Postings and the Post

If anyone is reading this (other than you, John -- thanks for the call!) please bear with me while I try to find my voice in it.

A big part of this blog will be on saving the print newspaper -- not the exclusive print newspaper, not the "let's hold off on breaking news till the morning" newspaper, but a print newspaper, for the following reasons:

A. We know how to do news in print better than anyone else. We should play to our strengths. We can do video, but TV stations have been doing video for decades. Maybe they know how to do it better than we can? Maybe they have the technological and support infrastructure to do it better? That doesn't mean never do video. That means don't think video is going to save us.

B. The ease of entry to the Internet marketplace, the low cost of doing business, and the faddishness that seems inherent to a world of seemingly infinite choices make it hard to economically support the sort of large operation one needs to cover the news. We need a dedicated channel into people's lives and homes that we control, and thus can charge premium ad rates for. Voila, the printing press and the trucking network!

C. If newspapers had been going great guns and all of a sudden broadband happened and we lost half our circulation, then the Internet would be the problem. We've been losing circulation in real or relative terms for decades. We've been propping up ad revenue with quick fixes since the late 1980s. All this time, people have been telling us what they don't like about newspapers, and we stolidly resist listening to them. (Take jumps. Take the ignominy still rained upon the newspaper business' one great success story of the last 30 years.) So "the Internet is the answer" isn't the only answer.

In line with which, the Washington Post wishes to hear from its readers. It particularly wishes to hear from prime-demographic female readers about what they want in a print newspaper. Good for the Washington Post! Unfortunately, being a newspaper, it can't go too far go out of its way to admit that it wants this information -- that might seem like shilling, or not being objective about yourself. But it's a start. (But if those readers say they want articles that don't jump...)