August 24, 2009 by ggackle
The Quad City Times newspaper recently announced a newsroom shake-up naming a new "executive editor," but deigned not to explain what happened to its current, now former, editor.
It isn't unusual for businesses to talk up promotions and try to avoid difficult questions when top management re-schufflings occur. Used to be common for editors to assign reporters to call companies that left out important information, particularly the "why" of it all.
Readers aren't looking for an exposé on the inner workings of the newsroom, but ignoring the obvious in its own company coverage only fuels suspicions about what other information the paper ignores at other businesses and public institutions.
Five key reasons why newspapers are dying
There have been hundreds of articles about the dying newspaper industry and what can or should be done to save the daily press. This article by Bill Wymans explains why the business has seen enormous stock price declines and the continual erosion of readers and advertisers.
One of the article's basic premises – printed newspapers are NOT about news, but exist primarily as a delivery system for mass advertising – is one that doesn't get talked about much. It is, however, why the Internet, with its ability for even small "Mom and Pop" businesses to reach potential customers easily (and at less expense), has devalued print newspaper advertising and its value to many local businesses.
How will Microsoft and AT&T deals affect Yahoo/newspaper consortium?
With Microsoft entering the picture to handle Yahoo's search functions, Yahoo is free to concentrate on developing its online ad selling on Yahoo properties and its more than 800 newspaper consortium partner sites (including qctimes.com and all the other Lee Enterprises properties).
While the greater focus on online advertising/sales appears to strengthen the Yahoo/newspaper consortium alliance, a recent agreement between AT&T Yellow Pages and Yahoo may have the opposite effect. The Yellow Page reps are to begin selling Yahoo online ad display inventory, which could impact sales of local ads on newspapers' online sites. Yahoo also recently rolled out its own automated display ad creation tool to better serve/reach local small- and medium-sized businesses.
Finding local businesses, products or services using the large search portals Google, Bing and Yahoo has become much better and more reliable in recent years. Add in the yellow page online ad mix and competition for local advertising dollars will get that much tougher.
WQAD's new web site includes feeds from competitors
The new owners of WQAD-TV, Local TV (owned by investment firm Oak Hill Capital Partners), have a much different online vision than previous owner, the New York Times, or any of the other network affiliates in town.
The new WQAD look/design is obvious, but the most notable difference is the inclusion of news feeds from virtually ever media outlet in the Quad Cities. You'll find RSS feeds of news stories from the Quad City Times, the Dispatch/Argus, the River Cities Reader, the Bureau County Republican, and the Clinton Herald, along with competing television stations KWQC and WHBF.
Why not try to capture more visitors/page views and serve as a resource aggregator for local news? That's basically the idea behind Google News and its popular Google Reader feed aggregator.
The web isn't the only place Local TV takes a different, refreshing approach. Read its Employee Handbook.
