I've always been a huge fan of Rob Curley's ever since I read a Fast Company feature on him about how he's helped enlighten newspapers in Kansas, Florida and now Washington about how to improve their products. (Read full article here.)
And while Rob is viewed as an Internet geek (which is good) his real value is that he points out some obvious truths that many people just don't want to hear. In other words, print what people want to read. This made me realize the main challenge facing newspapers and magazines today isn't technology but the fact that many just don't give the readers what they want. The only thing technology has done is speed up the process and point out the flaws.
I bring this up because Rob has a recent post using food as an analogy about how newspapers should think about news. (Read post here.)
He also agrees with my point of view -- that Sam Zell actually makes a lot of sense and people better start listening.
I know this is probably going to make me a little unpopular — or maybe that’s more unpopular — with some of the traditional journalism folks out there, but I actually agree with a lot of the things that Sam Zell has been saying lately.
We need to become more relevant to our audience. We have to make ourselves indispensable to our readers. We shouldn’t let a false sense of self-importance get in the way of trying to make news organizations matter to most folks again. Zell is absolutely correct on these points.
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