Was out of pocket yesterday, and have a backlog of blog-able stuff and a finite amount of time. So, the "hodgepodge bullet point post":
- More Vin Crosbie on circ declines: ...the average large newspaper loses more than half of its subscribers each year. Think of that: a product that is aimed at consumers but that loses half of its consumers each and every year. There is a problem with that product.
- He also has a nice summary of a conference on wireless content in Prague. Found this tidbit particularly interesting: Sydsvenskan, the leading regional newspaper in southern Sweden, inserts an SMS code in stories that won't be resolved before deadline -- court cases that will be held later in the day, for example. Readers who want to know the outcome send the code to the paper and receive the update by SMS. "The reader subscribes to a specific piece of news, not to breaking news in general," says Mr Packer.
- Over at My Other Blog, Dan posts a story on a rise in Elks Club membership. Can't quite articulate it yet, but this somehow illustrates part of the hyper-local news and community concept.
- Been thinking a lot more about how "Citizen's Media" can play into our concept, particularly how to ensure quality. Our friend, Russell, thinks it's got legs, though: Imagine being able to see, for instance, Diana's Mercedes crash, instead of pictures of the crashed car some minutes later. So, here's a crazy thought for a big news, crazy day. The rise and rise of the blog has shown that many, many people are capable of producing first class written content, worthy of any traditional "professional" journalist...Would it be possible to produce a news paper (on or offline) made up entirely of freelance, amateur content? If I was a news journalist, I'd start to look over my shoulder and twitch a little.
- Citysearch and Topix are teaming up. Not sure how I feel about that, but since neither produces much, if any, content, not terribly worried.
- The Feds served the Old Gray Lady a subpoena in their circulation investigation. I doubt they'll turn anything up, but if they do, our model's going to look all the better. Meantime, a Newsday distributor got caught red-handed destroying undelivered papers and circulars.
- Russell also has more on the Bluetooth Spam, including an interesing post on guidelines for using location based services, not only for marketing, but also for tracking employees.
- Eric has his almost-weekly Belo recap (scroll 2/3 down), this one being a post-layoff edition. My favorite tidbit: The proprietor of my favorite restaurant pulled his advertising from the DMN in retaliation for the Gary West snafu.
- Word is that all of the DMN suburban bureaus are shutting down next week. I've been saying that we would launch exclusively "inside the loop," but this makes a wider launch a bit more tempting.
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