What do we want – and expect – from the newspaper?

Consider: We are living in a watered-down world. There is so much new information that we cannot keep up with it and often spend time sifting through inaccurate or irrelevant information, wasting our research time and therefore having less time to devote to “the real goods.”
We are distracted by the aberrant news stories: unusual rescues, or the wild woman who refuses to stay with family and returns to the jungle. And that is because we really don’t have the time to drill down into a big news story. The full-page extensive features in the daily newspapers are reserved for the now skinny weekend editions – if we have time to read them.
Newspapers, we all know, are in trouble. People aren’t reading them. Small communities, it seems, still do need their newspapers. This region has more than a dozen of them.
What we are trying to understand these days is who is doing what out there. Who is on Facebook and why? Who is reading this newspaper and others, and why? What do you really want?
There has never been so much content submitted to this newspaper. We could probably fill two newspapers every week. What is interesting is that we are not inundated with letters to the editor or breaking news stories, or complaints about taxes and government, but rather, you send us pictures and stories of things that are happening close to home. And these are stories that you must want to share with others by seeing them distributed in print.
This is one time that word of mouth, Facebook, Twitter, flyers, the sides of transport trailers and roadside billboards don’t do the job. Holding a garage sale: imagine just telling your neighbours and waiting for the entire community to show up.
In the year 2011, digital information is supposed to double every 11 hours. But that is just if we believe what one source says. Which brings us to the subject of credibility. Where do we turn when we want credible news?
It seems that people still favour print, television and radio for serious news and still turn to local newspapers for local news. Newspapers take a hit every time someone accuses us of reporting on something or writing something in a certain way “just to sell newspapers.” Imagine that.
We’ll wager that clothing stores hang up clothes in the window because they want to sell clothes. Shame!
The reality of the newspaper business – currently weathering both the economic downturn as well as the public’s push for more free, immediate, online content – is that it is still a business. It costs money to produce the content in a daily or weekly newspaper, and the days are long gone where subscriber revenue alone can cover these costs. As a result, advertising has and will continue to take up space in newspapers and will take up airtime on local radio and television stations.
Recently, a group of international documentary filmmakers penned a letter denouncing the corporate influence on their medium; in particular, they noted the growing reluctance of insurance companies to provide “errors and omissions” insurance for films that criticized actions of their wealthier, corporate clients. E&O insurance, however, is often a required criteria – a sort of protective measure – before the filmmaker’s work can be broadcast in the U.S.
In similar vein, responsible newspapers strive to produce a synthesis of what is happening in a city, town or community and being responsible means being accountable for what we say.
Just as objective reporters struggle every day with the concept of being subjective human beings, newsrooms have struggled – since the advent of the newspaper – with the concept of reporting the issues of interest while captivating the attention of the public and doing so within strict, often legally-bound guidelines.
As more eager and willing journalism students enter the mix of increasingly corporate media, as the hectic demands of the 24-hour news model undoubtedly pick up speed, and as the threat of advertising dollars inevitably looms over the desks of publishers worldwide, those of us in the business want to know: What do readers want? And where do we go from here?                 L.S. & J.B.