What's new in Tacoma print media

CityArts has its first monthly issue this week. Ensie is already a fan of the first monthly issue. She pointed me to the Stadium Thriftway where I picked up my very own copy.

I was happy to contribute a short squib for the front of the magazine about the Frost Park Chalk-Off. (Note to Harry Potter fans, a squib can mean many things beyond just a low level wizard, including a short piece of writing.)

In other Tacoma media news, I bought Friday's paper (for the first time in awhile) and looked at this week's GO. There are a number of changes, including printing the comics (instead of in a Friday SoundLife, which is no longer there). I think the magazine-style format serves the arts content well.

But it did get me thinking ... I think the Tribune should take the concept further.

I wonder if part of the problem with day-in/day-out print coverage is that there is seldom any single compelling reason to buy a printed paper today. I know some people who don't subscribe to the paper but buy it every so often at a news stand. In my experience, they are usually buying either Friday's (to find out what's going on that weekend) or Sunday's (for a variety of reasons, but frequently for the ads, actually).

So why not step that up? If I ran the Tribune (and I'm not trying to angle for your job, Dave), I would consider really making Friday and Sunday papers the key days for readers to get the Tribune in paper form, possibly even at the expense of the other days.

I'd use the Friday paper for huge spreads on the weekend with a massive focus on sports and entertainment. Then Sunday would be a day for big news coverage--the investigative reports, the week in review, the next week previewed with analysis and opinion pieces, big diagrams, timelines, flow-charts, etc. Some stories just work better on print than on the web, like long stories, analysis, investigative stories, multiple stories about the same topic, and stories with great illustrations or photographs. Put them all on Sunday.

Of course, to a certain extent, this is what's happening already--certain days of the week have certain focuses--I just think the Tribune might need to consider pushing it even more. I'll use arts coverage as my example, since I'm most familiar with it:

What if you went with the theory: "If it's arts, it's in GO." Cut arts/entertainment pages from the rest of the week and put them all in GO on Friday. Reviewers and writers can file their arts stories throughout the week as usual but unless there is something really time sensitive, publish everything in GO. Make it a fully-loaded arts magazine for the entire week, where GO covers everything from that Friday until the next issue. Any reader interested in what's going on in Tacoma for film/theater/food/music/entertainment/etc would know when to get the paper. And advertisers who want to hit those readers would know exactly when to advertise (and with that kind of price targeting and higher readership, couldn't you justify higher rates?).

The rest of the week, the short updates from the new GO Arts blog, Ed's Diner, etc. can be printed as usual with updates, reminders, links to articles, and previews of the Friday magazine.

The silos could be built out even further. For example, could restructuring business content along the same lines make Monday's paper essential reading for Tacoma-based business people? What if the daily paper were just three sections long: The Front Page section, for all news (world, national, and local); Sports (there is always enough sports to cover); and whatever focus that day is.

The bet the Tribune would be making is that by bundling like-content on a certain day, the circulation (and actual readership; technically a different number than circulation) for that day's print paper would increase, because interested readers would know there will be something they are looking for. Those readers may not purchase the paper on another day, but a different kind of demographic would be). In addition, these daily silos would provide much more targeted options for advertisers (and thus more lucrative for the Tribune).

And there ends Erik's most recent discourse on the Tribune.

If you're so inclined, here's my argument for adding Tacoma back into their name from a couple months ago and a short bit on cutting the "most active" stock quotes from the paper.