Rethinking the newspaper
I'm hurt. No one has asked me how our meeting to begin our efforts to remake the paper went. OK, I know you are just being polite and don't want to be perceived as nosy, and I appreciate that. As a reward, I'll go ahead and tell you.
As I wrote about in January, we have been working on thinking younger and making our content more local. Now we've taken the Readership Institute's research and recommendations to heart. We're layering in experience-based editing. That means that when you read the News & Record, we want to evoke these thoughts and feelings:
* It gives me something to talk about
* It looks out for my civic and personal interests
* It provides surprise and humor
* Its ads are useful
The definitions of the experiences are here, but, if you don't want to bother with the link, they are pretty intuitive.
A formula? No. Or, at least no more formulaic than we've used for years. Instead, the idea is to provide you more intensely relevant news and information. The "old" model of newspapering -- we tell you once a day what you need to know and you'll buy us if you know what's good for you -- is rapidly losing its footing. Now, we're trying to tell stories in more compelling ways, to make the important interesting and cycle out of publishing boring process stories, and to focus on journalism that makes a difference in the hearts of our readers and the life of the community. That means tightly focused investigative efforts, clear explanations on how the news affects you and stories that resonate as true and reflective of the community.
The market is changing, as people have said. Our work rethinking the newspaper will take us a while to complete, but we'll be making changes throughout, trying this and abandoning that. Tomorrow's front page will reflect some of them, with, I hope, more interesting story selection and more impactful design. You can view it Tuesday on this site if you aren't a subscriber (and you really should be!)
As always, let me know what you think.
Comments (5)
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Very nice page layout and very interesting links. I think you're exactly on the right track. The hard copy newspaper's function will evolve in the coming years into a source for the local news that doesn't make it to the internet.
But if you're still the state's third largest daily, I think you owe it to your readers to give national politics some significant visibility in the paper. Even if it's just the same one page every day.
Not everyone has a computer and democracy will not thrive without information. It's the responsiblity of a free press to provide it. Indeed it's a vital part of the checks and balances in our system of government.
Posted on May 17, 2005 7:49 PM
John, I'm an old man so please don't hurt me or cancel my subscription. I am not persuaded that your changes will make any difference. It is going to be fascinating to sit back and watch another mature industry in decline struggle to find its way. In 1962 Sam Walton opened his first Wal-Mart. Neither small town America nor corporate America, Sears and K-Mart for example, have yet figured out how to compete against them. Textiles and furniture were oblivious to a 5,000 year old civilization that in less than 25 years has buried them. Let's not even bring autos and steel into the conversation. The newspaper business has two 500 pound gorillas on its back, the internet and constant connectivity. I would urge the newspaper business to look outside the confines of their industry and study what has happened to other industries in decline.(I was in textiles and apparel.) Those industries fiddled around with focus groups, marketing studies, best practices, experts, trade associations, used the latest bells and whistles, and yet still managed to fail spectacularly. Their mindset was a total disbelief that their customers would want someone else's widget. Your widget is news and it is a commodity subject to vicious competition. The changes you have enumerated would be exciting, let us say, in a third world country that doesn't have a communications infrastructure. Right now it appears that the newspaper industry's response is going to be the same as textiles and furniture, defensive and feeble. Without coverage of international and global news you have begun the process of dumbing down the triad.
Thanks for the invitation to respond.
Posted on May 18, 2005 3:43 PM
Well, Tom, we'll see. We're hardly being defensive. We're not attempting to block competition or thinking it will go away. We not only understand where the market is going, but we're trying to go there, too.
International news is, in fact, a commodity that you can get anywhere. That's precisely why we're focusing on local news which you can't.
Posted on May 18, 2005 3:55 PM
I don't think "thinking younger" and trying to re-examine what people want from a newspaper is a bad idea at all. It's pathetic how many people (outside of a journalism class) actually read the N&R on campus at UNCG. And these are precisely the people who SHOULD be reading the paper.
What do they do for International news? Television or the Internet.
What do they do for local news? Nothing.
Any step toward reversing that trend would be good for everyone.
Posted on May 18, 2005 4:35 PM
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Posted on May 18, 2006 12:35 PM