It’s easy to blame the internet for the decline of the traditional daily newspaper. It’s a factor, yes, but just because demographics and the social blueprint are changing it doesn’t mean your local newspaper should accept this techno-quick & dirty iPhone phenomenon. The sad decline in readership, circulation and sales is the result of the newspaper-reading market becoming both stimulated and stupefied by social media, and bored to death by the uninspiring content of your local paper.
The publishers and editors need to get off their paradigms and switch things up. As they say in the Marines, ‘Adapt, Overcome and Improvise.‘ Businesses either adapt to the market or they fail, it’s just that simple. Better yet, they create new markets. But what we’re seeing all over the country are local daily newspapers, once effectual, thriving publications, producing fewer editions per week and seemingly having less items of interest to publish (which means less advertisers) while their circulation and readers evaporate into the ethernet and their staffs receive pink slips.
The newspaper on my front porch lately is so thin it doesn’t even need a rubber band. I can read the thing, skim it, in 30 seconds because there is rarely anything of substance in there. I used to enjoy the morning paper, and I know many people who enjoy that evening read as well, young and old alike ...if only they had something yummy to read. Something with personality and depth, some emotional gravitas. Readable, not dry data.
In my opinion, newspapers are going in the wrong direction. They are further driving down their already dwindling market by catering to the few hangers-on in their circulation area by feeding them local pap and intellectually unstable “news”. A grocery store is opening, a furniture store is closing, a domestic dispute, a high school kid wins a golf match, someone lost their keys. I mean, empowering the community doesn’t mean dropping the bar so low that readers can get more local news and gossip by talking to their neighbors.
Our local newspapers today are like journalistic incest.
They seem to be marketing to the lowest common intellectual denominator, like in mass market advertising appealing to a 6th grade level. They’re letting their assumed market base drag the paper down, much like Donald Trump’s market base is dragging America down. It’s the publisher’s and editor’s journalistic responsibility to pull the market up to a higher level empowering the community, not reciprocating its complacency. The editorial decisions by some of the editors are cheating their readers, and potential readers, out of valuable insight while placing their publications and their own jobs in jeopardy.
The editors and publishers of these for-profit mom ‘n pop small market media concerns are locked in their own time warp and within their own limited range regarding marketing and journalism savvy. It’s like they’ve given up and accepted defeat.
The editors are mistaken, missing the boat, in my opinion, thinking that there is no higher intellectual interest from their local markets. There is. They just have to edit accordingly and not be afraid to raise the bar. People aren’t as dumb as they may think. To merely cut and paste regional and national syndicated jargon by has-been writers and editors caught up in the same journalistic dilemma and interspacing it with the local ‘Mrs. Hansen lost her keys’ stories or someone’s kid chalk-drawing on sidewalks is a disservice not only to journalism but to the readers, the community at large, and the integrity of the publication.
I’m not saying there is no place for these kind of stories, it is a local paper, but you have to question whether they are front page headline news.
The papers could work harder and smarter toward self-preservation. Build the market, don’t concede it to the internet and social media. It’s okay to publish breaking national news in the local paper. It’s okay to create controversy, local or otherwise. In fact, it’s the responsibility of the editor/publisher to do these things. Responsibly.
Question stupidity.
Sure, these small local papers are a training ground for young student journalists moving up, or out, in their careers. Published mistakes will be made. Published corrections will follow. It’s part of both the business and the art of journalism, and of selling newspapers.
The one thing any editor of any local for-profit newspaper should realize, however, is that his job is not to win a Pulitzer, it’s to sell newspapers. Every editorial decision must be a business decision also. Give readers something stimulating to read. Don’t let the joy of a morning or evening newspaper be swept away by the lunacy of social media, or by an embarrassingly benign local non-story. Sure, build your online identity, consider social media, but don’t become subservient to it. Always point your readers toward your flagship daily edition. Salute it each morning and each evening. Make your readers do the same. And don’t make the mistake of trying to copy the short burst information style format in your local daily. Leave that to the internet and social media. Your job now is to sooth and entertain, not rally and incite ...to appease not provoke ...to spell out the gutsy truth.
Grab this new market by their iPhones and show them what reading is all about. Teach them to read again before Americans become so lazy and uninformed they won’t know what hit them when the Chinese or the Russians are running the country. Otherwise, the few local hangers-on who still take the community-reflective paper seriously, and the few who write cretinous ‘letters to the editor’ will dictate your doomed market. The rest of us are canceling our subscriptions and looking for something interesting to read.
Here’s a little media marketing lesson I learned a long tome ago. Bear with me. I was a copywriter and commercial producer for our local radio station. I made a commercial for a local septic service company. The tag line I’d written was, “...your business is our business (if you know what I mean ...)”...then some music, ‘Disco Lady‘ by Johnnie Taylor to close it out. It was suggestive but well within the boundaries of appropriate, well within my boundaries of appropriate as a responsible communicator, and it was very, very mnemonically memorable and funny.
An elderly woman living somewhere in the valley called the station manager and complained that she was offended by the commercial and demanded it be taken off the air. She was the only complaint. The station manager pulled it and almost fired me. When the septic company heard about this they confirmed they loved the ad, insisted it be put back on the air because their phone was ringing off the hook! They threatened to sue the station if the ad wasn’t reinstated. The ad was a local hit. Won an award.
The point is, money talks bulls**t walks, creativity trumps mediocrity, and power to the people. The station manager had a choice to make ...cater to the singular elderly woman’s preference, or cater to his advertising dollars and the other 99.99% of his listening market.
Today, and precisely because of the internet and social media, and 24/7 cable news, the local community has expanded into a world community. Your local community news can be placed on a community bulletin board at the local market. The local newspaper needs to become part of this burgeoning world community now, raising the bar and local intellect, and not try to split the difference in a watered down potpourri of miscellaneous pap. Mrs. Jensen can find out about Mrs. Hansen’s lost keys through the community grapevine, but I’ll bet she would like to know more about what Mrs. Hansen thinks about where Melania Trump is, or Kim Jong-un, or immigration, crime in the streets, drugs, and all the other issues that affect our daily lives and futures, and give us something more intellectually stimulating and entertaining to talk about. Remember, they watch CNN!
If newspapers like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, even USA Today, are considered by some to be the high bar and bastions of journalistic integrity in the gotcha, breaking news/gossip frenzy of today’s ravenous news market, then your local newspaper should follow suit and adjust to fill that niche for their local hometown market.
The gutsy truth is the key to increased readership. Some writers, and editors, inherently possess the ability to walk the thin line between truth and gossip, between informational data and creative reasoning, presenting and favoring the truth from varying marketable perspectives. Horace Greeley, founder of the New York Tribune, one of the greatest newspapers of its time was quoted as saying, “The best use of a journal is to print the largest practical amount of truth ...truth which tends to make mankind wiser, and thus happier.”
On the other hand, the actress Betty Davis, also hit the nail on the head saying about her published critics, “Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s toilet paper.”
Betty was ahead of her time regarding after market merchandising.
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah.
