Five-Ws for Fixing Newspapers - Plus a Framework on How

Mark Evans, COO at blog company b5 Media and a veteran business journalist,  offers an analysis of how newspapers should fix themselves.

Here is the condensed version:

• Why do newspapers need to change? Frankly, they have no choice. Circulation is declining as more people, particularly 15-to-25-year-olds, use the Web to get the news."
• What must newspapers do? Experiment, innovate, focus on and engage the community. Clearly, newspapers need to embrace the Web, but it's not just a matter of migrating stories from paper to the digital world. They need to encourage interaction with readers by soliciting comments about stories, providing links to external resources, launching blogs, podcasts and video blogs, and driving traffic between the newspaper and the Web site.
• Where is the industry headed? As a starting point, let's assume a growing number of consumers get the news fairly quickly from the Web, all-news radio and 24-hour TV stations such as CNN and NewsWorld...So what does this mean? Well, newspapers - and this sounds strange - need to abandon the "news" because it's become a commodity.
• Who will write the news: Hire young, aggressive reporters for peanuts, and leverage their enthusiasm until they start to demand more money. Then, you let them go and hire a new crop of cheap talent... Or the other side of the coin is using some young talent to run around town to do the "grunt stuff" while having a small, but talented, group of senior reporters to write columns, news features and analysis pieces.
• When do newspapers need to change: Easy answer: now. Anyone who got caught with their pants down by the Web's emergence as a news resource needs to adopt an aggressive, risk-taking approach. This will mean mistakes will be made, experiments will blow up, and pet projects will fail. It means newspapers have to stop being afraid of the Web cannibalizing the print product;

Mark offers a good, realistic assessment of the 5-Ws. But an important last question was unspoken: How?

I'll offer a quick disruptive framework to help answer that:

• Separate strategic business questions into three files, inspired by Vijay Govindarajan's Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators, which was highlighted in the Oct. issue of Harvard Prof. Clayton Christensen's Strategy & Innovation Newsletter:
  
  • 1)Revitalizing the current business;
  • 2)Abandoning processes, products and services that customers no longer value or can't earn their keep;
  • 3)Creating new opportunities for the future.

• For Revitalizing, ask the key question: What do customers value and pay for?  Continue to make incremental improvements to deliver along these lines.  (It may be easier to look at competitors and other industries to get a clear answer.) No need to break dramatically from the past and no need to break the bank on this file.
• For Abandoning, ask the key question: If we were to start fresh today, what would we create as a company and as a service for customers? Identify the biggest, costliest, most distracting processes of the current operation that were not identified as parts of the future and begin exiting those processes ASAP.
• For Creating, assign a small, independent team with a limited budget to create a new business. Give them lattitude to borrow the current company brand and resources as they see fit. Do not saddle the team with obligations to use resources, to solve problems in the current business, or even to reflect the core competency of the current business. Allow the team to cannibalize as long as they deliver profitable growth near term. Allow the team to make small, inexpensive mistakes to learn the right new business. The key question: What are the problems that consumers and or advertizers are trying to solve today, but can't?

**Other Views**
Talking Tech:Mark Evans' weekly podcast with Kevin Restivo.

Fast Company magazine explores the success of small newspapers like the Naples, FLA Daily News that have gone "hyper-local" to hone in on a differentiated service that readers value. Mathew Ingram found the link and tracks media trends.

Brass Tacks Design says newspapers can redesign their way to increased readership. Also a prior article on challenges newspapers for copying new designs rather than innovating.

The Readership Institute at NorthWestern University looks at newspapers and their readers. Loads of research.