I'm so old I can remember when the N&R was going to focus on local news and commentary as a way of offering unique value to readers in its market and differentiating itself from the me-too media.

Reality check: Local coverage is more expensive than wire-service clipping. And the revised production schedule, which requires the opinion section to close several days in advance of publication, is crippling as well. 

Oh, well, nothing much happened in North Carolina last week anyway.

Mitigating factor: One of the three features about the Middle East on the front of the Ideas section is written by someone who lives in Guilford County.

Comments

[justcorbly]

Maybe Al-Quds has an AP piece about the NC primary on its editorial page today.

I wonder if local papers are going to migrate to something like that radio model where the programming all comes from somewhere else, with just enough localisms thrown in to fool anyone who's just there for the entertainment.

[Andrew Brod]

Yep, one used to be able to open the Sunday Ideas section and see Ed each week, Debbage once a month, and me once a month. I guess it's good that we don't have such local clutter now.

[Andrew Brod]

For some reason, your permalink reminded me of this.

[Ed Cone]

There's an art to making the global local, and vice versa. But, again, that kind of work has to be done on assignment, you can't just pull it off the wires.

It would have been interesting to see something about today's topic at a local level -- Guilford County has a lot of immigrants, how are these cultural shifts playing out as people adjust to life in this country?

[Billy Jones]

Ed, you've been such a cynic of late. You remind me of myself-- stop it.

[John Nagy]

I'm preaching to the choir here when I say that the unique selling proposition for local papers like the News & Record is LOCAL. But old habits die hard and die slowly, especially with general circulation newspapers that think in this day they should still be everything to everyone, even if it's just a little bit of this and little bit of that. The truly radical thing for these papers to do to re-establish their connectivity to community is to come out and say, "We're going to stop giving you all this wire copy and syndicated features you can get everywhere else. Instead, it's going to be all local content, local voices, columnists and contributing writers." All. Local. Content.

The fear for papers is the pushback. Who thinks the community wouldn't start howling about their respective gored oxen? Commitment to local is a two-way deal. Could a city like Greensboro accept a smaller paper with a shorter -- but broader -- reach? Pardon the cliche, but it's a real paradigm switch for everyone.

[Andrew Brod]

It's all well and good to talk about the challenges of evolving a more local product. But the point of Ed's post is that the Ideas section is going in the opposite direction. It used to be more locally oriented.

[David Wharton]

Two words: Rosemary Roberts.

[John Nagy]

Andrew, I understand Ed's original post and concur on his point. But for all the heat and flash these last few weeks of what the N&R is doing bad, no one's mentioned what they're willing to give up in order to get a better local product. Resources are finite. More local commentary means giving up stuff. The N&R could likely increase its budget for local commentary by getting rid of The New York Times wire and its columnists. Fair trade?

[Andrew Brod]

"...what the N&R is doing badly..."

[Andrew Brod]

"More local commentary means giving up stuff."

I thought the N&R just created a panel of local people willing to write columns for free. Free content shouldn't mean giving up stuff.

To be sure, the last time the paper did this, the results were mixed. Maybe it'll work out better this time. So what's happened to this panel?

[Billy Jones]

Funny, if most businesses were to ask people to work for free it would be called slavery or at the least a violation of labor and/or insurance regulations but when newspapers and other publishers ask writers to work for free....

[Ed Cone]

Nagy's point is a good one -- pursuing the stated (and logical) strategy would take some thought and ruffle some feathers.

But table stakes include the resources to report and analyze locally, and in a timely fashion. That's clearly not happening at the moment.

[Doug Clark]

Ed, I enjoyed having you write for us, and you weren't restricted to writing on local topics.

Nahed Eltantawy's article was interesting and important on a topic most readers probably don't know a lot about. I won't make any apologies for using the Ideas section to present commentary on subjects of local, state, national or international concern.

[Roch]

"But for all the heat and flash these last few weeks of what the N&R is doing bad, no one's mentioned what they're willing to give up in order to get a better local product. Resources are finite. More local commentary means giving up stuff." -- JN

I'll take a stab at it.

First, cut unnecessary managers/editors. To the extent that they direct their reporters on what to cover, they are unnecessary for self-motivated reporters who have a nose for news; to the extent that they exist as a check for accuracy and ethics, implement peer editing where the quality reporters edit each other; to the extent they exist to mediate between reporter and public or reporter and executive staff, they are fat. The same goes for executives in other departments who "direct" the doers but don't "do" themselves. Teams of doers instead of managers and underlings.

Second, go to five print editions a week. Readers will not miss the wispy Monday and Tuesday editions, especially if it means higher quality for the remainder. Cutting materials and distribution costs by 25% or so would free up massive resources. What about the loss of revenue from those editions? I suspect the ratio of revenue to costs for those issues are the worst of the week; even if I'm wrong about that, scarcity raises costs: when there are only five editions instead of seven, the value of ads space in the remaining five will increase. Subscription value will be maintained by increase in quality.

Third, created a more horizontal organization and give people the training and the encouragement to work across disciplines, then expect that of them. The goal is to make it easier to produce quality more prolifically through greater efficiency and greater productivity. For example, a reporter should know how to quickly and easily make a graph to illustrate some facts in a story; editors, to the extent they remain, should actually know how to edit internet content.

Fourth, computerize management of assets. Yeah, I hate lingo too, but every story, video, picture, blog post, comment, print ad, classified ad and web ad can be thought of as assets. Digital assets can be handled by computer systems. Design and implement back end systems that mange the storage, assembly and distribution of these assets to multiple channels to build and maximize reach and, therefore, revenue. Break the old habit of thinking of print content, web content, app content, etc. Content is content. Let computers automate the tasks of preparing it for any particular channel and have them do it in real time to the extent possible. There should never, ever, ever again be an editor's meeting to decide what will "go on the front page of the website today." If the editor wants that kind of human decision-making, provide the digital assets with the equivalent of an internal "like" or "+1" button so that items get promoted to the "front page" (itself a waning concept) in real-time based on staff ratings throughout the day.

There's more, including one or two key essentials that I don't particularly feel like doling out for free. But these are how I'd start and I guarantee this, whether it's from a blog comment getting the right person thinking or some other inspiration, we will see this kind of evolution if the N&R is to survive.

[Ed Cone]

Doug, my carte blanche as a columnist was part of the fun of the job. Still, I was always a Greensboro guy looking at the world.

I agree that the HPU prof's piece was strong, and it also worked on the level I just mentioned -- she's local, so that counts in my book.

The local focus doesn't mean ignoring the rest of the world, perhaps especially in the Ideas section.

But to be clear, local was the stated focus of the N&R, and in my view a logical one. Such a focus requires resources, and to this reader it appears that both the focus and the resources are lacking.

Finally, thanks to Doug for reading and commenting here. Having editors and writers venture out in this fashion is healthy and engaging. Readers may lose sight of it amidst the back-and-forth, but I enjoyed great professional and personal relationships with both Doug and Allen, and think of them both as friends today.

[Doug Clark]

Thanks, Ed. We do almost always stick to state and local issues in the house editorials and my and AJ's columns. We are trying to increase locally written content on the Ideas front, even if it's just a sidebar to a wire piece, such as those I wrote regarding the Titanic anniversary April 15 and lottery winners' privacy April 29. In addition, we are working very hard to keep a state and local focus on our Books pages.

[Ed Cone]

Fair enough. And I do think the local sidebar can add real value in terms of bringing a national or international story into tighter focus.