“Newspapers should become the leading local Internet ad aggency, which goes against ancient newspaper instinct of not ever helping anyone who is your competitor ， ” says managing director Stephen Gray.“But the fact is that audiences have split in a million directions, so here we are in a local market and our job is to help businesses in our local market succeed.If that means we are placing ads on Google and Facebook for local businesses, so what ？That's what it takes to succeed and ad agencies have been making a living off doing that for some time.”
It's actually not a bad idea(and I've seen some newspapers do it successfully)．Except it seems to be tantamount to recommending that newspapers get out of the newspaper business.And if they become ad agencies，then newspapers really aren't newspapers anymore, are they？And then there isn't really a need for all that expensive journalism anymore, is there?
This is the problem with the idea of coming up with a “new business model” for newspapers.If you have a new business model, then you're not in the same business anymore.But you hear it discussed as if newspapers and journalism can remain fundamentally what they are, just with a new “business model” plugged in.Like a toy car that just needs new batteries to Keep running ．
Look, I'm not saying that media companies shouldn't offer marketing services—they've been doing so for decades(e.g.custom publishing)．And as brands increasingly want to provide content directly to consumers, marketing services may be a big growth area for media companies.
The problem is that once you cross the line to selling other companies' media because it's more valuable than your own, then you face a fundamental question about why you're going to the expense of producing your own.
Notes：
①instinct n ． 本能 ②tantamount adj.相等的 ③fundamentally adv.根本地
