G.A.B.B.

I didn’t make it to yesterday’s Akron Roundtable speech on the future of the newspaper business. Laura Rich Fine – Media Analyst for Merrill Lynch spoke about how media markets are changing and how that affects the future of the news gathering industry. Happily the BJ story includes a link to the podcast page on the Roundtable website which I listened to this morning.

The BJ write up is fine, though it kind of feels like the individual points that made a coherent whole in the speech have been excised and laid out on the table, leaving a deconstruction less illuminating than the original. If you have time, I recommend giving the pod a listen.

Some points I really liked didn’t make it into the BJ piece. Among them:

• That the best assets papers have are reporters and editors. This is the antecedent to the point reported in the story that papers can’t cut costs by cutting staff.

• Along with the point that “Local content and the ability to deliver professionally edited stories will keep newspapers alive,” she notes that local papers need to let go of world and national coverage – the internet and cable guarantees that people will get that news elsewhere.

• That it’s best for newspaper companies to be privately held. She went through the steps Knight-Ridder should have taken to remain independent – including buying back its stock.

• That people under 30 expect their information to be free and that is not going to change.

• That new media offers challenges and opportunities for the newspaper business, including:
  • The possible end of print
    
• incorporating citizen journalists into online papers (though it’s interesting she did not talk about bloggers.

The next speech is June 18 with John Ong, former head of Goodrich. I'll try to make it there. In the meantime, a past speech by Rob Curly, Director of New Media at the Naples Daily News looks intriguing.