A quick look at any Website’s stats will show what online readers are checking out. Guess what! It’s not just puppies and kittens, celebrities and crime (or celebrities who commit crimes). Sometimes it’s hard news. And sometimes their habits offer hints to what kind of hard news they want to read.

So when you have an inkling of an idea of what “serious” news readers want, why not chase it and see if the numbers grow more? Although a wall sits between advertising and the newsroom, the newsroom is not completely outside the client, i.e. reader, investment loop. The job of the newsroom isn’t to sell the reader something they may not have wanted in the first place. It’s to give them useful information.

Wouldn’t it make sense to give them some of the information they want - fun and serious - and also give them what editors think they really need? Of course, that begs the question: “What do readers really really need to see know?”

But who am I, and why am I writing this? Well… I am an online journalist, who collects blogs maintained by locals. I stumbled upon Charle’s blog and think it’s quite nice - the design and content - and wanted to compliment him on it, but I got sidetracked and decided to ramble. (Dag it!)

http://visualeditors.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1985197%3ABlogPost%3A7469

Not sure why you got the impression that I think good journalism can be pooped out with minimal effort, since I’m advocating re-investment in the product (hey, it takes money to re-invent and innovate). Yes, profits are declining, but papers are still raking in profits in the 20% range. Doesn’t it make sense to reinvest some of that now (while you’re still making a good amount of money) if you’re serious about re-inventing the product? The whole idea of investing is that you put money into something with the expectation of it paying bigger returns in the future. Example: You take out a loan to expand your business, with the expectation that the expansion will eventually earn back more than the loan. Yet newspapers are saying, “We want those returns from the expansion, but we don’t want to take out the loan to get that expansion started. We’ll just expand with the resources we have, while we’re at the same time cutting those resources.” How do you think that’ll turn out?

Think about how much it’d help if a newspaper re-invests just 1% of the millions of dollars in profit it makes. How many extra reporters, copy editors, multimedia specialists, and programmers will that pay for? We can scream “innovation” all we want, without the financial investment, it’s but an empty mantra.

You say that no businessman should take a risk on a failing model of journalism. I completely agree. But the “adapt or die” idea applies to both the editorial and the business side. At the same time that we re-invent the editorial model of journalism, should we also not look at the business model? My problem is that it doesn’t seem like the newspaper industry is interested in re-examining its business model and developing a new one that will work well in concert with a new model for the editorial content in the present media landscape, where newspapers cannot possibly return to the mega-cashcows they once were. Instead, we are simply reshaping the editorial model to continue to prop up an obsolete business model. I’ve written this before: The hope seems to be that online revenue will grow big enough so that we can simply plug online dollars into the spot occupied by print revenue in the current equation and keep on raking in 30% profits.

If your computer’s fan breaks and the motherboard gets fried, what do you do? The computer didn’t go kaput just because of a bad motherboard; the broken fan had something to do with it, too. If you just plug in a new motherboard and keep working without replacing the broken fan as well, your computer will break again soon enough.

Zhu, news is a commodity and until you treat it like that you’ll find yourself hating business people for the rest of your life. How is news NOT a commodity? News is not an expectation, it’s something that people want not something they need that definition itself should give you a hint. We may be in the First Amendment but in order for us to continue doing our job we must make money! Good journalism is not easy to do, it takes time and it takes people. A good meaningful story cannot be done from 9am-5pm by one person and then pooped onto a page.

Good journalism takes multiple journalists attacking several angles. It takes time and it takes production. It takes graphics people, designers, photographers, reporters, advertisers, circulation managers, copy editors, delivery people, a well registered press, post-consumer paper, editors, secretaries, internet, phone lines, buildings, vehicles>gas, plane tickets and more. Do you think good journalism can honestly be pooped out with minimal effort because that’s what it sounds like.

Do you know why they’re worried about affording you Zhu? Because profits are falling and you can’t hire MORE people if you’re making LESS money, that’s basic economics. Take a risk, you say? Take a risk on what, a failing model of journalism that has no guarantee of working? Zell wants you to do good journalism and he’s pretty sure it’s not what you’re currently doing otherwise the numbers would be rising. So you first need to figure out what good journalism is and do it and convince him it works and then he’ll hire you more people to get the job done right.

ADAPT OR DIE!