The daily news­pa­pers owned by the con­glom­er­ates have failed to serve the local mar­ket, and instead serve up cheap, stale wire news. Why should I trust a news­pa­per head­quar­tered in Asheville to serve up qual­ity news about national issues? I go to the Times or the Jour­nal for that.

Most newspaper’s busi­ness model is as out­dated as this clipart.

Like­wise, I wouldn’t trust a national news­pa­per to tell me about local sports scores, local busi­ness news, local fea­tures, etc. I go to the Moun­tain XPress for that. Here are three obser­va­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions, partly inspired by the XPress.

1. The key to suc­cess in this third age of news­pa­pers is to only cover the region where the read­ers actu­ally spend their time. Where they eat, work, shop, com­mute and reside. This is what’s miss­ing. I don’t just mean end­less slide shows of hol­i­day parades — I mean actual, inves­tiga­tive report­ing on local issues, com­pelling fea­tures of local suc­cesses, sprin­kled with a few more “this is how we fit in the world” sto­ries that broaden the scope into the wider con­text of our region, state and nation. National news should not be “how many Sen­a­tors voted for the stim­u­lus” it should be “how does the stim­u­lus actu­ally affect local insti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ments?”
   
2. Tight inte­gra­tion with online tools will help get the real prod­uct — not the 1/2 pound of ink and paper but the local report­ing, the orig­i­nal can’t-get-it-elsewhere infor­ma­tion into the pipeline and in front of peo­ple how­ever they choose. RSS news­read­ers, Twit­ter and other tools are now accessed by peo­ple on their cell phones and homes.  Infor­ma­tion is cargo, so embrace all of the deliv­ery methods.
3. Where there are eyes, there will be adver­tis­ers. Adver­tis­ing will fol­low. Don’t worry about it.  Con­cen­trate on your orig­i­nal con­tent. How­ever, I do see a role for national ad orga­ni­za­tions that news­pa­pers buy into so as to still be able to access the national adver­tis­ers that would oth­er­wise ignore the under-50,000 viewer markets.

Every time I see a national head­line on a local news­pa­per, I see the death of that busi­ness model is yet a lit­tle closer. The end­less kata­mari of the national con­glom­er­ates has expired, and the quicker they die the bet­ter. The long slow decline has accel­er­ated, and there are oppor­tu­ni­ties to be had for nim­ble orga­ni­za­tions that have the cojones to adapt quickly.

Do you have exam­ples of good imple­men­ta­tions of the new old media? Here are my two local favorites:

• Tryon Daily Bul­letin (for its print edition)
• Moun­tatin XPress (for both web and print)

And please, poke some holes in this and give me some other per­spec­tives — I’m con­tin­u­ally shap­ing my outlook.