Imagine a news Web site that’s a portal to everything people used to read in newspapers plus a bunch of things that newspapers were never able to provide. A cool idea, I think, but first it requires newspapers to embrace two provocative ideas:

1. The mass audience is dead.
2. The product of newspaper Web sites is not news.

No more mass audience

Radio lost the mass audience first when TV proliferated. Gone were the days when a large swathe of the American audience was listening to “Gunsmoke” or the “Avenger” on radio. TV started as a mass medium because there were few channels, so again, everybody seemed to watch “Laugh-In” or The Ed Sullivan Show.” But then as more and more TV networks started, people fell into niches. They could watch networks about just food or gardening or do-it-your-selfing or history. Few shows could garner the huge audiences of the past, but collectively, networks developed tight groups of devoted fans.

The same is happening now with the transition of newspapers to the Web. The old newspaper thinking was to reach a large, broad audience, which was often not highly invested in the news. That meant editors picked story topics that would appeal to the many, not the few. The Web, however, gives news organizations a chance to reach a lot of small but highly interested niches. New thinking is needed.

BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis called this the “mass of niches” in his recent book, “What Would Google Do?”

A colleague of mine, graphic artist Darren Sanefski, coined the word “hyperinterest” to explain how newspaper Web sites could cater to this “mass of niches” on the Web. He was playing on the term hyperlocal, which has come to mean a news Web site that is tailored specifically to a geographic area, such as a town, a city or even a neighborhood.

The thing is, people don’t always or only define themselves geographically. Some define themselves by their interests — skeet shooter, video gamer, foodie. Others define themselves by their needs — person in search of a baby sitter, newcomer to a community, job hunter. Still others define themselves by political interests, or personal agendas or avocation –  Democrat, tree hugger, soup kitchen volunteer. At different times, people may define themselves through any of these criteria or other ones, depending on what they need at that moment.

What if newspapers’ Web site helps these readers find what they wanted. To do that, news organizations must figure out what their product is.

What is a news organization’s product?

I’m guessing most in the newspaper industry think they sell news. I’d argue news was never the product even in the halcyon days when multiple newspapers competed in one city. In those days, newspapers delivered ads wrapped in news to readers. The product was really the ads, not the news.

Today, as newspapers try to transition to the Web, part of the product may still be ads. But part could be convenience.

Last week, I blogged about Tim Windsor’s question on the Nieman Journalism Lab blog about whether online news content is like bottled water. He asked how bottled water companies could essentially sell something most people in industrialized world can get for free. My answer: Bottled water companies aren’t selling the water; they’re selling convenience.

So what if newspaper Web sites offered convenience.  People read newspapers for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with news. Some like the coupons, the lottery numbers, the comics, the crossword puzzle. Anyone who has worked at a daily newspaper for any length of time knows that a quick way to elicit hundreds of angry phone calls is to repeat the same Jumble two days in a row.

A portal Web site

Imagine if a newspaper’s Web site didn’t look like a news Web site at all. Instead, when you entered the site, you faced a question: What do you want to do?  (I’m picturing it almost like Facebook’s “What’s on Your Mind?”)

You could pick from a pull-down  list of choices — find out the weather, read the top story, find the movie reviews, do a crossword puzzle, post a video game review, view today’s front page.

You’d also be able to type in what you wanted if none of the options met your needs. And you could bypass this search option, and navigate the site yourself if you desired. It would be like a typical news Web site search feature, but on steroids.

You also could still reach the site in traditional ways: through Google searches or by selecting from topical menus. But these menus wouldn’t mimic newspaper sections — features, sports, news. They would include a whole world of options.

The newspaper wouldn’t create all these options. It would link to them, creating this rich one-stop-shopping for everything a person in your community needs to make life easier.  Remember, we’re selling convenience.

A few examples of what I mean:

• A new at-home mom moves into the community, so she types in “find other moms” into the newspaper’s Web page search feature. She’s directed to a parenting topic page that includes a link to the Meetup.com list of moms groups for that locality; a list of recent parenting stories from the wires and that newspaper; a list of all the local moms’ groups.
• A crossword puzzle junkie can’t get his fix with just one a day in print. So he accesses the gaming portal on the newspaper’s Web site and reaches multiple puzzles to confound him plus chances to play Scrabble or Sudoku. The newspapers doesn’t create the games; it finds a way to curate them or link to them.
• A video gaming enthusiast wants to sound off on this great game she just played. She can reach not only a video gaming blog, which offers reviews from readers, staffers and others, but a portal to an already-existing video gaming community. Plus she’ll find aggregation of a variety of the best video-gaming blogs and sites from around the world.
• A member of the community happens onto the site and wants to know what’s the top story, based on what other readers’ think. He is connected to a list of stories that are getting the most comments as well as a list of stories that other readers have picked as the top reads in a Digg-like “most popular in last 24 hours” fashion. (A bit like the way it works on Times People at The New York Times.)

The news Web site becomes not just about news — but about everything. The news site isn’t selling news or ads; it’s selling convenience.  Gems on the Web site aren’t hidden but easy to reach. Depending on what the user clicks on, the site suggests other sites, links, blogs, news stories in much the same way that Amazon.com suggests books or videos or Facebook suggests “people you may know.”

All this would need a very robust search function, much more robust than I’ve found on many newspaper Web sites. But it’s possible.  I use Google like this all the time, by typing in questions of what I want. I usually get great results. (For example, I just typed “Where to find tax forms” into Google and reached more than 60 million results in .50 seconds, the first of which was the IRS tax forms.)

One final point: Each of these “hyperinterest” pages will have limited, but highly interested appeal. In other words, newspapers can’t expect huge traffic to each. The idea is to create highly interested small groups of readers. One thousand highly interested readers are better than 5,000 who care only a bit.

The impact is cumulative. In a way, it’s like saving money. The easy way to slash your budget is to stop paying your mortgage, likely your biggest expense. But then you’d lose your home. So the only realistic way to cut costs is to trim small amounts of many expenses.  In the end it adds up.

That’s how hyperinterest pages would work. Each might have a relatively small but growing following, but collectively they would contribute to a large readership. And because these readers are highly interested, they would spread the word about your site for free.  That’s just how it works on Twitter, where one friend tells two people, who tell two more people and so on.

Seems like it’s a good time for some short takes from my jaunts around the blogosphere. Here are some posts that I found interesting. Hope you will, too.

Is news like bottled water? Tim Windsor has a thought-provoking post at Nieman Journalism Lab today, noting that bottled-water producers know something newspapers do not: How to sell something people can often get for free. In much of the developed world, tap water is free and clean, yet people will shell out $6 or more for a bottle of water.  Windsor asks: Is online news content like gasoline, a “necessary commodity that people will begrudgingly pay for, because they have to” or bottled water, ”a necessary commodity that’s packaged in a way that finds a happy and willing customer base?”

A colleague and I tossed the idea around a bit this afternoon. How are water and news content different? The same? Are we buying bottled water because the product has been marketed to us as necessary. Or is there something else we’re buying? 

After some thought, here’s what we hit upon: We’re buying bottled water (and by we, I mean other people. I’m strictly anti-bottled water for environmental reasons) in part because of marketing. When I was growing up, we ran the tap. The only bottled water was pricey and snooty Perrier. So part is marketing; the consumer was persuaded that he or she “needed” bottled water, perhaps because it is perceived as  cleaner or healthier.

Some are buying it because their tap water stinks (literally, like sulphur or other minerals.) The water may be safe to drink , but it may not taste good.

We decided convenience, which Windsor mentions, is the main reason people buy bottled water. It’s a seemingly small convenience. But in today’s frantic world it looms larger. Consider me as I make the hurried dash from work to after-school program pickup to home to get my son ready for his Little League game. As a non-bottled-water drinker, I waste, say, a good three or four minutes hunting for a sports drink bottle that is clean and has a cap that fits and then filling it with ice and water for my son to tote to his game. It would be easier to grab an already-filled, chilled bottled from the fridge.

So could readers could be marketed to want to pay for news content on the Web? Perhaps, but I doubt it. The problem still comes back to why pay for what you’ve been getting for free. Imagine if bottled water were handed out free for years, and then someone decided to charge. It wouldn’t fly. (And that doesn’t mean news organizations should have charged for online content from the beginning. Some tried; it didn’t work.)

Back to the water analogy. If people are paying for convenience when they buy bottled water, charging for news content will only work if readers feel they are getting something else — not just news. Something they want desperately. Something that makes their lives easier the way grabbing a bottled water from the fridge does. But what that is, I don’t know. I wish I did.

Social media editor: So The New York Times has appointed a social media editor, Jennifer Preston. She jumped in with both feet, tweeting:  “How Should @nytimes be using Twitter?” Old Media New Tricks offers some smart strategies for Preston, including “Interact with your followers, and follow them. The Times account only follows Times employees right now and does not respond to followers.” Bravo.

How to use Twitter: Found a frank post today that spells out in “How to Use Twitter and Not be a Douchebag.” Good advice for journalists or anyone on Twitter. Best takeaway from blogger Adam Darowski:  ”It’s not all about you.If you’re going to get anything out of Twitter at all, you need to immediately check your ego at the door, listen to people, and build relationships. Talking about the things your or your company are doing will only get you anywhere once you’ve already joined the conversation.” One quibble, which I noted in a comment on Darowski’s blog: He’s not a fan of retweeting; I am.

Why to use social media: Kyle Lacy isn’t writing for newspapers with his dripping-with-sarcasm list of 10 reasons your business should not be on social media. But he could be. He makes the point that only a business that purchased a dial-up modem to “save money” would want to skip the benefits of social media. His best reason not to be on social media: “You find that building ‘trust’ in a marketplace is a waste of time.”

I’m in the midst of a series of blog posts explaining how journalists can use social-networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Linked In. But I’ve decided to interrupt the series temporarily for a very important post: Questions about new media that journalists have asked me over the past several months.

I feel this is crucial to get out because I’m pretty darn passionate about the transition that newspapers are going through, and I feel an almost evangelistic drive to help fellow journalists negotiate through the changes. I don’t want my cronies getting frustrated and giving up.

So, here are the questions and my answers. In the interest of readibility, some questions are the combination of several queries.

Can new media tools like blogging, Twitter, Facebook, etc. really save the media? In a word, no. There’s no magic bullet. News organizations need to rethink everything they do. They must become truly online-first newsrooms while producing a superior print product. They must engage readers in a way they never have before and create new content that works for the Web. New media tools are part of this transition, but they are just tools. They are useless without a complete rethinking of what it means to help readers make sense of their world.

Isn’t what people say on Twitter boring? Twitter is a conversation. You get out of it what you put into it. If you follow 10 people and that’s it, yeah, you’ll be bored. It will be like standing in a room by yourself and talking. How fun is that? But follow a bunch of people in your community and on your beat and keep adding to your follow list. In time, you’ll find yourself getting story ideas, tips for blog posts and engaging with readers. Tim Windsor at Zero Percent Idle highlighted a quote by Morris Digital’s Steve Yelvington that describes Twitter so well I just have to repeat it: “It’s like a big caffeine party. Everybody’s talking at once. Really fast. But you have magic ears.” Now doesn’t that sound interesting?

How do you find the time to blog or use Twitter, Facebook, etc.? People find the time to do what they value. You can’t afford to stand still and just keep doing the same old, same old. Why? Because whether you are ready for it or not, the media industry is changing and heading online. If you’re not convinced, even a passing read of Romenesko, Newspaper Death Watch or Paper Cuts should make you realize that journalists are losing jobs and news organizations are faltering. Newspapers are scrambling to change their business models, connect with readers and provide them with the information they want in the manner they want it. Pretending it isn’t happening won’t stop it.

Would social media and blogging work on my beat? You bet it would. My beat right now is parenting, and that fits really well into the blogosphere, and it offers lots of fodder for making human connections with other parents. But I’ve reported on or edited coverage of courts, police, state and local government, higher education and religion, and I can see how these tools and this approach could work for each of those beats. Journalists need to tailor ideas to their beats and learn from other journalists who are doing that.

Doesn’t it feel weird to talk to people you don’t know on Twitter, etc? Yes, at first. But it probably felt odd the first time you interviewed relatives of a murder victim or covered a contentious city council meeting. Give it time. Don’t try Twitter for three days and quit because it hasn’t worked yet. Keep at it. Keep reading blogs that explain how to use these tools. Keep talking to other journalists who use them. In time, it will become second nature — like asking a question at a news conference.

Won’t connecting with readers damage my neutrality? It doesn’t have to. You’re always a journalist, whether you’re on Facebook or in the newsroom, so you need to keep a handle on what you say. The Poynter Institute offers a vigorous discussion on the topic. But the media is changing. I offer opinions on my blog, although I stay away from opinion on stories I’m covering. Much of my banter on Facebook is opinion, but not about my beat per se, more about life. I think the public realizes that journalists have opinions, and they appreciate seeing us as real people. Just because being journalists who are engaged in the community can be tricky doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

That’s it. Off my soapbox for now.

– Gina

I’m going to depart from my usual tips today, and give a pep talk. Why? Because I need one.

This has been a particularly tough week in a series of difficult months years for journalists.  This week was the first time that journalists I know personally lost their jobs. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer joined the list of newspapers up for sale. And The Atlantic questioned the health of the venerable New York Times.

So here’s my pep talk:

My fellow journalists, we are at what is indeed the largest crisis in our history. Newspapers have laid off thousands of workers. Advertising revenue is down and with the economy in ruins that’s unlikely to improve soon.  Some newspapers have stopped publishing print editions several days a week or at all.  Some journalists are doing new jobs at newspapers, just to keep a paycheck. And we fear — at least I do.

But we cannot freeze in fear like the proverbial deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck. For if we do, we are sure to die, just like that deer.

We must fight the instinct that tells us to give up, to hide under a blanket and cry or do only the bare minimum because we’re doomed anyway.

That, my friends, is the surest way to hasten our death.

We don’t have the luxury now to be mediocre journalists or even good ones. We must be amazing. We must harness all that we know and use it to innovate, to retool our industry to a new medium, to take advantage of how social media can help us reach readers. We need to be at the very top of our game, and we must fight for the life our industry.

It’s understandable that we’re anxious about whether our papers will survive, whether we’ll have a job tomorrow or next week or next month. But we need to set aside our broken hearts, and, as a wise editor at my paper wrote in a memo to the staff, “channel anxious energy into journalistic innovation and creative new content.”

We must embrace new media like never before. We must quickly find ways to use it and not get bogged down in the bureaucracy that can slow progress. We cannot leave it to upper-level managers to figure it all out. They need everyone thinking; everyone must be coming up with ways to reach readers, create news content, utilize the tools of the interactive Web.

We can do it

If you’ve ever ridden a horse, you know that the worst thing to do is to tense up when you get scared. If you get tense, your body hunches over, your legs clamp the horse’s flanks, which tell the horse to speed up.  In that stance, you can easily lose your form and fall off the speeding horse. What you need to do is relax, sit up straight, trust your training and move with the horse even when you’re terrified.

Journalists, we need to move with the horse. We need to reach deep inside and find that reserve that journalists have that makes them do the crazy things they do. It’s a reserve that’s a mix of chutpah, grit and, perhaps, a little stupidity.

It’s a reserve that make us head out in a blizzard to cover it. Or that makes us rush to the office when there’s a deadly hurricane, a plane crash or an ice storm because we need to do what we do: tell stories.

This quality makes journalists forget their own worries and do their jobs even when flood waters rage around their homes or they are afraid for their own loved ones following a terrorist attack like 9/11.

We can do this. We have the training. We need to summon that adrenaline that we get on Election Night that enables us to put out the paper even when the computer system fails or the voting database does not work. We do it because we must. It’s our job.

We must summon this inner strength because our nation needs journalists. A democracy needs an independent voice that questions those in power, that asks the questions others won’t, that demands to see evidence to back up spin. And we can do that on newsprint or a computer screen.

Sure, citizen journalists and bloggers are part of the new media, but I believe there’s a valuable place for trained journalists as well.

We cannot fail because even if the public doesn’t always appreciate what we do, they need us. Journalism is a bit like the post office. No one thinks about its importance until the mail is late. We know our value, and we must be committed to succeeding.

We must fight until we cannot, and then we must keep fighting. We must because that is our job. We cannot let journalism fail. We must set aside our own real pain, and, as Tim Windsor says on Zero Percent Idle, be the “people facing forward … doing the job of journalism in the new digital reality.”

If we fight, will we save journalism? I can’t guarantee that. But I do know this. If we don’t try, we’ve already lost.

– Gina

I know I promised my next blog post was going to be about my hopes for journalism in the coming year, but I got a bit sidetracked today. ( I’ll be back to the hopes before the year is out.)

A colleague e-mailed me this morning with the most delightful and unexpected news. Two bloggers, both of whom I respect but don’t know, blogged about little ol’ me. I just started this blog, and, honestly, I am thrilled when I check my stats and find that anyone has read it.

I feel humbled and excited. I started this blog because I really care about journalism and its future, and I’m just intoxicated with what new media can do for it. What happened here is a perfect example.

I regularly read a blog called News After Newspapers. I enjoy it. I think blogger Martin Langeveld is right on about so much about the future of newspapers. Often he puts into words what I wish I had thought of.  So I added him to my blog roll. He noticed, contacted me and added me to his.

Then Langeveld blogged about me. Then Tim Windsor blogged about me on Zero Percent Idle. Then Windsor tweeted my blog post about how journalists can use search-engine optimization techniques, and several other people retweeted, which is cool and super helpful in letting a bunch of people know about what your wrote.

What’s fascinating about social media is you can actually see all this unfold. You can view it on twitter at twitter search for my name, Gina Chen, and for savethemedia.

If the power of blogs — along with twitter — could get some folks to read a blog written by a journalist in Upstate New York, imagine what it could do for you?

– Gina