Somewhere, the publisher of a Top 50 market newspaper is saying, 2009 is the year we stop printing on paper. The cost of moving a dead trees version of the news to your doorstep is just too expensive.
Just in the past week, the Detroit newspapers have decided to cut back the frequency of home delivery.
Meanwhile, every other newspaper is also cutting costs. A number have decided the Associated Press is one place to hack. Even the ‘lower” costs the AP says many members would pay under a newly devised rate schedule.
But, many publishers are figuring out they don’t need the AP. With national and international news having become a commodity, why does any newspaper outside of the Top 5 markets felt it needs to have a vanilla version of a Presidential announcement, a Congressional vote, or even an airplane cash. The news is readily available online and via radio and TV.
What readers want is local news, comment, opinion, and analysis. And where is it? It’s out there, away from from the newsrooms. While no newspaper can afford to field as many feet on the street as it would like, they can do something else. They can recognize that bloggers can be a huge resource for local politics, sports, restaurants, traffic, entertainment guides and so on.
If I were a newspaper editor, I’d be scouring the Web for every local blog I could find. And I’d assign an editor or two to review them, vet the content, and talk with the authors. And then I’d agree to print their posts in the paper as well as on my own Web site with links back to them. My pages would be more lively, include stories I never would have gotten from a “seasoned” reporter, and people would again be talking about what they read in the paper.
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