While the massive tabloid-style paper is in itself archaic, from the reader's perspective, it's sometimes hard to break into the iron-clad mentality that has engendered this flimsy stock, indelible ink and cluttered space.
As a generation, we've grown to love the new style in which information is presented clearly. Blogs, as one example, are more readable, mostly because you can scroll and scan headlines, with information orderly and legible. It's searchable, friendly, organised and specific.
The newspaper comes from an entirely different era. It's reminiscent of smoky editorial newsrooms, tweed-clad journalists and an old-boys club of snobbery and intellectualism.
Old publishing mentality
We still want the news and the insights, but let's not lose sight of the fact that the old publishing mentality bars access to the general reader, whose sole means of communicating their thoughts and opinions has been through a "letter to the editor".
In this day and age, readers want to click and comment, should the urge grip them. They also want a response. And while the print iteration might still be surviving, other channels can give the reader a cross-pollination of contact options. Assuming you provide them.
Print is largely going wrong because its publishers have got stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide, perhaps desperately clinging to an era that's definitely past. But, it's not a simple case of style, attitude and formality that's adrift in a new world of personal, interactive reporting.
Publications have realised that they cannot afford not to be visible on the World Wide Web. But their presence is often nothing short of laughable. Those that have lagged in developing a well-conceived online presence have already disappeared, their hard copy effort not able to sustain them.
Those that have paid lip service to the reality are likely to head the same way. The new readers are happy to mix their media, going effortlessly from print to online and back again. We still subscribe to our favourite magazines and might still pick the odd daily or weekly news read from time to time.
But where the two fail to meet successfully is where the reader loses interest. A publication's greatest asset is, or should be, its editor and advertising prowess. The modern reader spends all day online, with access to the world through his or her browser. The natural means to access a traditional print brand is to go to its website.
This can either tune me into, or out of, bothering with the product as a whole. If the editor listed on your website resigned six months ago, I'm going to suppose that the paper went with him or her.
If I can't find a single telephone contact number on your website, I'm going to take my advertising elsewhere. The modern reader is not interested in completing an online form when wanting to spend money with you. This is a marketing tactic employed by companies who want to know who their online readers are - as a publication, you should know your demographic and not use your news source to obtain reader details. This is what sells your "paper" after all.
If you advertise your paper through a catchy headline on a street pole billboard, I want to be able to search for it online. Compelling me to go and buy your paper to get to the story is not very convincing in a world where exclusivity is just about dead and news spreads faster than the latest South American viral outbreak. I'll find that story form another source, better presented, more up-to-date and with reader input and opinion - online.
If your home page simply lists a snapshot of your paper's stories, you're also losing the game. Why then bother with daily newspapers in the first place? Your reader can access the news from his or her PC, but might be inspired to buy the print edition if it offers something a little more absorbing than the headlines already accessible on your website.
The very mentality that begot print needs to adapt or lose out, which it will if it concedes that print still comes first and the web story a mere afterthought slapped somewhere online.
Your landing page has become your reader's primary access and contact point. Unfortunately, the paper-based story will have to take second place. And the best print can hope for is that it understands this reality a lot sooner than its advertisers.
