Save newspapers by rebuilding them

I’ve expressed my admiration for Jeff Jarvis many times on this site. Once again, he impresses me with his advocacy for rebuilding newspapers from the ground up, taking into consideration that their Web sites can and will become more important their their dead-tree versions:

And newspapers have to take an even more frightening step: They need to start driving readers from print to online. Yes, that means driving readers from a higher-margin product, print, to a lower-margin product, online - but those margins are artificially maintained because advertisers still value print more than readers do (why else is the print audience shrinking while online is growing?). When reality catches up to advertisers, and when buying ads online in a distributed world is made easier - and that will happen - will newspapers be ready? When that day does come, newspapers will even have to consider selling print as a value-added upgrade to online, the reverse of what is done today.

Bingo. Within 10 or 20 years actual printed newspapers will exist mainly to serve the shrinking number of news consumers who do not or cannot get their news on the Internet. The advertising problem is self correcting; businesses that insist on advertising only in newspapers — with their shriking circulation figures — will have their lunches eaten by companies that advertise on the Internet.

And I like this sentence:

And I’d look hard at your local columnists and ask whether they are as informative and entertaining as local bloggers.

I think Phil Luciano’s ears are burning.

Jeff Jarvis,Buzz Machine,advertising