PHOENIX – As newspapers across the country continue to lose revenue, new streams of media are being rocketed to the forefront of the new media age. The internet has created a massive gulf in the way news is delivered. Newspapers used to push information, and the consumer essentially had no choice but receive it. Today, due to online media, the consumer is now pulling the information that they want to see, without having to wade through a mass of other stories.
Mark Hinojosa, current Director of New Media at the Detroit News, spoke to the JMC 425 Online Media class today, at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at ASU’s Downtown Campus.
Hinojosa spoke of current trends in online media, the future of news papers as a whole and specific news papers which may fold within the next year. “The paper down in Tucson… that’s pretty much dead, unless someone comes to the rescue,” he said.
Not all the news was bad, though. He did have some positive things to say to the students in that 4p.m. class. “You’re entering into the world of journalism at a very exciting time,” he said. “You guys have a lot of new technology that was foreign a few years ago.”
Part of his job at the Detroit News is to manage all the online media, and make it much more user friendly. “We really want to create a more tech-savy readership,” he said. “We’ve gone as far as sitting down with people and teching them was a mouse and a monitor is.”
One of the more radical ideas the Detroit News has incorporated is the idea of cutting back on home delivery. He said they had to choose between cutting back staff members, or keeping them employed, and finding other, more creative ways of eliminating certain costs. He wanted to keep the staff intact, and instead, focus on the home delivery.
“We’re still getting 35 percent of street sales, which is pretty good,” he said. “We’re down to only 3 days a week home delivery, but those days are very specififc. They account for 85 percent of our advertising revenue.”
He’s still excited about the future of online media – regardless of the poor economy. “We’re doing some crazy things, but we really want to make you [the reader] smarter and make your life easier,” he said.
For more information about Mark Hinojosa, vistit his web site at Mark Hinojosa
Also, visit The Detroit News to experience Hinojosa’s work at The Detroit News
