Throughout this series, we have been discussing steps that a local newspaper could implement systemically that will not only save it, but will allow it to embrace the changes resulting in the ability to better compete and achieve greater success.  One thing is for certain, the legacy model used for years in the newspaper industry is becoming more and more obsolete depending on how progressive your readership is.  Making the transition to a new paradigm which incorporates social and online media can be daunting, but nevertheless essential to compete in the global environment.   In the final step, we will summarize the previous six steps and discuss an effective implementation strategy.  As each organization is unique, so too will be the strategy to execute these steps.

In step one, we discussed changing your mindset and that of your entire news organization.  This is a fundamental change that must take place before you can proceed.  Not only do you need to recognize the changes that are occurring, but you must also recognize the opportunities that exist for your organization to change as well.  The good news is that this is a rapidly changing industry.  I’ve only been in the news media business for about six years now, and it is amazing how much has changed just in that short time span.  Because no one knows your organization and your readers better than you, it is incumbent on you to evaluate the pace and the degree you implement these steps.  This will largely be determined by the readers and advertisers you serve.  If they are still widely accustomed to reading a daily or weekly paper, then you may be able to ease into some of these steps.  However, if your readership is more progressive and your subscriptions are rapidly declining because they get their news from other sources, then you will probably want to execute these steps in a more expedient manner.  Above all else, you have to become comfortable in new media before you even begin to think about an execution strategy.  Once you understand what new media is all about and the impact it has on the news industry, you must make the commitment to expand beyond print.  Having said that, your readers will determine when and how you carry out this commitment.  Regardless of how quickly you integrate these steps into your mode of operation, you will eventually be forced to do so because I can guarantee you that this is no longer a print only business.  In step four, we discussed performing an organizational assessment to determine if you and your staff possess the core competencies to successfully make these changes.  Not only did we discuss providing training for your staff, but it might even be necessary to bring some people on board that are more comfortable using this new media.  If you’re like me, a grey hair, it’s never too late to learn from a purple hair.  That is to say, we could learn something from those who have been submersed in this environment from the beginning where it is second nature to them.  Please note that I am not advocating turning over the reins to them, but using a team concept that will help drive these changes throughout the organization.  Understanding the new technologies and the role they play in this industry is the primary barrier for most news organizations.  In step five, we further discussed that if you are not exactly tech savvy, you can easily enlist those who can provide assistance.  Of course, this step came with a warning to not get taken.  Forewarned is forearmed.  Please understand you can implement these modern technologies into your daily operations fairly easily and inexpensively.  One way to do this is to integrate these technologies in baby steps.  By doing so, you can more easily test what is going to work and not spend a great deal of your resources on something that is less effective.  In step six, we discussed building a new business plan.  You must define a new business model that will yield the results you are seeking.  I cannot emphasize this step enough.  If you do not have a plan, then any strategy will take you there.  Further, if you do not have a plan, how will you know when you arrived at your ultimate destination?  There is no rush to implement these changes.  Take the time to do it right.  Hopefully by now, the economy in your area is starting to pick up a bit and you will begin to see those traditional ad dollars.  I urge you to not be fooled by this or lulled into a false sense of security.

To summarize this series, I urge you to take these steps one at a time and deploy them pragmatically.  Review similar news organizations to learn from their successes and failures.  I also recommend that you suspend the urge to attend the traditional news conferences with the same people you usually do.   This may not be the best place for you to discover the radical changes necessary to compete in this changing environment.  At the end, it ultimately depends on how you define success in your business.  There is a definite opportunity to adapt and integrate these new technologies into your news organization that will not only include print, but audio, video, social, and online media to serve your local community.  Until next time.

Think outside the newsstand,

Joe

If you have been following the series; 7 Steps to Save Your Local Newspaper, then you know I’ve been discussing what might be unchartered waters to you.  In step #1, I talked about the necessity to shift your mindset to accept that technological innovations have changed the way news is delivered forever.  In step #2, I discussed becoming comfortable with new media in general and more specifically, Web 2.0 that has revolutionized how information is going to be exchanged in the future.  In step #3, I further discussed the transition from print to digital by integration of multiple media into news delivery.  I purposely selected this next step to address the anxiety that might be starting to set in about now.  Before you go any further, it is important that you stop and take a personal assessment of yourself and maybe even your staff to examine your core competencies and the ability to convert these steps to a successful action plan.  The great thing about technology is that it is constantly changing allowing for you to get up to speed fairly quickly.  Unfortunately, some people might find technology intimidating.  Please don’t worry.    I’m in my 50s and I have been where you are and believe me when I say, if I can learn it, so can you.  This step is about providing you with tools and resources to assist you on your journey and better prepare you for the inevitable transition.

One of the first things I am going to recommend is to reserve some time everyday to research these topics.  For example, set aside about an hour daily and use whatever search engine you’re comfortable with, (i.e. Google, Ask.com, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) and do a search on social media and newspapers in social media.  As with any topic you research on the internet, there will literally be thousands of results.  Select one and dive in.  Read and learn.  Consume the information until you completely understand the concepts and their practical applications.

The next thing I recommend is to start following some experts in this field.  The following people are not affiliated with the newspaper industry, but they are considered experts in the social media and marketing fields.  These people have successfully monetized social media.  By taking the time to understand and get to know what social media is all about, you are making the commitment necessary to take the next step in the marriage of the newspaper industry and social media.  Take the time to visit their websites, subscribe to their blogs, listen to their podcasts, and read their books.

• Chris Brogan – I personally know and have the highest respect for Chris.  I consider him the “Godfather” of social media, Social Media 101, http://www.chrisbrogan.com.
• Mitch Joel  – Six Pixels of Separation,  http://www.twistimage.com/blog/ and podcast
• John Wall and Christopher Penn, Again personal friends -  http://www.marketingovercoffee.com blog and podcasts
• Seth Godin – http://www.sethgodin.typepad.com

**WARNING**           **WARNING**            **WARNING**

BUYERS BEWARE!  PLEASE DO NOT GET TAKEN!

Because you may be new to some of the technologies and concepts I have been discussing over the course of this series, I want to make sure you understand that much of what I have recommended is FREE or at a very low cost.  There is no need to spend a lot of money to integrate these technologies.  Leave that to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.   Let’s look at our website, Civicedition.com as an example.  It was a free wordpress blog that someone helped me to install.  I purchased a template for $150.00 and had some very low cost graphic design work done.  I have ghostwriters help me take my ideas and convert them to something you like to read because I don’t write particularly well.  Other than that, that’s it.  My costs are minimal.  You as a business will have some more costs to consider, but all in all there is absolutely no need to spend thousands of dollars up front.  I suggest taking it one step at a time.  Once you’re comfortable, move on to the next step.

In summary, take the time to learn it before you try to implement it.  Read the books that I recommended and learn as much as possible by visiting the blogs I referenced.  Once you get comfortable, I recommend you interact by posting comments on blogs you find interesting.  Learning this process will not only give you the opportunity to engage, but it will also provide you with the same experience you will ultimately be providing for your subscribers.  It’s important that you understand how the process works so you are prepared to offer your subscribers a digital outlet that integrates audio, visual, text and pictures while incorporating a medium of information exchange.  Next post in Step 5, I’ll be discussing further the role of technology in your business.  Until next time…..

Think outside the newsstand,

Joe

The younger generations in today’s world no longer think in terms of isolated media such as print, film, and audio. Rather, it is increasingly true that all of these media are now accessed through the meta-channel of the Internet. And while the first wave of Online newspaper editions were simply transcriptions of the text already available in the print edition, the inherent nature of the Internet has made this model obsolete.

When a user logs onto a newspaper website, she expects to see more than just print. If an article is based on an interview, she expects to be able to find the video recording of this interview. Conversely, if an interview is published as audio or video, she expects to find a link to the transcription and to a summary. While there are certainly users who still prefer a primarily print-based experience, this demographic is quickly shrinking.

And it is not only users who are sensing the need for change. A study published by the Media Management Center at Northwestern University found that most journalists see the transition to digital as a necessity. Out of all of the journalists interviewed, only six percent felt that they wanted to move back to a print-based model. You can read the full study by clicking on the link above.

The challenge for local newspapers is to effect this change without having the relatively vast resources that are available to major news outlets. When news first started to go digital, setting up integrated media still required a great deal of technical expertise. However, with web 2.0, the technology required to integrate multiple media into your online presence is no longer prohibitive. So even if you run a very small shop, there are several things that you can do to make the transition without breaking open your piggy-bank. Here are just a few examples of simple (and low- or no-cost) ways that you can do this:

1. Set up a content management system.

A content management system is a software program that allows you to update your website using an online interface. This way you don’t have to know HTML or any other type of coding. You’ll probably need to have someone set this up for you, but the work is relatively low on the difficulty scale for most web designers. Hence, this should not cost very much at all, and once it is set up, it will need little to no maintenance. Joomla, is a popular content management system, but there are countless others. Send me an email or write a comment if you need help choosing one or need to find a freelancer to set this up for you.

2. Set up a digital blog.

A blog is an even simpler way to upload content to the web. WordPress (the model used for this very website) is very simple to use, and you might even be able to do the initial set up yourself. Otherwise, you can hire a freelancer to do the work in a few hours or less. All that you have to do is log in, paste in your content, and click “publish.”

3. Use a microblog.

Twitter is the most popular example of a microblog. If there is breaking news that you want to get out right away, use this tool to give your readers a quick headline.

4. Use free or low-cost image sharing wigets.

Images are not nearly as expensive to post on the Internet as they are to print in a newspaper. If you have a website with a decent amount of image hosting, you can do this for free. You could even simply host your images on one of the many free image hosting websites such as flicker. This may not be “super-professional” but it is definitely efficient, and may be perfectly appropriate for the scale of a local newspaper. This also has the added benefit of making it very easy for your readers to send in their own photos which you can then accept or reject as content.

5. Share videos.

The same goes for videos. You can host videos from your website if you have enough space and bandwidth, but even just hosting videos for free from YouTube can do the trick. An organization like the New York Times would probably prefer to host their own videos, but for a small local newspaper, a YouTube channel might be enough, at least to start. Once again, you can host both your own videos and user submitted videos.

6. Set up an email newsletter.

This is an efficient way to remind your readers of what’s happening in your newsroom and important issues that they should be aware of. A great way to encourage your readers to give you their email addresses for the newsletter is to require an email address for them to be able to leave comments after your online articles and other content (which, by the way, they are going to expect to be able to do).

7. Podcasting.

This is essentially the practice of recording short audio segments that can them be effortlessly posted to the web. When it comes to conducting interviews, this is a great way to include the original source material behind an article.

8. Use texting for mobile content.

Just like your micro-blogging tool, texting can be used to sent breaking news headlines to readers who have opted in for this service. Only in this case, they are granted mobile access.

9. Integrate news into local maps.

Mapping software such as Google Maps can be easily integrated into news stories allowing users to visualize the location of events. This can also be used to set out recreation plans for users such as bike trails, hiking paths, and garage sale itineraries.

10. Integrate news into social media (e.g. Facebook or Myspace).

For almost everyone under thirty, and for a growing number of people above this age, social media have become a central part of life. As such, your local paper should have a presence on these forums. By putting up a fan page for your newsroom, users can “like” or “become a fan of” your organization, providing free publicity. You can then link your microblog into these social media outlets to have them automatically update users about breaking news.

As always, if you need any help with these concepts or want me to hook you up with someone who can help you set some of these features, send me an email or leave a comment.

Think outside the newsstand,
Joe

The next step in saving your local newspaper is to become comfortable with what is called “new media,” and specifically with Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is the newest branch of the Internet, encompassing its community networking and interactive avenues such as blogs, community generated content, and twitter. This is the way that information is going to be exchanged in the future; it is dynamic and immediate. And unfortunately, local newspapers are going to be left behind if they don’t learn how to disseminate information in a form that people will be able to digest. This is a revolution in how people think about information, so it is going to take some effort to make the necessary changes.

Honestly, I could go on about new media for pages, but for now let’s just go into a few pointers:

1. First of all, set up some form of online presence.

This can be simple at first, even a single page or wordpress blog is a good start. You don’t want people who are searching on the Internet for local news in your area to come up with nothing. This represents a huge demographic which is currently being lost to the wind. If you don’t know how to set this up, you can hire a freelance worker to do it for next to nothing.

2. Test the usability of your web presence.

If you already have a website, or if you’ve just set one up, perform a usability test. Get one or more of your readers to log onto your website and ask them to try to find a feature that they read in your print edition a couple of weeks ago. Ideally, the user should be able to locate the feature within a couple of clicks. If they can’t, you need to hire someone to rework your website to make it more user friendly. Again, this should not be very expensive, and I could even give you the names of a few people who could do this for you for a reasonable price. It will pay off in the long run when the change to digital results in readers who don’t even purchase print editions (which is, in fact, already happening to an extent).

3. Build your community by gaining information about your readers.

Give your readers fuller access to your website in exchange for a small parcel of information about themselves, for example their email address. One really easy way to make this happen is to require users to sign up for an account in order to leave comments after the online edition of your articles. This not only adds extra value to your website by turning your articles into a dynamic conversation, but it also gives you access to your readers’ email addresses, an important link that you can take advantage of later on.

4. Use the flexibility of the online medium to update your stories.

One of the major limitations of the local news model is that information is only disseminated once a week. This makes it terribly difficult to keep a story going from one edition to the next. For this reason, stories tend to live and die in a single issue. But with an online presence, you can perform small updates to stories on the website. This allows stories with greater interest to receive follow up attention. You can even install a program on your website that will tell you which stories are being read most frequently so that you can make sure to perform updates on these stories. When you publish an article in your print edition, you can give directions to go to the website to receive updates on the story.

5. Integrate Video.

Part of new media is the merging together of formerly distinct media. Hence, a local newspaper need no longer be just print. It can incorporate video and audio interviews as well. If you have the budget, expanding the role of your journalists to encompass video is a great way to reengage your audience. If you don’t have the budget, you can also explore community generated content. Or as a third option, you may consider hiring young freelancers just out of college to do this sort of supplementary work for you.

6. Get a twitter account.

You’ve heard of twitter, but you may not realize how it could be a part of your news organization. Twitter is a great way to quickly disseminate live information about topics of interest. This adds to the “real-time” quality of your newsroom. It also serves to keep your audience engaged. They are far more likely to appreciate the service that you provide if news is brought to them in real time, rather than just once a week. Even if this means sending out just 140 characters (the Twitter limit) every once in a while between official publications, this increases the volume of your voice.

I could go into a lot more detail on each of these topics, and I think that an entire series of new media posts is probably in order. But until then, do your best to explore each of these aspects of new media and implement them into your business. And if you have trouble with any of the technical elements of this technology, shoot me a message and I’ll try to hook you up with an affordable consultant who can help you.

Next week we’ll be looking more closely at the problem of print versus new media. Until next time…

…think outside the newsstand,
Joe

A few months ago, the town where I live was hit by a major storm. Luckily, no one was hurt; but we had experienced what is called a “macro burst,” and everyone was understandably shaken up by all of the fallen trees and downed power lines. The storm only lasted a total of twenty minutes, but the damage was extensive. As soon as things started to quiet down, my natural curiosity urged me to get outside for a closer look at the damage. I started talking casually to my neighbors, and then I decided to take a few pictures of the downed lines and fallen trees on my iPhone.

When I got back inside I showed the pictures to my wife and she suggested that I send them over to the local news. Of course, living in a small town, the closest actual TV station was thirty miles away in Boston. So I logged onto the website for WCVB TV Boston and created an account for myself where I could upload the photos. And sure enough, my photos ended up on the Boston local news. All in all, it took about one hour from the time that I sent them in for the photos to be broadcast.

When my son–who is a professional photographer–got home from work, he decided to take some pictures of his own. Needless to say, these were superior to mine and they made the news as well. You can see my photos here and the ones that my son took here. But more to the point, this whole experience brought me back to a conversation I had had a week earlier with my good friend David Holroyd, founder of eCast Videos. David had told me that he felt that in the near future, he didn’t think that newspapers would be “papers” at all. Instead, they would consist of several types of content at once: text to be sure, but also images, audio, and video, all in a robust and interconnected portal.

But it wasn’t until my town’s scuffle with a “macro burst” that I fully understood the importance of this idea. A multimedia portal on a local level would be able to combine the best from both the local capabilities of my town paper, and the slightly wider and less specific capabilities of the urban TV station. After all, it would have made far more sense for me to send the pictures of the storm to a news organization in my neighborhood rather than to a TV station thirty miles away in Boston. This way the information would be specifically targeted to those who are the most likely to consume it, the people who where actually directly effected by the storm.

And even more importantly, this portal could be a hybrid between professionally created content and user created content. Users such as myself could deliver the type of content that it is impractical for hyper-local newspapers to create such as large amounts of images of sudden occurrences or brief tweet-like constant updates, while the paid journalists could stay busy adding value to this content by digging deeper into the more complex stories. But one thing is for sure: the local newspaper of tomorrow won’t be a newspaper at all; it will be a robust and dynamic community portal.

Think outside the newsstand,
Joe

I recently read an article over at sfnblog.com entitled “LA Times Adds E-Commerce Links, Revises Comment Policy.”

When I first glanced at this headline, I thought: “Great! Finally some of these big newspaper people are realizing that they need to monetize their content.” But then, as I proceeded to read through the article, I realized that, as always, the devil is in the details. The LA Times is doing the right thing; they’re just doing it in the wrong way.

So I went over to the LA Times website to see just how their new affiliate links (which by the way is what they are called, not “E-Commerce Links”) is working out for them. What I saw was pretty discouraging. They made absolutely no effort to actually promote this system, instead just putting it up and hoping for the best. And worst of all, whenever users actually click on one of these affiliate links they see a disclaimer:

“Clicking on Green Links will take you to a third-party e-commerce site. These sites are not operated by the Los Angeles Times. The Times Editorial staff is not involved in any way with Green Links or with these third-party sites.”

This is a major buzz kill for anyone who might have made a purchase after clicking on one of these Green Links. With “promotion” like this the LA Times can look forward to a negligible click through rate.

Now, I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a suggestion to the LA Times that I know they aren’t going to like: Stop thinking like a newspaper, even if just for a moment, and imagine your situation from the perspective of an “online marketer.” Sure I understand that you want to hold onto your integrity as a news organization, but if you want this system to work, you need to start thinking about the bottom line and stop intentionally distancing yourself from a system that could potentially make you some money.

Right now, the LA Times probably has a conversion rate for their Green Links of about .125% and they have roughly 10 Million regular readers every month. You can do the math for yourself, but essentially this works out to a profit of about $300,000 per year, assuming that each Green-Link-motivated sale will give the LA Times a commission of about two dollars (a reasonable expectation).

Now, this is by no means a bad thing. $300,000 could definitely save a few jobs or reduce cutbacks, but honestly, you could do a lot better, LA Times. At one point shortly before the recession, a website that I ran was getting a conversion rate of roughly 3%. If the LA Times could achieve this, they could make millions off of affiliate marketing. All that you need to do is actually get behind this system rather than apologizing for it. Here’s six things that you can do to make this happen:

1. Be Transparent
Promote what you are doing and don’t be ashamed about it. You are “selling” (no, it’s not a dirty word) products to your loyal readers. Be upfront about this and they will be much more likely to participate rather than simply ignoring your affiliate links.

2. Create a Video Explaining the System
Your readers will be far more likely to buy products through your affiliate links if you create a short thirty to sixty second video explaining the process. Be upfront with them. Say, “Hey, this is a great new way that we are creating revenue so that we won’t have to charge you for content. When you click on one of our Green Links and buy a product, we get a small commission, and you don’t have to pay any more than you normally would for the product. It’s a win-win situation.”

3. Post the Products that Have Been Purchased Recently
People are far more likely to buy things when they see that other people are already doing so. They hate to do things alone. But if you put up a side bar showing all of the most popular products that people are purchasing through the affiliate program, this will take away some of the hesitancy.

4. Write a Report on a Product and (God Forbid) Sell It!
I know that this is a taboo subject, but you guys are writers, am I right? You put words into pleasing combinations for a living. Why not channel a small fraction of this skill into writing up soft-selling product reviews that encourage your customers to buy through your affiliate links? If you really feel so uncomfortable about doing this yourself, hire someone from the budding new generation of internet savvy marketing writers to do the “dirty work” for you.

5. Let Users Rate and Make Comments on Products They’ve Purchased Through Green Links.
This is a free way to engage the power of your online community to generate revenue. When one user gives a positive revue of an affiliate product, others can purchase it with confidence.

6. Live by the Law of “ABS” (Always Be Selling.)
Don’t just tell your readers about the affiliate system one time. Tell them again and again and again. In my own experience with affiliate marketing, I’ve found that people need to be reminded over and over again about the system. Give your readers the basic rundown on the Green Links system with every chance that you get. The profits that you will reap as a result in the future will far outweigh any hesitancy you may feel in the present.

Think outside the newsstand,
Joe

photo by Steve Rhodes

I noticed a post on April 23rd on EditorsWebBlog.org about the struggle that newspaper websites are going through right now over whether or not to continue giving their content to Google for free. The author, Maria Conde, cites the internet consultant Arnon Mishkin, who is a major proponent of payed content, and who has been encouraging news websites to remove their content from Google. He argues that a large portion of Internet traffic doesn’t come from Google, but rather from regular, faithful visitors who respond to a news organization’s strong brand recognition.

However, Maria Conde notes that despite what Mr. Mishkin argues for, his own research shows that Google is still responsible for a significant portion of news websites’ traffic. In fact, according to Mishkin’s report as much as fifty percent of traffic to news websites comes from topic searches on Google. In her post, Maria Conde concludes that most news websites still need Google to generate traffic, unless they already have a deeply entrenched brand and a significant crowd of regular visitors.

I couldn’t agree more! Sure, a news website is a community (although it happens to be an online community) and should and will allow it to keep up a significant flow of traffic on its own using a strong brand. In short, Mishkin is right that branding works. But try suggesting to a “new media” consultant that you’d like to build your brand without using Google. He or she would look at you as if you had two heads, or perhaps no head at all!

Google is a central player in new media, meaning that any newspaper that wants to make the transition into this uncharted territory safely must adapt to Google’s new role in the industry. Otherwise, newspapers will go the same route as the music industry, which took a huge hit by denying the incontrovertible changes from internet technology. Seth Godin, in his book Tribes, describes how the music industry condemned itself early on to a slow and painful death by refusing to let go of business models rooted in the past. According to Godin, the music industry ignored two fundamental rules:

1. Don’t base your business predictions on market conditions that are better than the status quo. Chances are that they will never arrive. (Does this ring a bell newspaper guys?)

2. Don’t base your predictions on your past performance. If you’ve made money in the past, you did so under the market conditions of the past, which may have been categorically different from the market conditions of today.

The newspaper industry is doing the same thing today. They are repeatedly breaking these two rules. Instead of inventing new models that will work in today’s market, they are crossing their fingers and hoping that business will improve some time in the future. They are assuming that they can use models that worked twenty years ago and succeed in today’s market. This is an unfortunate repetition of what has already happened in the music industry, one that is sad and painful to watch. People haven’t been paying for news and don’t want to start paying for news unless they are given some sort of extra value. Trying to charge people for something that they are used to getting for free is simply not a viable business model.

Think outside the newsstand,
Joe

Image Duplicitous Soul from Vermin Inc

A few weekends ago, the Boston area where I live was pummeled with rain. We received twelve inches of rain in two days, about one third of our average yearly rain fall. As soon as the flood waters started to rise, I was desperate to get up to the minute accurate information. So I turned on my TV and logged on to the internet. I was quickly able to find up to date information about Boston. There were pictures of cars toppled over and news about power outages, all of the things you would expect during a major storm.

But I actually live in a suburb of Boston, so what I really wanted was information specifically about my local town. I decided to start searching for flood information directly related to my suburb. Nothing.

There simply wasn’t any information posted yet about the flood even though it had been going on for several hours already. I wanted desperately to know if any roads were going to be out, if the schools were going to shut down early, and if there might be a power outage coming up. But there just wasn’t any information of this kind available.

And then it dawned on me that our local town newspaper only comes out once a week. Next weekend, I would be sure to find lots of information about the storm and pictures of fallen trees and flooded streets. But what good would it actually do me then? Sure, I would probably be interested in seeing the pictures, but the information itself would no longer be of any use to me. I needed it delivered to me in real time so that I could make decisions based on this information. I needed to know if roads were out so that I could decide whether or not to try to drive. I needed to know if schools were closing early so I could pick up my son. I needed to know if a power outage would be likely so that I could take the necessary precautions.

But I couldn’t find any of this information. If we were to invent the local newspaper for the first time today, wouldn’t we make sure to make this information available in real time?

In the last few posts I’ve talked about switching to a “community hub” model, a website where community members come to get up to date relevant information, and that, on an opt-in basis, actually delivers information directly to them via emails and text messages.

Under this new model, city officials could deliver updated information in real time about road closures, possible power outages, and public service closures in real time. It could even be set up so that officials and reporters could update this information straight from their portable devices, so that even if the power is out in their homes or offices, they should still be able to get the word out.

Sure enough, the power did go out at my house, and I had no idea what we were going to do for dinner. Here’s what I really could have used in this situation:

Let’s say that Julie, the pizza shop owner from our previous post, still has power on at her shop. She sends a text message to the community hub (with whom she has a monthly paid subscription) that says: “We’ve still got power here at Julie’s. Come down for a hot meal and free bread sticks with any large pizza.” The community hub then distributes this message to community members who have opted to receive updates from local food purveyors like Julie’s Pizza.

Let me tell you something. If I had received this text message to my mobile device while I was sitting at home in the dark with my family, you can bet that I would have been at Julie’s pizza within minutes!

Everyone wins in this situation: Julie gets business for her pizza shop, the local news hub proves its value to Julie who continues her subscription, and I don’t have to drive aimlessly around town in order to find the one or two restaurants that are still open.

Think outside the newsstand,
Joe

Photo Credit by minds-eye

As you know, the purpose of this blog is to answer the question, “What would the local news business look like if it were invented today?” And we are asking you to contribute to this blog, to critique and to add to our ideas in order to create a new business model for local news.

I recently told a friend about this idea and he said, “What? Are you crazy?” He simply couldn’t understand why we would put our business plan on the internet for people to look at and even steal if they want to. “You need to protect your ideas,” he said, “or someone else will take them.” As far as he was concerned, opening up this blog to a crowd of people is unconventional and risky. In one way, he’s right. Developing a business model in this way is unconventional. In the past, if you had an idea for a new business, you would guard it with your life and only share it with a few close friends, and even they would be required to sign non-disclosure agreements stating that they would tell no one.

But in the information age, this will no longer be the way that ideas are generated and explored. We are now in the age of “crowd sourcing” in which tasks are accomplished not privately by individuals, but publicly by torrents of people working together simultaneously. Two stories illustrate this point:

After this last Thanksgiving holiday, my son took a flight back to his university in Florida. After getting off the plane, he was disappointed to find his keys missing as he reached his car in the parking lot. Purely out of frustration, he made a quick post to his Facebook along the lines of, “[Explitive]… at  airport. left my keys in Boston and only spare is in dorm room!” Within fifteen minutes, he had friends messaging him back who where at the same airport offering him a ride. Within half an hour, two other friends who where headed down to the airport anyway had hassled his RA into letting them get his car keys from his room to bring them to him. In the past, he might have lost two or three hours trying to figure out how to get out of the same situation, but the power of the crowd got him out in a matter of minutes.

The second story comes from a post on Mitch Joel’s blog, Six Pixels of Separation. Mitch was stranded in Times Square in New York looking for a decent meal not completely saturated with grease. He sent a quick tweet to his Twitter network asking for advice and within a few minutes he had received “multiple recommendations [and] managed to eat a lightly seared piece of fresh tuna with vegetables at Blue Fin.” Once again, the crowd was able to solve a problem with ease that would have been difficult, at best, for the individual. This inspired Mitch to write and blog about the phenomenon of “crowd sourcing.”

Just as in these two examples, we believe that the solution to the problems faced by local news will not be found by an individual sitting alone in a room. Instead, we need to tap into the wisdom of the crowd by sharing and critiquing each other’s ideas until we find a solution, like a bucket brigade working to put out a fire. Doing things the old way is like having each person grab a pale and run half a mile to the lake and back with water. Each person has different talents in differing degrees, but this system doesn’t take this into account. But when everyone works as a crowd, you can have the stronger people get into a line and ferry the full pales back from the lake, while the weaker people form a second line taking the empty pales back. People with leadership skills can work to keep the line in order and make sure no one gets exhausted, and the very strongest people can be in the front throwing the water on the fire.

With crowd sourcing, each person’s individual strengths are brought to the forefront, while their weaknesses are eclipsed. This is what we hope to accomplish with Civic Edition. While the two of us bring our business experience to the table, each of you brings a different kind of talent. Some of you are reporters currently working at local newspapers, some of you have experience with social networking, and others may have experience with community organizing. We believe that together, our combined abilities will be greater than the sum of their parts. What do you think?

Think Outside the Newsstand

Joe

At 7:30, this Sunday morning, I was begrudgingly awoken by a plaintive and incessant beeping coming from a distant room in my house. It turned out to be the very last of our land-line portable phones, the sole survivor of our family’s slow conversion to complete reliance on cellular. We hardly ever use it, and so it had been somehow knocked under a couch where it was left to languish until it had run almost completely out of batteries. And now, on its last leg, it had begun to make this horrid noise, a cry for help asking me to place it back on its charging base.

As I was placing the phone back on its base, I pressed the talk button—purely out of habit—to see if there were any voice mails. Perhaps Publisher’s Clearinghouse had called to let me know that I was a finalist in their ten million dollar sweepstakes. No, even they would have probably known to call me on my cell phone. There was just one message, left on Friday by the mother of one of my youngest son’s friends. She was calling to say that her son, Johnny had left his backpack at our house and wanted to ask if my son would call and make arrangements to return it, otherwise Johnny could expect to turn up at school on Monday with a truck-full of his homework missing, and hell to pay.

I try to respond to all of my messages as quickly as possible, so I was a bit anxious that two days had already lapsed. I took down the number and quickly ushered the phone over to my son’s room where I found him quadruple-tasking on Facebook, Skype, iTunes and homework (or so I’m told).

“Michael,” I said as I laid the number down by his keyboard, “Johnny’s mom called and left a message on Friday saying that he left his backpack here.”

My son didn’t look up from his computer or down at the phone number. The situation obviously didn’t seem all that urgent to him.

“Are you going to send him an email then?” I asked, assuming that this must be how kids communicate these days, since he didn’t really seem interested in using the phone.

Then Michael turned his face around towards me and I saw his eyebrows raise and his nose wrinkle in a look of bewilderment. I suddenly felt a tinge of generation gap syndrome coming on.

“Email?” he said, “Email? Who uses email any more? I’ll send him a message on Facebook chat!” and with this he turned back to his “homework.”

My son is fifteen years old, and he doesn’t even use email, a medium which I still think of as new and cutting edge. How are we going to market to, inform, educate, and entertain an entire community of people like my son, who are already using technology that is two steps ahead of the rest of us? If people in this generation no longer use email, what are the chances that they are going to subscribe to, much less even pick up a local newspaper?

Today, people of different ages access information in drastically different ways. People who are fifteen have different expectations from people who are thirty-five, who have different expectations from people who are fifty-five, and so on. While many people in the older generations still want to be able to hold a physical newspaper in their hands and would be greatly inconvenienced to get their news online, there are also many young people today who have never communicated using physical media and are therefore not even a viable market for printed local newspapers.

Our media culture is in a hybrid phase. So if we are to invent the local newspaper business today, we need to offer a hybrid product that appeals to all different age groups at once. There is still probably quite some time before print media goes totally digital, but there is no telling just how much time is left. By establishing a hybrid model now, the local newspaper industry will be ready to transition to an all digital model when the time comes, ensuring that local news will still be available to future generations.

Think Outside the Newsstand,

Joe