This is the second in a series of articles (Step One) giving my two cents about how newspapers can dodge their obituary).

Simply put, newspapers – or any industry endangered by the internet (real estate, travel industry, booksellers, video-rental stores…and the list goes on) – need to understand two basic facts:

• Like it or not, the (near) future is online (after that, who knows?). It’s virtual, not physical.
• Embrace geeks (those technologically conversant).

I think most people (grudgingly, in many cases) understand the former, but the latter doesn’t register. Here are my thoughts on how geeks can help save newspapers.

Newspapers have to be willing to listen to – and follow – geeks.

What do I mean by this?

Example: Any outfit can take a print columnist and post that daily column on the newspaper’s/magazine’s website, but if (for example) comments are not enabled…well, that outfit missed what the web is all about.

The web is:

• Link-driven
• Community-driven
• A flat line – not an inverted pyramid. A commenter/blog author blasting one’s coverage can be as important as the original coverage.

Geeks – in this article’s content, I mean the web-savvy – get this.

And geeks get the limitations/connections. Not everyone needs to be on Twitter or FaceBook; in some cases, one or the other would be a good thing.

My advice to newspapers: Hire/listen to geeks. They will steer you away from that $5 zillion Microsoft software purchase by pointing out that X is open source and, uh, free. And it’s used by more Fortune 500 companies than the MS product blah blah.

More importantly, geeks’ll tell a company that this or that will drive more traffic (and sales/ad impressions). They’ll be wrong often; we all are. But they’ll give the non-geeks insight into what they have never even considered but is happening all around them on the web.

Dear Newspapers: Online is the current survival mode – so at least listen to the geeks, who grok the web.

Scott Rosenberg, a founder of Salon.com, had a great newspaper anecdote the other day, describing the Q&A; from a “save the newspapers!” forum:

A young journalist who’s started up a blog that focuses on the 2010 census. Today we call this a “niche site”; but it’s also what we used to [in newspaper lingo] call a beat.
— Coll, Kinsley, Bronstein kick newspapers around

Again, the geeks – this guy running this unknown site – is an expert on same. He’s a geek. He gets the web. He gets what he’s reporting on. He’s the “beat reporter.”

I think Rosenberg’s off-hand comment is brilliant and really hits home.

Newspapers: Getting a better idea of the future?

Update 5/12/2009: At least one journalism school is getting the message – Northwestern University’s Medill journalism school is hoping programmers can save newspapers (via TechCrunch).

Northwestern University’s journalism school is offering free scholarships to software developers so they can further hone their journalism skills and possibly integrate the two for a media company down the line (disclosure: I attended this journalism school). The idea of creating programmers who understand journalism is compelling and brings attention to an important trend taking place in the industry.

— Leena Rao, “Calling All Coders: Journalism Schools Want You To Save The News Industry”