If you are reading this right now, I thank you.
Because if you’ve been paying any attention to the plight of newspapers these days, you’d know that less and less people are reading them, at least in the print form.
Many newspapers are losing money, readers and market share as they face heavy competition from the Internet, bloggers, Craigslist, Google, You Tube, Facebook and who knows what will be the next big invention.
Publishers and editors everywhere are trying to come up with creative ways to fight back.
They are rebuilding and remaking the newspaper business model so it has both an electronic and print future — a multimedia future we like to say.
Tuesday, we will take a big step into the new future. In that paper, you will see something that I never thought I would see — an advertisement on the front page of the Daily Pilot.
It will be in the same place everyday, at the bottom of the page about six columns wide and two inches high.
It was only five years ago or so that talk of a front-page advertisement would have sparked a battle royale between the newsroom and the advertising department. But in these leaner times, we have discovered that more give and take must happen from all of us.
Now front-page advertisements can be found on most major newspapers across the nation. It’s become the norm, not the exception.
And the funny thing is it doesn’t offend my journalistic senses as much as I thought it would.
Front-page advertising is just one of many steps we and other newspapers are taking to change our business.
In addition, Tuesday’s paper will seem a bit thinner. Instead of printing on a 50-inch wide paper, it will now be on 48 inches — a leaner product for a leaner time that will save money and paper.
We’re not stopping there. Tuesday will also mark more changes to our websites. We are moving things around and creating new features. Reporters now file stories throughout the day to keep the website fresh with the latest news, and we are moving an editor to an early morning shift to largely oversee the web operations.
Many of you probably have already seen our daily video broadcasts and video features that we produce at www.dailypilot.com/video.
Now, reporters who used to go to stories only armed with a pad of paper and pen may well be equipped with a video camera, a microphone and a laptop computer. It’s called backpack journalism and expect to see more and more of it in the months and years ahead.
