Tomorrow, newspapers will sell out because they will be a collector’s item. The newspapers featuring big front page spreads of Obama’s inauguration will catch the eye of people walking past newstands and newspaper boxes. They will grab them to save for their children and grandchildren. They will be momentos for pocket change.

Which brings me to a point I have made over and over again (OK, maybe not hear, but I do say this). The newspaper’s future is as the specialty publication. The demographic of readers will be dying. The ones who still read papers were alienated by most newspapers doing repeated redesigns to appeal more to young readers (who aren’t reading newspapers, and don’t plan to) and appeal less and elss to its core customers, the 40-somethings, 50-something, 60-something and 70-somethings.

In the end, the newspaper never appealed to the young readers and it rejected its loyal readers. Newspapers still are reluctant to accept that print is dying and online is the real business model they should have developed. But there is still hope:

Newspaper as specialty publication.

Here are just a few examples where it could work:

• Major events such as the inauguration. Newspapers should consider not just having one print run, but having a few runs (how do you like the idea of getting people to buy not just one, but four, newspapers from a set?). All a newspaper would have to do is create content and reset the front page, maybe a jump page, and redo the print runs.
• Specialty newspapers in large print. Obviously, it would be cost prohibitive to do this daily, but a condensed version of the week’s news in large print is one way to woo back those alienated older readers. It’s also a whole new advertising product to sell to local companies who have that customer base.
• Specialty newspapers by interest or neighborhood. Now, this is one area where I think many newspapers have done well. I think they need to revamp the approach a little, however. Many times, specialty publications by interest become big ads with a dash of copy from unenthusiastic, overworked journalists who consider that type of reporting a joke. Neighborhood specialty publications tend to be treated like rags. Take pride in these specialty publications! Up the level of integrity and journalism. Farm the work out to freelancers or bloggers who are enthusiastic about the topics or neighborhoods.
• Create the future of newspapet boxes, where a reader can select five topics that interest them (maybe travel, sports, stock quotes, their local small town, and editorials), swipe their card or drop in a couple quarters, and a pdf custom newspaper prints. collated and stapled.

One day, the online news will be the primary product. I hate to say this because I know it will upset many journalists, but there really is no reason to be upset if your employers would just get it. But since they don’t, I will say it again.

Your product is the news. It is not the newspaper.

Journalism will always be needed, important, and valuable.

_{Photo of newspaper © Sanja Gjenero}

You are doing it all wrong. All of it. Wrong. Just stop.

Newspapers are running the wrong way.

Hey, it happens. We all can panic when we’re confronted with change. It’s called the fight or flight response. And newspapers have taken the flight route. Sad.

Step back five years, maybe 10. Newspapers see their penetration levels dipping, just a little, so they all do a redesign. They all switch to an a.m. cycle. (Is there an afternoon daily left? I’d love to hear about it.) They realize young people are not reading newspapers, so they decide to revamp to be alluring to said young people.

And don’t think they were, like, losing money. In fact, they were still making money. A lot of it. A fellow newsroom reporter characterized it perfectly. They used to make money hand over fist. Then, they were just making a shitload of money.

“Why, oh why, won’t 20-35 year old males read us?” they lamented! (Psst: it’s because they don’t like you, and they don’t have time for you, and they have wives and families who keep them far too busy to spend time with you.)

Flash forward to today and you can see how this strategy worked out for newspapers. Umm, yeah.

So here I am going to break down each thing you newspapers are doing, and why you should be doing the exact opposite to survive and even thrive.

So I’ve decided to start a series, one just for my own amusement because I know there isn’t a newspaper executive who is actually listening (or even knows what a blog really is). But hey, if you’re still working in newspapers you could, like, print this on paper and fax it to your editor. Maybe then they will listen to it. Let me know if you need a masthead.

I would worry this is burning bridges, but I pretty much set a torch to that bridge a while back anyway. So expect me to be quite blunt, open and frank in this series.

In this issue, one of the biggest, baddest, panicky things newspapers are doing: newspapers are going shorter when they should be going longer.

If people want short news, if they just want to know what happens when it happens, they are not turning to newspapers. Why would they? They can get it online or on TV faster. In this day and age, they can find almost anything one can possibly think of written sooner from a source other than the print newspaper.

There is only one thing the newspaper has to offer that a newspaper can do better than anyone. The long story. The investigative, special project story. The story that (now don’t sprain yourself) takes time to report. It takes time to craft it into an amazing piece of compelling writing that someone will read from lead to inch number 50.

Yes, I said time. So you need to quit doing what you call “beat shuffling” but all the reporters know is really downsizing. I was working at a Gannett newspaper, a reporter who was skilled at advanced computer-assisted reporting (as in building databases from scratch, followed by analyzing them, and then reporting, and then writing). I was told I would be the assistant business editor with loads of time for projects.

By the time I left (and left the news business entirely), I was expected to do the following in a typical week:

• Edit the business section when the business editor wasn’t in (as in, daily)
• Edit the real estate section
• Cover a small town
• Cover the transportation beat
• Be a business reporter
• Do business briefs
• Do some dorky weekly construction report thingie (mindless BS)
• Attend numerous staff meetings
• Attend editor meetings when the business editor wasn’t in (again, quite frequent)
• Post breaking news update to the web site (and they would get on you if they discovered you were slacking to less than 2-3 daily)
• Write 2-3 special project stories per month

Yes, you saw the last one correctly. How hilarious is that? At my previous job, my entire job description was that last bullet although, of course, in reality I did much more… such as getting yanked off reporting and running a local news desk for a couple months. That kind of ate into my investigative reporting time.

Needless to say, with newspapers operating this constant “feed the beast” mentality in some vain attempt to keep up with the myriad faster news sources, that doesn’t leave much time for, well, journalism.

But newspapers should be embracing what they are. They are the perfect spot to do the opposite. There are few things in life better than kicking back with a Sunday newspaper, sipping on coffee, and reading an in-depth investigative piece and news feature. Nothing.

And that is the one thing newspapers have on all their competition. And it’s the one thing they flat-out refuse to do because it takes commitment to real journalism against all odds, commitment to real journalism because readers should be more important than profit margins and studies and demographics and penetration rates.

Part of the reason I got on this tear was something I read by the Queen of Spain blogger Erin Kotechi Vest, who is a fellow journalist turned blogger. If you haven’t yet, go read the full post, Damn You Harry Shearer.

Rarely was I able to dig any further, as the news cycle was short, the attention span of listeners shorter, and I had an average of 30 seconds to tell you everything you needed to know.

That is not journalism, that is marketing packaged as fast-food news and information.

On the few occasions I approached news directors and asked them for the time or leeway to dig a bit further, I found myself in that real journalism world where you are looking and striving to hold someone or something accountable. To find out what really happened, and make it public.

Damn brilliant.

So what is the solution in an industry that is laying off and consolidating left and right, even outsourcing local news to India? How can you do more with fewer reporters?

Well, I have a confession to make. When I was temporary editor for a Lee Enterprises newspaper, reporters would often tell me about a bigger, better story they could write if they had just a few days. You can ask any of those reporters, and they will tell you. If it sounded like a cool story, I told them to go for it. I told them I would much rather have a kick-ass Sunday story than a lame Tuesday story. I just made sure I didn’t have the whole newsroom doing real journalism at the same time.

Nothing bad happened. The beast didn’t attack. The newspaper was printed, and all the news holes got filled. Shoot, I rarely even used AP copy. But you newspapers can. If you really think 90 percent of your readers distinguish between AP stories (or an AP story with a local lead) and your own reporters’ stories, you are seriously deluding yourself.

If I’d told the powers that be about my strategy, they would have flipped. After all, this is a newspaper where we were told in-depth stories should be no longer than 10 inches. This is where I was working as a special projects/CAR reporter. Not good. I totally swear I am not making this up. This is not a joke. You can read the full internal memo sent to Romanesko if you don’t believe what you are about to read. Or if you don’t want to believe. This was a directive:

Routine stories need be no longer than 6-8 inches. In-depth stories should be within the 10-12 range.

Our technique must be – tell ‘em what the story is about, tell the story and get out quickly.

Wow. Yeah. Take a moment and just soak that in. This is what has happened to a business that once brought down a President.

What newspapers should do instead is feed the beast crap instead of tying up your reporters’ valuable time regurgitating press releases or compiling information for cutesy graphics or writing briefs. Use the wire for filler, not real reporters with real brains. Shoot, let the beginners do that.

But those reporters who want to do more, who have the skill and passion to do more, let them loose! Let them be newspaper reporters. Again.

And for those of you who just like newspapers, and miss them, go read real journalism where you can still find it from time to time. And when you do, write the publishers of those newspapers and tell them you want more of it.