Robinson maps the new newspaper mindset

John Robinson, editor of the News & Record, writes in his Editor’s Log about the changes at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (and Gannett, Knoxville, Dayton, etc.). He lists the initiatives that are becoming central to these “new” newspapers (when will we ditch that term?):

1. Putting readers — knowing them, interacting with them, learning from them — first in everything
2. Emphasizing local enterprise and exclusivity; cutting back on commodity news
3. Building new media expertise across the organization, expanding well beyond the newsprint-centric publication that comes out once a day
4. Devoting more time and resources to watchdog journalism; ramping up the urgency and aggressiveness of the report
5. Displaying more personality — both our own and the community’s
6. Creating a different sort of paper; we’re going to do that first with Sunday’s edition for which we’re building a new plan

I mention this because I think there are some lessons for college media. Most college media probably do a really good job on nos. 2, 5 and possibly 4. But the key changes in the industry are frankly nos. 1, 3, and possibly 6.

Interaction and involvement with readers is the community aspect. New media expertise is the Web-centric content aspect. How many of us are doing those two things well?

And I’ll be interested to see what the N&R is planning for their Sunday edition. I dream of a day when the newsprint edition becomes a repository of stories, reader submitted material, and analytic pieces that appeared first on the Web. A weekly or semi-weekly college paper is already well-positioned to make that sort of dream a reality.

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