My plan for the Seattle PI (Part III)
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has been put up for sale by the Hearst Corporation. If it does not find a buyer in 60 days (56 days and counting…) — most analysts believe it won’t — the paper will cease production. This week, I am outlining my plan for how to save the Seattle PI, return it to profitability, and improve the quality of the journalistic product that readers receive.
Earlier this week I suggested that the PI, and other local papers, focus on providing more and better local news content. Today I will outline some thoughts on context, and how news content should be presented in order to attract greater interest from readers.
The way I see it, the concept of exclusivity in news has disappeared — you can now read/watch/listen to what is happening in the world from a million different sources, both journalistic and non-journalistic in nature. Increasingly, organizations are bypassing the media entirely and using various forms of new media to talk directly to their audience. As a result, audiences no longer rely on newspapers alone – if at all – for finding out what is happening in the world.
What readers do still rely on newspapers for is context — how an issue is impacting their local community and what it means to them personally. Thus, the way newspaper content is created much change. Instead of reporting what has happened, the job of newspapers must become explaining why, how, and what impact something is having, or will have, on the community. Newspapers already do this, but as a component of the rest of their coverage. That focus must become the central element of local news coverage. In fact, there is no need for print newspapers to share ‘news’ at all — since that information is available from so many other places. And to the extent that newspapers aggregate news online, it must be clearly presented as different than the original, context-heavy content they create.
Additionally, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and local newspapers everywhere, must give their readers tools to understand and apply the knowledge they offer. For starters, that means news content must be created in formats that the audience enjoys and already uses — audio and video, so it can be accessed from a mobile device, and with the ability to be organized for future use or shared with friends and colleagues to name a few. If the reader has to go out of their way to get the newspaper, they simply won’t. So the local newspaper content strategy has to be about push, and delivering their insights and analysis where and when the reader wants.
Last week, I wrote on this blog about how news organizations could change their coverage to provide better context. I wrote:
“When I open up the paper or log onto a newspaper site I see missed opportunities. I skip over articles about events and announcements I am already aware of, like so many others who get news throughout the day. I skim through the stories that report what happened, and spend my time on those that provide the analysis or insight I desire. I spend most of time is on the editorial pages where the opinions help to put the issues of the day in context. In short, I read the stories – and the publications – that teach me things.
The other day I came across a post from the Online Journalism Review (now the Knight Digital Media Center) about some of the early planning around the future of news. The post read as follows:
“Ten years ago, at the first “New News” seminar held at the Poynter Institute, a group of digital pioneers brainstormed what would be new about online news. They listed what it was that newspapers were not providing that the new digital news space would enable and how the new medium might change news reporting and writing.
Many of the predictions were based on the idea of the “limitless newshole,” an endless space for providing deep context and satisfying the “give me more” that reporters thought news seekers were craving. The promise of hyperlinking and easier communication between readers and reporters were all high on the list of ways this new news space would change news. Creating new expressive forms of reporting, providing better follow-up on reported stories and crafting new relationships between words and graphics were noted as new potentials for online news.”
As best as I can tell, few of the ideas that this group discussed way back when were ever fully embraced by the news industry. Many of the ideas related to context and how the news is reported, but newspaper companies chose instead to focus on the technology to support new delivery mechanisms and the potential revenue opportunities that only existed online. In doing so, the newspaper industry let the core of their business — the news content — go unchanged. The readers have change. The expectations for what role a local newspaper like the Seattle PI should play in the community, or daily media diet, have changed. The news product, which serves as the foundation for everything… that remains largely the same.
Like so many other things in the digital age, the technology that powers the delivery of local news content is not what will make it special. You can have all the blogs, videos, and feeds in the world — but if the content that is presented isn’t meaningful, the audience will look elsewhere for something that is. That’s why context in local news is so important, and why its a key part of my plan for how the Seattle PI, and other local newspapers, can survive.
Brian is Managing Director of little m media which provides strategic guidance and support to organizations around the use of the internet and technology to facilitate communications, engagement, education, and mobilization.
