Get an Audience Strategy

An outstanding post on the Readership Institute "Get Smart" blog. Linda Grist Cunningham, editor fo the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star shares her newspaper's approach to serving customers and building readership. The newspapers strives to understand its audience and build a portfolio of products to serve them. The staff began work toward where they are now as far back as 1994. But it isn't too late for newspapers if they begin to become reader-centric today. Cunningham's Q&A is a good start.

Brett Favre and Things That Matter

A superb column on leadership from Poynter's Jacqui Banaszynski. She applies qualities that Green Bay Packers QB Brett Favre displayed throughout his career to the newsroom. Frankly, they can be applied to everyday life: Love your job, own your decisions, take risks, be real.

Even most of my fellow Bears fans gave grudging respect to Favre simply because of the leadership qualities he displayed on the field. Really, he was a "City of Big Shoulders," blue-collar kind of guy that Chicago would have loved to have had under center.

A Soapy Future

An interesting business analogy…News, like soap, will always be in need. I like it.

This column serves as another good example of how to combat the doom-and-gloom (from now on abbreviated as D&G) reports we see too often.

Speaking of good news, National Newspaper Association just released some good news about community newspaper readership—83% of adults (18 and over) reader community newspapers weekly.

Also, read how The Record in Glasgow, Scotland, has been innovating to respond to readership and revenue challenges that are as bad, if not worse, than newspapers face stateside. The key message: Newspapers can still be a powerful, profitable force, according to Newspapers & Technology columnist Jim Chisolm:

"But until now, many publishers have been obsessed with retaining their single version of what they do. Moreover, many remain over-protective of competencies, such as printing, page design and copy-editing, that can be done just as well elsewhere at a proportion of the cost. (Want proof? One London business weekly outsources all of its coverage to a third-party, retaining only opinion and analysis within its own newsroom.)"

Newspapers need more crusaders

Plenty of good ideas exist for newspapers from outside the United States. The Media Management Center’s Michael Smith writes about Las Últimas Noticias and how it embraces the idea of engaging readers in conversations about the news. London’s Daily Mail comes up frequently in industry blogs. The latest is notice of its recent “Banish the Bags” campaign to eliminate environmentally hazardous plastic grocery bags. Scroll down this page and note some of the features of the Guardian’s campaign--extensive coverage of the environmental impact, an online petition, a wallchart for school/home highlighting key points, a free reusable grocery bag for every reader.

What this showed, though, is how a newspaper can still act as a crusader. This kind of advocacy can re-establish newspapers as important community citizens, improve credibility and, ultimately, boost readership. People still respond to important work. Newspapers are best equipped to make these important things happen. They must make this a priority and reassess other tasks. They must funnel their resources into things that are going to make a difference.

The efforts can be scaled up or down. Every community has something that needs fixed or praised.