Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Slashdot carries today a thought-provoking piece by Robin Miller about how newspapers should change to survive.

"It's time," Miller writes, "for local newspapers to become truly local." Most local newspapers, he adds, "seem to think that they are still their readers' primary source of national and international news, just as they were 20 years ago. So that's what fills their front pages most of the time, with local and regional news stuck in a "B" or "C" section.

"Welcome to the Internet age, local newspaper (and TV) people. I can and do get my national and international news from The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, Al-Jazeera, Fox News, CNN, and other online media that cover faraway events better and faster than you ever will."

He also says newspapers should embrace their readers, encouraging them to contribute to stories and to comment on what the newspaper publishes. "No matter how much I or any other reporter or editor may know about a subject, some of the readers know more. What's more, if you give those readers an easy way to contribute their knowledge to a story, they will."

Miller writes that he believes smart newspapers will survive, but they will change. "Eventually, I expect print newspapers to become 'snapshots' of their Web editions taken at 1 a.m. or another arbitrary time, poured into page templates and massaged a little by layout people, then sent to the printing presses..."

Here are some favorite quotes, including reactions to Miller's piece:

• Miller: "The smartest newspapers will follow my survival recipe or come up with their own way to become an integral part of their community instead of a building full of people who have been sprinkled with Secret Journalism Powder that makes them better and smarter than their readers. These newspapers will not only survive, but prosper. They may even become the prime outlets for bloggers in their communities, which will increase their readership and ad revenue."
• dada21: "And as the Web grows bigger, I see more people ignoring their communities of people dissimilar to them and gain respect for their Web communities of people similar to themselves. More geeks on /. know others here than they do their own real life neighbors."
• xmas2003: "But I wonder how many mainstream journalists will read what you wrote ... or perhaps even more importantly, the business people associated with those operations."

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