News-Record.com

HA! The top editors will be meeting... what on Earth is going to come out of that that is NEW?

Nothing. It's the same players who've been groomed and coached for decades on what is "news" and thinking that they know better than readers.

I wish you luck (as always). But, once again, I continue to believe nothing will change at newspapers until the reward system changes. Reporters who write "the big story" (boring to readers) continue to get rewarded while the reporters who write the stories readers really care about (all one story each day the in paper) get trampled on.

You're stuck in a hard place: you still want to break the "big story" so you have to encourage that, but you know it's not what readers (REAL readers) care about.

Here's an idea: create a whole page in the paper EACH DAY with REAL news to ACTUALLY USE!!! I'm not talking about inside baseball at the city council meeting, I mean things that people really NEED to know to live their lives.

Don't skimp on it the way you did with the little News To Use blurbs on the bottom of 1B back in the day. Those were useless.

Good luck..

if all yalls meedya was all rasist, yalls wood no

Thanks, Jim, for the good wishes. And you're right about our need for more stories that help readers live their lives. But your description is hardly the way our reward system works. And if we really wanted to write only "big" stories, we'd have a lot more of our staff working on them.

While I have you, please send me a private e-mail elaborating on your earlier comments about people of color we've hired. Your e-mail address listed here apparently doesn't work.

The free market economy isn't going to allow the newspaper industry much time to come to a decision on how to compete in the 21st century. You can't tread water but so long. The textile, apparel, steel, and auto industries have also had their share of supposedly talented people with vision. The clock is ticking.

John, Good luck on your meeting. The stats are against you: readership for all traditional news outlets is down and the demographics are showing that the buying cohort - the 18 - 34 group - are not avid readers of the newspaper. That being said, I have faith in the N&R's willingness to think outside the box. The question is: are you able to think outside the financial box?

Yes. But even so, making the newspaper more lively, incisive and relevant is less about money and more about working on the right things.

I get my news from the cable news networks, I only read the N&R online for editorial comments and obits. I look at the noon and evening local TV news for local events.
Newspapers can never be "real time" and that's the news the public uses these days.
Sad to say, but newspapers are way down the list as valuable news sources.
If you want to maintain readership, you have to offer something that other outlets don't offer. That said, I'm not sure what that "something" is, but you'd better find it if you don't want to find yourself on the "extinct" list.

In the search for revenue, does newspaper management consider the Landmark Communications subsidiaries CoolSavings.com and Alliant Cooperative Data Solutions as competitors for advertising dollars?

John --

The way you are approaching the problem from a content status is naive. Don't kid yourself: the only reason this hasn't happened sooner is that the newspaper is a near-monopoly created by high barriers to entry. If you want to remain profitable, you are going to have to find a way to maintain that near-monopoly with lowered barriers to entry.

Write down these four words and carve them in your brain, starting yesterday:

Dominate local onliine advertising.

The way out for newspapers is to bully their way into dominant market share over local online advertising. Currently, your situation with auto, jobs, classified, real estate, and retail/merchant online advertising now is a jumbled mess of initiatives and partnerships that doesn't work.

The answer is to make capital investments RIGHT NOW to force your way into market share domination of every conceivable area of online local advertising. Whoever holds that status will have some flexibility as to content.

If you don't, I'll write you later at your new e-mail address:

staffmanager@gso.local.yahoo.com

Tivo and the like are giving up info on programs I watch later. The reason is (and seems fair to me) that advertisers won't fund shows I watch if I'm not in their ratings. But the N&R? I go to the editorial page first, and B second. What matters to me is what's going on here. I've got the Web for the national stuff that has no Greensboro roots. What are the MSM print publications doing for me? Can you ask them, John? Please?

I appreciate the advertising advice, but I'm afraid that's out of my league. If I were an advertising expert, I'd be making a lot more money and not blogging on news content. So I can't answer your question, Tom, and Mr. Sun, I hear you and will pass that to our capital investors.

Sue, what are the MSM print pubs doing for you? Reporting the news that goes onto the Web?

Has the NandR released any statistical informtion on how many visitors the News and Record internet site is getting per month and what they are clicking on within the site?

No. We get about 7 million page views a month, but I don't see -- and don't know if we pull -- specific site visits.