OH ZELL!
(Photo of Sam Zell)
It's a bad, dour time for newspapers, dear friends. But, you knew that.
Costs are up, readers are down, advertisers are gone.
Say you're the publisher of an almost-daily newspaper. What would you be doing to keep the rag healthy, and you and your employees, ah, employed?
Well, if I were that publisher I'd be working hard to get more advertising on the electronic pages of the paper, and I'd be doing that by attracting more readers to those electronic pages as well as to the paper pages.
With more readers, you can sell more advertising. Yeah, I know, this is just basic stuff and anyone could suggest this.
But, specifically, what would I be trying?
1. I'd speed things up so that short, fast stories hit the electronic pages all day long. Stuff has to move fast to keep readers coming back, and you want them to come back so they'll see the ads. The old model of publishing stuff once a day and then waiting for the next day to publish something new is gone.
Now, you have to hit readers hard and fast and grab their attention or you'll lose them.
2. I'd link to national news outlets in a prominent way.
3. I'd link to local city government.
4. I'd accept short anonymous reader posts on stories. But I'd have a good system to eliminate libelous material. Some newspapers we've seen recently have as many as 1,200 responses to stories, while the almost-daily Daily Pilot (oops, we let the cat out of the bag) only has 2 to 4 responses much of the time and they're usually from one local boring nutcake, who for some strange reason, thinks people want to hear his uninformed knee-jerk and obvious opinions).
5. I'd stop featuring blogs that are anonymous. If these cowards want to write long blogs that mostly just smear others, let them have their names associated with what they write.
6. I'd change the ad formats and pack them around the blogs. (Yes, I have specifics about this as well, but I'll hold them for now)
7. I'd have special promotions that would compel electronic readers to pick up paper copies of the paper.
8. I'd do a better job of linking to reliable high traffic blogs in the community that do move material fast. I'd drop community blogs that seldom move material. Hey, this is free content for the newspaper and most bloggers are in it as a labor of love.
9. I'd redesign the paper pages of the paper for more impact. I'd get rid of the slow mo "Nooooow, we're going to tell you about"....and replace it with "Wham! Bam! That's the deal!" (The OC Post bungled this.)
10. I'd carry more articles on ICE and illegal immigration.
You can't bore people into reading your newspaper. Not anymore.
And, that's just for starters. If anyone wants more, you know where to find me. Last row, end seat, big head, black shirt.
Remember, you can trust my advice on newspapers because I played a reporter in a movie once and worked for a time for the Gray Lady.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
