Scottsdale, Arizona - Before I launch off into my thoughts here, I desire to make one thing perfectly clear. I am not here to disparage Gannett, or the Arizona Republic newspaper.
Furthermore, I do not hold myself out to be the savior of the whole world of communications. I do, however, have some pretty firm beliefs, based on many years of business experience. Fair enough?
If I owned Gannett's Arizona Republic newspaper, I would turn the whole thing upside down.
Newspapers, magazines, and many forms of mass print communications have been with us since the Gutenberg press. This form of communication held supreme until society was presented with television, and the radio.
In all three of the above mediums, society would rely on "the few" to deliver communications down through these channels.
The great problem with this reliance is that the messages might be slanted with the view of the few.
With the advent of the Internet, and in particular the emergence of social media, the whole landscape has significantly changed.
Here are two epoch-making, paradigm shifting things that we all must understand:
- Why would I listen to a reporter telling me what is happening (in some, but not all cases), when I can get the information directly from the source.
- With the inherent costs associated, and the substantial time lag inherent with print media, I am likely, with the Internet, to already know the news, and I have already likely chosen who I would like to get that news from. The classic case is President Obama. I can get the news directly from his social media site. Furthermore, if I want to have someone interpret his actions, I can further subscribe to a political analyst of my liking. I do not need the newspaper for this type of news.
Now, I grant you that "what's going on" is not the complete mission of the press. The press further gives us investigative reporting, but that is also easily accomplished on the web. The current press also has someone to run take pictures of a burning house, but the Internet can do that as well. Nowadays, it is generally someone with a cell phone that is capturing this type of news as it happens.
So...if I owned the Arizona Republic Newspaper, here is what I would do...
Again, I would turn the whole thing upside down.
In my opinion, the days of the printed newspapers are quickly moving to extinction. It is slow, and too expensive a medium.
Secondly, I should no longer rely on the few to report to me the days news. There are millions of voices, through the power of the Internet, willing, and able to tell me what is going on.
Therefore, I would turn the whole funnel upside down. Instead of a few reporters, talking to the masses, I would drive the reporting downstream, and enlist the aid of many "reporters" to bring about the news of the day.
Instead of a newspaper having 20 reporters, I would dive deep into the wisdom of the crowd, and surface hundreds, and hundreds of experts. Now, each of these experts won't necessarily have something newsworthy each day, but nonetheless, they are in my stable should I need them, and they are trained, and compensated, in perhaps a small way, to keep chirping about their particular field of expertise.
Meanwhile, around each of these hundreds of experts, I would busy myself to build small communities of like-minded people. This would be the joint vision of the "newspaper", and each of the various channels.
Furthermore, the job of the "newspaper" would be to aggregate the various stories, from the hundreds being written, and decide which should find their way to the front page. This would be determined by the quality of the writer, and the particular interest of a story.
Examiner.com is just such an example. The great problem with Examiner.com is that they set the bar WAY to low to become one of their "examiners". Just about anyone can become an examiner. You need only the ability to fog a mirror, a passing interest in a particular subject, and voila...you are an examiner with the promise to growing revenues, if you can deliver eyeballs to the mother ship.
In my humble opinion, however, this is exactly the right model!
Go downstream into the universities, the churches, the businesses, the nonprofits, the sports teams, the neighborhoods, the restaurants, the art galleries, the local parks, the political parties, etc, etc, and build a massive force of experts.
Give them a shared vision, shared with them monetarily, and build an on-line empire of daily eyeballs.
I can already hear some criticism. "Dude", they cry, "we are already on-line!"
I agree, but every single newspaper site I go to, requires a languishing wait for their page to load (because of all the advertising loading from all over creation), AND, you require me to log in, and build a profile to participate. I don't like the experience! Did you hear me, I don't like the experience. And furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, many times you are filtering my news through a young, less expensive journalist.
You need to re-think your whole plan. You need to have the courage to give the information away, and make the content remarkable, then once you have earned the trust of a slew of eyeballs, the advertising revenues will follow.
Lastly, I am not suggesting that you instantly stop the presses. This is a transition. But if you would allow me the voice of prophet for just one minute...you better heed this call. The printed medium is not going to stop this train from coming.
Marketing take-away for my business/organizational clients - you have incredible opportunity now to build our own social media channel. The same is true for you. No longer should you rely on print, and e-mail to communicate your messages. You simply must build your own social media channel.
