Having seen the forest for the trees — or is it the leaves from the twigs? — some former editors are chiming in on the state of an ailing industry. Melanie Sill has the story:
In a recent post to his Media, Disrupted blog, John Robinson argued that newspapers should start doing some basic things differently — from having a real person answer telephones to punching up editorial commentary — to restore their communities’ sense of ownership and trust in their local newsrooms.
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The biggest threats to newspapers aren’t just their familiar revenue problems and ever-proliferating competitors, but also the opportunity costs of failing to innovate more boldly — to be transformative, not incremental, in moving forward.
What kind of changes should we put into place? That’s always a valuable question to ask. Change, not just for change’s sake, but for improving the quality — the perception and the rapport — we present to our audience.
