How to fix the newspaper biz

There's a really interesting item on how to fix newspapers on the Buzzmachine blog. News reporting isn't our business here, so this might be off-topic, but the health of the media is of interest, so it's not too far off-topic.

I won't detail the long post -- read it for yourself -- but the basic point is that newspapers need to abandon the expense of reporting all those things that people can get more easily and on time from other sources ("What is the real cost of maintaining stock tables for the few readers who still use them in print?").

He also argues that papers need to push their readers to their on-line sites, even to the point of selling print ads as add-ons to online, rather than vice-versa.

He details a long list of things that are worthless -- TV listings, advice columns, movie critics, national sports coverage -- and suggests that the expense and space devoted to those things be dedicated instead to the one thing the papers can do better than anyone else -- local news.

If, instead, you took those resources to get rid of a crooked mayor or reform property taxes, you’d be performing a far greater journalistic service. It may not get you awards, but it will get you readers.

Sounds sensible to me, but what do I know? Well, I know they've got serious problems -- but whether this is the fix or not is another issue.