Newspapers retain value--tell people!

Dennis Wyatt, managing editor of the Manteca (Calif.) Bulletin, writes a compelling column on the value of community newspapers. A lot of readership answers are found in columns like these, so I promote them whenever I find them. They should certainly be written more frequently. Newspapers need to promote themselves better.

Speaking of which, the Times-Dispatch in Richmond, Va., announced some changes to its print edition. Publisher Thomas Silvestri outlines the changes and the reasoning behind them. The transparency and forthrightness is appropriate and commendable. He could have sold the changes better though. He explained that reader were going to lose 16 to 20 pages, but could have explained more convincingly that the readers were not going to lose the most relevant content. He explained that the newspapers was pulling some of its outermost circulation, but didn’t take the opportunity to hammer home that readers in those areas could still access the website for up-to-the-minute news and analysis.

I’m sure Silvestri wrote the column he felt addressed these changes the best, but it could have really used a stronger marketing approach. You don’t want to oversell or appear pandering or fake. Just be honest. “Yes, we’re losing money on the fringe circulation and we’re sorry we can no longer deliver the paper to these readers. However, our website serves these readers well and, more and more, is a preferred method of getting information and news for many readers.” It’s not BS. It’s truth.

Finally, a very good summation of strategy for how newspapers can still thrive. Amny concepts familiar to this blog: quality of the journalism, not quantity; giving consumers what they want in the format they want it in; reinvention; monetize the hyper-local.

What the 'Barometer' really shows

The 2008 edition of the Newsroom Barometer, conducted by Zogby International and commissioned by the World Editors Forum and Reuters, was released. Nothing surprising, but an interesting point emerged. I wondered if it might be valuable to look at this particular point and different way.

According to the survey, 57% saw the biggest threat to newspapers as declining readership among young people. I immediately thought, “This isn’t the threat!” It’s a symptom of the threat. It’s the result of the threat. It is something related to the threat, but it’s not the threat.

In and of itself, this provides no useful information. Young readers are not using newspapers. It’s the why behind this inaction that is important. This is a small difference, perhaps, but it is significant. It’s easy to hide behind symptoms. It’s easy to target them and try to correct them, leaving the real problem still lurking in shadow.

Newspapers have proven they can get young people to read. Remember Your Mom?

Investing in this long-term is the only way to make such initiatives anything more than a Band-Aid.

The Barometer showed editors are optimistic but that should not keep newspapers from innovating, exploring new business models, and preparing for the future. In other words, getting beyond the symptoms of their decline.

Common Sense Journalism: The 'well hole looking up' problem

Another VIP--Very Important Post: Common Sense Journalism: The 'well hole looking up' problem

I think Fisher's argument points again to the importance of Newspaper Next as well as enterprise journalism: Use the N2 innovation method to create information products that fulfill jobs people need done. Use enterprise journalism to generate compelling content that is important to readers' lives.

Using N2, in a lot of ways, will determine format. Enterprise journalism, in a lot of ways, overcomes any issue of format.

The bottom line, too, is to just ask people what they want...and listen to them. Basic stuff. Then you don't have to struggle with the reasons why you should "go digital" or not. The audience will tell you.

What comes from "Experience"

Nancy Barnes, editor of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, led the newspaper’s innovative “experience” redesign experiment. The results seemed to be positive for choosing and presenting stories based on how they would affect the users’ “experience” with the paper (in other words, did the experience with the paper make them smarter, give them something to talk about, etc.).

I was not able to follow up on whether the “experience” newspaper translated into bigger readership. I suspect it didn’t. Newspapers most certainly would have copied the strategy had it been overwhelmingly successful. Still, it’s a shame no newspaper refined and improved upon what took place in Minneapolis. The results seemed promising. I’ve seen plenty of newspapers and newspaper groups abandon promising projects just because the payoff wasn’t as great as expected or proved too difficult to maintain (Knight Ridder’s Boca Raton experiment). Instead of building off success, they returned to the status quo. And so here we are today…

Anyway, Barnes writes here about what influences their news decisions today and mentions a watchdog blog that sounds promising.

I noted the Chicago Sun-Times’ scratch-to-win promotion in a previous post. I was a little down on it, but am even more down on it now. I purchase 3 or 4 copies of the Sun-Times during the week. This promotion is now in its third week, so I’ve seen at least 7 or 8 editions that supposedly have this scratch-to-win game piece inside. I’m either very unlucky or the Sun-Times has done a terrible job inserting this piece (or, forgive my cynicism, keeping delivery people from stealing them). I found one game piece. That’s it. Terrible. I’ve purchased the paper at no less than six different locations. One of the vendors told me to make sure the edition I picked up had a game piece inside, so the problem doesn’t seem to be an isolated one.

A great Q&A with Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein about the future of newspapers: A sample:

Ocean City, N.J.: How does one explain the success of the Arkansas Gazette Democrat (or Democrat-Gazette?), which refuses to put free content on the Web and has seen a rise in circulation?

Steven Pearlstein: Unlike the chief executive of the Washington Post Co., who is very smart and knowledgeable, I don't think free content is the way of the future. For quality news -- that is, non-commodity news--readers are going to have to pay, and readers are going to be willing to pay. And that will be in addition to advertising revenue, which will represent a significant but still smaller share of all revenue.

As for Arkansas, you have to remember that it is still virtually a monopoly when it comes to local news, and they may therefore be able to do what other news organizations can't. But it is telling us something about consumer behavior and willingness to pay for news.