Think of this as Volume 12, Number 15 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
While leafing through what is left of my daily newspaper it suddenly occurred to me how such dinosaurs can save what is left of their franchise.
Stop running AP shit. (Picture from Creative Loafing next to a story on Atlanta Journal-Constitution losses by Scott Henry.)
I don't need the national or international news, in brief, printed and distributed. Neither does anyone else. We get it on TV, free.
What I want from a local paper is the local news. The sports. The local happenings. Exclusive stuff no one else has.
So strip the paper down to that essential. One section, 12 pages, magazine-sized. Then, when you post the stories online, give every one that runs in the paper a simple URL that you can also print in the paper — since it's going online first anyway.
You're essentially printing a guide to your Web site, and an ad for it. It may be no more than 12 pages which, with ads, may be about 30 before you start your comeback.
Then give it away.
Every city has a bunch of such free papers. Creative Loafing, which went bankrupt buying other papers but was profitable on its own, is free. There's even a free Sunday Paper that was started by former AJC ad men. It's a valid model. There are lots of advertisers begging for a reasonable CPM (cost per thousand on ads) that is widely distributed.
If you do this right, you can even afford to offer the new paper by mail throughout the state. You want to do that so you can get more regulars into the Web site. When you decide to offer this product in a new region of the state, simply wrap a four-page guide to local stuff around the main paper, then head to the post office. Bulk rate, cheap. It should not take that long. Netflix gets me my DVDs in a day.
I'm not certain what to do about the comics, but what if you put them behind a paid firewall on the Web site? That would subsidize the licensing of lots more comics. Now you have the heart of a "paid tier" to which you can add, say, highlights from the local legal databases (what's doing at the courthouse), and actual real estate news (the transactions, not the fluff). Whatever you think people will pay for. Experiment.
Just remember the rules.
- Print nothing you didn't write.
- Every story you print has a link, a URL people can enter quickly for more.
- Every online story is interactive. Every reporter is a blogger.
- Build your city directory. Map and database everything in town to increase value.
- Look for value you can start a paid tier with.
What are the odds anyone listens to me now? About as good as the odds of them listening to me before.
But this is your last shot, Mr. James Cox Kennedy (left). You want to be a cable-only guy, fine. You will be, within a very short time, unless you do something both smart and drastic.
Starting with getting out of the AP.
