Save the Media

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Some short-takes of interesting stuff from around the blogosphere:

Then & Now: Scooping the News has started a useful series. Each week the site is evaluating five newspapers with circulations of more than 100,000 on how much their Web sites have innovated since five years ago. I think it’s an important exercise because as the site says “innovative newspapers attract online readers.” And in some cases, it’s heartening to see how far the Web sites have come.

Here is today’s evaluation, including the Baltimore Sun, which received a 16 out of 20 composite innovation score. Last week, the review included the Miami Herald, which earned a 17.

Not a new problem: I’ve known since I started in the journalism business 20 years ago that readership was declining. I lived to see the demise of many afternoon dailies, including the Herald Journal in my own Syracuse, NY. What I didn’t know is that these problems went back farther than I realized.

Former newspaper publisher and Neiman Journalism Lab blogger Martin Langeveld explains on the Retired Pastor Ruminates blog that newspaper circulation has been declining since just after World War II. In 1947, 132 newspapers were sold for every 100 households. By 2008, that had dropped to 42 newspapers for every 100 household. Wow!

Langeveld says TV, Cable and later the Internet contribute to this decline. But the main culprit, he says, is our nation’s “increasing prosperity and discretionary income (which) turned us into a nation of niche interests” that doesn’t need the  “common ground of a newspaper everyone in a community reads.” There is a lesson in this for all of us in journalism: Don’t hate the Internet for ruining newspapers; alter your product to meet your readers’ changing needs.

Must-reads: Danny Sanchez,  multimedia content manager at OrlandoSentinel.com, recommends five online media books, including “SEO for Dummies” on his blog, Journalistopia. He gives a brief blurb on each that made me want to get every book out of my local library this summer.

A bit of fun: Last week, I tweeted a link to SUNY Brockport journalism professor Marsha Ducey’s fun post about Paperboy, a video game from the 1980s. In case you missed the tweet, here’s a recap:  She offers a tongue-firmly-in-cheek recommendation that newspapers follow the example of the young paper deliverer in the game.

Her advice:  Get the news in your customers’ hands, celebrate your successes, above all — stay alive. It’s a fun read. Who can’t use that these days?

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