A group of Star-Tribune employees have launched a new campaign aimed at engaging the community to come up with new ways to save the bankrupt newspaper. What I find most innovative with the ‘Save The Strib’ effort is the use of social media to spread the word via their blog, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This is exactly what the Strib needs to embrace in order to survive.
Last month I posted a 5-point plan to revitalize the Strib on my personal blog. Running through my logic was a focus on embracing electronic distribution and reducing the costs of publishing on paper. But I didn’t address what I now think is the central issue that Star-Tribune management will have get right to assure the viability of the paper:
Improve Local Content.
The Strib can transform themselves into the digital age, embrace blog software and social networking but it will all be a wasted effort unless they are delivering the best quality content relevant to the communities they serve. This means hyper-local coverage, more investigative reporting and local perspectives on regional and national issues. What we have seen happen in many newspapers across the county is the downsizing of the newsroom and increased use of wire stories. This is a death spiral in the age of Google News which does the sorting of these same wire stories in real time and for free. But setting up a local blog network that aggregates into a regional news portal that feeds both electronic and print editions just might be the answer here.
The journalists and the Minnesota Newspaper Guild who have started the ‘Save The Strib’ campaign have a huge challenge ahead but their proactive use of social media just might make a difference. This approach has a good chance of engaging and motivating the community to generate ideas that will save the paper. The following video features readers more than well known citizens which is very encouraging. And those readers almost universally talk about content.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP3_y15ti8g
Cost cutting will only be a part of the solution to the Star-Tribune’s troubles. Improving local content and embracing digital distribution will prove to be the deciding factors.