Newspapers

To my generation newspapers seem to be a thing of the past. In fact the only one my family bothers getting anymore is the Sunday Oregonian. It is no mystery as to why people are flocking away from newspapers. News is delivered straight to all of us; whether it be social media, a blog, or reddit. There is no need to wait on the daily paper when all the news you want is one click away.

As for the future of newspapers, Jeff Jarvis has many suggestions in his book "What Would Google Do?" One of these suggestions I have already discussed a little. Distribution. You may notice that when your parents, friends, relatives, etc. post about news on social media, that it usually links to a newspapers website. This is because newspaper companies are still out there doing all the research and getting all the information we want to hear. The only problem is that we don't want to wait. So Jeff suggests working with people. He does not suggest working with other companies, but working with the public; in his words: "recruiting and mobilizing the public to report." 

Another topic he dives into is the inefficiency of newspapers. With newspapers and word of mouth being the only ways of acquiring the news, they had no one to compete with; therefor, no need for maximum efficiency. But now that newspapers are competing with the world wide web, they don't have the time or money to have 3+ editors and publishers look at each story. Because on the internet, something happens, and millions of people are posting, blogging, tweeting, and doing whatever they desire to get the news out. Which, again, puts the newspapers way behind schedule. 

One strategy newspapers could pursue, is focusing more on local news. Hear me out. When something big happens in the World, you hear about it. The news comes to you. But you may not see tweets and Facebook posts about smaller local stories. And small stories are still news.