Newspapers Must Reach Out, Touch Reader

The headlines may be snappy, the stories all crisp and comprehensive and each photo compelling to the eye, but the sad truth is that the type of newspaper you are now reading probably is obsolete.

It’s not that video has superseded print as this culture’s medium of choice (although it has), or that newspapers are inherently incapable of capturing and holding people’s attention. It’s that most newspapers--as currently written, designed and published--are giving people less and less of what they really need.

Newspapers are misnamed; the idea that newspapers are about the news is simply wrong. If you look at the history of newspapers, what you will discover is that their role was less as a vehicle for news than as a medium to create communities of interest.

Consider your own reasons for reading this paper: Is it just to get the latest information? Or is it to feel connected to a part of a larger community? Remember, one of the most successful ad campaigns in history was not “Reach Out and Inform Someone”--it was “Reach Out and Touch Someone.” People want to feel connected; news is just one way to continually energize those connections.

So the real issue here is less “packaging the news” than creating these communities. That’s why tomorrow’s newspapers have to be fundamentally different from today’s. Editors and publishers need to explore ways to build newer and tighter relationships with their readers and advertisers. Instead of relying on editorial rhinoplasties and promotional gimcracks, successful newspapers will use emerging technologies to redefine their roles as the vital community medium.

The problem is that most newspaper editors are prisoners of print; they think purely in terms of texts--stories, quotes, photos, charts and columns (like this one). Their notion of high technology is the newsroom word-processing system. Publishers are little better--innovation to them is high-speed insert machines and ink that won’t smear onto readers’ fingers. Everything revolves around delivering news and advertising in a nice paper package.

That’s shortsighted. Newspapers have to stop treating their readers as readers and start treating them as people. People want to do more than just read; they want to act. They want to connect with people and ideas on a variety of levels.

What newspapers should become--and must become--are gateways to these new connections. Increasingly, newspapers are going to shift from being editorial and design driven--new coverage, columnists and formats--to technology driven, with telecommunications, audio/video and computational media used to redefine the role of the printed page. The intelligent deployment of technology is the key to transforming an audience of passive readers into an active community of shared interests.

For example, there is no reason why each newspaper section can’t have its own answering machine to take reader comments and suggestions. Transcribe these verbal “letters to the editor” and weave them into the section. Print a custom-tailored questionnaire in the business section on taxes or in the sports section on the all-star team and encourage people to fax in their responses.

These “fax polls” offer a way to build new links with the reader, and technology can turn the reader into a participant. USA Today has done something like this with 900-number telephone polls with some success--but it’s handled more like a vox populi gimmick than an integral part of the paper’s editorial mission.

But integrating text and telecommunications makes sense. Newsday in Long Island, N.Y., has enjoyed significant revenue from its 976 sports and weather phone lines. Why not put a 900 number at the end of a story on, say mutual fund investment options? For a small fee, the reader can call the number to get more information from the journalist who did the story. The way you do it is have the journalist tape a five-minute interview on the story and then “index” the interview so that people can use their touch-tone phone to access the bit of information they want.

Blending print with this sort of audiotex service strikes me as an obvious way to get people to view the newspaper as a community information resource. There are all kinds of news and service-oriented stories that lend themselves to such audio augmentation. Most journalists I know would love to be able to write stories that get people interested enough to pick up a phone and call.

There are enough personal computers out there that urban and suburban papers should give serious thought to putting up advertiser-sponsored computer bulletin boards. This isn’t anything like the humongously expensive/disastrous videotex ventures of the 1980s.

These bulletin boards offer low-cost communications and access to a very desirable demographic. Think of it as an on-line newsletter for special interest groups. The bulletin board can point out relevant stories in the newspaper, and the newspaper points people with more specialized interests toward the bulletin boards. Putting past movie reviews or restaurant reviews on-line might be a genuine service.

One also shouldn’t ignore the role technology could play in creating a new level of responsiveness in advertising. There’s nothing stopping a newspaper from serving as a clearinghouse for more information on its advertisers. For example, why shouldn’t a newspaper offer to fax a restaurant menu of one of its advertisers to a reader requesting it? My gosh, some weekly newspapers already offer telephone mailboxes for their personals ads. Why shouldn’t daily newspapers offer such services for its classified ad clientele?

Yes, there are a bunch of newspapers, ranging from this one to the Hartford Courant, now exploring how best to transmit fax versions of themselves. And yes, Times Mirror, the parent of this newspaper, lost millions trying to turn the pig’s ear of videotex into a silk purse of publishing profitability--but those approaches to technology are nothing more than an extension of the print mind-set.

They treat technology as a medium for dispensing data instead of as a tool to craft communities. The idea here is to get more than people’s eyes involved in the newspaper. The goal is to use the newspaper as both a platform and a springboard to other media. Ideally, these media enhance the value of the newspaper and vice versa.

This technology-driven vision of the future of newspapers doesn’t in any way jeopardize the next generation of Ben Hechts and Mike Roykos any more than the rise of television has killed the novel. There will always be a place for people who can write stories with style or present ideas with elan. But editors and publishers need to understand that their newspapers have to coexist and co-evolve within a new ecology of multiple media. It’s not enough to publish all the news that’s fit to print. You have to use all the tools you can to build and serve a community of people who want to do more than just read what you’ve written . . . and then turn the page.