the newspaper business

Scott Karp is / was visiting Washington D.C. and made this observation.

Yesterday I took a river boat cruise on the Potomac river with some visiting family, and was fascinated to hear what the tour guide said about this innocuous building.

Turns out it was the newsprint warehouse for the Washington Post.

Based on his use of the Blackberry, he boldly predicted:

I’ll bet that in ten, maybe even five years, that warehouse on the river will be storing something other than newsprint — or it will be demolished entirely.

 I’ll take that bet Scott, I’ll even give you 100:1 that you aren’t even close with your ten year window.  Right now, there is nothing on the market that can make it possible to access everything that is in the Washington Post as well as ink on newsprint does.  There is nothing in public development that comes close.  Privately there may be some super gadget that will replace newspapers.  But nothing so revolutionary can get to market and be widely affordable and accepted in a short decade.

If you think you have the best grasp of how you will get the news in 2017, here’s $2000 for your trouble.

This is definitely cool. A newsstand that displays digital front pages.

Sure, I could get the news on my desktop computer or iPhone (yeah, I wish!), but as a newspaper editor, I’ve got a soft spot for tradition.

Front pages shown here feature some of Birmingham’s big stories during the past year: the rise of “American Idol” Taylor Hicks, the firing of Alabama Crimson Tide Coach Mike Shula and the hiring of Nick Saban. (The Birmingham News won the Pulitzer soon after.)

This editor is really thinking and certainly not afraid to tackle a difficult design and technology project.  This link will take you to a step by step way to make your own digital newsstand.  There should be one of these in every newspaper’s lobby.

Here’s a taste of the tech know-how to get this done.

With a little AppleScript work, I trained my Mac to get the papers.

The Mac Mini connects to the Internet and to my iTunes library through my home wireless network. Each morning the computer launches a script triggered by an iCalGraphicConverter and launches a slideshow with PhotoPresenter, a nifty little $8 shareware program with lots of snazzy transitions. The remote can pause or cycle through the pages.

I think there’s a market for you Scott, do the major vending machines know about your design?  Very nicely done. Congratulations, and forget about that headline - just trying to draw people in you know!

Matt Dickman asked via Twitter (actually I use Twitterific):

If you pay for an ad in a paper and use a quote from an employee of that paper in the ad, is there a conflict? I am conflicted.

It’s the first real Twitter that was worth responding too.   Of course, I only have a handful of Twitterers on my list.

Two newspaper executives from large chains discuss the future of newspapers.

Anyone seeking solutions to the newspaper industry’s battles with declining circulation and advertising revenue didn’t find them during a roundtable discussion Wednesday at the Newspaper Association of America’s annual Mid-Year Media Review in New York.

What attendees did get were some provocative observations about the industry from Gary Pruitt, chairman, president and chief executive of McClatchy (nyse: MNI - news - people ), and Scott Flanders, president and chief executive of privately held Freedom Communications, the parent of The Orange County Register and other newspapers.

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An article in Southern Newspaper Publishers Association weekly eBulletin describes how a publisher in Chattanooga decided that attempting to appeal to young readers would alienate the newspapers appeal to its core audience.

It’s not tit-for-tat when publishers / editors make the decision to try to attract young readers. Boomer readers like a lot of the same things X’ers do. So to think that adding content that appeals to X’ers means you loose boomers is wrong.

I think we have to remember who our core readership is and how to reach them,” said Tom Griscom, publisher and executive editor. “You can still go after young people, but we are clearly focused on getting that group that grew up as readers.”

After hearing of the idea at other places, Griscom and the Times-Free Press did their own research and began to consider how, and if, the idea for news targeted specifically for baby boomers would work.

Here’s the fun part. The research was conducted among the newspaper’s staff. The publisher / editor asked the boomers in the NEWSROOM if they thought it would work.

The boomers initiative was launched after the first of the year, and every day since, Times-Free Press readers have been able to check the top of their front page near the masthead to see what baby boomer stories are in that day’s newspaper.

I’d love to see a story list that they have identified as boomer stories. I’m guessing they are general interest stories that would appeal to all of their readers. As a boomer, I hate the banner illustrated below: its condescending. Riding a roller coaster is the “ride of their lives.” C’mon.

Here’s another heads-up for you Chattanooga Times-Free Press. Boomers aren’t your core audience anymore. Sure, the top of the age 50+ still qualifies, but the lower end of 40-45 is vunerable.

I agree, a newspaper can’t take any age group for granted, but the future lies with X’ers. Spend more time trying to appeal to them and we boomers will keep reading. We don’t need labels to tell us what appeals to us.

I haven’t made an attempt at this game, but I am intrigued by the introduction.

Newspaper Manager II is a newspaper management game. Create a best selling newspaper, set newspaper prices and content, hire/fire reporters (even bribe other newspapers reporters!)

Stay within budget and make plenty of money to keep the boss happy. Or it may be you getting fired!

Features in-game help and 5 increasingly difficult challenges.

Give it a go and let me know how you do.

I’m a little like the maestro of the BGCO, I may not let you know how I do.

…finally decided that if I did fail, I had the option of pretending that it never occurred. In that case, I would definitely NOT bring it to the attention of anyone else.

The Southern Newspaper Publisher’s Association is running a contest with a $2000 prize for the best prototype of how you will get your news in 2017.

The author of Blackhawk Down thinks that journalism’s future is in global dialogue and writes an interesting account of his first contact with interactive journalism.

Unlike with TV and radio, which are stuck with people reading out loud, customers of digital journalism will get the best of all media forms. They can wade into any story that attracts them as deeply as they wish. Readers will gravitate toward prose, while those who prefer sounds and images can simply watch and listen. The digital report will not be locked into the strict chronological format of TV and radio news, but will be much more like a newspaper, which permits you to begin with sports and weather, if you wish, or go right to the editorials or comics.

He also has some great advice for aspiring journalists.

I advise young journalists today to learn how to use a digital video camera, and to get used to working in multimedia. Nearly every story I write today for the Atlantic, and every book I undertake, I do in conjunction with a documentary filmmaker.

Good luck with the contest.  If I can help, drop me an email.

 There is an old saying: the freedom of the press belongs to those that own the press. Another one is, don’t argue with people who buy their ink by the barrel.

Blogging has changed that and Jay Rosen, a journalism assistant professor at NYU, has outlined specific instances where bloggers shined light into dark corners until the main stream media picked up.

With blogging, an awkward term, we designate a fairly beautiful thing: the extension to many more people of a free press franchise and the right to publish your thoughts to the world.

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Shameless self-promotion (maybe)

BGDailyNews.com employment site, called The Job Network, is now affiliated with Yahoo’s Hot Jobs.

Not too long ago this would have been treason. Yahoo was out to take our employment ads, take our classified ads, and more if they could.

Now, both sides are realizing that cooperation and competition is the best of both worlds.

So if an employer is looking for help, by calling our classified advertising department, the employers ad can appear on The Job Network, and on Yahoo Hot Jobs.

Times are a’changin’ and we’re working hard to keep up.

USA Today has been running a series for their 25th year of publication. Today they have picked the 25 things that have all but vanished.

First, their number one pick is “indoor smoking.” This makes the top of the list of things that have “left us?” Here in flyover country, there is still a lot of indoor smoking. So it’s not even close to “vanishing.”

Second, they blew it when they said afternoon newspapers were vanishing:

Remember the kid on the bike who never quite reached the porch with your afternoon daily? He moved on, as did lifestyles and the media world. City afternoons became lonelier for newspaper readers.

It was #22 on their list, but only 56% of the nation’s newspapers are morning papers.

They pretty much nailed it with the rest of their list, but these two examples point out that they are slightly out of touch.