Currently the Cowles Professor of Media Management and Economics for the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, he is a key member of the GOLD project team. We tabulated the responses and identified a number of themes that came up over and over again. The concept was to conduct an analysis of the socioeconomic trends in which diversity plays a central role, constructing case studies that use real markets and publicly available data to seek out profit-potent scenarios. Those test cases were taken to industry focus groups and newspapers to stimulate discussion and generate the dialogue necessary to create the toolkit and training materials. The interview process was key to getting information about real concerns plaguing the people who run newspapers.
Margins are at significant risk of decline from classified-ad competition and other threats.
Fundamental market changes are underway and recognized but are not being seriously addressed. Individually, niche competitors don't matter. Collectively, they do. The challenge must be to find replacement revenue streams. More than 40 themes also were mentioned frequently as needing attention, about a dozen almost universally.