Saving Newspapers

Today’s “Locals Only” column, which I’m taking a break from, at Search Engine Land is about the challenges newspapers face — written by Marchex COO John Keister.

Keister lays out the situation and alludes, at the end, to some of the local SEM efforts that a few newspapers have  undertaken. To date most of those have been with WebVisible. If newspapers were smart they would do a range of things:

• Agressively embrace (and monetize) mobile (See AP/Verve). Get out in front of this medium
• Mimic the YP industry and sell search marketing, websites, video, etc.
• Leverage any and all relevant ad networks (Centro, Yahoo, quadrantOne, etc.) to get more money from their sites
• Participate in Google Print
• Add community to their flagship sites (via Topix, CityVoter); improve usability and site search
• Build other types of sites: verticals, mom sites, unconventional hybrids, neighborhood level sites. If they can’t build ’em in house, partner with those (e.g., Outside.in) who can
• Get more deeply into local shopping (via local inventory data providers)
• Syndicate their content and ads widely. Adopt the “agency” model, vis-a-vis advertisers, that YP has.

This sounds like a “hodge podge” of to-dos. But unfortunately they’ve got to fight the war on many fronts to survive. But it probably is already “too late” for some metro dailies.

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Here’s an interesting, related piece from Editor & Publisher on new business and ownership models (non-profit, coop, etc.) for newspapers.

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