How will the average U.S. newspaper turn itself around?

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Many journalism bloggers, industry commentators and people who read my blog work for big publications, and they often do not hear or see some of the ridiculous things their smaller brethren are doing.

The average daily newspaper in the U.S. has a weekday circulation around 36,500. Newspapers like that are a world away from The New York Times and its resources.

Frankly, many large newspapers and other large journalism publications are putting out fine online products. And even some enlightened smaller companies like The World Company (home to fantastic Lawrence Journal-World) have great online products. But the average American newspaper is not producing a quality online product, and few have employees willing to embrace the Web as their future.

I hear stories all the time about the frustration of getting entrenched employees to embrace the Web: “It’s a pain because the people who have worked there for 30 years basically don’t give a crap about the Internet and just aren’t updating it.”

I hear tales of woefully understaffed papers, without real online editors. These Web sites are often still under the control of the business and advertising staffs. These are staffs without managing and assistant managing editors for their Web sites, and these papers lack a clear vision for the future.

We’re talking about papers with no direction, and few employees really care about their papers’ future. We have got to figure out a way to get that 36,500 circulation newspaper up to code. It’s the average U.S. newspaper that is most vulnerable right now, because the big dailies still have a lot of resources to play with and are willing to innovate, while weeklies have a niche market that few have begun to challenge.

The kind of employees the average paper has (from the publishers on down to the lowest staffers) aren’t the same caliber as papers like The Washington Post or USA Today. Obviously, smaller papers lack the financial resources of their bigger brethren, and many smaller papers are owned by large media conglomerates that often only care about the companies’ marquee newspapers. How will the average U.S. newspaper turn itself around?

Will it?

  • http://blog.syracuse.com/newstracker Brian Cubbison

    Interesting question. There have always been some understaffed burned out newsrooms, even before the Internet But others could thrive with a low-maintenance open-source approach.

    If the newsroom is small, wants to do great things but is burdened with an aging “front end system” and old Internet Explorer web browsers that don’t let you see how useful RSS feeds can be, for instance, there ought to be a clean and simple open-source way to publish online without having a web guru on staff. Think of it as a Tumblr for newspapers. Develop it and give it to those papers.

    Same for the one or two eager people in an otherwise oblivious newsroom. What package of easy free services would meet their needs?

    I kind of like the idea of a Tumblr for newspapers.

  • http://www.hanfordsentinel.com Confused

    I work for a small newspaper with a circulation of 14,00. I think for a our small staff we’re doing a pretty good job of trying to make our Web site work. But when our managing editor posts this on our newspaper’s blog.It really makes the staff confused as to what were supposed to be doing to keep us afloat.
    http://www.hanfordsentinel.com/blogs/?p=80