News-Record.com

Everyone has his/her own ideas, including the pseudonymous Athenae at the group blog First Draft, who takes a couple of items from Jim Romenesko's newspaper-industry blog at Poynter and whips them into a to-do list for the industry:

[Many newspapers' efforts to attract young readers are] like desperate parents dyeing their hair pink and listening to their kids' CDs in a futile and sad attempt to get their kids to like them. Personally? ... I don't want my parents to be just like me. I want my parents to be my parents, to do things I need parents to do, like set a good example, provide food and shelter, and teach me about the world.

Here's some resolutions: Stop sucking. Stop running front-page features on flip-flops and the Sopranos and The Passion of the Christ. Stop cutting your newsrooms in half because you only pulled a 20 percent profit last year. Stop acting irritated that your readership isn't what it used to be. Nothing's what it used to be. Stop saying you have no money for journalism and sending your ad sales execs to Jamaica as a reward for meeting quota. Learn to wiki? How about learning to FOIA? Do the little things: Local official giving you a hard time? Request his travel reimbursement records. Tell the story you don't think is a story because it's always been that way, or because everybody does it. Stand up to power and when [politicians] whine that you're mean, buy yourself a beer and send me the bill, because that kind of mean is defined in the real world as your job. ... No fear or favor. No backing down. Not. One. Inch.

So, which of these items, if any, should we put on our action plan for 2006?