This talk about the Death of the Newspaper is killing me. One of my first jobs was at a newspaper (the largest in the region). I was hired in the production department for my experience with the web and the internet in 2000. By then, I had been “publishing” what is now known as a “blog” for about 5 years, but this isn’t about my history, this is about the future of newspapers. So, newspapers… it’s time we had a talk.

Don’t listen to self-proclaimed “social media industry experts”, they’ll see social media as the duct tape that fixes all your problems. They’ll tell you that you need comments and discussion threads! a Facebook account! FriendFeed and a shiny new Twitter account! Don’t cheapen yourself with that. You’re journalists, not school kids trying to hook up. Authority and reputation are the currency of the internet. Don’t blow it all for one last good run.

The lack of an interactive community isn’t what is hurting you. It’s your distribution model. Print and distribution is crazy expensive. What you need is the newspaper equivalent of TiVo¹. Let the readers to choose what they want to read and when. Keep your writers writing and you’ll keep your readers reading².

Let some other site handle the community management. Sites like Reddit, Digg and Slashdot specialize in discussion, and you specialize in content creation. Would you let Digg write your articles? Content and Community³ are two different fields, and you won’t be able to master both.

You might think you still need those print numbers for advertising, but you’re wrong. Your readership number was never tied to the number of runs across the press. Sure, back in the beginning, that was the only number that mattered, but we’re a couple centuries removed from that now. Think about that. Your readers can now get to your content from anywhere at anytime. Why do you still think the number of rolls of broadsheet you use daily is a valid indicator of reach?

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is about is either going to be sold to a new owner or become an online only publication⁴. The way they see it Option 2 is the equivalent to death. I’d say they’re wrong unless they continue doing the web the way they’re doing it now.

This is not about the death of journalism, this is about the death of your centuries-old distribution model⁵.

Addendum

I started writing this about two weeks ago, and recently came across Clay Shirky’s incredibly long winded Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable and I particularly loved this salient bit:

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.”

I don’t agree with Clay that we’re all in the dark ages. “So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs?” That’s almost like asking “Who will write the songs if the record labels go under?”

One thing he does is explain the complex relationships between the newsroom, advertising department, and production that I basically glossed over here. If that’s the sort of thing you’re interested in, it might be worth slogging over.