Timetravelling to save newspapers

"Journeyman" a little-watched, much rumored to be axed NBC show had an interesting episode last night. Dan Vassar, the time traveler/newspaper reporter gets called into the office on Christmas Eve and gets told he was being laid off along with 25 percent of the editorial staff as part of cutbacks ordered by the publisher.
So what does he do? He goes back in time to 1979. Finds out the publisher that ordered the cutbacks sat and watched as his dad died of a heart attack so he could take control of the paper. An eager young copyperson provided an alibi for the son in exchange for a promotion to reporter, and didn't seem to mind the rumors that she "caused" the heart attack while in the saddle with the old man.
Anyway, she comes clean. Dan threatens to spill the beans unless the job cuts are called off and everyone goes off and has a Merry Christmas.

But it did make me wonder. If I could go back in time and "save" newspapers, what would I do and when would I do it? Somehow I think the Internet era is too late and the invention of television is too early. Any thoughts?

 

I did go back in time, I told Belo that CatCue was the wave of the future.
Then I laughed and laughed and went home.

 

Well, I suppose you could go back and shoot Al Gore. Then he couldn't invent the Internet.

 

You could go back in time and hypnotize corporate bigwigs and stockholders that in the future a 10-15 percent profit margin is good. That just because the paper's profits are down from a 20+ percent profit margin, doesn't mean that layoffs and mergers are needed.
You can also go back and hypnotize newspaper publishers to start exploring new ways to take advantage of a forthcoming technology called the internet.

 

Or you could go back in time and make the acquaintance of this man named William D. Singleton when he's still a young chap in school.

There, you can steer him into a different field, say fast-food service, predatory lending, crab fishing, money laundering, white slavery or one of a thousand other wholesome pursuits that don't include owning and running newspapers into the ground.

 

If most newspapers didn't ignore the Internet until the last couple years, we wouldn't have the problems we have now... It wouldn't have been too hard, all they would have had to do is copy what ESPN and Sportsline were doing all along...

It's really that simple.

 

Maybe I'd go back in time and convince school teachers to stop graduating idiots and illiterates, thus lowering the number citizens that avoid being informed.

 

Probably inheritance taxes were what made local families sell their newspapers to chains, and everything became more bottom-line. But I'm not sure I'd want to save newspapers by repealing "the death tax."

 

It seems there are an inordinate number of Journeymans in the can. I told a guy I work with that because of their time travel they knew there was going to be a writers strike and wrote a whole season.

 

Or they're just recycling quantum leap episodes.

 

Actually, now that I think about it, I'd rig that Pew study that came out a few years back that showed the quality of a newspaper didn't determine whether people read it or not. I'd change it to have it read the quality of a paper expands the number of people who read it exponentially.