How Newspapers can become relevant in a Web 2.0 world | The Next Wave in Dayton Ohio
I don’t usually cross post from my business site- but since I have so many readers in the Dayton Daily News media center- I thought you might be interested in how Cox should be saving your jobs… but has no clue.
The prognosis is not good for newspapers, when in fact, they should be kicking butt, but, these mass creators of content are totally clueless…. continue reading:
How Newspapers can become relevant in a Web 2.0 world | The Next Wave in Dayton Ohio
I grew up in the business- and I know a little about both reporting news and making it. I also know something about what advertisers really want. Unfortunately, I still read the DDN cover to cover every day- and hope, deeply- that you start showing signs of intelligent life down there sometime soon.
If you want to know why Dayton is writhing in self pity, look at your lame “news” paper and cry. Arresting a drunk guy in Troy isn’t news that matters. Nor is what Forbes says.
Time to wake up- before you’re all jobless.
Web-intelligent life at DDN is hard to find. Last week I read a DDN article, which I found through the DDN RSS fee (which for some reason duplicates or triplicates articles!), about the Montgomery County Public Health District’s new fitness center at Elizabeth Place. At the end of the article it told how you could get more information by going to the PHD website at phdmc.org and clicking on Programs & Services. Now that’s appropriate for a print article because PHD’s actual page about their fitness center has a wicked long URL which no one would want to retype. But in the web version of the article phdmc.org was not even enabled as a link and in the web version they could have linked to the actual page. I e-mailed the author of the article, and he replied saying he had no control over what DDN’s web team does but would send on my message to them. If I were that writer I’d want some control over how my stories were published on the web. I’d be jumping up and down if it wasn’t easy for me to include real live links (web 1.0, not even web 2.0) in my articles.
To go along with the new logo, Dayton needs an original newspaper to market it’s resources. But, to take on such a monumental task like saving a newspaper company these days sounds crazy. Even Sam Zell the “professional opportunist” is finding it a daunting task, he is shaking up many of the newspapers across the county, if anyone can turn a profit he will, I’m curiously watching.
One pattern I seem to see in the DDN is a catering to certain zip codes. That may be where new subscribers are coming from or where there is advertising interest but I agree that I don’t need irrelevant reports from Troy unless these items are intended to be generally amusing police reports as a humor factor.
I wish they would bring back more good old fashioned investigative reports and delve into pressing issues that impact the whole region. Stuff like the recent story and editorial on the reluctance to press forward on the bikeway plans. Dive into it a little more. Who is supporting it who is not and why. What are other cities in Ohio doing with their bikeway plans? How will this affect long term economic development for the core and suburban areas?
The coverage has become too stripped down.
Has anyone there read a Boston Globe or Washington Post lately?