Text is not Dead

Everyone knows what is causing the dilemma the newspaper industry is currently facing, especially small, local papers. Few people will pay for news that they can get for free. Makes sense to me. A lot of news sites offer, with varying degrees of value, local news.

CTCentral and Topix are some that offer news of central Connecticut. However, CTCentral more or less refers readers to the local papers by offering the links to them on one side and little or no original content (not from the paper). Topix does a fair job of showing the major news stories of any specific town. The interesting thing about this site is that while newspaper sites will close articles for comments after a certain amount of time, Topix doesn’t do that. The result is news stories that have become discussions, nearly creating a hybrid of Twitter and the local newspaper website. Nixle functions entirely differently. It’s free, and people can register, submit their location, and receive alerts in the form of text messages. Typically, the alerts are from the local police department, so immediately, and by phone, someone can know about a nearby traffic accident or criminal activity.

The Raw Story features an article that discusses possible strategies for newspaper survival. One recommendation is that they use hyperlocal sites as potential models. The article has a quote from an opinion piece, which appeared in the New York Times, by David Swenson:

In a recent opinion piece in the Times, David Swensen, the chief investment officer at Yale University, and Michael Schmidt, a financial analyst, argued that US newspapers should be turned into “nonprofit, endowed institutions — like colleges and universities.”

On the other hand, The Chicago Tribune will be implementing an entirely different strategy. For a week, the paper plans to not run AP articles to test readers desire for them. This experiment will apply to only print newspapers. I wonder about the effectiveness of this test because few people will subscribe or unsubscribe to a paper based on one week’s worth a issues. To me, this situation seems like an injured person using anything, any scrap of cloth, to stop heavy, heavy bleeding. I feel bad for the newspaper industry- not bad enough to subscribe to a paper- but bad. However, the paper is demonstrating desperation and a severe laps in judgement. If something is failing, why remove one of the most valuable and desired aspects? Why lessen the quality just to see if the readers notice enough to cancel a subscription?

The future of local news really exists in the smaller, non-profit , or hyerlocal sites. Now, it’s up to that industry to grab the reigns and produce something worthy of replacing the print paper.