Small and Sensible

I've increasingly found myself nodding and giving a "hell yeah!" to the writings on Jay Small's Small Initiatives blog. The former Belo Interactive-now Scripps executive's second post in his series on "Saving Newspapers" reads like our business plan, save for his optimism about segmenting print editions.

(There are a lot of smart people-- Jay, Vin Crosbie, Sammy Papert among them-- who advocate individualizing print editions. I buy it on the manufacturing side, but it's the distribution that I can't get my head around. Maybe at a less-than-daily frequency delivered by mail, but I can't see the carriers making the shift to thinking about which paper goes on which doorstep.)

Jay's basic premise for the "Daily Me" is right on, though:

Newspaper managers have to stop blindly assuming they are producing the only -- or the best -- news product their readers see every day. That assumption is what puts Bush/Putin in the lead spot on A1, and allows all the local sportswriters to doze because no high school events happen to be played on Sundays.

Be sure to catch the bulleted suggestions for how best to fill the paper at the end of the post.

And, in a post on Craigsnews, Jay hits on the business problem that I think most of the citizens journalism outfits are up against:

That's why I believe most community journalism efforts as currently conceived, minus an overlay of agenda-setting professional reporting by someone (I'm not presuming that's established media, just not occasional, amateur practitioners), will eventually fail one of two ways:

1. Drying up to become an empty world once the amateurs grow weary of the poor work/reward ratio.
2. Remaining robust in terms of quantity of content, but with a terrible signal-to-noise ratio.

I'm not sure I want to be right about this. Someone prove me wrong.

We hope to prove him wrong, but if we do, I think it will be by producing a hybrid. And that's our biggest challenge -- figuring out a way to provide consistency from professionals and a respectful, open environment for citizens while still making a buck.

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UPDATE: Jay provides a scenario for segmented distribution.

Comments

[Vin Crosbie]

"Maybe at a less-than-daily frequency delivered by mail, but I can't see the carriers making the shift to thinking about which paper goes on which doorstep.)"

The postman has done it daily for centuries. With a wee bit of training, even newspaper carriers can do it.

Moreover, the newspaper would have a significant sorting advantage over the post office: Its press database can print each individualized edition in order of geographic delivery. The carrier then merely drops off each edition in that order. No rocket science needed. Even a circulation manager could figure this out.