Thank you for your great insight. Everything you wrote makes absolute sense. It will be interesting to see if the local papers can actually compete with their online editions or because of all the competition only big players like the New York Times and the WSJ will survive. I am wondering what you are going now after being in the business for 15 years? Thanks for coming by and sharing your thoughts.

1. The newspaper is dying. It’s going to be a long drawn out one, with the paper gradually becoming more locally focused until the smallest areas are covered sufficiently by the Internet. The daily paper is going to gradually reduce itself to a local gossip rag, shopper or entertainment guide until it finally peters out.

2. There is a lot of ego involved in the old guard. A lot of them told us youngsters we were foolish to waste time with “this online thing” and frankly refuse to go back on their chest thumping. The ones with any brains understand that the wagons are circling, but figure it won’t happen before they retire and it’s someone else’s problem. In the meantime, why risk status quo? A chief editor’s job was pretty sweet at my paper. Meet for an hour or so to decide what everyone deserves to know today, take a 2 hour lunch, do some Kiwanis or Lions Club or whatever you like, visit a school or two to talk about how important your job is, etc. Not a bad way to earn your six figures.

3.:

- You compete against craigslist by having the best penetration in the local area. You fight to hold on to this until the web is covering every little nook and cranny properly, at which point you give up and offer yours free.

- Ditto. Plus you gather all the “old boys” network to promise to honor the paper in exchange for voting you big salary increases since you sit on his company’s board.

- Ditto.

- You don’t. Your clientele is old rich people and your services are geared toward them. You kid yourself with school programs like NIE and the like. Your best hope is that these kids grow up in the “old boy” system and advertise in your paper in exchange for a favorable board presence.

There are better printing methods, they just cost more money. It’s hard to convince the brass that it’s worth it to create a quality product when it’s assumed you’re going to throw it away within an hour.