live in interesting times. Our cultural addiction to content has fostered a new way of thinking about news distribution–and many have predicted the demise of the newspaper industry for the last decade or so. Lots newspapers have been in trouble for a while and it seems that, if you’re a newsprint publisher, your business outlook is bleak. And there are lots of little reasons for this.

For one, the newspaper isn’t as timely a news-breaking mechanism as the Web or a cable news station, so you can’t get the absolute latest information from a paper. For two, newspapers don’t contain consumer-selected content, like a customized Google start page or a feed-reading widget. Moreover, publishers don’t syndicate content in a near-realtime fashion as on the web.

Then there are the issues related to the creation and distribution of a paper: a relatively expensive process that requires a labor-intensive offset printing process using costly consumables and (very) specialized printing equipment. You’ve also got to deal with the challenges of distribution. Gone is the age of paperboys willing to haul 200 lbs. of paper on their back down a eight-block city route for a few dollars a day. Instead, the nominal cost for circulation of a paper has increased, while competitive pressures have forced down the cover price of each edition produced.

Finally, you have the issues of attitude: old-school mentality may be harming the appeal of newspapers to an increasingly smart news consumer. That is, news consumers want to told WHAT happened, not HOW to think about it. The role of editorial opinion in public and cultural affairs has therefore diminished, as readers now have access to near-instant FACTS about what happened, and near-instant access to DISCOURSE to formulate an opinion: cable news stations with talking heads, Internet discussion forums, and so forth. In other words, the business ain’t grampa’s town hall meeting any more. It’s a place where you don’t have to WAIT for the discourse. It’s immediate.

But the future of the local news business isn’t desperate just yet. In a future post, I’m going to talk more about the saving grace of the community news business: Hyperlocalism. This is the demand for community-oriented news that can’t be gotten anywhere  besides a local source that lives and breathes within the community it serves. It’s the antithesis of the Associated Press and the profit driver for future local news business. See you next time.