Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachne has it percolating today on the most uncomfortable topic in the news business: the coming -- and inevitable -- death of the newspaper, and what the industry might be able to do to save itself from extinction.
Jarvis' solution: cut out the fat, forget the sports and business sections, and produce newspapers whose sole focus is well-reported local news: [bracketed text and bolds are mine]
Imagine a newspaper that is only local news -- no sports, no business, little or no entertainment, and commodity national and international news treated as the I-saw-that-already commodity it is: only local news.
Why? Because we need to seriously consider new business models for journalism. See [Fox honcho Rupert] Murdoch's speech yesterday. See Merrill Brown's Carnegie report. See a hundred posts about media here. And see the two posts directly below about editors not even noticing the revenue that supports their enterprises disappearing and about putting out one-size-fits all products. We need to stimulate radical discussion of radical new views to rethink this business before it's rethought without us.
Having dealt with the sometimes frustrating worlds of the newspaper editorial division and the local TV news sweatshop, I can tell you that NEITHER one is adapting to the "new world order" nearly fast enough. The TV folks still look at the web team as those tech geeks in the corner we're forced to make the anchors "throw to" before every commercial break. The newspaper folks, at least in this market, are still lost in the worship of ancient op-ed writers, allowing few voices from my generation onto the page. But the thing is, people my age (early 30s), and especially people younger than me DON'T READ THE NEWSPAPER, and they're not going to start reading the paper if it remains as it is today -- largely dated AP headlines you already got from cable or online, plus sports, business and entertainment info from yesterday.
And at this stage, it's mostly older, suburban housewives who watch the local TV news. Most of the rest of us get our news online (or from John Stewart).
As for the editorial section, who needs it when you've got 24-hourse of opinion-bludgeoning on cable? Most of the op-eds are syndicated at this point, and readers would much rather email them to friends online than cut out a clipping (I admit I saved all my clippings, but that's a story for another therapeutic session...)
And since both the papers and the local news are mostly bundles of the same syndicated wire copy anyway (the same mega-conglomerate that produces the local ABC affiliate's web site here in South Florida also produces the site for the NBC affiliate, and yes, they share content -- you'd be surprised how many "news web-sites" have carbon copies in cities all over the U.S. BTW the former head of the conglomerate is now a bigwig at CNN...) it seems like a singular focus on local news offers a rare chance at differentiation.
For example, back when I was editing a local news web site for a network affiliate, our biggest stories often were the purely local dramas -- the grieving widow suspected of paying the car-jacker who shot her husband to death (and of buying crack cocaine from him), the umpteenth Cuban migrants wading to shore as news choppers buzzed overhead, catching every moment of the drama, or the latest Florida child to be kidnapped, (and of course, the one that beats all: bad weather). I sometimes hated those stories, but they maximized what the station -- and the web site -- could do well, and do differently. Ploughing local news resources into chasing national stories is ultimately a waste of time for the big newspaper and TV sites, because they can get that content more easily and cheaply from a shared source.
So maybe one answer for newspapers is to use their hard copy product to dive into the local stories, and drive users to their websites for the rest of what was once in the paper (entertainment, sports, national news, etc.)
<%
dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
