Merrill Lynch & Co. newspaper analyst Laurent Rich Fine is optimistic about newspapers’ future – but not through print. This coincides with a New York Magazine story on newspapers’ newfound use of online videos – more successful than their TV counterparts.

"Interest in news is greater today than it's ever been," said Fine. Yet newspaper companies shouldn’t cling to profit margins and models that don’t work anymore. "There's no way to go back to where the industry has come from," she added.

So don’t waste time in nostalgic reminiscence, especially as newspapers are experimenting with online features that are proving to draw readers and money.

Fine does believe that large newspapers will continue to strive, as well as local ones. "I think there's an enormous, unsated appetite for really local news," she said. Thus the overlying uncertainty concerns midsize metropolitan dailies.

According to her, newspapers can’t operate on the same business model, can’t expect similar profit margins, and should expect their print products to lose in importance.

Coincidentally, the New York Magazine just reported on “newspapers’ Web-video portals becoming the TV-journalism destinations of choice for smart people—that is, in the 21st century, the dominant nineteenth-century journalistic institution, newspapers, might beat the dominant twentieth-century institution, TV.”

Evidently, as underlined by a recent study by the Borrell Associates, newspapers’ use of online videos is proving to be effective, and attracting big dollars. A recent and noteworthy example is The New York Times’ video obituary of famous comic Art Buchwald.

Apart from alleged superior quality, the NY Magazine also sees newspapers’ videos as being more engaging for the viewer. “This is video-journalism-on-demand years ahead of digital television: Because I elect to watch a story, then see it on a computer screen eighteen inches from my face, I focus in a way TV doesn’t require.”

The article cites other examples of successful newspaper online videos, but that’s besides the point: newspapers have the potential – and they’re doing it – to override broadcast TV in quality online video content. That may be newspapers’ single-handed most powerful weapon to revamp their financial accounts in the years to come.

Source: The Plain Dealer – New York Magazine