I suggest returning to it’s roots. At one time it was the main source of literary work in England and the US. All the famous short story writers found homes in newspapers and weeklies. Dickens, Poe, Twain, Conan Doyle. Mysteries, humor, romances, tragedy. A novel in serial form or a series hero makes faithful readers.
In LA and New York, they could publish a hopeful playwrights or screenwriters demo scenes.
National consolidation. Imagine several “USA Todays.” THe New York Times could be the liberal one, the Washington Post the policy geek one, the LA Times (or something) the conservative one. Each ought to have an investigative unit in major American cities.
Or imagine a USA Today printed in your town with a certain number of column inches each day devoted to local news. The local staff could then be cut way back.
We’ve been asking oourselves that question for years, but haven’t really come up with a good answer. A big part of the problem is a lack of vision on the part of editors. The newspaper industry can be surprisingly conservative (in the sense of being reluctant to give up old ways). There’d still be people in the newsroom using typewriters if we didn’t have to file all our stories on computer.
But even those who have a vision, often fail to act on it. They’ll spout some buzz words and talk about how important it is to expand our Web presence and reach out to a younger audience. But then they fail to deliver any sort of plan, or when they do, try only half-assedly to put it into action.
Personally, I almost think the weekly alternative papers (like the one the SD is published in) are the way to go. A lot of people in the industry make fun of them because of their sometimes crass style and all the porn ads in the back, but their writing has an edge you often don’t see in mainstream dailies. Their approach to political issues can sometimes be a little heavy-handed, but that no-holds-barred, no idea is too crazy approach can actually work pretty well when it comes to feature writing.
Their reporters are also pretty well-tuned in to the arts scene, and not just what the big downtown theater companies or art museums are doing, but the sorts of quirky hapennings taking place at dive bars and small art studios, the type of places where a cash-strapped twenty-something is likely to hang out.
To succeed as a business, you have to sell something people want at a price they’re willing to pay, for a cost that’s below that price.
The traditional braodsheet fails all three tests by a large margin. Broadsheet newspapers will go the way of traveling ragmen & town blacksmiths.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be news, news gathering, and news disseminatng businesses. But they won’t look like anything we have today.
It’s odd, but people will resist paying a dollar for a newspaper with a dozen dollar off ads inside, but will gladly pay $1 for a ringtone they will discard after one play.
And people will gladly pay enormous amounts for extra dish channels. But begrudge the price of a book.
So maybe it’s all in the pricing format. The payment medium is the message.
Get the newspapers to buy or be bought by Comcast or ATT, and include the newspaper subscription as an extra channel in the bundle.
Or have it added to the cell phone bill.
I’d like to have a newspaper that has a full section for each continent. Y’know, one for Europe, one for Asia, South America, Australia and the Island Nations, maybe one just for the Middle East. You get the idea, I’m sure.
Just give me the headlines from the local papers, reprint the top stories only.
Try and avoid any bias, and maybe have a small bureau on the ground on each continent, to help with the local perspective.
I’d buy that newspaper. I’d probably even pay a premium for it. I don’t need it daily, let’s say twice a week.
Now, stop and think how powerful this paper would become if it was translated and subscribed to by a broad world wide population! Yowsa!
this is a GREAT idea!! I think it would actually work.
I don’t know why, but people really don’t mind paying for intangibles.
( hell, most cell plans are so damn complicated that nobody knows what they are paying for, anyway. 
)
As an former newspaperman, I deplore and am saddened by the death rate of some pretty good newspapers. The survivors so far are madly trying all different things to keep circulation up and attract advertisers, mostly to no avail.
My local daily is getting pitifully slimmer each issue and contains more idiotic nonesense about actors and other celebrities, fashions, foodstuffs, and other crap that is not really news. I’m not sure journalism schools teach real reporting any more, and if any editors exist, they never do much editing. There may not even be copy desks, as they probably feel as long as there are spell-checkers, let 'em just file their stories as written right on the computer.
I am a computer phreak and get some news there, watch the evening news on TV and swear constantly at it, but I am afraid the papers are on the way out.
Consider, one 30-minute newcast has less than 20 minutes of actual news and carries only 12 or so stories. Even the most terrible broadsheet will cover dozens and dozens of stories, worldwide, nationally and locally, even if skimpy coverage. On the Internet, one skims headlines, occassionally opens one to read the entire story. I tried some newspapers on my Kindle, but it is just not the same as pouring through a real paper. And I’d miss the comics. 
I can’t get through the day without my morning newspaper fix, so it will be be terrible when they no longer exist. And that will be unfortunate, and probably not too far in the future.
I think, to a great degree, it is a generational thing. We geezers were brought up reading newspapers, magazines and even, if anybody knows what there are, books. From the Boomers on, they seem more into audio learning rather than visual. Or else, if it isn’t on their cell phone, it doesn’t exist.
Grumble, grumble.
I think something along these lines must be done. Most of the paper would be assembled by the home office, with small local offices filling in the regional stuff. You could probably fire 80% of the editorial staff in medium size cities. The economy of scale would be great. With publishing software the way it is, you can still make the paper look like the old fish wrapper. You don’t need to USA Today-ify everything.
The hodge-podge of ad sales would also go away and that’s quite important. Advertisers like one-stop buying.
They also need to reverse the trend of worsening writing. Way too many times I see articles, even captions, that are grammatical or spelling messes. As well as well known falsehoods touted as facts. Standards are important to (some) readers.
The extremist domination on the OpEd page need to go. Go with rational, moderate people. Most readers are moderates. It’s not an “us vs. them” world.
Newspapers aren’t dinosaurs, it’s the people running them.
When I first got web access and went to newspaper sites, one of my first thoughts was that at some point they HAD to start charging. I still think that. How could they possibly survive by giving stuff away online and still charge for the physical paper?
But now there’s a fundamental problem. There’s a saying that news media are always accurate–except for the subjects the reader personally knows about. People are beginning to realize that’s true for other people on all the other subjects! Solemn assurances of journalistic standards and layers of editors and fact checkers have been revealed for the most part as a mere façade for biased, lazy, and sometimes completely fictional reporting.
The unofficial motto of the blogosphere is “We can fact-check your ass!” The news media might survive if they do that for themselves. And it’d be a good idea if they don’t waste time like CNN did fact-checking a recent SNL comedy routine about Obama, for fuck’s sake.
Who decides what is “extremist”, “rational”, and “moderate”? You? The FCC? Congress? The President?
Perhaps not your planet, but that’s definitely what Earth is like.
A friend of mine (in his late 30s now) got a degree in journalism, at a time at which unemployment in Spain was enormous. He took a look at the landscape and figured he better make his own employment.
So he started two very specialized publications, a monthly glossy on Jai-Alai and a daily free newspaper to be published in a handful of villages only. He was successful; one of his free newspapers has received many awards (they often sweep the table for the “imaginative advertising” kind of stuff) and his line of glossies is just great. A couple years ago he got an offer from the company which owns our “traditional” local newspaper: they wanted him to move to Madrid and create other specialized publications, as well as expand the line of freebies. Full control, the deal was “we want you more than we want your brands, they’re nothing without you.” He took it.
That same local newspaper is semi-sindicated with other regional newspapers; agency news are the same for everybody anyway; they share some of the comics, the weekend magazines, and if someone likes an article that’s been published in another one, they can reprint it.
El País and El Mundo (which has several different “regional” editions) may be the biggest ones (add ABC and La Vanguardia’s sunday edition, due to job seekers), but the combined regionals kick the big ones’ ass.
ABC is still published? Has it lightened up since the “Old Government?”
ABC is still published and still more retrograde than a dinosaur in suspenders…
I think good news for newspapers might be on the near horizon - if they can hold out that long.
There are several new “Kindle” type readers in the planning stages that will make newspapers viable again.
For instance, if I had a nice, larger format, thin flat screen, in color, with wireless access to daily papers, I would gladly take a subscription again. Go ahead and have your pages of advertising as I flip through the pages - maybe even add some sound and video content if you wish - but simply getting up, placing my nice flat screen reader on the kitchen table and flipping though electronic pages would be just fine for me.
Plus, no waste of paper for sections I never read, I can carry this flat screen with me wherever I go and read multiple newspapers and magazines. They can continue to sell advertising, and I don’t mind paying a few bucks a month to have access to good reporting every day/week.
Yes - once those electronic readers start coming down in price, I think newspapers, magazines and book publishers are going to see a lot of people suddenly start paying for content.
What do newspapers need to do?
Let’s examine this
How to get advertisers? They need to figure out a way to offer advertisers a way to present their products which cannot be done in TV, radio or Internet
Increase subsriber base. This would mean appealing to people who want news and features but can’t get it 'cause they’re driving or somewhere a laptop won’t work
What can newspapers do to improve readership? More investigative journalism. More featured columnists? More localism?
Can newspapers survive in the current format or do they need to retool? (the way radio retooled after TV took over. You know how radio dropped comedies, drama and anthology shows, for music and eventually talk)
So if you start by answering these questions you could probably come up with a way for newspapers to survive
I write here as a man who currently owns two newspapers and who thinks, long and hard, about this subject for a great amount of time.
Some of you are close. But most of what I’m hearing hear is wide of the mark. Not all dailies are dying. The one’s in real trouble are the ones that racked up an enormous amount of debt in the 1990s and later. The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and such are all being killed by their debt service and the way that distorts the business world. There are other obstacles, certainly, but the big stories usually center on the papers with major debt issues.
Yes, circulation has dropped off. And therefore advertising revenue has. But that can be dealt with if the management team is creative. Despite the issues apparent there are still growth niches in newspapers. Weekly local newspapers still have (according to the NAA) a steady 1-2% growth in circulation and revenue per year. That’s the sweet spot and that’s where I am.
Here’s the way to do it. I did it (starting from nothing. I didn’t acquire my first paper. I launched it in 2006.) and you could do it, too.
Do those things and you’re well on your way. Any attempt to be a top-level daily that covers the white house and wall street is doomed now.
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I’m in a different country, but I am studying a Master’s in Journalism and what Jonathon Chance says is spot on. Newspapers need to focus locally. The Australian isn’t going to run stories about the Bass Strait Ladies Gardening Club, but a local newspaper will. And local people will read that local paper to see Mrs. Bluerinse from up the road and her lovely geraniums. Which means local advertisers can advertise in that paper, knowing that local people will see the ad and come and buy from them (as people like to “buy local” whenever they can.
All the “National” or “International” news can come either off the Wire Service or from an affiliation with a larger Metropolitan paper (they’ll be with us for some time, as they’re one of those things A Civilised Society Must Have, along with plumbing, electricity, roads, and a postal service). A lot of stuff can also come from User Generated Content (which has the benefit of being free, hurrah!)
The only major point I’d disagree on (besides the political thing, but different countries and political cultures at play so it doesn’t count) is the “Free” thing. I think that a nominal charge- say, $1- should be maintained for no other reason than it establishes the “product” (the newspaper) as having some sort of value. How seriously do most people take the free “Community” newspapers they find in their letterbox or driveway? Not as seriously (usually) as the Respectable Newspaper They Have To Pay For.