The transition from mere a newspaper to full-blown social news organizations (SNO) requires a significant investement in technological infrastructre. That’s not an easy bullet to bite when ad-revenues are falling and potential investors are increasingly wary of a fledgling industry. So perhaps print publishers should be looking at technology VCs, rather than the more conventional sources of capital.

After all, becoming a social news organization is more of a technological undertaking than an editorial one. After all, an SNO requires more than just taking on technical infrastructure. It also requires internalizing tech culture and making sure that you have the resources and people and over see it.

Just consider how (1) approaching readers as users so that you can (2) offer them cross platform interaction through APIs to (3) can collect behavioral data, and (4) replace your ad-sales departments with a comprehensive marketing agencies (like Vice Magazine) that can (5) help mine that user database, and then (6) use your users to target advertisers and (7) diversify their ad offerings accordingly and (7) subsequently collaborate with editorial to develop symbiotic content model.

Internalizing a tech culture is so important for a newspaper to survive because it’s technology and new media that have eaten in to readerships, ad sales, and classifieds revenue. Simply put, it’s adapt and overcome. This is more than a media revolution. It’s evolution, and if outlets don’t evolve into media entities, they will simply go extinct.

Consider, recent comments by Vanity Fair‘s editor Graydon Carter:

The Internet is partly to blame for all of this, and perhaps micro-pricing or gated content will be part of the solution. “Youthing” down a paper to attract 21-year-olds isn’t the answer: the only way you’re ever going to get the average 21-year-old to read a daily newspaper is to wait 9 years until he’s 30. My suggestion to newspapers everywhere is to give the public a reason to read them again. So here’s an idea: get on a big story with widespread public appeal, devote your best resources to it, say a quiet prayer, and swing for the fences. [emphasis my own]

Say a prayer, indeed! While original and compelling content is part of the solution (something that both Nick Denton and Tom foremski agree with), it’s only part of the solution.

Where Carter is kinda wrong is in “youthing down” a paper, and I say “kinda wrong” because papers should actually be “youthing up rather than down. You see, content devlivery is another integral part of the solution, and if newspapers are going to survive, they have to start accommodating the 30-year-olds of 5 years from now — not necessarily the 30-year-olds of 9 years from now, but definitely the 30-year-olds of 5 years from now. ‘Cause if they don’t, the 25 year-olds of today are going to get into the habit of going elsewhere for their (less authoritative) content, and we’re all going to be the worse for it.

This is why social media APIs are so much part an parcel of a symbiotic editorial model: because readers are now users, and users interact with content. They don’t just consume it. As Alan Rusbridger, the Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian, noted in a recent interview, there is a blurring between the reader and the journalist, so it’s become necessary to involve the reader more and create a community around your journalist core.

And everything from approaching your readers as user to diversifying your revenue stream and targeting advertisers through user-data is a technological undertaking. So tech VCs may not only provide newspapers with the financial resources to make the transition to an SNO, they might also provide access to a network of resources and people who can help ensure that the transition goes more smoothly.

Credit: Gina Argentina

Considering how the New York Times is coping with the the plight of the publishing industry and news media better than most, it’s not surprising to see that they might be pursuing a more symbiotic editorial model. Granted, when it comes to weathering the storm, the NYT is a lot larger in both scope and scale (size, authority, and audience) than many of its contemporaries, so it has a definite edge. But its continual efforts to reinvent its content model are plain.

In addition to everything it’s done with blogs and Times Wire (a real time news feed), it seems to be pursuing all three facets of a symbiotic editorial model. Most recently, not only has it started thinking of its readers as users, but it’s implemented a diversified ad-revenue model to go with it. As Adage reports:

[...] Derek Gottfrid, senior software architect and product technologist at The New York Times, said the company has quit calling online readers “readers,” instead referring to them as users. [...]

“When we think traditionally about creation [at The New York Times] it was limited to people within the Times,” [said Derek Gottfrid, senior software architect and product technologist at NYT]. “We created for readers … [for whom] it was a passive experience. But as we moved online, we wanted to move people from readers to users.”

This shift to users-instead-of-readers is an important part of the transition toward becoming a social news organization. As Alan Rusbridger, the Editor-in-Chief of an equally auhtoritative newspaper, The Guardian, noted in a recent interview, there is a blurring between the reader and the journalist, so it’s become necessary to involve the reader more and create a community around your journalist core.

But more importantly, the NYT’s shift toward users-instead-of-readers is also seen in its integration of apps and what those apps might mean for its revenues. Overall, it looks to be evolving into a veritable social news organization. As the AdAge article elaborates, to coax people from being readers to being users:

[...] the company has opened up its [APIs]. The Times has taken content and data — both internally created material, such as movie reviews and best-seller lists, and external data, such as campaign-finance and legislative information — and opened up the APIs so that outside developers can create tools for its consumers.

Among the results: Instantwatcher mashes up the “Watch Instantly” program from online movie-rental service Netflix with Times movie critics’ top choices. Another app, called NYTExplorer, provides an alternative article-search function to the one that exists on NYTimes.com.

These apps demonstrate how the NYT is diversifying their ad-revenue model. The “Watch Instantly” app, for instance, seems a lot like an affiliate marketing tactic — i.e. a performance-based referral marketing model.

Purusing this kind of ad-revenue diversification and the technology to implement it is 2/3 of the symbiotic editorial equation. The reaming third is integrating a full-sevice marketing agency into your organization (as Vice Magazine has), and as the Nieman Journalism Lab recently documented, the NYT has an advertising R&D lab that seems poised to evolve into just such a full-sevice marketing agency.

Credit: OliverAlex

First, a publication provides two products: content and a medium. The content is for your readers/consumers/users, and the medium is for advertisers looking to reach them.

Your editorial becomes symbiotic when you cross-sell those two products, and you do that by strategically develop content items that complement the offers of advertisers that you proactively scouted. But it’s not about churning out biased content that will help advertisers sell their products. Rather, it’s about having an editorial format, knowing your readers demographics, and understanding what kind of consumers they also happen to be. So a big part of it is making sure that your advertisers actually have product offers that appeal to your readers’ consumer interests.

This, of course, raises the question of how you figure that out. It’s one thing to replace your ad-sales department with a fully integrated marketing agency, like Vice Magazine does, but it’s quite another to analyze your readers in a non-intrusive, non-obstructive way. And that’s where understanding them as users comes in.

Credit: Alex Glickman

But then there’s the technology side to treating your readers as users. Basically, if you’re going to provider your readers with the content that they each find most relevant, you’re going to have to collect data on them. And you do that by becoming a social news organization (or just plain-ol’ social content organization).

By leveraging popular APIs so that your readers can seamlessly aggregate, syndicate, and share your content, you achieve so much more than just increasing page views. You also gain insight into their behavior as users and consumers. Integrated with personal profiles/logins within your portal, this allows you target them with the most relevant content.

More importantly, it allows you to target them with offers that actually appeal to them. And when you do that, you not only increase conversions and value of your ad-space; you also build trust with your readers by demonstrating that you understand and appreciate their interests (as consumers and users). In a word, you use your users to target advertisers.

Of course, doing so effectively require that you (1) have a fully integrated marketing agency in-house (like Vice Magazine) that can (2) help you understand your users, (3) collaborate with your editorial to develop symbiotic content, (4) scout appropriate advertisers, and (5) diversify your ad-revenue stream so that you’re not relying on a single, limited model that might coax you into compromising user-experience. In other words, your in-house marketing agency has to market your editorial product first, and your advertisers second.