tool name

Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009

Tom Frazier: The Sun-Star as paper of tomorrow?

After years of being a nonsubscriber, we took the plunge a couple weeks ago -- signed up for a year. And we're glad we did.

It's nice to have the printed product, but I still read more online. My wife, on the other hand, pores through the paper daily. It has quickly become her morning ritual.

As we were getting ready for a short trip last week, I realized why we stopped delivery years ago. We canceled back then because of delivery problems. There were papers stacked in the driveway a couple times, instead of being held for our return.

We had no problem this trip. The papers were delivered within minutes of our return -- on a Sunday no less. We have a new system that is exceptionally effective and worry-free.

The system? It's a very nice neighbor, Bill -- our cul-de-sac volunteer. He checks and holds our mail and newspapers, puts out the trash, and waters the front yard. He does it with a huge smile -- for us and others on the court, too.

I decided to pack differently for this trip and not drag a laptop along. I have an iPhone -- an amazing device; it has an "app" for almost everything.

Unfortunately, I found that the iPhone is not the best way to read the Sun-Star. The mobile Sun-Star pages need a bit of tweaking. The good news is that McClatchy allows that; the same engine is used for the "three Bees" which have a bit better interface.

The trip was fine except that someone else decided to visit the East Coast the same time we did, Hurricane Bill. So instead of spending a lot of time outdoors, I stayed inside or in my rental car most of the time.

That allowed me some quality time to do some research on newspapers in general and the McClatchy Group in particular.

Gary Pruitt, chairman and CEO of McClatchy, was a panelist at a Stanford event in 2007. The subject for the packed evening was, "Pressing Times: Can Newspapers Survive in the New World of Journalism?"

Pruitt seems to be quite an optimist, unlike the other panelists. He claimed that one-half of all U.S. adults read a printed paper every day -- and even more on weekends. He lamented that the numbers were much lower for the 18- to 34-year-olds, as just one-third of them were daily readers.

When you include online newspapers with printed newspapers, Pruitt claimed that newspaper audiences are actually growing.

Pruitt's key points were that the Sun-Star and other McClatchy papers are in great positions. He feels that being the only daily in a moderate market is the place to be.

But he cautioned that the papers need to adapt and evolve and have four key characteristics:

Be the major source of local news in the community.

Be involved in direct mail.

Produce a "niche" printed product.

Have the leading local Internet site.

Pruitt quoted Charles Darwin and chuckled, saying you don't have to be the strongest to survive or the smartest. Instead, you need to be "the most responsive to change."

I wonder how he would rate the Sun-Star in 2009. Is the Sun-Star adapting?

Is www.mercedsunstar.com the leading local Internet site?

Is the Sun-Star's deadline a "rolling 24-hour" period, or is it still a particular set time? Pruitt said that all McClatchy papers need to be in the "breaking news" business.

For example, one reader asked this week why the Guaranty Bank story was in The Modesto Bee last Saturday, but not the Sun-Star. After all, the reader said, "there are Guaranty branches in both Merced and Atwater."

Is the Sun-Star the major source for local news? I think most folks would agree that's the case, but there's still plenty of room to adapt.

One such adaptation is in progress; it's called "Off the 99" -- a radio broadcast and podcast. There are a couple reasons to applaud this adaptation.

First, it's something new to Merced and is tackling locally important issues, such as the Wal-Mart project and the labor movement.

More importantly, it was done not by a dictate from above, but by two young local reporters, Scott Jason and Jonah Owen Lamb. It was their idea, their planning and their execution that put it all together. These are two gents who are members of the "texting generation."

Now that's what I call adapting to a changing world.

I for one hope the Sun-Star does continue to evolve and become a "Newspaper of Tomorrow."

Tom Frazier writes Sun Dog and can be reached at sundog@promessage.com.