However, I'd like to pick out one IHT reader who I think is representative of a large number of readers, but who, unfortunately for the IHT advertising department (except those selling the value of IHT readers as opinion formers) isn't worth much to them (because he isn't a senior exec. in a large European or Asian business, with corporate purchasing decision making power).
(How the IHT needs to get out of that trap laid so well by the FT and also used by the WSJ, is a discussion for another day.)
So let's meet our reader, and find out why he reads the IHT.
His views are especially interesting because he works on the Internet edge of media, and is extremely wired in the supposedly post-print age.
Graham Holliday works for www.fromthefrontline.co.uk in London.
Graham lived abroad for almost 15 years. He used to subscribe to the Guardian Weekly when he lived in Korea and later in Vietnam. Then Vietnam got the Internet and he didn't seem to need the paper.
However, to quote him, "I've been working heavily in journalism/blogs/social media for 7 years or more now and I realised the Internet was making me stupid as the way I use it to find out information is very niche. I miss too much. So, I decided to re-subscribe to a daily paper [the IHT]. First time I've had a daily since 1987 and it's great."
Graham outlined his reasons at his site Noodlepie, which I'm going to quote from (NB date - June 2008!)
The Internet was making Graham an expert in some areas and IGNORANT (my emphasis) in others.
The other (and IHT reader surveys show this), is that we watch very little TV.
What good print does, as you scan the page or turn the page to go to the areas you want to be an expert in or are interested in, is draw your eye to things you're not an expert in or did not know about but do not want to be ignorant of: something I once coined as the Broader Business Perspective, but lets just call it for now, the big picture.
The Internet has not yet found a way to deliver that.
So that's the good news for print, from where Graham is standing as an Internet media expert.
The bad news is that he's not so sure newspapers will be around for much more than a decade, not because of its inherent faults, but because, and I quote him: "There's no money in news."
However he adds one VERY important caveat to that: "Not the way things are currently modelled anyhow."
When we hear talk of dinosaurs and me banging on about Newspaper 2.0, it is exactly this that I am talking about.
Newspapers are stuck at Newspaper 1.0, with onerous legacy costs of failed imagination when it comes to what type of content they offer, how and when.
Newspaper 2.0 can overcome that.
I hope it's going to be the NYT/IHT who gets it first.
If not, and they hang on to Newspaper 1.0 because it still brings in juicy revenues and they haven't ever done anything different, they will go under, sooner or later. Just like Lehman Brothers, Merrill and all the rest who didn't realise the game had changed.
And someone else will develop Newspaper 2.0 and it's going to be very much a question of (committed and aggressive) first-mover advantage.
P.S Thanks to Graham for his fond IHT Flickr group and for taking the time to write to me.
A PLACE IN THE AUVERGNE
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Vacation /Business Trip Furnished Apartment in Paris
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