The Fight over Yahoo

Thanks to the Washington Post for its story on Murdoch and AOL fighting for Yahoo. This is the kind of purchase that traditional newspaper companies should angling for. Content folks + an Internet portal = endless possibilities.

Reimagining Newspapers

If newspapers worked the way they did in my brain:

1. Their Web sites would aggregate the news for a big, breaking story so if I went to their sites I wouldn't have to look at other sites in the region for stories on the same topic. I'd get short fat graph-introductions to stories on other news sites. I'd know it was a good read, because you told me so by showing me it was there. And the next time something big happened, I'd come back again -- and again.

2. Newspapers would look at their Web sites as a way to start as many regional or national online niche products as they could handle, given they keep downsizing their newsrooms. A place like Delaware, for example, would have a sister Web site for beaches or tax-free shopping or incorporation information for businesses. Fort Myers would offer a Web site for midwesterns who wanted to retire to the area, including a database of such information as movers in my area, property tax information and home insurers and rates -- so I didn't have to look around for this stuff on a bunch of other sites. (I worked in both places, just for the record.)

3. Local stories would be on incorporated into a map as well as just listed on the Web site by what time it happened. Then I could decide if I wanted to read the content by its closeness to my home or my work as well as just by a good headline. It would be really interesting if, as part of this effort, citizen videos of breaking news could be downloaded onto these maps as part of the interactivity for my geographic area of interest.

4. Sports departments would link previous stories on particular teams, so that I could read the stories that ran before about this particular story. They would use their archived profiles and statistics on a particular sport, encyclopedic information in a Wikipedia-like format if you will, as links in every story so if I would have every piece of information at my fingertips. And they'd add some kind of social networking, so I can hang out online with folks like me -- who liked the same teams.

5. Newsrooms would use their historical knowledge of the community and put that into some kind of Wikipedia-like database of information that allowed readers to learn about the area through their links to local stories as well as through just browsing on topics of interest. (Ok, I've mentioned this one before, but it has a long tail so I will mention it again.)

6. Directed the conversation on particular topics -- think msn's moneycentral -- by asking a few pointed questions about stories you've written that would engage in serious discussion, offer suggestions or tips and be another place to develop content that could be linked to the original story or new stories on the topic as they were written.

7. Think of each story not as a one-dimensional, one-time only piece that would be finished once the editor moved it to the desk. Instead, it would be interesting if newsrooms thought of every story as a container of endless possibilities for content that -- over time with links, videos, photos, maps -- offers the kind of depth that the print product has slowly whittled away at over the last few years.

Imagine.

Yahoo Can, Newspapers Can't?

Yahoo can do this. Newspapers can't?

See previous blog entry. Enough said.

Fixing What Ails Newspapers

I've been thinking a lot lately about how to fix what ails the newspaper industry. It's the topic of conversation with everyone I know who still works in the profession. And no one seems to have a magic pill.

A few months ago, at an annual meeting of the Associated Press Managing Editors, I spoke with a Gannett editor who knew me before I jumped off the print bandwagon and fell into this Internet gig. She asked me, given my new vantage point, how I would move forward in the new media age.

I suggested that her company -- also my former employer -- consider taking its news service, which wasn't breaking much news ground, and use its staff in a different way -- to aggregate news from its newspapers across the country. There was, as far as I could tell, no reason for WebMD or any other national health site to exist when the company owned a string of newspapers that could provide more, and better, health-related content. Sadly, she said, a similar idea had been floated before but, for a variety of reasons, it hadn't worked.

The conversation bothered me. And today, a day after reading the full report from Newspaper Next, it still makes me cringe. The report, if you haven't read it, is a call to action for newspaper companies struggling to compete in a new media landscape.

So here's my suggestion for the day, directed at any large newspaper company that's trying to recreate itself in a world where fewer people are reading print products each day. Consider taking all your Web sites dedicated to a particular niche audience, let's say moms for example, and connect the dots for a national audience.

Imagine this. All your local niche moms sites connected under one umbrella site. (Let's steal a brand name from an already national product and call it USAmoms for lack of a better name.) All your local traffic moving through one national portal -- a Babycenter for moms if you will. I wonder, would that play with national advertisers do you think?

I guess someone will have to give it a try.

Things that Make you Go Hmm....

Last night, somewhere around 3 a.m. when I woke up and couldn't fall back to sleep, I grabbed a stack of -- ohmygawd -- printouts, wandered into the living room and curled up on the couch for a good read.

At the top of the pile was a recently released 100-plus page report called, Making the Leap Beyond Newspaper Companies. I had been saving it for an airplane trip or a sleepless night, whichever came first. It kept me awake a lot longer than I planned.

Here are some of the highlights I came across....

1. Newspapers are still behind in the new media game.
(I think we can all agree on this one.)

2. Local wikipedias. Do it.
(See previous blog entry.)

3. Search for new online target markets -- like moms. Write more for them. Sell more stuff to them. (Next will be dads and pets -- just ask Gannett. See page 17, annual report.)


4. The bottom line was simple:
Don't lose the money that's already coming your way.
Find ways to make more money with new products.
Target folks who aren't spending money with you.

After I finished, I had to wonder -- is any of that really new?

Mapping the Local News

A reporter I worked with at my previous job recently sent me a link to a news site she works with in Chicago called ChiTownDailyNews.org. I was fascinated by the mapping on it. The idea of linking news stories to a map of the community seemed like another way to localize the news for readers. I've seen it done before for special events -- a marathon bicycle race in the midwest and crime in a city.

If I were from the area, mapping of the news would help me prioritize what I wanted to read -- and what I wanted to read first. I wondered if video could be incorporated to make it more interactive -- something like this new site, Seero, which focuses on travel. My only complaint was that there weren't enough news stories on the map, which would make it a richer experience for readers.

A Snapshot of the Newspaper Industry

I spent the better part of the last week in another state, judging a newspaper contest for a company I haven't worked for since college. It was an odd experience given that -- after more years than I care to admit -- I no longer work at a newspaper. And it proved to be an interesting snapshot of what's happening in the industry.

As I was checking into the hotel, I ran into another judge -- an editor I haven't seen in more than 20 years. Back then I was a reporting intern, and he was the assistant city editor assigned to make certain I made it through the summer without getting into too much trouble. He must not have held my inexperience against me since he seemed happy to get reacquainted.

When he heard I'd joined an Internet startup company, he wanted to talk more about my experience. Why? The newspaper company he works for is for sale. He -- and another judge who works at a sister paper -- will find out next summer who their new owners are.

While we examined the quality of visual, written and online journalism for a group of papers none of us worked for, the state of the industry was the backdrop for discussion. Using the numbers, this picture of the profession emerged:

1. Of the 16 judges, one was a long-time journalism educator. So for the purposes of accuracy, 15 judges had been working at a newspaper in the last year.

2. Of those 15, three were no longer in the industry. One now teaches college journalism. One works for a government agency. The third (me) works for an online company. All three of us left the industry in the last year. All three of us had worked for the same newspaper company for a long time.

3. Of the other 12 judges, two editors (as I explained earlier) are working at a newspaper company that is on the market.

4. Of the 10 remaining, one -- who manages a digital department at a newspaper -- lost an assistant who took a buyout. This happened two days into the event. That manager won't get to replace the position.

At dinner one evening, we were visited by several editors who worked at the company's largest newspaper, which is located in the same town where we had converged. A friend, who lives in the city, e-mailed me a copy of a recent article about the executive editor, which was published in a regional magazine. In it, the writer described how the editor was fighting against a declining newspaper circulation by focusing more on its online site. The article gave her efforts mixed reviews.

And today, a few hours after an editor at another newspaper told me he was asked to buy equipment on eBay to save money, I read that newsprint companies are increasing their costs again. Given the recent buyouts, layoffs and declining stock prices of newspaper companies, it makes you wonder -- what will happen next?

Before I returned home from my stint as a judge, one editor at the event explained that the increasing pressures on the industry were hitting his newspaper, too. He simply isn't hiring much these days. He added: "It's not going to get better anytime soon."

But with all the talented people in the journalism industry, I still have hope that he's wrong.