This list from Mark Potts (of “Recovering Journalist) is just the thing I needed in order to motivate me to ask my students to think of the online version of the paper as the primary product, and the print version a useful offshoot. (At present, the reverse is true.)
What would you do if you ran a newspaper?
Somebody
asked me that question recently, and it made me pull together some of
the thoughts I’ve had recently about the problems that newspapers are
having and what they might do to pull out of their current spiral. This
is hardly a complete list, but here’s a 10-point prescription for
ailing newspapers:1. Make the Web the primary product
Stop
pasting the newspaper onto a screen. Reorganize the newsroom so that
its work appears online as quickly as possible. Breaking news,
enterprise and feature stories should be put on the Web as soon as
they’re ready. Period. The printed paper should be a snapshot of what’s
online at 11 pm, and that’s about it. Publishing on the Web should
drive priorities, not publishing in print. And embrace the technology:
news Web sites should be full of Web 2.0 goodness like interactive
maps, social networking tools, RSS feeds, distribution to mobile
devices, etc. Use the medium to its fullest.
