Comments on: Jane Stevens: Mini-metros will replace metro newspapers

By: Randy

Randy — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:05:39 +0000

Several years ago, I was doing some family history research at the Minnesota Historical Society, and going through the Late 1800s, Early 1900s newspaper archives, focusing on a few small rural towns that my ancestors lived in. It seemed each county, no matter how sparsely populated, had at least two, usually three newspapers to choose from. One for the Germans, one for the “English,” and maybe one for the Norwegians, sometimes in that language. The front pages had similar stories, but the back pages were all specific to whatever that group was interested in–who was visiting who, the church news, births, obituaries, etc. Nowadays the split (in interest) might be more along age group than ethnic group, but niche news worked back then too.

By: Dan Marrin

Dan Marrin — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:34:22 +0000

The local paper doesn’t do international or national news well? Okay, but does that mean they should drop it? See, this worries me because on the one hand, right, they’re probably relying on AP news feeds, and could be using that space for more stuff on your area. But on the other, if people only read that newspaper, then they lose sight completely of national/international news stuff.
The question for me really is what USE is this international news. 500 people killed on buses in Sri Lanka. That gets a 5-second headline on some radio station…why are we including it? Because it’s a big number. But so what? What are we supposed to DO with that? I think so many news organizations have not yet figured out the WHY of putting on certain items, besides the fact that they’re big crises. And as a result, you get this syndrome of “compassion fatigue,” where people are hearing about all this shit happening all the world, but have no feeling of empowerment because the news story wasn’t supposed to make us empowered – it was meant to make us aware that somewhere in a place called Sri Lanka (wherever that is) 500 people died on a bus. Damn. Awful…now onto other news. We need a better sense of what we want people to DO with the news we create, whether it’s local, national, or international. In my opinion.

By: john m

john m — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:55:56 +0000

I’d love to see our local paper drop their irrelevant national/international coverage and really cover what is happening in this city. W/ regard to multimedia — I keep waiting for the local TV stations to figure that out and take the legs out from under the paper but it hasn’t happened yet…