What a community newspaper needs to change

My last post was a bit of a dig towards my local newspaper, the Fluvanna Review.  Since that post, the writing hasn’t changed.  The same poor choice of chronological order still occurs.

I could show another post of the same poor writing, but I’m moving on.  I’ve thought about how I could make a community newspaper better.  What would I do if I were editor for three months?  Could I change the way a community newspaper operates?

Of course I could!  Would they listen?  That’s the million-dollar question.  The advantage I have is I worked on a “community newspaper.”  Working on the Campus Chronicle is like working on a community newspaper.  We came out biweekly (which is every two weeks incase you want to argue, look it up).  We had to deliver news that was old, that people most of the time already knew.  With those problems, we still grew readership this past year.

What we did was study the paper.  We studied how people consumed the news.  We studied our readership.  We studied how we worked.  We kept studying until we figured out a way to correct our ills and continue our strengths.

If I were in charge of a paper like the Fluvanna Review I would implement some changes that would grow the paper.

1. Stop reporting news two weeks old acting like it is still fresh.
When reporting a community event two weeks after later, it isn’t news.  No one cares because they were there or know someone that was there.  Readers don’t care what amusement rides were there.  Do you have a responsibility to report it?  Yes.  It isn’t that you report it, but how you report it.

Why not use the power of a feature article?  Follow a family at the event.  What did they like?  Why did they like it?  What didn’t they like and why?  Answer those questions.  Everyone knows it happened.  Tell me why we should care that it happened.

2.  Report news online unless it is a big story that is timely.
You have a website!  The website doesn’t need to be a static page that changes every time your paper comes out.  At the October Associate Collegiate Press convention a presenter said something that really stuck with our news staff.
“If you have a website you no longer come out every time a paper comes out.  You come out everyday, every minute, every second.”

That is something that seems much more simple than it is.  The mindset to understand this concept is hard to achieve.  It took us the whole year and the Chronicle doesn’t still use all of the capabilities it can.  It is a transition with definite progress.

The easiest way to transition is to remembering your paper comes out every second.  We started with the sports section.  Game reports take an hour to write after the contest is completed.  Grab two players and the coach of the team you are following.  Bam.  Upload and you just had a new issue of your paper.

Small changes in the sports section, leads to small changes in the rest of your newsroom and big changes at your paper.  Every reporter wants to be published.  Seeing your name in print whether online or paper is a rush.  Other writers will want to be published more often on the web.

3. Make the website easy to use.
Because some community websites think, “We want a website like other news organizations.  We just don’t want to pay a lot so we will find the cheapest, easiest [for us] way to do it.”

That ain’t working folks.  You don’t have to spend a lot to have an easy to use website.  $150 per year and one time fee of $100-200 can get you an easy to use website.  Go to Wordpress, find a good theme from a developer and get a server.  Most bloggers pay this and they get a lot less exposure than a community newspaper.

4. Always be willing to evolve.
Times are a changing.  That means so is a newspaper.  Do you have to get a Twitter account?  No.  Should you?  Yes.  Do you have to get a Facebook fan page?  No.  Should you?  Yes.  Should your website have RSS?  Yes, that was a stupid question.  Should your website have internal AND external links in EACH story?  Yes.

I believe I conveyed the idea.  Just because it has always been done doesn’t mean it is still correct now.  I use to always call my parents if I were out past 9 pm.  It doesn’t matter now because I’m 21.  Newspapers need to grow up too.

I only suggest four changes, four rather easy changes. At the Chronicle, our website grew hits and we became meaningful every week instead of every issue.   Everyone thought I was crazy when I suggested a Twitter page.  We got one in February and by April our advisor said that was a really smart move.  He said, “Man, you were right.  This Twitter thing is huge now.  We had one before everyone and their mom showed their Twitter URL on everything they could.

These changes did effect our paper edition.  Instead of our papers sitting on the stands for months, they disappeared, in a good way.  Our stories were interesting because they went in depth to the news item.  Students actually cared about what they read when six months prior they could careless if our paper even existed.

Don’t make your paper be a waste of time and money.  Make it meaningful.

Here are a few examples of my changes displayed at the Campus Chronicle.  Of course, the examples are all my work because this is my blog and I’m a shameless self-promoter.

Sorority recruitment.  We ran two stories, the news item and a feature.  The feature had about 100 more reads online and the paper disappeared quicker than any paper we ever had.  We think it was this story, but who knows.

Game Reports.  Here is a game report that came out the same night as the game.  We tried to get all reports out by midnight of the same day.  People wake up and read the story.

Website.  Here is the Campus Chronicle website.  Pretty easy considering it is College Publisher.  The biggest problem I have with CP is the backend is incredibily difficult to navigate.

Twitter.  Here is a Twitter account.  For the Student Government Association Presidential Debate, which we hosted and moderated, we live tweeted the whole thing.  We also live tweeted during basketball games.  Guess who did that…

Go inverted, community newspapers!

Community newspapers are vital to many neighborhoods across our great land.  If it were not for community newspapers, some locales would never be covered.  People love reading what is happening not only across the country but also across the street.

Community newspapers are also important for journalists.  One of my favorite reporters started at a small community newspaper in Queens.  Mitch Albom’s first article was about a parking tickets hearing for the Queen’s Tribune.  I once read, which I can’t find currently, he went there looking for the who, what, when, where, and/or how of his story.  And he reported it, even if it was just parking tickets.

The reason I bring this up is because my favorite newspaper comes every Thursday.  I get my community newspaper, the Fluvanna Review, from my cubbyhole and read it cover to cover.  I love reading what is happening “across the street.”

The thing that pains me the most from my community paper, as well as other community newspapers, where did the journalism go?  Where was the who, what, when, where, and/or how?

An article this past week violated the same rule I violated the first time I wrote an article.  Instead of a parking ticket hearing, this story was covering a school board meeting.  The writer took the logical writing style but the illogical reading style.  The dreadful style is telling the meeting chronologically instead of by importance.

By reading the article (full disclosure: I did not attend the meeting) I would say the most important issue talked about was the last thing in the article.  The district superintendent and two citizens discussed the International Baccalaureate program.

The article’s headline has the IB program listed first in it!  This proves one of two possible problems.  Either the editor incorrectly identified the most important subject or the writer buried the subject.  I think the latter.

The second most important subject, employee salaries, has played itself out for at least a month in the public interest.  It led the story because it happened first in the meeting.  I only think it should be second because it seemed pushed into the meeting, not planned for.  The board has discussed salaries at previous meetings and this was just “beating a dead horse,” for lack of a better term.

It could go either way though.  The salaries could go first and the IB program elimination second.  Either way, they are the two most important subjects and deserved “top of the fold” treatment.  (Unfortunately, the Fluvanna Review doesn’t have a cross fold in it, but you get what I mean.)

The problem of the chronological style is it doesn’t keep interest.  Readers don’t want to feel like they were at the meeting.  Readers would read the meeting notes and agenda if they wanted to know what transpired or they would just have attended the meeting.  You read the article to know what you missed.

The simplest way to think of it is to imagine you run home to tell someone the story.  What do you tell them first to make it seem interesting?  Are you going to lead with the meeting started promptly at 7 pm, like this article did, or are you going to talk about how eliminating the IB program is welcomed by many?  Will you talk about how the school board is defending the salaries of many employees?

There is a reason why the inverted pyramid has survived millions of articles.  Use it.  You think Mitch Albom went to the parking tickets hearing thinking he would receive more sports writing awards than anyone else?  You could become him too.