VIPs: Very Important Posts

Having written a book, countless articles and a year’s worth of blog posts about readership, I’ve been searching for the essential nuggets of information that a publisher could take away from everything I’ve written…a sort of jumping off point en route to a readership revolution. I’ve found them. I only wish I’d written them.

The first comes from blogger David Sullivan, who write an essay about an American Journalism Review essay on the closing of the Albuquerque Tribune. He lamented the fact that superior journalism not only couldn’t save the newspaper, it blinded it to too many things that really mattered to readers—local news and sports. His last line is the kicker:

A business model needs to support good journalism, but good journalism is not a business model.

All true. Unfortunately. But it isn’t a bad thing to embrace this. Think holistically. The business model supports good journalism which supports the business model (with superior customer service, strong branding, and relentless promotion driving the whole thing). It all goes back to the Readership Institute’s Four Cornerstones of Readership—Content, Service, Brand and Culture—and the “Eight Imperatives” that go along with them.


http://www.newspapernext.org/2008/02/what_should_we_stop_doing.htm
Elaine Clisham of Newspaper Next provides the second VIP. Her readership strategy sums it up nicely: Redeploy resources. It’s been said by others including Bill Watson of the Pocono Record and others in my book. But newspapers have to start looking at where their resources are going to have the biggest impact. There are things newspapers don’t have to cover. There are things that have higher readership value. Newspapers can do things differently. They just have to have the guts to move ahead.

No time for games

The Sun-Times here in Chicago is launching a circulation promotion—a six-week scratch-to-win game. The Sun-Times does a lot of things right. And there is nothing inherently wrong with this strategy. The paper is in dire straits (not all because of its own doing, thank you Mr. Black and Mr. Radler) so it needs to do something, yes. But games?

Newspapers need innovation. What is frustrating is that the Sun-Times staff seems to possess the forward-thinking that can lead to innovation, but they just may not be positioned to do much more than games. That's old thinking.

I remember writing about clever games that newspapers were using to generate interest 10+ years ago. We need something more than that now. Go bold, Sun-times, lead us.

Other thoughts:
A good analysis picked up on Jeff Jarvis’ Buzzmachine about why Google has succeeded. Simple answer: it didn’t sell out and kept innovating. They could have sold to anyone at any time, writes Umair Haque, and simply become the search box on Yahoo or MSN. Instead, they stuck to their bigger mission and revolutionized a broken system.

Jarvis also points to a contest run by the Star-Ledger in Newark that asks developers to help them create a local Facebook app for New Jersey. The newspaper is trying to connect to communities and one way the Star-Ledger is doing that is through “The Exploding Newsroom” blog. A nicely designed blog by John Hassell.

Readership issues cross generations

More interesting findings from the Readership Institute...Young students have the same complaints about newspapers as adults (same excuses for not reading, too). This lends some credence to just how strong the findings from the Readership Institute's Impact Study really are. The study is roughly eight years old. And while it has not proven to be a panacea, it clearly establishes a game plan for securing readership. applying bold innovation to this data should reveal solutions. Newspapers are still waiting though.

More posts this week. PTA work has been quite busy, as we try to apply these same readership and innovation principles to our publications, both in print and online. Stay tuned to that, as well.