How to Save the Traditional Newsroom

In the last post I said I had no ideas about how to fix newspapers. Well, now I do, thanks in large part to a brainstorming IM session with my co-worker John Moran.

I think John Cass is on the right track when he points to hyperlocal journalism as a key element in fixing newspapers, but I think it's only a start. There are a number of hyperlocal sites out there (I've talked a bit about H2otown.info) but can these help make money?

The real problem, as I see it, is that newspapers had that role as community source but lost it.
Frankly, I'm not sure they ever knew they had it, but it's what gave them power.

Often you hear journalists talk about their role as storyteller at the proverbial campfire. The image is of ancient humans sitting around at night, not long after feasting on their latest kill, telling tales of the hunt. One person leads telling everyone what happened that day, all other tribe members rapt with attention.

Great image, but wrong. The campfire is a circle not a stage. It's not just one story being told but many. People are talking to each other, some are calling out their own stories. It's an organized cacophony.

But all this times newspapers looked at themselves as the source for information. The one place local residents turned for news. And with older technologies, like newsprint, TV or radio, they were right.

So, what do they have now? Let's just take the example of the New York Times. As far as I'm concerned the paper's biggest asset is trust. People trust the information in it. Yes, you hear a lot of grumbling about inaccuracies in the Times, but for the most part this is where America turns when it truly wants information about the world.

This is also why the cases of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller hit so hard, they struck at the very trust that we, the readers, hold dear.

So, how would I fix it? First, I'd put all online content behind the pay firewall except for breaking news. Yes, you heard me right. I'd make people pay for content. In a move similar to what they've already done with select content, I'd make it so regular print subscribers easily get passwords so they can log in as well.

The argument that people won't pay for content is bunk. They will. How many people pay for HBO? I have DirecTV just so I can get Jets games on Sundays here in New England. Then there is cable penetration, which is very high in this country.

What would Times readers get for their money? It has to be more than just news, they have to become part of a community.

Readers should be allowed to post hyper-local content. Since registration will probably contain a certain amount of geographical information on each subscriber, a reader in Hackensack, New Jersey should automatically receive content that comes from other readers in their area.

However, a community is more than just about geography, it's also about likes and dislikes.

This is where things get very interesting. People who buy their way in must be allowed to comment on stories, not just in letters to the editor or in forums (though, these should still exist) but in comments attached directly to the story. What's more, they should be able to create their own spaces within the New York Times site, being able to focus the news as they see fit, a place where people can "clip" stories or even have searches on terms that are important to them. But here's the kicker: that should be public, this way other others can follow the various editions of the paper. Leaders would arise, just as they have in the blogosphere.

Along the way the Times would be collecting information on its readers, and then feeding content to the readers based on their interest. This isn't Earth-shattering technology, Google does it daily by feeding ads based on what's written in a blog or even in our emails.

And yes, I know that this kind of idea is called a blog or wiki, but I don't want to be bound by those titles. Newspaper sites must find ways to harness the power laid out before them, while levering the trust they earned by delivering us the news for the last century.

Once they have this community, they may earn back the classified ads or other revenue-producing concepts that could save them from financial ruin.

There's obviously more to explore here, like how to take lessons learned by gamers to make massive amounts of information easier to absorb.