Toledo Talk - Things newspapers can do to remain viable

From jr's workspace

Things newspapers can do to remain viable

Nov 13, 2007 Recovering Journalist blog posting titled Building a Bridge to the Future.

Details about each item below are in the Recovering Journalist blog posting.

Think Outside the Box.
Engage Your Audience.
Don't Just Create Content—Aggregate It.
Embrace the Competition.
Get Local. Very Local. Hyperlocal.
Stop Covering the World.
Let Your Stars Shine.
Video: It's Not Just for TV Stations Anymore.
Use the Technology.
Dig Into the Data Mines.
Put Your Sales Force to Work.
Educate Advertisers.
Ready, Aim, Fire.
Stop Pasting Display Ads Onto the Screen (Or Worse, Popping Them Up).
Explore New Revenue Streams.
Experiment and Innovate As If Your Life Depended on It.
Kill the Print Edition. Seriously.
Get Some Guts.

Building a Bridge to the Future is part three in an interesting three-part series about improving the newspaper business.

Part One : The Chasm
Part Two : Digging an Even Deeper Hole

The author of the Recovering Journalist blog, Mark Potts, was CEO of the short-lived hyperlocal community journalism project called Backfence, which went belly-up back in the summer. About Potts :

How do I know about this stuff? After 15 years as a journalist for The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and other major news organizations, I cofounded WashingtonPost.com, was on the founding team of the @Home Network and, most recently, created and cofounded Backfence.com, the leading hyperlocal user-generated citizens media company.

Nov 13-15, 2007 postings at a different blog titled Imagining the Future of Newspapers

created by jr on Nov 13, 2007 at 07:15:47 pm
updated by jr on Nov 15, 2007 at 03:15:55 pm Comments: 4

print source versions backlinks

tags: media

Comments ... #

I like this one: Get Local. Very Local. Hyperlocal.

News and sports.

posted by billy on Nov 15, 2007 at 03:32:42 pm     #

Interesting read, though I suspect that many more newspapers - slow to change and run by newspaper people, not by techno-savvy, foward-looking visionaries - will wither and die in the next 10-15 years.

And to replace them will be all sorts of as-yet evolving media, not the least of which are individual bloggers.

At any rate, I enjoyed the thoughtful article, and it opened my eyes to a few dimensions of the new media to which I had not given much thought.

posted by historymike on Nov 16, 2007 at 08:52:24 am     #

More thoughts and ideas from others are gathered in this article page, assembled earlier this year.

posted by jr on Nov 16, 2007 at 09:06:45 am     #

HistoryMike I disagree with your assessment of newspapers.

While newspaper readership is declining they still bring in more ad revenue than any other media. INCLUDING TV AND RADIO.

This is because newspapers have always been trying to use new technology.

In the 1940's a St. Louis paper tried making a fax machine like thing so people could get the paper at home without a deliver boy.

The 1970's began the move from typewriters to computers eliminated the need for typesetters and proofreaders.

The 1990's brought the internet and the move from print to electronic papers.

Trust me if there's any group who's looking for the next way to use technology in order to boost revenues it's the newspaper industry.

Because the industry has a product (news stories) that change every single day they're constantly looking to change with it.

In 1982 Ganette tried something. A paper designed like a TV. With colors, graphics, short stories, and a national audience. Newspaper editors and reporters called it "fast food journalism" and denounced that the public would ever fall for it. Now today the USA Today is the largest read newspaper in the country and every other newspaper has been trying to copy it ever since.

posted by MikeyA on Nov 18, 2007 at 11:15:16 am     #