Does your newsroom know its community?

Take about a minute and look at Mark Glaser’s 10 steps to saving newspapers in the digital age (via CyberJournalist). And then take note that the thread running through each of these steps isn’t about cutting costs as much as it is about being innovative in the effort to engage the local community.

Because I’m a good netizen, I won’t reprint the short post here and deprive CyberJournalist of the traffic, but I will say that Glaser is right on target in telling news sites to focus on what businesses want, rather than viewing them as an endless source of advertising dollars. And his recommendation to engage the community in face-to-face meetings recalls Gina Chen’s fine Save the Media post on how journalists can create communities of readers.

Google News Timeline

Mathew Ingram looks at the brand new Google News Timeline and wonders: Why can’t newspapers exhibit this kind of creativity?

Google News Timeline is very impressive, offering users the abililty to look at news by days, weeks, months, years and even decades in a visually appealing column format. You can also refine your search according to a particular news source.

Hilarious skewering of news industry bloggers

At Huff Post, Paul Dailing gives a well-deserved ribbing to the news industry know-it-alls in “How to become a ‘death of newspapers’ blogger“:

That’s why I’ve decided to become a “Death of Newspapers” blogger. I’ll join the ranks of Jeff Jarvis, Paul Gillin, Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky in competing to see who can use the most jargon to describe something everyone knows is happening.

Apparently, it’s very simple. The more you self-reference, pick feuds and talk about the failure of TimesSelect, the better you’re doing. If you make it sound like you’re the one who figured out newspapers are dying, you win.