There's a reason why we don't have any dinosaurs

I think this video clip says it harshly, but it's true. Hanging onto a costly print product could just be the last bad business decision some of these enormous dailies make.

Jim Lehrer discusses the Tribune Co.

First, I would have embedded the video for you here, but you can only digg or del.icio.us it (those aren't the only sites it supports, just the most common). So please go here to view it.

Okay, did you watch it?

Good, now we can talk about it. My favorite part is the disagreement between Jon Fine and Esther Thorson about the impact of the ever-shrinking newsroom. As Thorson rightly points out, those pages Fine said he wouldn't miss from his beloved New York Times weren't really there for him anyway. Those are the pages someone else is missing.

I have an example. This morning my boyfriend and I are having coffee over the paper, and he is digging through to see what sections are in today's edition. He squeals as he comes across "Entree" the weekly food-focused section. It usually includes one or two guest columns, a few recipes, an AP health story, etc.

I have never gotten excited about seeing it, and probably only read it once. As Thorson also mentions, there is one section neither one of us bypasses: City/Region. It's the only place to find out what's really going on here.

Fine says that newspapers should have been focusing on that all along. He also says he could go on the Internet and find 100 stories about what happened in Iraq today. Time to experiment...

Now I know that Google News is not one of the best aggregates so we'll check there and Yahoo! News as well. I am going to exclude any stories that are not about what actually happened during the war today.
Google News links: Associated Press story about soldiers who are in Iraq but want to help comrades in Afghanistan. That was the only story on the first page, which contained 30 articles with "Iraq" in the headline. Nothing on page two. Even the foreign newspapers were all about the U.S. presidential candidates and not about what's actually happening. Bear with me here, I think I'm going to make a point. There is one sentence in this world report from Reuters, published by England's The Guardian. That's on page four. The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer today had an update on Iraq. That's on page five.

Okay, I don't feel like I've quite made my point yet so I'm headed over to Yahoo! to see what turns up. I'm impressed, second story is an AP story about total U.S. troop deaths in Iraq. Here is a CNN.com story about a car bombing that killed 15. It also has the AP story about soldiers wanting to be in Afghanistan and this story from Reuters about security. On the second page of hits is a story from AFP about taking control of Shiite provinces.

Okay, what did I learn?

I confirmed what everyone already knew, Google News isn't that good, and Yahoo! is better. It gave me way more variety of stories, rather than the same thing over and over again. We also learned from Yahoo! news that the only reporters in Iraq belong to the three biggest wire services in the world. Now I don't find this surprising or disappointing. At least we have someone there.

But do we have lots of these AP, Reuters, and AFP reporters telling us what's happening? Nope. As evidenced by the lack of variety in these stories, we don't have many reporters there. And I certainly didn't find Fine's suggested 100 stories about what happened in Iraq today. In fact I'm pretty sure I didn't even scrape the surface of what actually happened.

As an addendum I refer you to this article in the current issue of American Journalism Review

And so it begins

In this article from the The Daily Telegram, a Wisconsin paper, reveals it will publish daily news, photos and video on its Web site and reduce it's print edition to two days each week. It intends to remain a paid subscription print edition. Hmm...

Let's start with putting some of the article here since one is required to sign up for a membership (it's free, but a hassle) to see the story:

Following a growing trend in the newspaper industry, The Daily Telegram will refocus its emphasis toward Internet publishing, company executives said today.

The Telegram’s Web page, www.superiortelegram.com, will become the primary source of day-to-day breaking news, said Publisher Ken Browall. It will feature printed news and photos of events as they happen seven days a week, along with audio and video clips.

Online news coverage will be supplemented by a twice-weekly printed version of The Telegram that provides exclusive Superior and Douglas County news and sports features plus a wide variety of community news and columns not offered by other Twin Ports media, Browall said. The twice-weekly Telegram will remain a paid circulation newspaper.

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Internet publishing has grown in popularity as traditional print advertisers have gradually moved to the newer medium. Meanwhile, print advertising revenue has declined nationwide, and newprint costs have grown. This year, the revenue stream has been particularly weak as the struggling economy, poor credit conditions and slow hiring has hurt traditionally strong classified advertising customers in the automobile, real estate and help wanted sectors.

Okay, here's my brilliant idea. Instead of reducing the number of times per week a print edition is produced, newspapers should instead make people buy the print edition in stands and make sure Web content is available to subscribers, first thing, everyday.

For the old fashioned people who wish to receive print papers at their homes, newspapers could charge them a special rate, more than the online edition but less than if you bought it in the stands.

Here is why I think this will work: Newsprint is expensive and limiting. The Internet is cheap and limitless. With more innovative placement of advertising, newspapers can sell ads online, save money on ink and newsprint, still produce the product people are used to getting, still get subscription numbers to use when selling ads, offer similar penetration, attract younger audiences, incorporate more styles of storytelling, and still satisfy the older generation who can't imagine getting their newspaper online. If newspapers are almost exclusively sold in boxes, the paper still has the chance to attract new readers and distribute news to those who aren't regular readers.

Of course, this means that the Web site has to offer cell phone compatible Web sites in addition to the full sites. These sites are much simpler though, and should be easier, not harder, to create.