Jim Waterbury, a long-time friend and media guru, sent me news about the demise of daily newspapers in Louisiana and Alabama. I learned of this news not from a newspaper, but from an electronic source—how appropriate.
Why are newspapers fading? They are not listening to their customers. The terminal diagnosis is not because of the Internet, but because you don’t hear newspapers saying that they will deliver the kind of news local people really want to read.
If I ran a newspaper, here is what I would do today:
- Drop national news. I get that on Twitter and Yahoo!
- Never run a story from outside the area. I’d rather run the worst local press release than a story from two states away. Local leads.
- More photos. I’d cut ALL story copy in half.
- More photos of regular people on the street.
- No story jumps. If you can’t read it on the page it starts, cut it down.
- Drop stocks or numbers of any kind—unless it is in a cool infographic. That is stuff perfect for the Internet; get it out of the newspaper.
- No syndicated material. Drop Ann Landers, Hints from Heloise and opinion-page columnists. Go get the local citizen journalists and fill a paper.
- Work deals for exclusive coverage and trademark it so it can’t be shared except by you.
- I wouldn’t put my local news online. I know that sounds counter to all I’ve said, but it doesn’t pay. Make it so people must subscribe and read your paper to get local news. Then sell the heck out of it.
- Use more graphics to demonstrate ideas.
As Mr. Waterbury says, “Local media thrives when it is truly local.” If newspapers are to survive, they must look at subscribers as customers. The lack of listening is killing newspapers, not the Internet.
Awesome insight on this. I love the suggestions of how to reformat the physical newspaper. However, I think this is still a losing situation. While it’s a non-profit, I believe that MinnPost out of Minnesota is one of my favorite examples of how to have online news. The ads are focused, don’t monopolize the webpage – it’s about the content. And yet, and yet, they make money, they don’t lose money every year like most newspapers.
If we took one of the last suggestions, “Don’t put your news online”, I really think that would be the death of newspapers. Not immediately, because there would probably be a surge of people subscribing again, but eventually those people (demographic) aren’t going to be around anymore. The consumer is changing.
I don’t remember where I read it, but another article I read recently hit on this problem from a different angle. That is the angle of advertising. The article suggested that the reason local papers (much like the New Orleans situation) are losing to the internet is not because of news content, but because of advertising. Previously, newspapers had the monopoly on local advertising. Everyone got the newspaper, so everyone saw the ads – the news was just secondary. Now, people can get local advertising through so many different channels, Google Ads, Facebook, the local newssites (tv, radio, newspapers), etc — there is no monopoly on the local ad market anymore.
John- Thanks for the comment. You may be right. It’s hard to make sure you are watching the road as you drive and keep an eye on the destination. It’s all important. This weekend I was comparing a printed New York Times to the iPad version. It is amazing what seems to have more importance, but the experience was not the same. Might be a future blog. Thanks again.
I completely agree with you. Too many times I pick up the newspaper and breeze through it in 5 minutes. There isn’t enough interesting content. You can find national news anywhere. Heck, we have 24/7 channels dedicated to it. I learn more about what’s going on in other countries than I do in my own city. Newspapers are intent on altering their model, but it’s their structure and focus that needs to change. More local news, please!
Middle Child: Thank you for the comment. They have got to reverse engineer the paper but start with the target audience first, not last in the process. Thanks again.