In all seriousness, if you've got a local-business section you think might benefit from statistics, we need to talk. (No, I'm not trying to sell you anything.) Email me: andrew@timetric.com.
Ask HN: What would you do with a newspaper-dot-com's built-in audience?
21–30 of 36 posts
Re: Ask HN: What would you do with a newspaper-dot-com's built-in audience?
#22I would start crowd-sourcing articles and pay the authors a small amount when they get published.
Re: Ask HN: What would you do with a newspaper-dot-com's built-in audience?
#23Re: Ask HN: What would you do with a newspaper-dot-com's built-in audience?
#24Extend the content of the print version rather than duplicate it. Conceptually this is what NPR does with their website. The Daily Show website extends broadcast content similarly for their interviews.
Audio is an excellent medium for journalism and today is nearly as portable dead trees for many people. It's potentially salable and suitable for longer news stories.
Have an advertising policy which respects your readers as readers. The biggest asset of newspapers is trust. Highest bidder ads about my credit score destroy it.
Re: Ask HN: What would you do with a newspaper-dot-com's built-in audience?
#25[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What would you do with a newspaper-dot-com's built-in audience?
#26leverage the userbase. build a social network around local news, and let your readers do most of your work for you. they'll bring you leads, distribution, etc.
host your own reddit? submitting all of the articles to it, and letting users crowdsource the headlines, as well as the comment curation. you can offer a more interactive experience and can engage readers beyond hit and run comments or avoid the youtubeish free for alls that sadly seem to dominate the discussions on most news articles. put the power in your reader's hands, because frankly you guys need all of the help you can get.
i really love the way comments sections works in the new york times, for example. it would be really interesting to try take that even further.
Re: Ask HN: What would you do with a newspaper-dot-com's built-in audience?
#27Build a local deals engine a la groupon. Yah this is obvious, but the reason that this works so well for newspapers: a) Newspapers have a built in sales force to sell local merchants on the concept. b) Newspapers attract a hyper-local audience and building a list of people interested in local deals is a money printing asset. c) Newspaper execs, consumers, and merchants are familiar with the model so it's not a hard s…
The Austin newspaper just announced that today: http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/aust...
Re: Ask HN: What would you do with a newspaper-dot-com's built-in audience?
#28There are three major benefits presented by the internet to traditional media. First, the ability to offer far greater depth and breadth of coverage than could reasonably be offered in print. Second, the ability for the media to be instantly interactive. While letters to the editor did allow some interactivity, they aren't nearly as interactive as what can be done online. Finally, along the lines of interactivity, digital display should allow the media the ability to offer content that doesn't necessarily have to appeal to everyone; it should be much more feasible to target niche markets and offer content tailored to them, while profiting from the greater ability to monetize a niche market.
Having said that, my company, Barhopolis (check out http://barsannapolis.com), is currently looking to partner with newspapers to more easily reach an audience. This gives you a great breadth and depth of information, in the form of hundreds of local events updated daily. Interactivity in the form of reviews, comments, and photos shared by visitors. And, most importantly, it gives you access to a niche market that is easy monetizable. We'd also be able to incorporate current and future editorial content, as well as customize the branding. I'd love to talk to you more about it, my email is justin@bulletprooftiger.com.
Re: Ask HN: What would you do with a newspaper-dot-com's built-in audience?
#29tl;dr a glorified affiliate merchandiser.
One tremendous asset papers have left is trust. They should leverage this trust to offer deals on high-quality products to their readers. If they vet the products to ensure they are high quality, they retain trust. If they retain reader trust, the goods producers benefit from association with the newspaper. Thus, they can offer good deals.
Papers already do this, inn a half-assed way. But leveraging their history of goodwill, built up over decades with readers, has to a great way forward for them.
Re: Ask HN: What would you do with a newspaper-dot-com's built-in audience?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you do this for a living?
Nope, but I'm building this system into a site I'm creating for PE investments to help users of the system improve their pitch. Want to leverage it?
Would love to chat? Can you drop me a line? I'm Shafqat at NewsCred dot com. My startup is in this space so really intrigued!