Self-Inflicted Damage, New Opportunities

Over years of consulting on strategic marketing communications issues, I have observed that one of the core reasons that organizations, business and governments suffer financial and other hardships and sometimes fail is because of self-inflicted damage. Losing market share or shareholder value or any other benchmark of success, especially revenue, is rarely as a result of a competitor taking it away but rather an organization giving it away through unwise decisions and policies. There is the case today than the mainstream news business. A couple of examples that forecast the future, I believe, for specific news organizations:

1. The Washington Post online.  If this online news organization ever had a strategic compass to chart a place in the competitive online world it was lost long ago or most likely never existed.  Today, The Washington Post online does not reflect its core market and community of the nation’s capital, and its audience numbers show the decline, as measured by Alexa.com. The newspaper’s site design has not changed much in the last six years.  Even the online news site of WTOP, a local radio station in the Washington, D.C. area, has more online audience than the Post.
2. MSNBC.  This cable news operation (when it is not airing infomercials for cleaning supplies and exercise gadgets) once was outstanding, particularly in its coverage of Katrina and the hurricane’s damage in 2005.  But that was then.  Today, MSNBC shows nine year old video of TV entertainment reporter Bill O’Reilly going obscene on camera and ignores covering world news, such as the earthquake in China or cyclone disaster in Burma.  For MSNBC, it’s all about talking about how great their own campaign coverage has been … at a time when many viewers just want the news.
3. CBS 60 Minutes.  Once the premier television news program, 60 Minutes is relegated - due to budget cutbacks - mostly to doing interviews with personality authors about their news books.