Outcompete your neighbors online

Are you ignoring the town next door?

Newspapers live in the land of terra firma. Each newspaper primarily covers the communities it can reach, with a car and a print subscription. Yes, the paper itself probably covers the entire world with the assistance of the wire services, but the target audience is local.

Perhaps you are fortunate enough to live in a city with two daily newspapers. I am sure the online competition is sizzling — and readers are gaining the rewards.

Increasingly, though, most mid-sized newspapers operate in an environment where there is just one daily newspaper that predominates — theirs. The city or town next door may have its own community daily, and it doesn’t much mess with yours. This is the status quo. Aggressively moving into the neighboring market is not the norm. The result? Newspapers are lazy from lack of competition, and their Web sites suffered because of it. Why put resources there when it just might eat into their own print subscriber base?

But eat into the competition’s subscribers? Now that’s a little more interesting.

We have reached a point when newspapers have embraced the Internet. They can’t help it. It’s such a useful way to provide news and services to the community that they have bought into the idea, even if it’s costing them on the bottom line for a few years.

What has not changed as much, though, when it comes down to covering the local community, is who provides the news content. It’s still the local newspaper. And it’s not so much the neighboring paper.

The Internet, though, is more than a way to provide deeper content and services to your community. It’s a good way to target others.

I am surprised that more newspapers are not waking up to the predatory opportunities available to them online. The formula is simple. Build a better Web site, promote it to the neighboring community, and gain readership. Create weekly free publications for neighboring communities that are easy to distribute and will generate enough ad revenue to support them. Offer lots of content online. Save on paper and distribution costs. Once the concept is embraced, the design of the online content and weekly publications can begin.

Is this aggressive journalism good for the newly targeted community? Will the community next door be gaining a more energetic and useful source of news content? Will the local newspaper wither under the weight of competition? How easy will gaining readers be?

I suppose it all depends on the quality of service your neighboring newspaper offers. Find a weak spot in a neighboring newspaper’s services and throw resources at it.

I’d be banking on good old competition to sort it out. In the meantime, shouldn’t you be reaching out online to the town just beyond your subscriber base?