DESIGN is the new BLOG!

So what do people think of this...
www.brasstacksdesign.com/howtosellmorenewspapers.htm
Makes some good points, also makes some terrible points.

 

I sincerely doubt Waterbury is the exception to the rule, particularly if you sub major conference football/hoops for pro sports as needed.

And Dyepack is going to shit a baby elephant when he reads this article.

 

Too many papers do look and feel the same, and too many are shedding readers (who are reading our stuff on our Web site). But there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer in using Paris Hilton pictures to jazz up an A1 centerpiece. The sky may be adjusting but it isn't falling.

 

I think the article was great, though I don't know if all of the redesigns were great. The Californian was almost hard to read b/c of all the color. He was right on about shorter being better, and I love the looks of the papers with the multiple entry points in the mast and on side and bottom rails. We are too afraid of a few hundred complaints over something that could in the long run make the paper more successful and more enjoyable.

 

I like how he hailed Maxim magazine as the model for all other magazines.
You see Maxim doesn't run stories. Just a collection of briefs arranged under pictures of scantily clad women. I don't know this because I don't think I have ever read Maxim and I can say with a great degree of certainity that I have never purchased one.
I read the New Yorker, especially the investigative work by Seymour Hersh, but this guy says no one reads that stuff anyway and everyone should drop it.
I just don't know what to say about that.
But I'll add that instead of running a cutout of Paris Hilton on the front, how about newspapers start whoring themselves out to smart people who like and want to read.

 

Very interesting story, especially because our paper has received copies of the Bakersfield paper. I had heard they went all color and I am interested as to whether that is paying off for them.

In many markets, people don't subscribe because we can't get the paper on their doorstep before they leave for work. In some cases, they'd subscribe if we could get the paper to them just 15 minutes sooner. An editor committed to selling more newspapers would be motivated to cut 15 minutes off his deadline. Would the editorial product be compromised? Maybe. Would this trade-off be worth it? I guess that depends upon how much you want to sell more newspapers. The only problem I had with the story was this paragraph. Last I checked the reason the paper wasn't on the customer's doorstep on time had nothing to do with whether we got out at 11 or 10:30 or 10, it has to do with no one wants to be a carrier anymore. I don't blame them, at my old shop it seemed our carriers were either meth addicts or really, really old people. The fact was they didn't deliver papers on time.
At my present shop we are having problems finding carriers and why wouldn't we when we pay like $6 an hour with no money for gas. Who wants to work from 2-6 a.m. for that kind of money? Not me.
So, instead of trying to force editorial to get out earlier, maybe this redesign guy should figure out a way for carriers to get paid more or to find carriers that will show up on time and deliver papers on time.

 

DyePack is really slipping. I figured he would have posted 8 times by now...

 

This is the funniest thing I have seen all day. If I am better paid then my readers, then this is why we aren't selling newspapers, because they can't afford them, because God knows I can't.

 

Good point, I missed that one. If I didn't get my newspaper for free, I wouldn't get it.

 

I think jouranlists was too broad of a term there. What he meant to say was penny pinching pricks upper level editors instead of journalists.

 

Hi.

"No time to read" is people lying to survey takers when they mean "nothing interesting to read." People seem to be finding time to read on the web, books and so on. Just not newspapers. Anyone not getting that shouldn't be out there peddling their "consultant" geniusness.

Snake oil salesman, IMO.

 

I don't support all of his ideas, or even a lot of them. But this section ought to be engraved on the desks of publishers and editors everywhere.