Newspapers and their Web sites don’t serve markets well enough

I have quite a few opinions about this Kurtz piece. If you haven’t already, you should read it before moving on with my disjointed rant below.

Regarding the Web stuff at the bottom of this article: I think fear of what others in the community have to say is not an excuse to try to quiet their voice.

By simply turning off a blog on your site, you don’t do much. There is absolutely zero cost involved for a blogger to a new site. They can set one up for free. Then they’re competing for the same attention every site, newspaper or otherwise, is vying for. To me, embracing blogs is more important than trying to compete with them in the long run.

Because some projects fail (by what measure?), does that mean newspapers shouldn’t try new things? No. Dozens of television programs get canceled every year because they don’t meet audience expectations. But that doesn’t mean TV programmers necessarily fall back on producing the same types of content over and over. Each new program tries to serve a specific segment of the overall market. You have winners and losers and hope that the balance keeps you in the black.

First: Be the best source to the most valuable markets, then branch out

Sometimes I feel like the newspaper industry tries too hard to be all things to all people, but ‘all people’ really turns out to be current, vocal subscribers.

There’s too much talk of ‘The Readers’ when we really mean ‘Some Readers.’

I’m tired of the vague subtext from editors that readers read the entire paper. I have never seen evidence to back this up. In fact, it’s quite the contrary on the Web.

People have habits, cater to them

Each section, each piece of content (articles, comics, games and even advertising) is serving only a segment of the entire readership. Most people don’t say ‘I want to be informed of the world around me.’ They say ‘what happened in last nights Twins game?’ ‘What stupid joke does Mallard Fillmore have today?’ ‘Why did Playmakers change it’s name?’ ‘Why were the police on my block yesterday?’ Readers want to know about content that is relevant to them in some way (individual interests, subjects, proximity all play a role).

I think the serendipitous nature of learning something new about the world from a paper or a Web site is secondary to the reason people actually pick up the news. It comes after they’ve done the crossword, checked the box scores, cut coupons, read the obits or scanned the front page.

The real ’silent majority’ don’t read your product (yet)

The man who talks about the ‘silent majority’ of subscribers is probably right. But, personally, I don’t think that group of people should be the largest slice of readers. Think of it like a pie chart. This man represents only a slice. The business objective is to grow the overall diameter of the pie, regardless of why people read the paper or go to a Web site. The way to do that isn’t to just listen to your readers. Listen to the people that aren’t reading, too. The San Jose Mercury News is on the right track.

None of this changes the fundamental role of the newspaper. We are still providing information to people who need it. We have to ask what information people want and package it in a way that serves a segment of the community.

Somewhere along the line, this industry forgot to ask that on a daily, monthly and quarterly basis.