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Holtz Communications + Technology

Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Serendipity: A strength of print

I was thumbing through my Sunday newspaper earlier this week when I came upon a full-page feature that, despite the dullness of the topic and my own lack of interest in government finance, drew me in. “State Budget 101” featured a cartoon professor walking you through a plain-English explanation of the key issues underlying California’s budget crisis with simple-to-understand charts and graphs. Here’s what it looked like:

Shel Holtz

It struck me, as I dug into the feature, that this is the kind of thing that newspapers should be doing. Enough innovative, useful material like this could entice a lot of people back to reading the daily dead-tree version of the news.

The same information can, of course, be found online. In fact, this same feature is available on the Web in an interactive format:

Shel Holtz

But here’s the main difference between a print newspaper and an online feature:

I would never, ever, click a link to “California Budget 101: Making sense of the state’s financial meltdown.”

My eyes would skip right past it as my brain subconsciously noted that it has something to do with budgets and finance, not my strong suit nor a focus of interest. But when I turned the page and saw the feature there, all in one place with its appealing graphics and a promise of simplifying something complex, I paid attention.

That’s serendipitous discovery of content.

As I noted a few weeks back, rather than introducing more and more compelling content like this, most newspapers have grown timid. Turning a page means finding more AP and Reuters coverage of stories you’ve already read on some news site because you learned about it on Twitter. With that kind of content, it’s no wonder people are abandoning newspapers.

But turning a page and seeing something you didn’t expect, something you never would have looked for, but that makes you go “wow,” that’s a capability that newspaper publishers need to exploit. And as long as I continue to find content like that in the Bay Area News Group’s newspapers, I’ll keep subscribing. (Incidentally, this is also a strength to be leveraged in internal communications, helping to simplify complex issues for employees that they would never click to view on the intranet.)

One suggestion, though. While the interactive, online version of the feature included a PDF of the print version, there was no link to the interactive page in the newspaper. Tighter integration between print and online will only bolster print’s value.

06/18/09 | 2 Comments | Serendipity: A strength of print

Comments
  • 1.Yes, I totally agree with you! Call me old-fashioned, but I LOVE the serendipity of print. I often stumble across interesting articles and ads that I'm convinced I wouldn't notice online because the subject matter doesn't initially appeal to me. That's one of the reasons I prefer reading books rather than newspapers and magazines on my Kindle.

    And you're right--the print media has been way too slow to exploit this competitive advantage as well as better integrate with online.

    Liz Guthridge | June 2009 | The LEAN Communicator

  • 2.I didn't ever understand why StumbleUpon was popular until I read this post.

    I feel like this is also a good example of capitalizing on the local advantage... which is less and less of an advantage, but still helping newspapers out. I'd definitely read this if I saw it in the Sentinel.

    Rex Riepe | June 2009 | Orlando, FL

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