Tech Columnist Says ‘Techies’ Don’t Have Any Ideas for Newspapers

USA Today Tech columnist Kevin Maney discusses what “techies” would do with a newspaper. He says that everything he’s heard is pretty basic:

But of the dozen or so people I asked, no one offered an idea that totally broke form, reinventing newspapers the way eBay reinvented garage sales. No one, for instance, proposed that newspaper websites, which generally look more crowded than a Mumbai flea market, pare down to a single, clean Google-esque local search box. No one suggested that local papers outfox Craigslist, the free classified site that the newspaper industry treats like kryptonite, by creating their own free local classified sites.

Kevin, I’m not a “techie,” but here are a few ideas:

https://gesterling.wordpress.com/2006/11/18/why-are-newspapers-still-doing-this/

https://gesterling.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/who-will-build-the-first-3-d-newspaper/

https://gesterling.wordpress.com/2006/11/06/more-newspaper-thoughts/

https://gesterling.wordpress.com/2006/03/01/newspapers-should-move-faster-part-ii/

https://gesterling.wordpress.com/2006/08/30/newspapers-and-the-integrated-marketplace/

https://gesterling.wordpress.com/2006/08/08/a-new-newspaper-network/

https://gesterling.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/what-about-topix/

https://gesterling.wordpress.com/2006/07/12/my-times-is-here-in-beta/

And there’s a lot more where that came from . . .

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Here’s eMarketer-compiled data (small sample) from an ad agency survey re traditional media vs. “new media”:

But here’s data from a US-based American Advertising Federation survey showing that traditional media are still regarded as effective, especially as part of an integrated (online-offline) campaign:

Integrated media campaigns are the future in the fragmented world of local in particular. That’s why entities that have both online and offline assets (assuming both perform) are stronger — and one reason Google and Yahoo! are both going offline (newspapers, radio, video, etc.)