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Sunday, November 01, 2009

Thinking about subscribing to the GT after all


I had to use three Winco bags last night to get the fire started.

Made me think, where's this morning's paper when I need it?

Don't get me wrong. I like the writers at the GT. I know Matt N. and like he and his writing. I like Mike, the publisher, as well. The GT produces great content. I am one of the sets of eyeballs/unique visits on www.gazettetimes.com also.

I just would have found it really useful to have a GT on hand last night. I could have read the 6 or so local articles and the half dozen or so other local tidbits and then used the Associated Press content that makes up 70% of the rest of the paper for getting my evening fire started.

Newspaper is great for getting fires started.

I've been trying to get Mike and the crew at the GT to adopt a hyper-local model for the paper for the last 6 months or more. You can see my previous posts/comments here and here.

The reason I'm so emphatic? Because I think it'd be good for the community and ultimately profitable for the paper- it might even save them from the demise that papers around the country are experiencing en mass.

People like to read about themselves, their friends, their kids, their politicians, the companies they work for, and what's going on in their community . There are now a multitude of places a person can easily consume their national and international news and information from- on demand. Why fill the paper with redundant material? Does making it fatter increase the perceived value? (apart from fodder)

Isn't there enough stuff going on in our community to write about? People doing both awesome things and bad things. People moving, people shaking? Here's an idea:source articles from the many great staff blogs the GT has online. Better yet, identify some quality local blogs to source material from and put that in the hard copy paper.

Is $12 bucks a month too much to pay for a handful of great articles a day and reliable fire starter in the evening? As soon as our Winco bags run out, I'll decide.


*all posts should be taken with a grain of salt. They are not intended to provide business advice from which to make informed enterprise decisions. The above comments were made by an insurance guy with small children.
Posted by Chris Nordyke at 11:28 AM
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8 comments:

  1. Great post Chris. The GT could definitely benefit from posting local content that is meaningful to the memebers of the community. All the AP content is already syndicated online and in countless papers around the globe.

    I agree that getting local writer/bloggers to create content would be a better model. I could see the value in that and would support it out of principle.

    Lee Enterprises (http://www.lee.net), owner of the GT, is definitely not local. The question now is, how do we get a local newspaper? There is a weekly publication put out by my friend Noah, The Alchemist, that is local. I don't find much value in it, and most often I don't pick it up. However, people are free to write whatever they want and submit it for publication. Could Noah's model could be made into a daily publication easily if it had broader appeal to the community?

    Corvallis seems to be fragmented into many social cliques, what could bring these groups together? Are these cliques what keeps the GT from being hyper-local because any market research shows no correlation between their interests? I'm just aksing questions now. I dont know the answers.
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  2. Interesting thoughts. As a 51 year old I can see your views,but I also understand there a lot of people in Corvallis that are older and really don't like computers and prefer to get all of their news the old fashion way. You and Paul are the two most tech savy people I know and I admire both of you because of it, however, I believe that hi-tech for everyone is still about a decade away. At that point, sad to say, more of the "dinasaurs" will be gone and more of you young pups will make up a larger decision making population. This may sound cynical but I really think that is the way of the world.
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  3. What are the obstacles for the GT becoming more locally focused?
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  4. Chris - Great article and nice "point of view." I, too, used to use the GT as firestarter. So if you decide to go that route, it should be a good investment.

    But seriously, I have heard others say they don't read the GT anymore for exactly the same reason you mention--it's all courtesy of the Associated Press. Local people would love to see more articles and pictures of their community.

    In Philomath, the Philomath Bulletin is all about local. It's a fun newsy family paper. However, it is currently struggling to keep its doors open. Advertising and membership revenue haven't materized to the level it needs to be self-sustaining.

    Since most of what the PB covers is school stuff, our high school students have started a membership campaign to help out the struggling paper.

    I wonder if the students of Corvallis would be willing to do that for GT?
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  5. I just wrote a blog post about why I no longer read newspapers (see my link) I do admit that I rely on the GT for many of the links the Corvallis community posts. I see the GT as a vital necessity for our local community. I would be very supportive of a so called hyper-local model.
    @johnflurry
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  6. Just an addition. We need to remember that the GT is not a locally owned paper. it is owned by Lee Enterprises, a conglomerate. So, is it in Lee's interest to have a hyper-local model? If it should be I would argue that it would be nearly impossible to convinve the folks in Davenport, IA.
    Here is what Lee owns currently:
    http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php?c=lee
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  7. Chris, I appreciate the nod.
    I'm hoping to really start a conversation about some of these concerns at Ignite on Thursday and then we can go from there. I welcome the discussion moving forward.
    Let me just say that a news organization isn't exactly like a "Bed, Bath and Beyond." What I mean is that while we each have corporate masters, newspapers aren't automatons and we absolutely hang our hats on local news and information.
    What you're seeing in print newspapers at the GT and around the country as far as wire copy is concerned is more inertia (that the newspaper should carry information that reaches beyond geographic borders) than a corporate directive for coverage of one kind or another. I haven't ever heard anything from the company about coverage other than Local Local Local.
    If you examine a history of news coverage over the past 30 years industrywide, I think you'll agree that cost-cutting has done more to affect news coverage than any kind of outright policy.
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