Newspapers should be more like Amazon

Implicit in the mastery of the long-tail strategy is the idea that a big company can serve each customer with precision, in part by deploying sophisticated data analytics and in part by using technology to efficiently deliver good service to small numbers of people. That is an anathema to some in “mass media,” but news outlets need to embrace that approach if they’re to serve readers with enough value to regain relevance. For instance, when a newspaper writes a series about local schools, it provides the same information to every reader. When a newspaper creates a searchable database about the quality of local schools, and gives each reader the ability to select the variables they care most about, then the paper is tailoring the reporting to each reader. One database creates a thousand stories.

This is not to say that a news outlet’s strategy should be to offer everything to everyone, but there are no doubt opportunities for the Post to offer more news and information to more people—for example, by becoming the world’s leading news outlet covering policy and politics, not only in Washington but in capitals around the world, and covering more topics more deeply. Sure, that would be expensive, but the relevant market for Internet companies today is the world’s population, not just the U.S.’s—why not the same for news outlets? Newspapers, like TV stations, never got away from the artificial boundaries drawn by their distribution technologies: for newspapers, the reach of their physical distribution; for broadcasters, the reach of their antennas. Now they can imagine distribution patterns focused on topic or audience rather than just geography.