This week's series on Reflections of a Newsosaur from Alan Mutter has been a positive contribution to the debate on the future of newspapers. Mutter has taken some of the breathlessness out of the print-is-dying movement but also made clear that change was profoundly necessary and bound to be profound.
His final instalment prescribes, and in short form he suggests:
1. Newspapers need to sustain themselves as long as possible to help develp the platform-agnostic delivery of content.
2. They need to get into niche products.
3. They need to shed their dependence on conventional advertising and look to new ways to build revenue streams.
4. They need to develop inside sales teams to reflect the smaller revenues.
5. They need self-serve advertising.
6. They need to provide consulting and other services from their professional perch.
7. They need to charge for something.
8. They need to staff newsrooms properly.
9. They need to look for non-newsroom content contributions.
10. They need their sites to be more interactive.
On the surface, these seem largely boilerplate. But there are many large entities still far from even half this list.
