By: Lucia Moses In one of the more far-reaching efforts of late to combat readership declines, the biggest U.S. newspaper publisher is launching a company-wide program calling for stronger emphasis on the impact local news has on readers.
For the Gannett Co. Inc. initiative, titled "Real Life, Real News: Connecting with Readers' Lives," to have a shot at working, newsrooms will have to change some long-standing habits in the way they approach news coverage. "We tend to fall into autopilot," said Mark Silverman, publisher and editor of
The Detroit News, one of the execs from Gannett's large papers who learned about the program recently. "We need to take a look at the community from the outside in." Coverage of budget cuts, for example, could focus on how parents are being charged for extracurricular school activities, he said.
"Real Life" grew out of internal research that showed papers had to do better in satisfying interest in local news and connecting with young readers, Gannett Senior Vice President Phil Currie wrote in an e-mail to
E&P. "'Part of the disconnect is not recognizing those things in life that are so important to readers. So the approach we are advocating is wider coverage of the moments of life that mean more to the readers," he wrote.
Gannett's project also "is really in line with what we found about people's interest in everyday people," said Mary Nesbitt, managing director of the Readership Institute at Northwestern University's Media Management Center. "It's not just doing more stories about everyday people but presenting news' everyday effects on ordinary people."
Gannett editors will begin training this month in "Real Life," but some are already looking at changes like requiring discussions about each story's impact on readers, injecting more creativity into story-telling, making beats more consumer-driven, and throwing out the inverted pyramid.
Silverman said "Real Life" isn't about replacing important stories with fluff. "Anytime you talk about about readership, people think you're weakening the paper," he said. "That's garbage. We do an awful lot of aggressive enterprise."
The idea of stressing relevancy and service has been catching on throughout the industry, though usually on a paper-by-paper basis.
The Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif., is preparing to introduce this month news and design changes to its feature sections that emphasize a "call-to-action theme" in a bid for young and female adults. The changes include more arts and entertainment news and a new health and family section, among subjects found by the Readership Institute to be of high interest.
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