Of course neither Google nor YouTube went into business to become a large media concern but that is what they keenly decided they had become and are now leveraging their ability to deliver a tightly-focused audience to people who want to pay to be in front of them. Some think Google could have bought the New York Times for that much money - maybe - but that is not the online audience that their advertisers want.

Newspapers have mountains of precious data but need to develop better structures to allow that rich information to be accessed by users.

I recently developed a video newspaper prototype for a client and made sure to show them five ways that their videocasts could be monetized off the same asset. They hadn't planned much beyond selling pre-roll spots against the videos. Newspaper web sites get a lot of traffic but they are not sticky. Video help makes them sticky but that is only the start.
The key is to develop these new story tools to make sites more satisfying for the user. When people are satisfied - they linger and return frequently and, no surprise, sponsors like that.

Today I was interviewed by a business reporter from Zurich about the future of video and podcasts and she asked for data and research to divine the future. That's a reasonable request and certainly there is a lot of measuring being done except that deals like YouTube/Google kind of suddenly upset the best projections and models. e.g. Last December I was asked to write a multimedia article for the World Editors Forum for the "Trends in Newsrooms" book and predicted that 'Video' would be the word of the year. Right, so far - but I didn't know about YouTube then. The lesson is to be constantly getting familiar with new story tools and remain nimble so you can develop rapidly. That way you are ready to adjust quickly to your audience. This approach requires a different style of leadership and a new newsroom culture for many.

The results and opportunities during this research and development era are very promising but if you are waiting for the research to come in before you move - you may be too late. Developing the road to the future has to be funded, run by smart multi-media savvy executives and some of these experiments have to be allowed to fail so that we can learn something useful about what will work for our communities. Now is the perfect time for smart owners to take risks, invest in the retooling for the future and rely less on other people's benchmarks to divine your course. Your colleague's data are not your customers.

In other words what works for a national daily is not what will likely work for you. We are in a disruptive time for established mass media. Call it the rise of the niche verticals but developing niche expertise will be critical. From the experience I have gathered I would say that not many news execs are savvy yet as to the many ways these new media story assets can be produced, packaged and monetized.

The costs now are so low to produce and distribute on-demand content (Whether video, audio or PDF) the real investment for newspapers is to to reengineer their operations, retrain and redeploy their teams to gain the expertise in telling stories across many platforms. The card in hand for newspapers is to be able to apply their story telling expertise to these new forms - and soon.

Robb Montgomery is a newspaper consultant and the executive director for the non-profit — VisualEditors.com.