A recipe for reinventing newspapers

Newspapers today face many challenges. At WAN Göteborg 2008 I listened to a presentation about the new 2008 Global Report on Innovations in Newspapers. One of the more interesting comments came from Juan Antonio Giner, founder and Director of the Innovation International Media Consulting Group, who talked about some challenges and opportunities for newspapers.

How to kill a newspaper in 20 easy ways:

1. Be dull and boring
2. Change slowly
3. Publish yesterday’s news
4. Take not risks
5. Expect different results by doing things in the same way
6. Insult your readers
7. Lie to advertisers
8. Please politicians
9. Cover buildings
10. Don’t interact with your audience
11. Print badly
12. Print poor color
13. Write long
14. Don’t care about design
15. Don’t hire talent
16. Don’t fire bad editors and managers
17. Pay badly
18. Don’t innovate
19. Milk the cash cow
20. Expect miracles

How to reinvent newspapers:

– Try wild ideas
– Be different
– Shake up things
– “Raise hell and sell newspapers”
– Make readers smile
– Great stories
– Be hyper-local
– Integrate or die
– Show, don’t dell
– Graphics, graphics, graphics
– Talent, talent, talent
– Journalism, journalism, journalism

Footnote: More great reports about WAN 2008 at the Editors Weblog.

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