From the category archives:

Challenges

7 Steps to Save Your Local Newspaper: #5 Recognize the Role of Technology in Your Business

January 3, 2011

From the printing press to digital media, the newspaper industry is no stranger to technological innovations.  Since the first rudimentary printing press was invented in China in 593 A.D., technological advancements have played a pivotal role in shaping the newspaper industry to facilitate its primary objective of gathering and disseminating  the news.  The newspaper forerunners [...]

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7 Steps to Save Your Local Newspaper: #1 – Shift Your Mindset

October 10, 2010

Last week I introduced my seven step plan to save your local newspaper. This week, we’ll dive right into step number one: shifting your mindset. And really, this is the most important step of them all. If you can’t redirect your energies towards a business model that works and leave behind all of the “legacy” [...]

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Newspaper – Revenue or Journalism: Is It One or the Other?

August 15, 2010

If you were to ask an editor for a local newspaper what type of value local news provides, you would probably get an answer along the lines of: “Quality information is an intrinsic civic good whose value cannot ever be fully measured. Our constitution’s second amendment could not stand without the aid of this indispensable [...]

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Talk Radio Will Die Without Local Journalists

July 12, 2010

This is because journalists are the most important link in the news food chain. Let me explain: I had this realization a couple of days ago while I was listening to a talk radio program. Somehow, the topic of daily routines came up, and the talk show host decided to describe his own. Each day [...]

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Dear Corporate Newspaper, Paywalls Won’t Work.

June 13, 2010

I have a message for all of the corporate news organizations sitting in their ivory towers behind their mahogany desks: Quit trying to convince people to pay money for content that you’ve been giving them for free for years! No one who is used to getting the news for free online is going to start [...]

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I Will Never Pay for “News Aggregation.” Would You?

April 27, 2010

A couple of days ago I realized why news organizations are having such a difficult time getting people to pay for news. It’s because, most of the time, what we are fed by the media isn’t real reporting, it’s just news aggregation. Let me explain: I was getting ready for work in the morning and [...]

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Email Is the New Snail Mail. What will Newspapers do?

April 20, 2010

I’m frustrated these days. Here’s why: My three sons—ages twenty-one, eighteen, and fifteen—don’t use email. I’ll send them emails about a family event a week ahead of time and not get a response until afterward. At first, I just thought that maybe my kids were blowing me off (this can happen to parents of teens [...]

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You Can’t Do HyperLocal from the Corporate Ivory Tower!

April 12, 2010

Dear New York Times, I recently read a blog post over at editorsweblog.org about your “hyperlocal efforts.” It cites your recent collaboration with Fwix in order to conglomerate news about particular local areas into a massive “local” news database, all from the comfort of your corporate ivory tower. Using Fwix’s software, you would gather all [...]

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Print Media Is Fading Fast. But What About Journalism?

March 22, 2010

There’s really no denying it. Sure, we may still be reading books for awhile, and even magazines. But eventually, all of these models are going to go digital, and in fact, they already are. And while the time frame for this change is unsure, one thing is certain: the more frequent and ephemeral the publication, [...]

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2010 Newspaper Ad Revenue is Fool’s Gold

February 28, 2010

You heard it here first! Political pundits and financial officials are now telling us that the recession is coming to a close. They say that the worst is over and that businesses are going to start making money again soon. It is inevitable that the local newspaper industry will latch onto this news and assume [...]

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