It was there in front of us all along
As newspapers desperately grapple to save themselves, their salvation (and the salvation of local TV news as well ) may right in front of them.
Newspapers are machines for gathering local news (along with a lot of other stuff).
Local TV news stations start their morning meetings by going through the local papers to find the stories they should be covering.
They do this because they only have a very small number of crews to cover the day’s news, and so each crew assignment must come back with a story. What better way to insure that than to simply steal the day’s news from the paper, who has already done the work?
This is really nothing more than a very early and primitive form of Google new aggregation.
And it worked, at least until the local paper goes out of business.
Now, here’s nifty idea:
As the local paper moves to video and begins to equip its reporters with video cameras, instead of just putting the video on the paper’s website, (where admittedly it gets limited play) why not sell the video (and the reporting.. and maybe also the reporter) to the local TV station?
In other words, cut out the middleman – the local TV news crew.
Here local TV news at 6. Here is the whole package in video. Just for you.
Now you pay me for this.
Of course, the local TV news station is going to pay the local paper a lot less than it costs them to send the truck, the van, the reporter, the gear, the editing pack and so on and so on ad infinitum. (Not to mention salaries, benefits, and the building!).
Well, why not?
Newspaper video is pretty good, but why should it go looking for online eyeballs when the platform for this is already in place.
What that platform needs is a constant and steady and dependable supply of content.
So why doesn’t the local paper become (in addition to a couple of other things), the supplier of video content to the local TV news station? What why doesn’t the local TV news station work on what it really does best which is packaging and distribution?
It’s a win-win all around.
Newspapers can save themselves if they start to think outside the box – or in this case, inside the box.
