Bob ‘The Thorn’ Cauthorn on how to save the newspaper industry

Vin points out a video webcast from UC Berkley of Bob Cauthorn being his normal self layin’ down the gauntlet. (If you don’t know him, lets just say… well, he was introduced as “a thorn in the site of the newspaper industry.”)

‘The Thorn’ lays out some mad science. The one hour, 42 minute and 34 second video is worth every millisecond. Although I wish there was an audio version. (While it’s nice to put a face with a name for those that don’t know him, the talking head video isn’t necessary. A video this long would have been much better on download/streaming/portability as an audio track.)

Anyway, there’s a lot of good stuff in here.

Cauthorn talks about general newsroom policies, “You’re not allowed to be on the phone to cover a story.” How there’s too many awards in journalism. Firing Editors that don’t grow circulation. You’ve probably heard all that if you’re a fan of Cauthorn, like me. Here’s some other notes I took:

… Starting a wiki experiment with open source software, “Forget the capital stuff. Find your top three reporters, tell them to not submit an expense report for the next two weeks and you can pay for this.”

He suggests taking your archives, dumping them into the wiki, and letting the public organize the information.

“I hope you all are not trying to make money off your archives, because you all are smokin’ crack.”

… He also suggests letting the public tag stories, letting them be “super-librarians” for you.

… He discusses the idea that newspapers are essentially unranked listings of information. We need to aggregate, organize that information and become the communities best repository for that information. That’s what newspapers have been for the last 100 years.

… He suggests organizing your material by geography in your community. Google is dangerous. Newspapers have the advantage now to move on geographic information. He advises everyone to move on this before Google does, because they can and they will.

… He also reiterates his prediction that daily print newspapers will begin to disappear, instead moving to a daily web publication with printed editions on strategic days of the week. (He suggests Friday, Saturday and Sunday).

It’s great stuff. Listen to it send it to your boss.