There’s often lots of loose talk about the “assets” newspapers bring to their fight for audience attention and advertiser dollars, but the experience of the past dozen years shows that we’ve overestimated our own capabilities and underestimated the speed with which great ideas can eclipse established products and trusted brands. Now, more than ever, we need to get serious about figuring out what we do well and how that can be adapted to what the marketplace really wants.
When I began managing an interactive business for a newspaper company in 1985, the question I got most frequently from print executives was “You’re not saying newspapers are going away, are you?” and I’ve heard the question in one form or another for the following 22 years. My answer always was – and continues to be – no. But the vague sense of smugness that usually accompanied the query years ago now often seems to have been replaced by a real sense of fear. The impossible now seems not so impossible – and our track record in the hyper-competitive online world isn’t flush with success. So the question of what “assets” we have that really matter has become more urgent.
As the newspaper industry goes through painful restructuring for the next few years, I think we’ll find—or perhaps more accurately, rediscover — a few key pillars to rebuild upon. They include the talent of professional journalists, the power of local presence and the potency of the print medium itself.
First, let’s talk print — and not with that hopeless “dead trees edition” attitude we interactive folks often affect, but with a genuine appreciation for the power of ink on paper. It has been 80 years since electronic media began to broadcast information quickly and with an emotional wallop that audiences and advertisers appreciate — and more than a decade since the ubiquitous Internet began adding the personalization, feedback mechanisms and measurability that make it a fantastic venue for consumers to spend their time and advertisers their money. Through all that, there’s not much indication that people don’t like print — even among many folks who don’t have much interest in the newspaper we’re printing.
If the daily newspaper had been invented after the Internet, we might be hailing it as the go-anywhere, read-it-the-way-you-want, visually rich, verbally-robust, supersized-format, community-building medium of the moment. But the fact that most newspapers don’t live up to that is a failure of our ability to exploit the medium to the fullest, not the medium itself. Instead of grousing that reading the newspaper is a habit that’s in decline (stupid audience!), let’s figure out how to exploit the unique attributes of ink on paper (and our unique capabilities to manufacture and deliver it) to produce print publications that are feasts for our LCD-glazed eyes and treats for our Facebook-addled brains.
Shrinking the same old coverage into fewer pages filled with the same dull ads, the same stale features and same bland layouts won’t cut it. This is a time for rejuvenation, not life support—and that should start with a newspaper that takes fullest advantage of the physical attributes of the printed page. For the broadsheet flagship, that probably means bigger and bolder, with more visuals and livelier text –as well as graphics, headlines and advertisements that treat the page like the big canvas that it is. It means accepting that most readers already know about the big stories from TV or the web, and uses the print page to complement that experience. It probably also means publishing differentiated print products for differentiated audiences, rather clinging solely to a homogenized daily broadsheet in a world that’s all about consumer choice.
One of the impressive things about the Internet is how it seemingly makes traditional geographic barriers disappear. We read information, share opinions, and instantly communicate in ways that appear to make geography no longer matter. But geography does matter offline — and our unique niche in the media world is to make it matter online too.
Maintaining a strong local presence that is truly in touch with its local people, local businesses, local institutions, local schools, local entertainers and local troublemakers is vital — and not easily accomplished. We start from a great base — no other news organization has as many eyes focused on the community as we do. But traditional newspaper content — with its emphasis on rote government meetings and shopworn local features that bore even their writers — isn’t enough.
Kudos to those reporters and interactive producers who are stimulating local online conversations about everything from politics to pizzerias, posting scads of digital photos of local people, and facilitating the discovery of local blogs and videos. Figuring out how to tap the passion and energy of user-generated-content in ways that add value from our smart, creative, well-informed newsroom is the key challenge and opportunity of the current moment of journalism.
Reinventing the role of the professional journalist for a multimedia era will be critical. The fact that we typically have the largest and best cadre of local journalists is a great starting point. It’s folly to expect that every good newsperson will be equally talented at writing for print, shooting for video and running an online discussion. But we can and must figure out how to use their subject matter expertise to produce content in a variety of formats and on schedules that aren’t predominantly tied to print deadlines or conventional notions of the typical newspaper article.
That doesn’t mean jumping on every new technology or abandoning rudimentary business analysis of new projects. Every beat doesn’t cry out for its own podcast — and, in fact, very few do. But the role of the reporter needs to adjust to recognize the primacy of the Web and the formats (like blogs) and techniques (like helpful links and search-optimized headlines) that are native to the Web. Newsrooms that are encouraging beat reporters to maintain newsy blogs and are viewing the print edition article as one byproduct of continuous beat coverage are probably onto a model for the future.
It’s important to remember that the entire media universe is shifting — not just newspapers. That means that opportunities may come our way that aren’t necessarily available now. That’s one of the reasons video experimentation at newspapers is so important — even in markets where there’s no shortage of video crews fielded by local TV stations. Particularly as video usage grows on mobile devices, having the largest and brightest group of versatile professional journalists in a local market may more valuable than having a large infrastructure designed primarily for producing traditional packaged-and-polished TV newscasts. Certainly, our local market competitors will be reinventing themselves, too — but when it comes to local news in new media formats, I’d bet on the local newspaper that understand which “assets” really matter.
Michael A. Silver held a variety of development, marketing and general management positions at Tribune Company’s publishing, interactive and broadcasting divisions from July 1985 until May 2007. Named an NAA digital pioneer in 2002, he recently hung out his consultancy shingle at www.SilverChicago.com and is now advising media companies and civic organizations on multimedia product development. 
