It started a couple months ago, but James and I started to notice changes in our local newspaper The Grand Rapids Press. It was looking a bit thinner, then in January it shrank to almost nonexistence.
We weren’t the only ones who noticed. The entire community was commenting on the GR Press weight loss like it was a Hollywood starlet whose bones had poked out of her Oscar gown. The public had spoken: newspapers, you need to fatten up!
The GR Press acknowledge this in a letter to the readers posted on the front page a week or so later. Editors had pulled sections in an effort to save money in this tough new economy, but had lost readers in the process. In response, they returned the missing sections and the newspaper gained a little bit of that weight back.
- Is your newspaper’s PMI (Paper Mass Index) looking too low?
No doubt, this is a tough time for newspapers. Economical woes aside, they are competing with the 24/7 instant coverage of the Internet and cable news. By the time a story lands on the pages of a newspaper, it’s old and forgotten. How are they to survive?
My suggestion: Stop feeding the local newspaper full of stories off the AP wire. Give us more local news, human interest pieces, in-depth investigations, and other content the big Internet news/gossip machines cannot produce.
At first, I was pretty Bitter about the sudden crash diet all the local papers seem to be following, but I can understand the difficulties of trying to make one of the oldest news outlets fit into the current century. The GR Press seems to be back to a healthy weight, but who doesn’t love a big, fat newspaper full of interesting articles, recipes, and unique content not available anywhere else?
By the way, GR Press, if you ever need content give me a holler, I am happy to help!
