How would you save this industry?

[DemoChristian]

If you had the power, what would you do with newspapers to get things back headed in the right direction?
I think I'd start by being willing to pay the money to get and keep good people. It might cut into the profit margin, but it would also keep/increase demand, which would pay off in the long run.
I would put everything online and hire people for online layout. I'd even be willing to go exclusively online if that was necessary. There are some older people who will never go for it, but it's clear the Internet is here to stay and we need to follow the example of the tobacco companies and hook 'em while they're young to have sustained success.
I would explain to investors that the profit margins of the past are probably never coming back, but there is no reason we can't continue to make a healthy return by being the top news source for our coverage area.

 

[Rex Harrison]

I wouldn't save this industry. This industry is ****ed up. Maybe letting the industry collapse and starting over would save journalism. But that's too radical/stupid an idea to really work. I know ...

BLOGS!

 

[steveu]

Have the paper chains buy the newsprint companies.

(Okay, okay, that was half meant as a joke, but considering we've been through 1,000 different solutions would this be feasible?)

 

[Pulitzer Wannabe]

Newspapers owned by non-profits. It's really the only solution.

In the short-term from strictly a sports standpoint, and nobody's going to want to hear this, but really localize the crap out of everything. Newspapers are already doing this - well, they think they're doing this. But most of them suck at it. They think that means put five high school volleyball matches on the cover every night and call it a day. That's a lame, cheap, easy way to "localize." Localize issues. Keep up with guys who played at the local high school or local university once they've moved onto the next level. If Joe Fastball is now a middle reliever with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, whenever the Rays come through Metro Stadium two hours away, get your ass there and write a feature about him the first day of the series.

Work to plan compelling local stories on your front almost every single day. Always strive to go deeper. There are way too many hacks in this business who show up to press conference and "availibility" and interview the high school coach after the game and call it a night. Unacceptable. Too many hacks treat it like a hobby. Demand more.

 

[Monday Morning Sportswriter]

Have the paper chains buy the newsprint companies.

(Okay, okay, that was half meant as a joke, but considering we've been through 1,000 different solutions would this be feasible?)

Well, Singleton's money man owned a paper company. That hasn't really seemed to help.

 

[BigSleeper]

Newspapers owned by non-profits. It's really the only solution.

Either that or have a model with a more reasonable profit margin of 5-10 percent. That's still more than most businesses will ever see.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Can't be done.

 

[Wendell Gee]

Simply put, I'd stop trying to be something I'm not. Instead of trying to be more like the Internet and TV with audio and video, go back to focusing on the printed word. Newspapers survived TV because they offered something TV couldn't - depth. TV gave you a 30-second clip showing what happened. A newspaper could go into depth explaining what happened and why it happened. Now it's "keep it short and try to get some audio or video to go with it." Print isn't going to beat TV and the Internet at their own game. It needs to stick with what it does best. It can survive doing that.

 

[captzulu]

Newspapers survived TV because they offered something TV couldn't - depth. TV gave you a 30-second clip showing what happened. A newspaper could go into depth explaining what happened and why it happened.

But what can print offer that the Internet can't? That's what makes competition from the Internet different from competition from radio and TV.

If I had the power, I would just let the current crop of newspapers die and start anew. That way, you are not constrained by or beholden to any expectations of the past, both in terms of business and editorial practice. Business-wise, you're not beholden to past expectations of 20-30% profits. On the editorial side, you're not constrained by the "this is how we always did it" mentality. You'll not feel compelled to dedicate resources to running every MLB boxscore simply b/c that's what you've always done. Your would not be held back by the mentality that your print product is always the more important product, or that your print and online products are in conflict/competition with each other rather than complements to each other.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Newspapers owned by non-profits. It's really the only solution.

In the short-term from strictly a sports standpoint, and nobody's going to want to hear this, but really localize the crap out of everything. Newspapers are already doing this - well, they think they're doing this. But most of them suck at it. They think that means put five high school volleyball matches on the cover every night and call it a day. That's a lame, cheap, easy way to "localize." Localize issues. Keep up with guys who played at the local high school or local university once they've moved onto the next level. If Joe Fastball is now a middle reliever with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, whenever the Rays come through Metro Stadium two hours away, get your ass there and write a feature about him the first day of the series.

Work to plan compelling local stories on your front almost every single day. Always strive to go deeper. There are way too many hacks in this business who show up to press conference and "availibility" and interview the high school coach after the game and call it a night. Unacceptable. Too many hacks treat it like a hobby. Demand more.

And leave the national to ESPN?

The "national" is why many of us are in the business.

 

[forever_town]

The basics: Enforce independence of editorial from advertising. Pay people competitive wages and good enough benefits where they don't have to look elsewhere.

The next steps: Encourage writers to -- and train them to, if necessary -- look more deeply into issues. Have us all take writing classes or do something so that we can create more compelling copy. Stop pandering to the lowest common denominator. That means no more Slutney stories, folks. Integrate the print side with the Web site. If you're a weekly, post your big story the day it happens whether it's your publication day or not. If you're a daily, that still means get your story up pretty much as soon as it's written. Realize that doing less with more is the real reality and that doing more with less is an impossible fantasy.

The deep cuts: Learn some customer service skills. Yes, that means coming up with less snark when parents whine about why little Susie isn't in the paper when she works just as hard as Johnny Halfback. Granted, many parents aren't reasonable. But neither are people like Lean Dean.

MO, YMMV

 

[Pulitzer Wannabe]

Newspapers owned by non-profits. It's really the only solution.

In the short-term from strictly a sports standpoint, and nobody's going to want to hear this, but really localize the crap out of everything. Newspapers are already doing this - well, they think they're doing this. But most of them suck at it. They think that means put five high school volleyball matches on the cover every night and call it a day. That's a lame, cheap, easy way to "localize." Localize issues. Keep up with guys who played at the local high school or local university once they've moved onto the next level. If Joe Fastball is now a middle reliever with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, whenever the Rays come through Metro Stadium two hours away, get your ass there and write a feature about him the first day of the series.

Work to plan compelling local stories on your front almost every single day. Always strive to go deeper. There are way too many hacks in this business who show up to press conference and "availibility" and interview the high school coach after the game and call it a night. Unacceptable. Too many hacks treat it like a hobby. Demand more.

And leave the national to ESPN?

The "national" is why many of us are in the business.

I'm not saying this applies to the New York Times. And, yes, it is why many of us got in. But it's just not the best thing for small and mid-sized papers at this point. There was a good article about this, applied to news side, in one of the Nieman Report Magazine issues recently - how disenchanting it is to get into this business high on the hopes of covering the White House and the CIA and national stories, and find out that, even at bigger papers, you're doing school board meetings and street and sanitation issues instead, with little hope of moving onward and upward.

So I can definitely see it from the writer's point of view.

But is it really so bad if you work at say, the Columbus Dispatch, to ramp up the coverage of Ohio State even more. Or to send the NBA finals inside for a day in order to get a localized issue story that has been planned for a while out front?

 

[Ben_Hecht]

The basics: Enforce independence of editorial from advertising. Pay people competitive wages and good enough benefits where they don't have to look elsewhere.

MOST DON'T SEE THE NEED, SO THEY WON'T.

The next steps: Encourage writers to -- and train them to, if necessary -- look more deeply into issues. Have us all take writing classes or do something so that we can create more compelling copy. Stop pandering to the lowest common denominator. That means no more Slutney stories, folks. Integrate the print side with the Web site. If you're a weekly, post your big story the day it happens whether it's your publication day or not. If you're a daily, that still means get your story up pretty much as soon as it's written. Realize that doing less with more is the real reality and that doing more with less is an impossible fantasy.

YOU WON'T GET CAPABLE PEOPLE TO FULFILL THESE EXPECTATIONS AT THE CURRENT DEMOLISHED PAYSCALES. WHY. SHOULD. PEOPLE. ACCEPT. SUCH.
CONDITIONS?

The deep cuts: Learn some customer service skills. Yes, that means coming up with less snark when parents whine about why little Susie isn't in the paper when she works just as hard as Johnny Halfback. Granted, many parents aren't reasonable. But neither are people like Lean Dean.

REPORTERS SHOULD BE KEPT OUT OF PARENTS' LINE OF FIRE ON THE PHONE.
THERE AREN'T ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY.

LET'S JUST GUT THE JOB TO THE POINT WHERE NOBODY SANE WOULD WANT TO DO IT.

MO, YMMV

 

[Alan Greenwood]

The industry itself won't die, but it will shrink. How dramatically it shrinks depends on how many publishers are willing to ride out the recession/depression, accepting smaller profits or actually losing money, while adapting to the new age.
(In an attempt to head off the obvious, call it the George Costanza Theory.)
The papers that are doing the most hacking away at newsroom budgets will, ironically enough, probably the first to die since they will be trying to modernize and expand their scope with insufficient staff. Readers are, and never have been, as dumb as we sometimes treat them; they know half-assed when they see it.
Papers that hang in there, keeping staffs intact and successfully converging print and online, will go on. They'll never return to the days when the pressess were money machines, but they'll go on.

 

[dog428]

It's funny to me to watch the whole industry going under and the jackoffs most responsible for it be utterly baffled by it. It's sad, yet somewhat funny, watching as they slash newsroom employee after newsroom employee and kill the quality, and then blame sagging sales on "THE INTERNET." As if the ****in' newspaper isn't on the Internet, too.

Look, fact is, there's one reason this industry is failing, and it doesn't have anything to do with people being unwilling to read the newspaper (either hardcopy or online). We're failing because our management sucks balls. Pretty much every industry in the world has learned how to adapt their business to the Internet. Newspapers, though, which allegedly employee the best and brightest, are still trying to figure it out. (I have a daily reminder of that each day as I visit our paper's online site, which, honest to God, could double as a how-not-to guide for other papers.)

Most papers still don't have a clear ad sales plan for the Internet. They still don't know how to maximize those sales. And they haven't yet come up with a plan for effectively displaying the product online.

On top of that, even online, most newspapers are still attempting to be THE SOURCE for info. Why? Why not be "the source" for some stuff and the conduit for others? Why not provide a ****load of links? Why not be the place readers can count on to at least find the story? Do you know how simple that is -- to have someone linking the hot stories of the day?

As for the newsroom itself, this idea that people aren't reading anymore is ridiculous. Have you strolled through a line at the grocery store lately? Have you seen the number of gossip mags? People are reading. They're just not reading the same things they used to -- or the things we're used to giving them. Guess who has to change? If it takes mixing in stories about Britney Spears' crotch or Lindsey Lohan's AA meeting to keep the place afloat, I'm on board.

The one drum I've been beating for the last year has been marketing of people. There are just a few newspapers that do this and even fewer that do it well. But it's basically the local TV tactic -- promote yourself. If newspapers, especially the small to mid-range papers, would do a better job marketing their writers/columnists, it would benefit all involved. The writer would feel more appreciated, the public would connect and the paper could maybe hold onto the guy for a bit longer. If there's one thing the ever-growing world of blogs and personal info sites should teach us, it's that readers like a personal connection. Have some chats. Put the guy's face and name on a billboard or in some ads. Run a few TV/radio spots promoting the guy. Yes, it goes against all of the "you're not a part of the story" lessons we all received in school. But if it keeps us employed, who gives a ****?

We've spent a long time trying to save this business while still holding onto all of the old rules, beliefs and mindsets. It should be clear that that's not gonna work.

 

[old_tony]

What Dog said about marketing of people is right on. And then, to add to that, once you've marketed your writers and your paper/website, stop giving it away for free.

In what bizarro world is there a business model that says "Expect people to pay for your product while giving it away for free"?

Give 'em the first 3-5 paragraphs of every story online. Then explain their either have to buy the paper or subscribe to the website to read the rest of it. If they don't, so be it. But you get nothing by giving them all of it for free.

 

[JakeandElwood]

What Dog said about marketing of people is right on. And then, to add to that, once you've marketed your writers and your paper/website, stop giving it away for free.

In what bizarro world is there a business model that says "Expect people to pay for your product while giving it away for free"?

Give 'em the first 3-5 paragraphs of every story online. Then explain their either have to buy the paper or subscribe to the website to read the rest of it. If they don't, so be it. But you get nothing by giving them all of it for free.

That's the first reasonable solution I've heard to the problem newspapers created by giving the online stories away for free. Sure people will be pissed at first that something that was free is now gone, but they'll get over it eventually.

 

[derwood]

Ownership change.

 

[DemoChristian]

What Dog said about marketing of people is right on. And then, to add to that, once you've marketed your writers and your paper/website, stop giving it away for free.

In what bizarro world is there a business model that says "Expect people to pay for your product while giving it away for free"?

Give 'em the first 3-5 paragraphs of every story online. Then explain their either have to buy the paper or subscribe to the website to read the rest of it. If they don't, so be it. But you get nothing by giving them all of it for free.

That's the first reasonable solution I've heard to the problem newspapers created by giving the online stories away for free. Sure people will be pissed at first that something that was free is now gone, but they'll get over it eventually.

Why not change the dynamics so the content is paid for by ads, just like radio?
I think that's a win-win, because it will keep readership high and the advertisers won't like to pay more but they will like knowing more people are seeing their ads.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Ownership change.

As in more local owners and less national chains?