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Mark Potts, author of the Recovering Journalist blog, recently wrote about the ten changes he thinks newspapers need to make to thrive. What follows is an edited transcript of his post:

What would you do if you ran a newspaper?

Somebody asked me that question recently, and it made me pull together some of the thoughts I've had recently about the problems that newspapers are having and what they might do to pull out of their current spiral. This is hardly a complete list, but here's a 10-point prescription for ailing newspapers:

1. Make the Web the primary product.
Stop pasting the newspaper onto a screen. Reorganize the newsroom so that its work appears online as quickly as possible. ... And embrace the technology: news Web sites should be full of Web 2.0 goodness like interactive maps, social networking tools, RSS feeds, distribution to mobile devices, etc. Use the medium to its fullest.

2. Local, local, LOCAL!
There are a zillion places to get national and international news, in real time. But newspapers are virtually the only source of truly local news. ... Local news is the last unique franchise that newspapers own, and too many newspapers don't seem to understand this. ... (Why do you think local community newspapers are thriving when big metro dailies are shedding circulation?)

3. If it's widely available elsewhere, don't waste time re-creating it.
Does every newspaper really need its own movie critic? A TV critic? ... Book reviews? Stories from Washington that the AP already has? ... the answer is unequivocably no. Those resources are just wastd.

4. Zero-base the news operation.
Pretend you're starting from scratch. Look at everything that's in the paper and ask tough questions about whether it's still necessary in an age when readers have multiple sources of news and information.

5. Get the readers involved.
As Dan Gillmor has elegantly argued, the audience knows more than news people do. Much more. Tap that knowledge by encouraging reader participation in as many ways as possible: contributing news and information about their communities, sending in photos and videos, commenting on everything. This can't be a token effort, and you absolutely cannot be scared or controlling about it: let the readers get involved at every opportunity. It will greatly improve the product and increase readership.

6. Lose the editorial page.
Unsigned editorials are a relic of a bygone era when newspaper barons exerted power in their community... Here's a thought: Replace it with reader opinions!

7. Expand the advertising base.
In any market, there are thousands of small advertisers that would never consider advertising in the big local newspaper. It's too expensive and covers too broad an area. But those advertisers want to reach the same people the newspaper does. Find a way to make this happen: more focused zoning, cheaper ads, ad rep pay structures that encourage selling to smaller advertisers. This is another area where community papers are running rings around big dailies.

8. Rethink the classifieds.
Craigslist, Monster.com and countless other news competitors have decimated the newspaper classifieds business. ... Anybody who's used craigslist knows how much more effective it is than paid newspaper classifieds. Look hard at your classifieds ... Yes, that may include shifting most of the classifieds online and giving them away for free, in order to keep the critical mass of classifieds that makes them useful.

9. Find new ways to serve advertisers.
What newspapers offer advertisers--display ads, classifieds--really hasn't changed much in a century. Look for ways to change that. Get into the Yellow Pages directory business online. Aggressively offer contextual advertising. Use idle newspaper delivery resources to help local businesses with their delivery needs. Use subscription lists to help businesses find customer leads. Explore interactive advertising forms that go way beyond boring banner ads. Offer data services to help businesses manage their inventories or sell things online. It's not enough to simply sell space in the paper or on the Web site. Help advertisers make their businesses more successful.

10. Take chances. Innovate. Be fearless about trying things--and killing things.
...A wise editor once said to me, there's virtually no history of research and development in the newspaper business, which is odd considering that covering the news is a daily act of research and development. Let's face it: The single biggest innovation in print newspaper journalism in the past decade or so is...Sudoku. Newspapers can and must do better than that to survive.

Source: Recovering Journalist

The Los Angeles Times announced that it is the first Tribune Company paper to be available for Amazon's Kindle Reader. This is a further step in the reinvention process that newspapers worldwide are adhering to.

The Kindle Reader offers newspapers a chance to adapt to today's world laden with mobile technology, by offering an e-reader-compatible version of their paper. Some editors, however, do not trust in the full-fledged future of the e-paper the 2008 Newsroom Barometer showed.

Kindle e-papers are offered by top US papers like The New York Times and the Washington Post as well as international papers like France's Le Monde, Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine and China's Shanghai Daily.

Source: Los Angeles Times Blog

See also:

A Paperless world?
Are we heading for all-elecronic papers?
   
 

As newsrooms increasingly seek to cut costs and embrace the concept of "mojos" (mobile journalists), some papers are going as far as to remove their journalists' desks from the office.

With the increasing use of laptops, WIFI and other technological innovations, publishers are wondering, is it necessary for journalists to have an office?

No, according to Stephen Borg, Publisher of The Record in Hackensack. The New Jersey-based newspaper is leaving its main building and relocating employees to another newspaper the company owns, The Herald News of West Paterson.

Borg is a firm believer in the concept of office "hoteling". Journalists must now make a reservation for desk time. This means there will be a lot of sharing, but 'hoteling' cuts down on the need for desks, and thus the space those additional desks would require.

Borg said, "I really view this change as "moving out into the field." He envisages mobile journalists working full-time out of the office.

With Borg's changes, the company can save some $2.4 million annually, cutting down on electricity bills, cleaning crews and all the like necessary to keep a building going.

Such innovations are arguably necessary, but it will be interesting to see how these newspapers perform after the changes have been implemented.

Click on the link below for more examples of cost-cutting/efficiency measures at newspapers.

Source: Follow the Media

See also:

UK: BBC integrates newsroom with new media on-demand production unit

US: Mobile journalism is changing the newsrooms

CNN won't go down the mobile news route

According to News & Record editor John Robinson, Kubler-Ross' model of accepting death can be applied to the current state of the newspaper industry in the US: it is time for acceptance.

In Kubler-Ross' model, the five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

In April, Terry Heaton, AR & D's Media 2.0 senior vice president, said the industry was at the depression stage.

Now is time of acceptance - not of death though, but of the need for change.

Reporter and blogger Doug Fischer wrote that although it may seem that newspapers are dying, they would continue to "exist in radically different frequency and content."

Journalists need to deal with the economic reality and think about the challenges ahead, Robinson wrote.

"That means we understand how the world has changed, and we understand how our journalistic skills and assumptions must change. For instance, learning what it takes to be a digital journalist is vital. Reaching readers -- information consumers, really -- where, how and when they want it is good for journalism. Listening to and learning from them is even better," he said.
 
Two years ago, the Economist published a special report in which it said that the newspapers might survive in the long term if they "reinvent themselves on the Internet and on other new-media platforms such as mobile phones and portable electronic devices."

The situation of the US newspaper industry does seem critical, in light of the massive wave of layoffs in recent weeks and the overall advertising decline. But Robinson pointed out that future journalistic opportunities lie in microblogging, beat blogging and social networking. Journalism is, in his opinion, on the verge of attracting different customers.

Source: News-Record.com
 

The Star Tribune announced that this summer, experts would train the Tribune staff to edit videos and produce programming. It said that the paper's staff has increased training in news production and entertainment videos to "enliven" the site, "diversify the news" and "prepare for mobile delivery."

Last year, Tribune photographers were trained to shoot documentary and breaking-news video. They were also trained to bring a basic video camera to shoot breaking-news.
 
"We're trying to transform a site that was once a newspaper on the Web into one that takes full advantage of the medium," Nancy Barnes, Tribune editor, said.

The Tribune's Rick Sennott is familiar with both photography and videography and he enjoys being a "one-man-band." His aim is to "produce images that act as a channel for true understanding and give a clear voice to the people being photographed."

The Tribune's site includes video content on issues such as gardening, health, sports and local news (see above). 

"While I'm still not crazy about seeing myself on the small screen, I really enjoy how video reporting can bring a story to life," Connie Nelson, Home+Garden editor, said, "You get the sights, the sounds. You can show rather than say. And you can make a personal connection."

Barnes expressed some concern over the increasing importance of visual journalism and how journalism has evolved to deliver more than just print news.

"It's no longer sufficient for a news company to put out a fine newspaper. We have to deliver the news anywhere, anytime, however the consumer wants it. Some days, this feels a bit like the old game where you see if you can jump up and down and pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. Now, can you do it on one foot?" Barnes said.

This trend towards increased online vide content is what news sites like the Tribune or the UK's Telegraph are following.

Source: The Star Tribune

See also:
UK: Telegraph releases online video widgets
Opinion: Best practices for video journalism, with Travis Fox
UK: Telegraph's main competitors are BBC and CNN, in era of multimedia journalism
 

In his blog, Steven Outing discussed the Global Conference on the Individuated Newspaper and the innovative approaches to personalized news that newspapers can adopt to attract more readers.

Key points of the conference included:

-using the available technology to give "individuated" news. This implies having a content management system that can handle personalized editions.
-younger audiences experience individuated media through many platforms including Facebook, iTunes/iPod, mobile phones, etc.
-individuated news is "inevitable" and newspapers have to evolve.

Rocky Mountain News reported that, due to the constraints of print, newspapers have provided people with a broad selection of content that might not appeal to every reader.

"It seems we can turn all the new-found power of the Internet - that so easily empowers people to personalize their news - and generate a whole new type of newspaper with greater relevance and value. Call it the reverse- published newspaper," said Dean Singleton, MediaNews CEO and chairman of the Associated Press board of directors.

Several examples of reverse-publishing have emerged in the US, with varied success, including the Rocky News' YourHub.com or the Chicago Tribune's Triblocal.

According to Rocky Mountain News, readers should participate in the journalistic process by specifying what it is they want to read about. If news organizations are to remain successful, they should look into customizing their content for each individual.

This makes some people worry that a lot of news might become focused on less serious issues like Britney Spears' latest misdemeanour. Journalism professor Vin Crosbie disagreed, because control of the news agenday will always remain divided between professional editors and users.

Source: SteveOuting.com, Rocky Mountain News

See also:

Goole News app for Facebook

Here are some headlines from our sister blog, SFN:

Yahoo defends "yes" to Google, "no" to Microsoft
Norway's online newspaper revenues reache €290 million
Mobile marketing still immature, but most effective among young generations
Free dailies contribute 24 percent of Swiss newspaper ad revenue
US Newspaper help wanted ads falll by month, year

Cox Enterprises-owned Palm Beach Newspapers Inc. (owner of the Palm Beach Post, Palm Beach Daily News, the Florida Pennysaver and La Palma) announced that it would be cutting 300 staff members out of the total 1,350, Palm Beach Post Online wrote. Sandy Schwartz, president of Cox Newspapers, wrote a memo to publishers of other Cox Ent. papers, PaidContent.Org reported.

Schwartz wrote:

"We have no expectations newspapers will return to the highly profitable days of the past; we do believe, however, we can publish newspapers that continue to make us proud and produce positive earnings."

In the memo, publisher of Atlanta Journal Constitution, John Mellott, added:

"Our AJC 2.0 efforts are in final prototyping stages. Our digital traffic continues to climb, and this week, we begin overarching digital strategy work."

Source: PaidContent.Org, Palm Beach Post Online

See also:
US: Cox Newspapers going mobile
USA Today founding editor; long live newspapers

The New York Times (NYT) has added a new "breaking news" alert to their text messaging service.

Users can send "NEWSALERTS" to 698698 (NYTNYT) and when major breaking news items are posted on the NYT homepage, users will get a text message with the news.

This feature is the NYT's newest addition to their mobile news service, which was launched at the beginning of 2008. The mobile services provide news, columns and other information to signed-up users.  

According to the NYT, the NYT mobile site got 19 million page views in May.

See Also:
New York Times mobile news through text message keywords

Source: NY Times press release

At the Future of Journalism conference Jeff Jarvis, journalism professor at City University New York, MediaGuardian contributor and BuzzMachine blogger, offered 10 questions news outlets should be asking themselves and the Guardian in particular. Here's a selection:

1 - "Who are we?"
History is "full of companies that had failed to answer this question and lost their way", said Jarvis.

He discussed how AOL could have become what Facebook is today if they hadn't been sidetracked into thinking they were a "content company." Likewise, Yahoo could have become what Google is, if it had embraced the fact that it was "really an advertising company."

In his opinion, the Guardian is "increasingly a 'community' company" but future growth could stem from thinking of the paper as a "platform" or "network". News organizations should try to "collaborate and mobilise" effectively, perhaps by including audience reports of news events. 

3 - Are we generous?

This may be done by "sharing technology, supporting people with the Guardian ad network" and "allowing people to be stars in the outside world", reported the Guardian.
 
5 - Are we findable?

News websites should be findable and should include "distributed content, content that is open for developers to build applications (or widgets), content that is findable on social media, and content that can be consumed on mobile."

Newspaper websites should act like platforms, sharing "knowledge and promotion and traffic and advertising and branding" Jarvis said.

Other questions for newspapers to ask themselves include:

"Are we inventing new narratives?"
"Are we in data layers?"
"Are we having fun yet?"
"Are we agile?"

Source: Guardian Online

See Also:
@Future of Journalism: the benefits of Twitter
@Future of Journalism: reporting celebrity news

"Papers facing worst year for ad revenue" screamed the New York Times yesterday, a headline topping an article about a "double-digit drop in advertising revenue" at American newspapers. But apart from the information detailed after the obvious headline, two observations can be taken from the article.

1. The general public is catching on
The headline enticed enough people to click through to the story that it was driven up to #7 on the most read stories list of nytimes.com and #3 on the 10 most blogged stories. Although media bloggers have been enthusiastically documenting the ups and downs of American newspapers for several years, the fact that the article reached both of these lists shows that the general public, or at least the audience of nytimes.com, is more aware and interested in the plight of the industry. Perhaps newspaper readers, recognizing the seemingly dire short-term financial  futures of US papers, are becoming genuinely concerned about their favorite papers, the journalism they produce and the democracies which they keep in check. As the industry struggles through tough economic times, will their readers come to the rescue by buying more subscriptions or even contributing money to help keep the newshole deep?

2. Dailies vs. weeklies
What was also interesting about the NYT article was what preceded it; a full-browser window advertisement for the analytical UK-based weekly, The Economist. Whereas the print circulation of the New York Times has remained relatively stable over the past decade (while the circs of its brothers in many American markets have decreased substantially), the circulation and revenues of the Economist have doubled.

Although the Economist is recognized as one of the smartest newspapers in the world and has undergone an ambitious global marketing scheme over the past few years, some analysts attribute its recent circ and revenue success to changes in the habits of readers. A growing number of newshounds scan the headlines on the Internet or mobile devices constantly throughout the day and thus have little need to purchase the daily paper which is often a rehash of news they already know. But weeklies such as the Economist have more time to reflect upon current events and get to the "What does it mean" aspect of news, something that is very difficult to accomplish on a daily basis. This aspect seems to be a near perfect fit in the busy daily lives of people. Where they once may have taken a couple of hours to read the newspaper front to back, now, news reading habits seem to more like this:
1. scan the headlines and first paragraph almost immediately after something happens
2. skip the details in the rest of the article
3. wait a few days for a comprehensive story that tells readers what incidents mean for the world and themselves.

In this sense, it has been suggested that newspapers scale back the frequency of their print editions to 3 or 4 days a week to adhere to readers' busy lifestyles. Even US weeklies seem to be decreasing their publishing frequency to bi-weekly in order to allow more time for reflection.

Back to the Economist advertisement. It would be curious to see what kind of success rate the Economist receives from advertising in NYT and if they'll receive converts from the NYT print daily to the Economist print weekly. On the other hand, any defectors will more than likely continue reading nytimes.com for their daily headlines. The problem seems to be that brief headline-reading visits to daily websites like nytimes.com aren't encouraging for advertisers, and in turn will not help any revenue losses from downturns in print advertising.  

The Telegraph has created widgets that distribute online video content to various social networking sites and blogs.

The widgets are compatible with 26 different websites, including Facebook and Myspace, and are available to mobile users. They will cover several of the Telegraph's news sections, including news, business, arts and entertainment, and sports.

According to Alison Reay, new media director of Telegraph Media Group, the video player is only temporary; the company hopes to embed videos within articles during the next 12 to 15 months.

Source: Journalism.co.uk