But aside from a continued push overseas, Asia Today also represents the Journal’s continuing push into video as part of its “WSJ Everywhere” mission. A couple of weeks ago, Raju Narisetti, managing editor for The Wall Street Journal’s Digital Network, told me that despite the newspaper’s big jump into video — more than four hours of live video per day, some 1,500 videos per month, accessible across 18 digital platforms like iPads, iPhones, desktops, YouTube, Apple TV, etc. — there’s still a hunger for more.
One of the futures of newspapers is producing online TV.
I mentioned video to a local newspaper editor I talked with recently and he rolled his eyes. “I can’t give video away,” he said. What he meant is that, like many newspapers, he had invested resources in producing video stories that he had put on his website and gotten nothing worth the effort in return.
I’m not surprised. That’s not the type of video he should have invested in.
Instead, he should be doing live-stream news broadcasts. Instead of putting up dozens of static TV-style news pieces that try (and usually fail) to compete for attention against many hundreds of thousands of YouTube and other online video pieces, he should be using those resources to stream news programs that compete against the just 2 or 3 local TV broadcasters in his market. The payback will be much, much more, backed by the key resource that newspaper newsrooms have always had and still have (despite layoffs) over TV newsrooms — relatively lots of reporters.
By this point into the Internet era, I would have expected TV broadcasters to be doing this all over their websites. But they aren’t. Even the big guys, like CNN do only meager live-stream programming and usually only in association with their local cable carrier. If they did more, they would lose those cable carriers and the carrying fees they pay. Local TV stations, smaller players for sure, are pretty much in the same boat. Which leaves this a wide open playing field for newspapers. I don’t know why more aren’t pursuing it.
