MediaBlog

του Stephen Brook

Juan Antonio Giner, vice president of the Innovation consulting group, presents to WAN his list of 20 ways to kill a newspaper, writes Stephen Brook.

1. be dull and boring
2. change slowly
3. print yesterday’s news
4. don’t take risks
5. expect different results by doing things the same way
6. insult your readers
7. lie to advertisers
8. please politicians
9. cover buildings not people
10. don’t interact with audience
11. print badly
12. print poor colour
13. write long
14. don’t care about design
15. don’t care about talent
16. don’t sack bad managers
17. pay badly
18. don’t innovate
19. milk the cash cow
20. expect miracles

And the solutions?

Try wild ideas
Be different
Shake up things
Raise hell and sell newspapers
Make readers smile
Great stories
Be hyper local
Integrate or die
Show, don’t tell
Talent, talent, talent
Journalism, journalism, journalism

“The alternative is not a business that values profits and good journalism, but a business where good journalism is the business,” said Giner, who then finished with a flourish that all journalists could appreciate, but in this case had a double meaning:

“Life is too short to drink bad beer.”