Plattsburgh Newspaper Going To The Dogs

PLATTSBURGH NY - 2/18/14

(C) 2014 Luke T. Bush

Your newspaper is dying, dwindling readership, ad dollars.  What can you do to reverse the decline?

Maybe give readers a reason to pick up the paper.  How about investigative reporting?  Looking into those stories heard on the street, getting to the truth, sorting the scat from the candy.

Nah.  That would involve reporting, acting like a real newspaper.

Images found at www.pressrepublican.com .

Instead hold a Top Dog contest.  Invite readers to submit cute photos of their canine companions.  A fun feature that won't generate controversy.  Investigative reporting — that could mean hurt feelings, bad things said.  Can't have that at your sleepy paper.

Let the readers do most of the work, providing free content that could potentially be exploited for more profit by you.  Unless they click on that one link they won't know that they're signing their rights away. To wit: "If you submit any information to us... you are giving that information, and all your rights in it, to us free of charge... [the information] may be used by us for any purpose, without your consent or any compensation to you or anyone else."

So if the paper needs a goofy dog shot for an ad, no need for a pro photographer, just use one submitted by a reader.  In fact let the readers create most of the content for free and reduce your pro staff to part-time wage slaves.

But won't such a move mean a lower quality newspaper, a continued drop in readership?  Well if you keep cutting you can maintain a profit.  That's what the big brains at the Head Office and the stockholders think.