I posted the following this morning on my NewsNosh blog. I think it's relevant here as well:
There's an interesting story in USA Today asking Internet entrepreneurs what suggestions they might have for the newspaper industry.
The answer seems to be localization and interactive features -- after, of course, taking the "paper" out of "newspaper." He's what some of them had to say, according to the USA Today story:
"I'd do what Ma Bell did with rotary dial phones," Jones ["Scott Jones, founder of search engine ChaCha and inventor, a very long time ago, of voice mail"] says. "I would phase out the print side over a number of years -- maybe 10 years -- charging more for the print version. In 10 years, print would be $5 per copy and online would be somewhere between free and 50 cents a day. I might even cut a wholesale deal with a $100 computer company to make it easy for all my print subscribers to move over to the online version."
Agreeing with that sentiment, tech investor Avram Miller adds: "How do we get 'paper' out of the name?" Will we call The Indianapolis Star a newspaper even if it doesn't print anything?
Other than getting out of paper, the techies almost universally came up with two main suggestions: turn newspapers into models of Web 2.0-style open media, and go super local, essentially becoming the town Yahoo.
This is a real struggle for newspapers. They seem to be generally uncomfortable with the idea of morphing into a fully online medium -- despite the great advantages this has for most of their audience.
And there is one rationale for this that requires some thought. There are still readers who still don't have solid access to computers, and they tend to be people who are battling poverty. Depriving these individuals of information seems a poor way to foster democracy, which newspapers see as one of their core roles.
Of course, there are other mediums these folks have access to: TV news, radio news, etc.
Maybe the answer is for newspapers to stop thinking about providing news like they are the only game in town -- which has been outdated for a long time now -- and let other mediums carry some of the burden.
Technorati tags: newspaper, media, communications, web2.0, newsnosh
