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Predictions

by Mike Masnick

Fri, Dec 30th 2005 2:49pm





The Newspaper Of Tomorrow To Look A Lot Like The Web Of Today?

from the just-saying... dept

Lots of journalists are busy looking for ways to save the newspaper business (which, it's worth remembering, is still quite profitable). There's an interesting article in Business Week about how to save the newspaper business, with a list of suggestions that basically sounds like: "copy all of the good stuff on the web and add good local reporting." It's not a bad starting strategy (even as local reporting budgets are being cut), but simply copying what others are doing isn't enough. Newspapers need to go beyond that to offer something more, and the final recommendation touches on how to do that. It's all about building communities around the paper -- and that doesn't mean just copying MySpace, but about really letting the local community connect with each other over the issues that matter to them. That's where good local reporting can combine with the community to offer something that's both different and compelling.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    Newspaper Format 21st Century

    identicon
    bigpicture, Dec 30th, 2005 @ 5:54pm

    Consensus journalism may be OK, but news (it is a "News"-Paper) material still needs to be kept factual and from credible sources. There can be opinion sections, and even opinions about factual material, but these somehow need to be kept distinct. This format can also be a great source of dis-information, if fact cannot be separated from opinion. Also suppose there is a ground-swell of specific opinion about a particular topic, that suggests some sort of political or other action is required. Will there be any mechanism for effective action?

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Re: Newspaper Format 21st Century

    identicon
    jjj, Dec 30th, 2005 @ 9:51pm

    HOW ABOUT A COMUNITY FORUM

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Machine

    identicon
    George, Dec 31st, 2005 @ 2:11am

    There's a newspaper machine by my house that eats quarters. Doesn't open or give up a newspaper, just eats the quarters. You can see lots of dents in the machine, likely from all the kicks it's gotten over the years from ticked off people.

    Here's one way how to save the business: How's about finally fixing all those machines so we can actually BUY a paper?

    That would be a good first step. Once you get that concept down, then you should try your hand at the web.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    More like the Web news...?

    identicon
    Rick Gutleber, Jan 1st, 2006 @ 1:01pm

    You mean instead of 6 paragraph stories with the occasional grammatical or spelling error, we'll start seeing 2 paragraph stories with tons of grammatical and spelling errors?

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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