Comments on: Opportunity in the demise of Boston Globe http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/06/08/opportunity-in-the-demise-of-boston-globe/ A posting every day; an interesting idea every three months... Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:49:42 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Brad Templeton http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/06/08/opportunity-in-the-demise-of-boston-globe/comment-page-1/#comment-126269 Brad Templeton Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:27:29 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/?p=1370#comment-126269 This reminds me of the proposal I made to help save UPI, and the local newspaper business, back 13 or so years ago when print newspapers still had a lot of life. The idea was to start with a wireservice or other source of national news. They would compose a paper. They would they lay out the paper, leaving holes for local advertising and local stories. They would lay out 3 versions each day, one for lots of local news, one for medium, one for little. All this would be packaged up and transmitted to a local office. The local office would insert local ads and stories into the result, and send that off to a printer. Several towns might share a printer within say a 3 hour truck drive, if need be. The result, a cheap to produce, high quality, local paper with quality national news. Who cares that it's mostly the same in each town, you're not reading two editions. Today this would still work, but the print newspaper may not be long for the world. This reminds me of the proposal I made to help save UPI, and the local newspaper business, back 13 or so years ago when print newspapers still had a lot of life.

The idea was to start with a wireservice or other source of national news. They would compose a paper. They would they lay out the paper, leaving holes for local advertising and local stories. They would lay out 3 versions each day, one for lots of local news, one for medium, one for little.

All this would be packaged up and transmitted to a local office. The local office would insert local ads and stories into the result, and send that off to a printer. Several towns might share a printer within say a 3 hour truck drive, if need be.

The result, a cheap to produce, high quality, local paper with quality national news. Who cares that it’s mostly the same in each town, you’re not reading two editions.

Today this would still work, but the print newspaper may not be long for the world.

]]> By: Max Lybbert http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/06/08/opportunity-in-the-demise-of-boston-globe/comment-page-1/#comment-126251 Max Lybbert Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:20:37 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/?p=1370#comment-126251 I know of one MBA suggesting this is the correct path for the newspaper industry as a whole ( http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2009/04/newspapers-are-under-scale.html ). I know of one MBA suggesting this is the correct path for the newspaper industry as a whole ( http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2009/04/newspapers-are-under-scale.html ).

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