An anonymous poster left this:
"Jim,
I would like to hear other peoples suggestions on how they could actually improve or at least sell more papers.I just don't believe enough is being done to improve the product to compete.These papers have always been penny wise and dollar foolish. It takes money to make money: they are taking money to make money."
Before Booth announced its recent slashes I suggested to them (and I also said I would see pigs fly first) that they seek the ideas of ALL their employees before making such draconian cuts. Well, they didn't do that, but we can still offer the ideas that we would have made to help the paper.
So, I'm offering this space for serious reflections on what could be done to save newspapers. Many of you have offered bits and pieces in previous comments. We all know the management is lacking, but let's go a little deeper. The comment refers specifically to content and let's assume the poster means all content, online and dead tree.
"If I was publisher I would...."
Have at it.
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11 comments:
One thing would be to drop the price of advertising in the paper.
Go after every little business in town and give them a deal. They could even offer free classified ads up to a certain amount ( 99 bucks)everyday. That alone I think would sell more papers. Drop the price of the paper also. The daily price has gone up 300% in BC and SAG the last 10yrs and has decreased in size and quality. In these hard economic times people are just fed up.
Maybe it is too little too late as I have been saying these things for years but you won't know unless you try. RIGHT??
LOCAL COVERAGE!!!!
Seriously, who care's about what happened in (enter state here) if it doesn't effect us here? Why do we fill a page in the paper with international news??? Do they not realize that people can go to CNN.com and get a better account of the store, with pictures and video, hours before the paper hits their doorsteps? Instead of all the breaking national news, maybe send some reporters out to write some interesting feature stories. That will draw people in. People love reading stories about other people.
Oh, but they can't do that, because they've cut their editorial staff to the bone.
They should have went to a morning paper long ago.
For what I was interested in, the FJ classified ads were pretty lame for what they charged. Wheeler Dealer and Trading Times were both better deals and you'd get more calls on your ad. FJ should have put all that stuff up online free when you bought an ad in the paper. If they had all the ads from all their Michigan papers up online it would be a pretty cool part of the site.
Dropping the ad rates and getting smaller businesses involved with the FJ would seem like a better thing to do than run pages with hardly any ads on them at all.
I hate seeing all these little blurbs about how great the paper is going to be in June. Why wasn't this stuff done last June?
Get rid of the online format all together and try to salvage what customer base you have left. Online news papers will NEVER work.
There are just too many other ways to get your news online. You may have the folks that will come to check obits from time to time but thats it.
That company was made with small business. They need to get back to the basics .
I don't believe a morning paper would do anything but screw the people working it. In this age of info it is instant anyway. Local coverage is a MUST; I agree on though. anyone interested in national news is not gonna come to mlive for it.
Plain and simple, do not raise the cost of the paper, lower the cost of classifieds (sure put them on MLame for free), come up with a rate structure that makes sense (real simple here place an ad in one of the smaller publications if you can not figure it out on your own) get rid of crappy special sections that on devour resources, and jettison the dead weight at the top.
I really hope you Booth publishers read this blog, at least one of you so the next time you all sit around the golden table at the country club you can take our ideas we have shared here and share them with your peers and call them original. The math is very simple if you are interested!
A 1A Sunday package with more heft, enterprise and impact than a story, column, photo and bus schedule previewing take-the-bus-to-work day might be a starting point.
http://www.mlive.com/bay-city/
*Realize what you are a portal. *Start a internet access business to compliment online offerings, ie. make the users home page the Flint Journal online. Use carriers as installers of the software (Senior are getting online currently at a greater rate but they need help). This brings a new source of income related to content and online offerings. Partner for a search engine, white & yellow pages listing, email service, etc. to round out the online news site/portal (Even for the internet access side if need be.)
Combine printing and all other "backroom" operations (accounting, customer service, phone ad takers) from all Michigan (or a state) newspapers into one operation. Not this three papers now bit. Go to emergency mode now!! There should still be local staff in Ad to go after and maintain the bigger accounts. The phone center is just to deal with inquiries or ads (like classified) that can be taken over the phone.
*Team up with a local news station by syndicating their news. The paper would get the stations footage then transscribe it to text and extend the article with file information or making phone calls for more information.
*Find free source of content like Wikinews.com. Print municipalities' meeting agendas as a public service; this allows public minded citizens make a decision if they wish to attend or not. Follow up and cover the meeting. Work with the local universities if the have a journalism degree or courses to have their work publish covering the university beat.
*Figure out what the strength of the paper is or basically what can you syndicate out to other papers. For a couple of examples-- The Flint Journal should have a good if not great foot in the auto business/union. Be the Advance Auto News Service and sell that out to other Booth/Advance Newspapers to start then beyond. With Heller's collumn, the FJ might be able to get it synidicated out to a few UP papers being a Yooper below the bridge. (Even dig up some of his older columns to start of those columns that might appeal more to Yoopers.)
Online, only allow the first paragraph of article to be seen with out some sort of payment, ie. micropayment, online subscription or having the FJ's internet access service. Having the opening paragraph with atleast bring views via search engines and allowing micropayments just to view an article instead of the whole site would encourage payments instead of discouraging readers.
*If it comes down to it, I would cut the carriers out and aim to have the paper delivery via the postal services. Print it early then get it pronto in the morning to the post offices so that day's paper is delivered that day.
If delivery needs to be cut at least put out a print edition every day. If that can not be done actually space the print editions out, so people can get the news in a reasonable time. (Obits come to mind.)
*On the ad front with out understand the papers cost structure, it is difficult to make direct suggestions. I would try to find a way to cut the ad cost to the advertiser to bring them back. Perhaps act like a general ad agency handling all their ad work for TV, internet, pre-movies, etc. bring in some commission. Partner with online ad provider (Google, Yahoo, or other) for ads on FJ site.
*Insist all employee read the paper. It would stop double use of syndicated material and laughable events like the Flint Journal reporting that Wallenberg Street would be temporarily close during plant construction and the plant would cover up the Overflow Parking mural when neither was or is true. Or make false statement in columns or opinion pieces, most infamously the finding of weapons of mass distruction in Iraq reported by the AP then indicated in a column and an opinion piece weeks later that they were not found!
*Update the TV Journal to actually reflect the digital TV setup with the digital subchannels. Yes, show that digital station 5.2, My 5 (WNEM-DT2), is on channel 4 on Comcast instead of channel 4 out of Detroit (Yes, I send the updated info to the person at the Journal in charge of the TV Journal and very little corrections occured. Heck the TV Journal indicating no call letters for channel 50 or where indicating them as WB?!?)
*In the case of the Saginaw and Bay City papers, they might as well merge all operations even news, perhaps only using their mastheads in their old areas with a switching of article locations with the mastheads. Heck, even look at expanding into the Midland area.
*If you have to stop with de
It makes no sense to stop printing on a daily basis. They have people buying the paper on a daily basis and then they switch to 3 days ?????? It does not take a genius to figure out that this is not good business sense. Now all the revenue from 4 days is lost.
Hmmm...why are we loosing money? The management that has failed the company and it's employees are still making decisions that are eventually going to kill the paper all together. If Newhouse really wanted to save the paper they would get new management and keep the people that actually do the work. The last time I checked the editorial ,mailroom, Press departments had never failed to do their job; but who gets to keep their jobs? The same people that have cost so many theirs. They should have put these people to WORK LONG AGO. WAKE UP!!!
15:39 and 16:10
wonderful
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