NDS Newsletter Archives

What if I said you could grow your newspaper’s web site circulation using free software that you (yes, you!) can probably set up yourself? And if you can’t set it up, a high school kid could set it up for you after school and before dinner?

Interested?

One good way to stanch the flow of departing subscribers to your newspaper is to turn a bit of the paper over to them. That’s right, get your readers involved by using free and reasonably easy to install software to create a Facebook/MySpace-like experience at your paper’s web site.

The idea is to turn your site from being simply a static information repository into an interactive destination. Change your site from a passive, read-only clunker into an active social gathering and news-sharing place where people want to be.

Statistics show that people spend less time visiting the local paper’s web site in a month than they do in reading one weekday print edition. The problem? How the site is put together.

Most newspaper web sites are dead-end streets. The visitor goes there, pokes around a bit, scanning photos and headlines and then skedaddles. Online, it is much easier to “change channels” than on a television set, and certainly easier than swapping out your paper for another one.

Even if you link to other sites — which you should — your readers will always return to your site to get the latest news and intriguing new links to meet their interests and to interact with other like-minded locals. You need to be their portal to the web and a place where they can participate and connect with the staff and with others and they will return.

So the key is to make your site (a) more interactive and (b) a central location for all your readers’ information needs. You’re not just a newspaper any more.

The Wall Street Journal is the latest big newspaper to go this direction in an attempt to grow their web site circulation. Readers will be able to comment on stories, ask others for advice and create interest groups. And they already have 4.7 million visitors a month!

Make your site interactive by doing more than simply allowing letters to the editor. Set up a place where readers can create blogs and comment on others’ blogs. Create a community forum where people can comment on news coverage or any other topic of their choice and people can interact there. Some papers have found that shared-interest groups form, such as young mothers or youth sports coaches and athletes.

These people come back to your site again and again, in part to read your news, in part to actually create content for you (for free!) and in part to interact with others in your community.

I’ll finish this topic off with some links to great free software. Coming next time!

Bob Bohle
bob@newsdesignschool.com

I recently wrote about how the presentation of the information in either your print or web edition is a critical aspect of your reader experience with your newspaper or site.

I keep returning to the “Experience” study done by The Readership Institute in Minneapolis a few years back.

The study basically found that a different approach to the news by making it more reader-centric made the paper product more interesting by a sizable amount. This doesn’t mean you have to lower your standards of journalism, you just need to present it in a different way.

They found that you need to give people something to talk about, that you need to look out for their interests (i.e., changing how your write heads from summaries to ones that connect with the readers’ interests in the story) and that they like surprise and humor.

Nothing wrong with that. I think if we just present news the same old way, we have our heads in the sand. The times they are a changing.

I think it’d be a good idea to revisit (or see for the first time) the Minnesota studies, and here are two links that will take you to the best files:

http://www.readership.org/experience/experiencepaper.pdf
http://www.readership.org/experience/startrib_overview.pdf

I’d poke around the entire site. It holds lots of good information, including on the home page to a story that — for once — has some GOOD news about newspaper readership. (http://www.readership.org)

If you go to the Newsletter Archive (accessed through http://newsdesignschool.com/newsletter.htm), you’ll find an example of a story changed into an Alternate Story Format to show you one approach you can take to move in the readers’ direction with your content. ASFs are one easy way to do that. Please register and leave a comment!

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Also, if you haven’t officially signed up for the newsletter yet (http://newsdesignschool.com/newsletter.htm), you have missed a few. This is one last chance to get free access to the archives.

Questions? bob@newsdesignschool.com

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