Quite the lofty goal for this post, but if the writers at We Have Beards are one thing, it’s arrogant. I mean confident.
My writing career started in college on the school newspaper. I like to pretend like I was a journalist, obviously I’m still pretending with this blog. Nevertheless, my love of newspapers started long ago. I still enjoy reading the newspaper today. That’s why it’s so heartbreaking to know that newspapers and magazines are slowly dying out. I know, I know, some of you might argue that they will never die. And they might not. I’m hopeful that they won’t. But the most important thing to me is not that the physical paper continue to exist, it’s that the quality of the reporting remain available to the masses.
I write a blog. Obviously it’s the greatest blog in the world, but I’m not winning a Peabody, and rightfully so. I don’t hold the “reporting” from We Have Beards up to the standards of the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times. My goal is to write a fun blog for discussing movies, music, literature and food. The great things in life.
As more and more people begin to replace their daily paper with bloggers like me as their news source, I begin to worry about the future of our country. And of course children like Ponijao. (She’s so effing cute!)
What I’m getting at is I have three ideas that I want to propose to save the papers, or at least delay the inevitable. Now, I know these ideas are brilliant, and I know that the big papers read this blog religiously, so if any paper decides to follow through with these ideas, you need to give me credit and some money. Just a little. I’m easy. Like really easy.
PAPERLIST
One of the biggest blows to the newspaper industry has been the growth of free online classified sites like Craigslist. For newspapers, one of the biggest sources of revenue used to be classified ads. They had the local market cornered. Then Craigslist, Backpage and other online classified sites that let anyone post anything for free. Newspaper classified departments have barely survived, but they are breathing, barely.
The solution is to take on Craigslist by uniting newspapers across the country on one site called PaperList. PaperList will have a homepage much like Google. The user types in their zip code and a travel radius in miles, and every classified ad from newspapers covering that area will pop up.
How will this beat Craigslist? Well, Craigslist blows. I don’t know how many of you use CL, but the once powerful classified site is now overrun with third-party posting bots, sketchy car dealers, murderers, and dishonest sellers. It’s quickly turning into eBay. You can’t find anything on Craigslist anymore, unless you’re searching for your rapist, then you’re definitely covered. All of the ads are littered with vague information, headlines with fake prices designed to trick you to open.
It’s a mess.
PaperList will be successful because each paper will use their existing staff to vet all posts to pull out the riff -raff. Clear posting criteria will be adhered to. It will be like the AP Style Book for online classified ads. So where Craigslist uses the shotgun approach and posts everything, PaperList will provide quality ads. Which will increase user satisfaction. It will also increase sales, therefore encouraging more users to pimp their goods.
24 HOUR NEWS
The other newspaper killer is the 24 hour news channels. FOX, CNN, MSNBC, and such are killing the paper business. But newspaper reporting is far superior. Why not take them on at their own game? Obviously print journalists are ugly bastards, so it will be tough to get them on camera, but I’m sure with modern makeup techniques we can figure something out.
The plan would be to again convince newspapers to unite to create one newspaper backed 24 hour news station. The basic idea would be like a public access channel. Different papers will be responsible for different blocks of time in the 24 hour cycle. The big ones like The New York Times and The Washington Post would likely pay for the morning hours and primetime. By spreading the cost over multiple papers, the overall venture might be less daunting. Plus each paper can make their time their own. Profits from their blocks will go towards covering production costs and overage will funnel to the paper. It’s like having your own network, but only having to produce one show.
The Wall Street Journal would have a business hour, although they already have one on CNBC. The New York Times has an entertainment network online or at least I’ve seen it advertised at movie theaters. Bring it to TV and talk about movies. TV makes money. The cable news channels do very well. But their reporting is sloppy. Again, the pull is quality. I know that most viewers aren’t looking for quality in their journalism. If they were FOX News wouldn’t be the most watched of the 24 hour news channels. So this obviously would be a tough sale. CNN has struggled with their ability to merge quality journalism with the sensationalism that brings in viewers, and they’re losing to sensationalism more and more everyday.
INVESTIGATE BUTTON
If there is one thing that newspaper and magazine journalism provides that no other news medium does, that’s in-depth investigations into the stories that affect our lives. The problem is often the stories that newspapers investigate are not the ones that sell papers. I’m not questioning their choices for what they investigate, but rather judging the American people for what they feel is important to discuss. Unfortunately, the print business is a business. They have to sell papers.
This idea is geared more towards magazines. Magazines like Time and Newsweek currently offers many stories on their sites that won’t appear in the magazines. I think they should amp up the online side of the business to be the main focus. Then on each story they should include a button that says INVESTIGATE, much like a Retweet or Facebook Like button. New stories will be open to further investigation for a period of time. By the end of the deadline, those that the readers want more information on will become the expanded topics discussed in the magazine. Essentially you’ll attempt to bring the online audience offline by providing them with what they want to know more about. It’s crowdsourcing for the magazine industry.
I think this idea has the most potential for being implemented because it doesn’t involve working with your enemies (other papers).
I think the print business needs to stop thinking of each paper as an island unto itself. In the past it was about scooping the other paper, but now scooping the other paper is impossible because the news has already broke on a blog or Twitter. Newspapers must focus on the quality of their investigations. In order to do that they need a better pricing model. I don’t think The New York Times idea of a pay wall is going to work. I’m not going to pay to read anything on their site if I have to pay. I’ll buy the paper for the experience, but I’m not going to pay when I can get the information for free from another paper.
The print community must come up with new and creative ways to fund their investigations and they have to be able to give people what they want at the same time. It’s a tough situation to be in. Obviously these ideas won’t save print journalism, but maybe they’ll bring a little more revenue.
What do you think about these proposals? Will they work? What do you think newspapers and magazines can do to increase revenue?
