My Hometown Paper?

This is something that's been on my mind:

I live in Winston-Salem. I have the Winston-Salem Journal delivered every morning.  But I don't feel like I know anyone there.  The paper doesn't have a "voice",  at least not one that I can hear.  The closest thing to its voice is the editor's column in the op-ed section.

In fairness to the Journal I think that the "voice" issue is the same for the vast majority of newspapers.  But unfortunately for the Journal they happen to be juxtaposed with the Greensboro News & Record. The N&R is making national (maybe even international) headlines, at least in the publishing sector and the nascent blogosphere, because it is embracing the newest in publishing paradigms: the blog.

At last count the N&R has five blogs: one written by the editor John Robinson, another written by Lex Alexander (I think he's their online guru), another titled Inside Scoop, a sports blog written by multiple sports staffers, and finally The Chalkboard blog which covers local education stories.

I get all of the N&R blogs via RSS.  I don't get their paper...yet.  But I still feel closer to the N&R, and in a way I feel it is my hometown paper.  And I think it's going to eat the Journal's lunch if the folks at the Journal don't act fast.  Here's why:

1. Via it's blogs the N&R has been getting direct feedback from it's audience (notice I didn't say readers) about how they would like to see their "paper" evolve in the future.  The N&R is doing a fantastic job of helping their audience take ownership of the paper.  This is huge because...

2. Paper circulation is on its last legs as the defining metric for local newspaper companies.  They are going to have to morph to survive;  there will probably be paper for the foreseeable future, but it's role as the core entity for the company is declining rapidly.  To morph the newspaper needs to know what it's audience wants and then create it.  N&R is doing that, and in the process they are replacing the monologue with a dialogue.

3. N&R already owns two thirds of the Piedmont Triad region (Greensboro & High Point).   Denizens of Winston-Salem see themselves as quite distinct from the denizens of Greensboro, which is very similar to the attitude of Northern Virginians to Suburban Marylanders in the D.C. area that I recently fled.  Anyway, it would probably pain the editor at the Journal (I have no idea what his/her name is) to know that I feel like I'm on a first name basis with the editor of the Greensboro News & Record (Hi John!).  If I happen across a hot story or issue, who do you think I'm going to ping with it?

4. The future for newspapers is integrated media.  I have no idea what the mix will be, but it's going to be some combination of paper, internet, video, audio and interactive media. 

My brother works for a major newspaper publishing company and he pointed out to me years ago that the real money for community papers is in classifieds.  At the time his company wasn't too worried about the internet because it was a glogal entity.  Enter Craigs List.  Oops.

My point is that newspapers are sitting on the cusp of something big and they will either thrive or die.  Right now they still own a healthy part of the audience, but they need only look at their declining circulation to know that the audience share is shrinking.  They have to act now.  N&R is doing that, and they are doing it right.

5. Last point.  I hear from the N&R several times every day, all via their blogs.  I hear from the Journal in the morning and that's it.  I used to check their website for updates, but rarely saw them.  (Honestly their site stinks).  As a result I know more about Greensboro's city council than I do about Winston-Salem's.

So for now I'd say that the N&R is my hometown paper.  It's not too late for the Journal, but they better act fast or it will be.  I'd love to write the editor and share some ideas...anybody have a name for me?

Comments

[Jay Ovittore]

Very well put. Glad to have you here in the Greensboro blog community. The N&R is doing something infinitly huge. We will see were it goes, but I think they can change the media game on a lot of levels. To bad the WS Journal doesn't get it. I feel lucky to live here, and that's coming from someone who lived outside NYC for most of his life.

[Ben]

*laugh* Seems like my signficant other and you have something in common. She lives in Winston, but she knows way more about GSO. Hmmm.. ;)

[Mark]

Here's their contact us page: http://www.wsjournal.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJC/Page/WSJC_ContentPage&c=Page&cid=1051216105698

No direct contacts to most reporters, though.

***
Thanks for the tip. Sometimes I don't know if I'm blind, dense or both.

I wonder why no direct contacts for reporters? I'd think they would want them to be "contactable" more than anyone else, if for no other reason than story tips.

[John Robinson]

Hi, Jon. It's good to have you as a read..., er, audience member. :) As I browse through your site of posts, you have a lot to add. I hope you'll share some of it with us, here and directly.

[Lex]

Welcome, Jon. As I explained in the post where I first told our readers/audience what I was up to, I'm not a computer/Internet guru so much as a writer/editor and the one-eyed guy in the land of the blind, someone the N&R's Powers That Be turn to from time to time to figure out what's up online and what we ought to do about it. I'm a little embarrassed about all the publicity we've gotten, inasmuch as we haven't actually DONE anything yet. But we will, because the status quo is not a viable option anymore, because it'll make us a better news organization and because it's the right thing to do.

Cheers.

***
Well I have to disagree on one point here: you HAVE done something. You have addressed the need to change the status quo and you have taken steps to identify those changes. That is huge. If it wasn't I don't think you would have garnered all the attention that you find a bit embarassing!

Thanks for the comment and I look forward to seeing the fruits of your efforts.

[Adam]

Hi Jon, I work on the website at the Journal and can definitely relate to some of the things you've pointed out in this post. Maybe my $.02 can add a little to the discussion.

First off, the Journal's editor is Carl Crothers. Just call 336-722-7211 and ask the lady at the front desk to put you through (or dial his last name into the employee directory). You might get voicemail but leave a message and I'm sure he'll try and get back to you.

Secondly, I think there are several reasons more news sites don't do what the N&R are "doing" (as Lex said, except for the blogs, they haven't actually "done" anything yet. I know they're working on it though).

Number One is news sites don't see an immediate, viable business model in a lot of this. Don't forget, these sites are just now starting to make actual money -- it's not really the case that we have all this time and money lying around that we can jump on every new and exciting thing we want right out the gates. JournalNow only has 3 full-time producers -- we're stretched pretty thin a lot of the time.

Number Two is news sites get strong resistance from folks inside the organization who don't have as much of a "web-centric" mindset as all of us do (let's be honest, a large, large majority of people don't even know what RSS is). In the case of the Journal, we are owned by a large conglomerate (Media-General) -- things sometimes move veeery slowly.

Number Three is sites oftentimes don't have the backend support structure to do things differently than they've been doing them (servers, programming, etc.) For the Journal, this has a lot to do with Number Two and the somewhat inflexible Content Management System we use. For other sites, is has to do with money, time, personnel, etc.

And Number Four (I'll wrap it up here) is the fact that only about 2%-10% of a newspaper's circulation would have the know-how to actually take advantage of many of these cutting edge approaches, anyway. So, a lot of that goes back to the business model.

Having said all that, though, I certainly see where you're coming from as far as papers not having a "voice" -- but also consider that not everyone in the business thinks that's a bad thing. There are those of us who do, however, and while it might be a slow process -- we are trying.

As far as our site stinking -- how dare you sir! :) We're working on that, too. And again, it's unfortunately been a slow process. Trust me!

Oh, and any emails you want to send to us folks at JournalNow, just send to webstaff@journalnow.com

Thanks!

*****

Well I have to say that I am very appreciative of your polite tone considering I was just a tad abrupt with my "stinks" comment. In all fairness to you and your mates working on the site I'm well aware of the problems you're faced with.

I too have worked on sites that suffer from a lack of resources (money) and do not have near the impact that they could. It really is a chicken and egg thing; the boss wants to see the money before commiting resources to the online side of things, but you can't really generate the money until you have the resources to build the kind of site that will generate the traffic and attention that leads to more traffic and advertising. It is frustrating.

But, in the interim let me make one small request. Can you add a live news scroll, even if it's the AP or even Google news, on the home page? Right now you have a couple of headlines midway down the page, but I think a scroll would be much easier to find. Also, an RSS feed would be most appreciated. I understand you have constraints with your CMS, but hopefully it would support some basic scripts that would make your lives a little easier:)

Finally, I'll take you up on your offer and give Mr. Crothers a call. I'm not sure how much he'll want to hear (you know what they say about free advice!), but I'd be happy to share some thoughts.

Thanks again for the comments Adam. Hope to stay in touch.

[Adam]

Hi Jon, me again.

Just wanted to let you know that after sending out an email about your post and the PressThink piece to everyone here and talking with my boss and co-workers, we've hacked out an RSS feed of our daily news updates that we'll start updating starting today. It's here:

http://extras.journalnow.com/rss/rss.xml

It's only one feed so far, unfortunately, but hey it's a start! After getting this off the ground we're going to start working on seperate feeds for sections, topic, etc.

Thanks again for the post and just let us know if you have any other ideas or concerns.

[Billy The Blogging Poet]

Howdy Jon,
Welcome to OUR community. I can see by the comments that you now have the attention of the WSJ, it's only a matter of time before they come around to our way of thinking and you're to thank for that. Thanks.

This experiment called blogging is all about community and is open to all who want to join in. Not everyone will be on every aggregator but all will be on someone's aggregator or list of links, and a community is built a link at a time.

[Beth]

This is for Ben, who I believe said that there was no contact for reporters on the Journal's site. I had to check this one out myself. There actually is, just look in the left hand nav on that link you sent and there is a "find an employee" link. I clicked on it and found all the reporters names, emails and phone numbers. Any way, it is good to get the 'big boys' at the newspapers thinking about what the community really wants - keep it up!