Newspapers' digital futures: USA and NZ

A reporter for The Press in Christchurch, Alex van Wel, interviewed me for a piece he wrote about ways in which newspapers in this country and the United States are adapting content to the Internet. He spent most of February on the U.S. East Coast, talking to editors and journalism educators – in some ways, the mirror image of what I’m doing here.

Among those Alex interviewed was Jay Rosen, journalism professor at New York University, and Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He also visited the Shelby Star in North Carolina, a paper struggling to attract advertisers to its digital edition.

My contribution to the article was to observe that because New Zealand doesn’t have local TV stations, many of the advertisers that dominate U.S. local TV (car dealers, home furnishing stores, appliance dealers) have stuck with newspapers here. That’s helped them remain stronger than their U.S. counterparts, at least in the short term.
Alex’s bottom line is this:

And, while people currently in the 50s and 60s may never own a [digital] tablet, younger readers – the core customers of the future – will, and they are likely to demand that fuller and richer experience. The trick is keeping the print product strong while uplifting the online offering.

In a nutshell, that's the challenge facing editors worldwide.