[MGP-Forum Announce] Sony starts selling the Soney eBook reader: $349.00

[Robin 'Roblimo' Miller]

> For some, the transition involves putting down roots in a community, 
> developing more interest in local taxes, road repairs, zoning cases, 
> schools and sewage problems. Some more responsible citizens don't need 
> as much of a push to take an interest in national politics, 
> environmental issues, international affairs or all the 
> consumer-lifestyle stuff in the paper.
>   

The problem in many smaller cities is that the local newspapers don't do 
a very good job of covering local public affairs.  I see my local 
(Bradenton, FL) paper, The Herald, as a minimum-effort  publication  
that  only covers obvious events such as council meetings, press 
conferences, and auto accidents. The Herald-Tribune, in neighboring 
Sarasota, is slightly better but no world-beater.

Worse, except for one reporter/columnist (Vin Mannix) at The Herald, the 
two papers combined have less personality than one of my goldfish. 
They're both chain-owned (The Herald by McClatchy, Herald-Tribune by 
NYT), and they are about as much like real, locally-owned newspapers as 
Burger King is like a real, locally-owned restaurant.

Why would a youngster growing up here or in another area with similarly 
bland newspapers want to read (or work for) a newspaper when he or she 
gets older?
> So how do we get a younger generation into the tent at 21 if their 
> parents didn't bring them up making the association between newspapers 
> and "being informed"? 

First, newspapers need to give people a reason to read them. In the 
Internet age, a small paper running 60% wire service copy can't compete 
with websites run by big papers and TV outfits. Their niche is local 
news, and they should be all over local happenings, not just reacting to 
"official sources." That would make them a must-read for citizens of all 
ages.

> "People don't read anymore" is a set of different 
> myths, easily disproved by best-seller statistics, but that's hard to 
> translate into stories about your local government. Maybe newspapers 
> should enlist Harry Potter as a paperboy, and get him to deliver 
> in-depth non-fiction at the same time, along with briefer local state 
> and national news.

Or maybe use the narrative techniques all good fiction writers use. 
Allow and encourage colorful writing. Build stories to strong 
conclusions instead of letting them trail off, inverted pyramid-style. 
If those Harry Potter novels were constructed like a typical, modern 
newspaper story, how well would they sell?

An editor who worked with me more than I deserved back when I was 
transitioning from fiction to non-fiction told me, "A real writer can 
put out a compelling story about a blank, white wall." 

Whatever. I subscribe to the local paper only out of inertia, and I 
don't think I'm alone in doing this. Its circulation is up by perhaps 2% 
in the last year (after dropping steadily for a number of years) in an 
area where annual population growth is 10% or more. And since this is a 
retirement haven, a high percentage of those new residents are from the 
generations that were raised to believe reading the morning paper was an 
essential part of the daily wake-up ritual. Apparently they don't see 
The Herald as necessary to their lives. Sad.

Worse news for the local papers: I've run several "help wanted" 
classifieds in both of them and gotten only unqualified applicants. I 
put a free listing on Craigslist and got near-immediate responses from 
at least five people worth my attention, one of whom was a true standout 
(and now works for me).  I'm getting ready to add another (probably 
part-time) person by the end of the year. Obviously, I'll go with 
Craigslist instead of a newspaper classified, not because of the money 
difference -- which is tiny; what's $60 to a 130-person public company? 
-- but because Craiglist gives me better results.

A final note: Our part of Florida has one of the country's lowest 
Internet use rates even though broadband access is available all over 
the area from a number of competing suppliers. We have a lot of retirees 
around here who aren't interested in computers or the Internet, plus 
some super-poverty. But even here, I think it's safe to say that the 
vast majority of the 18-65 crowd that has enough spending money to be 
newspaper subscribers also has Internet access.

- Robin