Several thoughtful and influential people in the local newspaper business are thinking about the following model. It has great potential.
- Establish a voluntary correspondent in every postcode/village that you want to serve. Give then a business card and agree to pay them a small retainer.
- Set them up with a blog to which they must post daily, strictly only local and relevant news and views, text, audio and video (no thoughts about Middle East policy). Geotag and subject tag it all.
- Create one single national website for local news.
- Let it be completely personalised by the user (many of us have more than one village or locality we would like to keep up with) and as algorithmically intelligent as, say, Amazon
- Give each voluntary correspondent a good quality A4 colour printer. Pay for the paper and ink.
- Have small teams of editors in regional HQs who know a bit about their area
- Produce branded, weekly, free, double sided, single sheet A4 weekly mini-newspapers (like the old FT Digest) for each postcode area
- Distribute door to door via Royal Mail (if affordable) or volunteers if no.
In print, advertising would be both hyperlocal and national — i.e. networks of demographically targeted postcodes.
On the web, advertising would be 100% user targeted.
Anyone could do this. I do not see necessarily that it will be one of the major established players that does it first.
Entry Filed under: Media, Newspapers
2 Comments Add your own
1. Ken Welsby | February 2nd, 2009 at 1:06 pm
At last, a realistic strategy to promote genuine local news.
As a veteran hack turned marketing/PR man with ink in the veins who has loved local papers since starting on one 40 years ago (!) - count me in.
Can I volunteer:
1 - as “district man” (as we used to call ‘em) for SE28 if it flies
2 - for almost anything else for almost anyone who wants to try to make it happen.
BTW, Richard, you are 100% correct when you say that it won’t necessarily be one of the established players that does it first. Do we feel an Eddie Shah moment coming on?
A couple of further thoughts:
It will need someone who really understands new media, which probably (hopefully?) rules out Rothermere.
Energy, commitment and marketing are as important as money in making this work - but as those of us who worked for Business a.m. in 2000-2002 have engraved on our hearts: if you ain’t got the cash, all the energy and effort is wated.
Could this tie in with the search for, or should that be need for, a new order in regional TV news? Or indeed local radio news?
I’ll post any further thoughts if I may.
Ken W
2. Richard Addis | February 12th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Ken - thanks for this. Your encouragement is much appreciated. Please do keep the thoughts coming in.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed