Newspapers: Integrate the Web! No ... wait!

As Sesame Streeters say, one of these things is not like the other.

From Scarborough Research, in its new white paper for the newspaper industry (get the links and more analysis from PaidContent.org; maddeningly, both Scarborough's white paper and the news release for it are in PDF formats):

"Newspaper Web sites are perceived as an integral and an essential part of the business strategy to grow audience. The concept of complete integration of the Web site into the company's overall business model [emphasis added] echoed within the responses from executives interviewed."

From Scott Anthony and Clark Gilbert, disruptive innovation gurus from Clay Christensen's firm, Innosight (writing in Nieman Reports):

"Succeeding with disruption requires embracing new models. ... The industry's online business model also needs some rethinking. Too many newspaper companies have replicated their print models online, relying on display advertisements and classifieds, instead of creating new business models. A recent study showed that as few as 10 percent of top print advertisers are top online advertisers in newspaper Web sites. These new online advertisers often require different ad metrics than those traditionally used in print media. Newspapers need to ask how much money their sites make from lead-generation, consumer direct marketing, and pay-per-use content. If the answer is zero, then they should not be satisfied with even 50 percent growth rates, because they are missing big growth opportunities."

I can't reconcile these two excerpts, albeit with both lifted from context of much longer reports. And I think the problem comes from Scarborough's choice of words to summarize research findings.

I gather from the report that people at newspaper sites were telling the Scarborough researchers how important it is to elevate Internet strategies in newspapers' corporate mindshare. "Integrate" really meant "remember the Internet in everything we do."

Heck, yeah!

For newspapers, the Internet should be recognized in planning and development as the global information exchange vehicle of choice for the foreseeable future, and the most likely source of both growth opportunities and competitive threats.

I believe that mindshare position should have been accomplished long before now. So if you work for a newspaper executive who does not believe that last paragraph, I'm sorry.

What scares me about the wording in the Scarborough report, chapter titles and news release -- repeatedly citing the importance of "integration of the Web site into the core newspaper business" -- is that decisionmakers at local newspapers will misinterpret it and act accordingly.

Establishing mindshare for the Internet as a growth opportunity is not the same thing as consolidating your Internet development, operations, marketing and sales arms into the corresponding printside organizations.

But I'll bet a lot of publishers who read "integration of the Web site into the core newspaper business" think the latter, not the former. And for those publishers who already folded online into offline, whether hoping for innovative outcomes or, more likely, cutting costs, I guess they could look at the Scarborough report and infer a rationale for their decisions.

I know the Innosight folks well enough to have heard them explain how tough it is for an incumbent company in a disrupted industry to itself create disruptive innovations within its core operations. I think they're right about that in general, and experience teaches me they're definitely right as applied to our beloved newspaper industry.

I guess I'd just hate to see newspaper executives read the Scarborough report (or, shudder, just the news release as an executive summary) and decide the best strategy is to blot all Internet efforts up into the mainstream of newspaper production.

It isn't impossible to innovate from within the behemoth. But I know it is very, very difficult and wastes energy, akin to paddling a boat up Niagara Falls.