Newspapers delude themselves into thinking that readers read nothing else. The assumption is that it’s not news until we cover it. So every newspaper covers the same story, wasting billions of dollars per year in duplicated effort industrywide.

And, for that matter, a related form of bigotry has always driven the whole “local” model for local radio and newspaper coverage. The model is based on pandering where the constantly reinforced message is that local people are better than people who aren’t local, and local businesses, organizations, schools, churches and resources are better, too. Local radio and newspapers take an us vs. them attitude toward the world, and that’s largely the business model.

Now that the Internet has killed “local,” the survival adjustment that radio and newspaper companies must make is to cover local events for a global audience. Radio stations and newspapers must now consider the larger, newer audience, and stop the bigoted pandering. And they must also stop covering the larger world.

While I agree with his premise that the Internet is killing local news, I disagree with his suggestion for a solution — that local news organizations need to stop pandering to the local audience.  I think the solution is the exact opposite.  I think they need to pander MORE.  I’ll give you three examples:

1. What affects your life more, a budget cut in the Defense Department or a budget cut in your local school system?
2. What affects your life more, a national report about crumbling infrastructure or a story about how a new stoplight is going to be installed at a problematic intersection near your house.
3. What affects your life more in the short term, the most recent quarterly earnings of Wal*Mart or the announcement that a new Starbucks is opening in your small town?

I think you probably see my point.  In most cases, local news affects your life more than national news.  And, there’s less competition for local news.  Anyone can hop on the Internet and find the national stories I mentioned above (that is, if I didn’t make them up), but they’re not likely to find much coverage of the local stories beyond their local news organizations.  This type of story is what local news organizations need to cover to survive.  Despite this, if I tune in to my local TV or radio station, or open my local daily newspaper, I see large portions of their “news hole” committed to national stories.  This is particularly problematic in the case of the daily newspaper, because the news I’m reading was actually printed the night before … and I know I can get a more up-to-date version online.

There are a miriad of changes that need to come to local news organizations if they want to survive, and you can add to the list “the need to become hyper-local”.  It’s an old business mantra — do what no one else is doing, and do it well.

Hat tip to Podcasting News for alerting me to this story.

Before you all email or post that Santelli is a pundit and not a reporter … I understand that.  Interestingly, however, in his profile on the CNBC website, he’s listed as an on-air editor.  Fact is, I think his rant was so far over the top that he can’t see the top any longer.  But, then again, it’s raised his profile and at the same time gotten people talking about CNBC … which I suppose makes him and his employer both very happy.

Scott suggests print reporters need to build alliances, diversify, and get closer to the cutting edge.  I agree.  The skillset that print journalists have is one that is still of use in the world.  Print reporters just need to learn how to put it to use.

As a PR professional, my world is changing too.  I find myself contacting fewer and fewer print reporters trying to get stories for my clients.  This is partly because there are fewer of them, partly because the ones who are there are overworked and less open to pitches, and partly because fewer and fewer people are actually reading newspapers.

Instead of wasting my time pitching newspapers all the time, I’m contacting bloggers, I’m posting online news releases via PRWeb, PR Newswire, and Business Wire, and I’m CREATING media for my clients via podcasting and web videos.  As the world moves further and further away from print media and more into online and user-generated media, the public relations pros who know how to work in that element are the ones who will continue to succeed.

What do YOU think?  Will the successful PR pro of the next decade be a cross breed of today’s PR pro and a social media producer?

The editor of PC Magazine says after the January 2009, the 27-year-old computer magazine will discontinue its print edition.  Henceforth, the magazine’s content will be delivered online and in an email version.  Here’s an excerpt from the announcement from Editor Lance Ulanoff:

While we are energized by the endless possibilities of the digital format, I assure you that the decision to stop producing a hard-bound copy was not an easy one. But the reality is that the ever-growing expense of print and delivery was turning the creation of a physical product into an untenable business proposition.

There’s no doubt we’ll be seeing more and more of these announcements from veteran print pubs.  The growth of online news content puts publications like PC Magazine at a huge disadvantage from a number of sides.  The magazine’s deadlines were such that the news it delivered to subscribers was six weeks old when it arrived.  Subscriber rates are down at nearly every print publication that exists today, mainly because it’s just not a format that people want any longer.  Digital is better for so many reasons that I just don’t have enough electrons to put them all on this blog.

Anyone interested in a pool to guess which major pub will be next?  My guess is the San Jose Mercury-News.  They’ve been shrinking that paper to the point where it’s almost irrelevant.

Rocked by warnings that it will cost news organizations $50,000 more per reporter to cover Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain, a growing number of journalists and press pundits are questioning why the media is staffing up coverage of the political conventions where little major news is expected. At least one paper and several Washington bureaus, we’re told, have budgeted only $100,000 for political coverage, and their convention teams will eat most of it, leaving little to put reporters on the campaign trail. Mark Potts, a media consultant who blogs about the industry on RecoveringJournalist.com, goes further: Leave the campaign coverage to the big shots, like AP, and spend that money at home. “That $50,000 would go a long way toward paying the annual salary for another reporter to cover something readers really care about, like city hall, or local schools.”

The resulting discussion (one example can be found at The Daily Kos) comes from many news blogs using this to further their case that bloggers can report the news much more efficiently than the traditional print news organizations.  While this is likely true, the problem with this discussion is that this Whispers item is not terribly clear.  Is that $50,000 figure the cost per reporter to cover one of the conventions, or is it the cost per reporter to cover an entire campaign?  I agree that the number is high, but there’s a vast difference between racking up a $50K bill in five days versus more than a year.

That aside, bloggers CAN cover the convention much less expensively than a traditional media outlet, particularly when you look at the traditional media outlet literally eating $100,000 worth of budget.  One great example of economical coverage comes from the blog Pam’s House Blend, which is fully credentialed for the Democratic Party Convention and is funding the trip through donations from readers.