Here are some of the more intelligent recommendations I have seen recently for the troubled newspaper industry.
Why not let readers Tweet stories they like?
Most local newspapers are notoriously bad at harnessing the power of the Internet to rescue their ailing old-line businesses. But the tools to reverse this are available in the latest wave of social media Web sites and search tools – including Twitter, according to Gartner.
And the benefits might be considerable.
Newspapers are clearly suffering. Many metropolitan dailies are hanging by threads, with advertising revenue falling 10 percent or 20 percent or more a month, and several cites, such as San Francisco and Philadelphia, likely to go dark.
But newspapers aren’t harnessing the power for this most important asset: loyal readers.
In a survey late last year, Gartner found about 49 percent of respondents in the U.S., U.K. and Italy use search engines once a week or more to find content. But only 20 percent use search tools built into a newspaper or magazine site.
So why not improve those tools and make them more prominent on newspaper Web sites?
Many newspapers similarly list their staffers who are on the influential microblogging site Twitter, but few offer Twitter users the ability to “tweet” stories from their Web sites, says Gartner.
In a similar vien, 24 percent of those surveyed said they share good content with friends via personal communications, such as e-mail and instant messaging. But how many newspapers: think of this as a major source of distribution?
All these ideas are worth considering in a desperate environment.
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