With the New Year comes advice and resolutions, here are 10-in-eight tips by Steve Outing, columnist for Editor & Publisher, to help your small newspaper grow at little cost.
- A sure way to grow is by following the example of industry leaders. There’s always a reason to the success of their innovations and ideas: an easy way to check small newspaper’s better online work is by consulting the winners of the EPpy Awards.
- Outing also insisted that small papers should hire multimedia people. Since every hire counts, forget about print-only veterans. College graduates and youngsters make a good match these days, as they require low pay and have a good understanding of and enthusiasm for multimedia.
- You do need, according to Outing, at least one specialized staffer: a “hot-dog programmer,” who can launch your dream design and content onto the Web.
- “Make a class assignment.” That is, get the local college to participate in your paper, posting a citizen blog on your website for example. It’s free help, and can help attract advertisers seeking that kind of user-generated content in small newspapers.
- Collaborate with other small papers. It’s valuable extra human and financial resources, although “of course, as a small member of the chain, you may not get all the attention you'd like.”
- Become a community portal. As a local paper, that’s your main strength and value to readers. “My lesson here when applied to small newspapers is that there's opportunity for them to create small online communities centered around narrow topics within any paper's market area,” said Outing.
- “Mix up professional and citizen reporting.” Sounds straightforward, and nearly every newspaper manager or journalist seems to agree that the future of the press industry lies somewhere in between both reporting methods.
- Last but not least, go all out online. As Outing reminded, you’re Time’s Person of the Year because there’s such a wide range of tools at your disposal to publish on all kinds of platforms at little or no cost. Use these tools to their full extent, thinking outside of the box.
