If Mark Cuban could change your sports section, here's what he'd do:

It may be the future, but the distant future. In the meantime, we have the problem that major advertisers still believe in print more than they believe in the Internet. So if you drive your audience away from the print product to your Internet product, even if the Internet product is for subscribers only, you are going to take a huge financial hit in the near term. Which no one wants to do.

I think it's nuts anyway for newspapers to make their Web sites like newspapers. Instead of competing against ourselves, we ought to make our Internet sites more like TV and compete against them. Less reading, more video.

 

Frank, people head to the internet for one thing above all else: information.

Our web sites should be dumping ground (albeit logical, easy-to-navigate dumping grounds) for all of the information we accumulate during our day-to-day duties that doesn't get into the paper.

 

Why would I want to read stuff that wasn't good enough to make the cut? And why would I want to pay people to write it?

 

Rosters (particularly for high schools)
High School depth charts
Sortable Statistics on par with the ESPNs/SI.com's of the world
Live game scores (particularly for high schools)
Schedules/results
Quick game recaps
Bar/restaurant guides
Easy-to-search databases of every restaurant review ever written
Easy-to-search databases of every movie review ever written
Easy-to-search databases of every concert review ever written
Event photos that didn't make it into the paper
1-on-1 interviews with area personalities/sports figures
Quick, web exclusive weekend guides
Nuts-and-bolts profiles of all local bands
Free, easy-to-use classifieds that users can upload themselves

Every newspaper story should be accompanied by complimentary material on the web: photos that didn't make it in the paper, an audio bit, a Q and A with the writer of the story, an analysis of the story (The story that runs in the newspaper is: BRYANT MCKINNIE BENCHED AT LEFT TACKLE; Accompanying it on the web site is the beat writer's analysis of how this position change will affect the Vikings), photos that did not run in the newspaper.

Our websites should be localized versions of a combination of MaxPreps.com, ESPN.com, DigitalCity.com, CraigsList.org, etc

 

When a person in a newspaper's coverage area has a question about anything, the first place he should think to turn is that newspaper's web site.

From, "What's the height and weight of the starting running back at Eastside High and how many yards per game is he averaging?"

To, "It's 2 p.m. on Saturday afternoon and I'm really in the mood for an authentic italian sub. . . I wonder where I should go."

To, "What's the halftime score of the Eastside-Westside football game?"

To, "Remember that instant replay challenge in the second quarter of the game that was overturned? Although it did not really factor into the overall outcome of the game, I wonder what the writers in the press box thought of the referees call. . ."

 

That was me.
But, he left out the part about leaving his employees twisting in the wind.

 

Well, Daemon, now you're talking about using the Web as a sort of almanac/library rather than as a news site. That's fine as far as it goes, but I don't see that it helps us as news organizations. I think we need to see newsprint and Internet as two distinct products with two distinct audiences. I don't think we help ourselves by telling consumers of either to go to the other product, nor do I think we help ourselves by making the content nearly identical. The Internet is a different medium and ought to be treated as such. Treating either as a stepchild of the other will only hurt one or both products. If newspapers cede hard news to the Net, it will only frustrate existing customers and drive them away from the product that currently pays the bills. If newspaper Internet sites cede depth to newspapers, then the medium won't grow and competing sites may develop to fill that void. Not an easy predicament, and one unlikely to be settled soon. But I'll never see any giving up of breaking news to be anything but hurtful to the newspaper. History says that's what happens when you try to make a daily newspaper into a magazine.

 

Well, there's our philosophical difference.

In my opinion, you break news on the web, flush it out in the paper.

You give people raw information on the web, and make sense of that information in the paper.

 

Fixing your typo.

 

That's fine, but it's the 2000s and most of the second papers are gone. Readers had a second paper to go to for newsy products in the 1970s. The people that want to do that today will go to the same paper's Web site. You get readers online and in print.

The problem for papers remains: You (increasingly) can't make any eyeballs off of print ... you can't make any money off the Internet.

 

Sue, a question: Have you ever heard of Google?