Bringing the Message to Circ Directors

I'm headed to the New England Newspaper Association meeting this week, particpating on a panel discussing growing audience.  My particular part of the discussion is growing the online audience through "engagement", read citizen journalism.  A big topic for us certainly but what I would like to do is to "tie it back", so to speak, to print somehow.  There are a couple of examples of this out there - YourHub.com, NorthwestVoice.com, but not many.  Any ideas you folks have are more than appreciated.
I will post my presentation here later in the week.  One thing my research has revealed, newspapers remain more or less clueless about the extent of Cit-J in their own backyards.  What a surprise.

Comments

[Kathy Schwartz]

I don't know how one can "tie it back to print." The photos submitted are not print-quality, they are Web-quality. The comments could be relevant to a print reader but not always.

I think the "tie" is in READERSHIP. Who cares if the readership is in print or on online. If we can tell our print advertisers that they gain 10% of the market when they also advertise online, what's wrong with that? Publishing UGC in the print paper isn't going to increase readership by 10% in print.

Eventually, the print will be the niche and online will be the revenue driver. It's up to us in the current minority to push that vision and stop trying to "tie-it-back" for the benefit of people who don't generally understand the opportunity here.

Have a great time at the convention, Bob. Don't forget to mention NENMA and invite all present to sign up today! nenma.org.

[Devin Gladstone]

Yo Kempf. Are you doing any work down there at SouthOfBoston or are you just attending conferences? ;-)

Devin

[Devin Gladstone]

I think there is a lot of "reverse" content gathering that is now starting to go on. Much of it taking online stuff and putting it back into the deadwood edition. I believe Boston.com does some of this with their "Lighter Side" and that the Portland Press Herald also has a new print section that is all culled from online stuff.

At Seacoast Online our foray into user-generated content has been our blog site, http://www.blogthecoast.com , which has been very active and succssful.

[Patrick Mullen]

We try very hard to sell 'readership'. I'm afraid that local businesses aren't 'buying' it... yet.

We know that the combined power of web and print is huge - and they will too - in time.

We've worked hard to 'reverse' content. And when we do it right -- user registrations skyrocket, site traffic goes up... and retention is high. There seems to be strong evidence that supports the 'reverse' publication of content.

A columnist actually took a copy of his online live Q&A transcript and printed it while he was on vacation.
http://thrnewmedia.com/cgi-bin/chat/view.pl?link=2004-12-23_50&chatname=The%20Barry%20Lewis%20column&moderator=Barry%20Lewis

This chat - http://thrnewmedia.com/cgi-bin/chat/view.pl?link=2004-11-24_25&chatname=K.J.%20and%20its%20neighbors&moderator=Chris%20McKenna
got published on page 5 -- full page...

It was sharp, to the point and a wonderful conversation.

Remember those pesky American Idol contestants - they chatted 'live' with our readers and the transcript was the #2 result on Google the night it published... talk about gaining share. Kids at school were talking about our website and many bought the paper the next day to see their names in print... damn that was powerful.

http://thrnewmedia.com/cgi-bin/chat/view.pl?link=2005-01-27_63&chatname=American%20Idol%20and%20the%20Molfettas&moderator=Rich%20and%20JP%20Molfetta

We hope to get on the Cit-J track and keep our readership growing as fast as our market.