The Marketing Plaza

Newspapers are crashing and burning. I’m not talking about in their own medium — although there’s sad news on that front.  No, I mean in the social media world.  Why?  Because they refuse to modify their message to the medium. It’s an odd commentary for a medium built solidly in the communications world, but one thing newspaper publishers, editors and writers don’t understand is how to use a blog to their best advantage (not to mention Twitter and other social media).

Publishers. Publishers care about publishing. They want the funds to print another day.  Hence, they are concerned with revenue.  Guess what? Blogs are not great revenue producers — at least at first — and publishers are not patient people. They want the ads in today for tomorrow’s edition.  The result?  They are looking for posts that will bring in advertisers. They keep trying to develop content that the Advertising department can sell, rather than content the community wants to read or engage in.  It’s not a good model and it hasn’t worked.

Editors. Editors are a bit better, but also don’t understand the medium.  Great editors understand the need for personality and the public thirst for the news behind the news.  One of my favorite Sunday columns was a local editor’s post on how his reporters got the latest, greatest story — literally the story behind the news. However, the insights were saved for the precious Sunday paper and not posted on the paper’s website.

Another young editor at a different local paper, started a community blog. She inherently understood the need for community voice on the paper’s website, but didn’t understand that community in the blogging world means individuals not organizations.  She approached non-profits in the State with the opportunity to post on a blog set up for local causes. The result is a series of mini-press releases on golf outings and benefactor and grant news rather than insights into the causes.  I can guarantee you that the only people reading the blog are the marketing folks at other non-profits.  The real community isn’t interested.

Writers. Writers understand writing and followings, but newspaper writers are in competition with themselves. They are saving their stories for the paper, hoping to get in the Sunday edition. Their blog posts are bland and again, tend not to tell the story behind the story.  Why was it a difficult story to write?  How did they get a crying mother to admit her son had gone sour? How did they learn about the story in the first place?  Don’t just tell me you wrote a great story. Tell me why you felt it was worthy of the newspaper. Then, you might draw me to your story in the paper, but mostly, I’m not going to bother to read your current blog. It’s not giving me any insight into your craft.

Newspapers are built for blogging.  They just haven’t realized it yet, or approached it in the right way. I wish they would. I’m a news junkie at heart and would eat it up — as would a huge segment of the online world.