People in the past have relied on newspapers to give them certain things such as entertainment, education, and diversion, but now readers don’t necessarily need a newspaper to provide them with those things.

McAdams gives the example of movie times, saying that many readers, including herself, no longer buy a newspaper to find out the movie times. They simply go on the computer and get the times from Google or they can go on their blackberry from any location. Therefore, the newspapers need to come up with new and interesting content for readers, content that they cannot get in other places.

McAdams recommends that newspapers should “concentrate on the motivations that still exist and on new ones that you can invent.” McAdams explains the need for newspapers to localize. It doesn’t make sense to compete with the big papers by producing the same things that they produce. It makes sense to use the large staff of news gatherers and editors to report news locally, news that is not reported by anyone else and stories that have not been heard hundreds of times. This is news that is important to the people interested in a daily paper. McAdams says, “Frankly, if it’s not about this place, I can get a better version somewhere else.”

Delivery is another major part of the future of the news business. A decline is circulation could have as much to do with delivery as it has to do with content. McAdams cites the example of canceling her daily paper due to poor delivery methods and having nothing to do with content.

In this day and age, delivery must be fast, reliable, and everywhere. That means delivery includes online video and mobile updates. Delivery includes websites whose editorial content is not ruined by the clutter of ads on the page. Websites need to have effective searchability, using things such as keywords and user generated tags.

Delivery and content, and not gadgets and digital media, should be the focus of the news business for the future, according to McAdams.

Source: Newspaper Association of America through Ifra Executive News Service