Marketing guru Seth Godin turns his sights once more on journalism and on what will happen when (he says when, not if) the newspaper is gone.

He thinks that the content of the paper is easily replaced online, that nothing will be missed in such areas as sports, weather, book and theatre reviews.

What's left is local news, national and investigative coverage, which he claims represents a very small percentage of a newspaper's overall costs. He puts the cost at two per cent. Strangely he doesn't identify international coverage or wires as part of the package.

I've seen criticism of his post's economic analysis already, but I think he's not that far off in terms of how local reporting, investigative work and national wires and services represent a smallish percentage of a newspaper's (as opposed to a newsroom's) overall costs. I wouldn't say two per cent is right, but I wouldn't put it in double figures.

Godin notes that online there isn't the same degree of journalistic cross-subsidy that exists in print.

"If we really care about the investigation and the analysis, we'll pay for it one way or another. Maybe it's a public good, a non profit function. Maybe a philanthropist puts up money for prizes. Maybe the Woodward and Bernstein of 2017 make so much money from breaking a story that it leads to a whole new generation of journalists."

On the other hand: "The magic of the web, the reason you should care about this even if you don't care about the news, is that when the marginal cost of something is free and when the time to deliver it is zero, the economics become magical."

Of course the advertising piece of the puzzle is not nearly magical. It remains disproportionately meagre compared to conventional advertising in terms of the value it places on a consumer. Something magical needs to take place in that realm soon.

Seth Godin has advice for underemployed real-estate agents: Start a newspaper. That's right.

His formula: Assuming six people are in your office, have them each do two interviews a day. Get 20 households to subscribe to your free paper (which is actually an online newsletter). Twice a week send it to them. Within a week it ought to have two dozen articles and 500 subscribers and very soon, if it's any good, it'll have the entire area subscribing. It'll own its zip (postal) code, which Godin asserts is an important achievement.

Godin doesn't take it any further. I presume there's the capacity to sustain it, to fetch some advertising to pay for the effort, and no one else able to do it. Otherwise the "gift" he suggests is yours to give is exactly that.

Marketing and brand guru Seth Godin obviously had had enough when he saw Jennifer Aniston on today's Sunday New York Times Magazine cover (note: it was its annual screens edition).
He took to blogging about the wasted currency and equity of the Times and how it might have positioned itself for a vastly stronger future.
In short, his points:
1. Use the influence and brand to let others spread their content.
2. Leverage the op-ed page and spread important ideas.
3. Build a permission asset.
4. Keep score (with lists).
5. Stringers.
6. New platforms for advertisers.
He concludes: "I guess it's about the difference between: senior management playing defense, supporting and protecting the status quo and avoiding offending the elders upstairs vs.
using existing momentum and clout to build assets for the next business."