Palin as President?

Check out this amusing little site:

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

Black Friday - 2008 and My GPS

A pretty uneventful shopping day for me. I scoured the ads at the 11th hour, and decided there were only two stores worth visiting this year. That is mostly due to my daily fix of electronics deals on Woot and Sellout Woot.

But my trips to Office Depot in Lynnwood and the well-hidden Staples in Mill Creek turned out to be fruitful. I couldn't help but notice how weak the Best Buy and Circuit City offerings were this year.

And in case you haven't noticed, flat screen TVs of all shapes and sizes are on sale everywhere this year. Same goes for GPS systems.

I finally took the plunge into the GPS world with the Garmin C510, pictured here. I got on Woot for around $80 a month or so ago. For someone who is as directionally challenged as myself, I am really wondering why I didn't get one of these ages ago. It can sometimes be frustrating not quite knowing where this thing is leading you (it seems to have a knack for taking you right into traffic, probably because it's leading everyone the same direction), but at times when you don't know where you're going, it's a lot better than nothing.

Daily Dose of The Beach Boys

One of my favorites, this performance is apparently from early 2008. Some nice visuals of Mike Love's trademark facial and finger moves.

Bizarre Story of the Day

You won't catch me with a Mike Love shrine!

Challenges faced by traditional daily newspapers

Everyone wants to talk about the challenges of the newspaper industry today. Yes, there surely are challenges. Looking at it objectively, the traditional daily newspaper is a business model that no one in their right mind would start right now hoping to ever turn a profit. Now that may sound harsh, but it's true (on a side note, the same thing could be said about many other businesses/industries, including the United States Postal Service).

Here is my top 5 list of major hurdles facing daily newspapers today:

1. Information overload: The Internet has given readers literally unlimited choices of where to get their news.
2. Scope of their news coverage: The local daily newspaper is rarely seen as the best choice for world, national, or even regional news. However, they feel compelled to still try to compete in these fields, as it is what their readers are expecting. This nails down what their one true strength is: local news coverage. Many local dailies have figured this out, and are trying to spend more of their resources in this direction, but it is difficult given the scope of coverage that they traditionally have provided.
3. Expensive distribution method: The carrier-delivery model is a load of dead weight. With gas prices shooting way up, it has become more and more challenging to recruit and maintain carriers. With most dailies seeing falling circulation, it is also far less efficient to operate carrier routes than it was in the days when most people on a street were subscribers. These problems will continue to get worse.
4. Newsprint costs: This again is another expense that will never go away. Papers are trying to do as much as they can to save on this (narrower pages, cutting back or eliminating sections, going to tabloid format), but there's no escaping this large cost. It makes one think long and hard about the online only newspaper.
5. Trouble migrating online: Newspapers have struggled mightily in the online game. Many of them are getting around to it, and some are doing a fantastic job. Many papers spent years in denial, treating the web as if it was some kind of fad that would soon go away. They put up basic websites, just because someone told them it was a good idea, and threw some articles up there to make it look good. There was no strategy. Heck, they saw the web as competition. They struggled with what to do with their content - if they put all of their articles online, who would buy and read the print product? Putting their stories online before they came out in print - no way! Frequent updates? What?

So there's my top 5 - I could probably come up with about a dozen more if I needed to. Newspapers were, and still in many cases are, in the best position to be the leaders online. They have the resources, the connections, the local knowledge to not just be the leading source of local news, but more than that. They have the opportunity to create a local community hub online.

But the point is they have to step up and do it. If they don't, someone else will - or already has.

The importance of content

This is the first in a series of posts I plan to make about the newspaper business.

The content produced by news organizations is now more important than ever. No other time in the world's history have consumers been faced with so many choices of where to get their news.

Back in, let's say, 1920, there were no choices. Let's say you lived in Port Orchard. You read the Port Orchard Independent. That was it. Whatever articles that newspaper contained, that was what news you would be exposed to. If you lived in Seattle, then oh my goodness, TWO choices of newspapers.

Ok then came along radio, eventually TV. But as most newspaper readers know, those are really quick hits. Not much in detail. It did offer some limited choices - maybe 3 or 4 news options.

If you haven't figured out where I'm headed with this - with the Internet, the consumer today has nearly unlimited choices of where to get their news. It is no longer driven by what the paper thinks people want to read about. They better know what their target market wants to read - or else guess what happens, your readers will go elsewhere.

In this world where people are busier than ever and there are more distractions than ever, there's also exponentially more information available.

So bottom line - you better provide the information (news, stories, etc.) that your target audience is interested in reading, or else they will no longer be your audience. You no longer have the luxury of a captive audience.

RIP Colby

Our dog Colby passed away suddenly on Thursday October 30th. Thank you to all of you who have offered your condolences. Here is a little tribute video I made.

A Tribute to Colby from Rob Schwertley on Vimeo.