Five Things The WSJ Can Do To Make Its ‘Local’ War With The NYT Matter

4) Go Free. I realize this goes against much of what Rupe ostensibly stands for but it might be one way to make immediate inroads. New York City papers are blessed with a subway riding readership. The Post and the Daily News are all about subway riding ease. In format and content. The Times and Journal are not. So why not break out the local section as separate tabloid-esque entity and just hand it out. For free. Guaranteed readership and probably an increase in WSJ readership to boot. After 12 months you fold it back into the paper or start charging. Hint: Pictures are your friends.

5) Here is something the Journal is doing very right and that the Times should probably take note of. Foursquare.

As part of the partnership, the Wall Street Journal is offering three types of badges—status symbols that Foursquare users earn for checking in a certain number of times at given locales….More interesting are the tips users can get when they check in at landmarks. For example, users visiting the George Washington Bridge might see this: Police were told to stop and search would-be subway bomber Najibullah Zazi’s car in Sept. 2009 as he drove up to the bridge—but waved him across without finding two pounds of explosives hidden inside.

This, or something like it is probably going factor largely into what local news looks like in next 5 years, so if the Journal can do it right they will be one step ahead of the game.

That’s all. I obviously don’t run a newspaper but I’ve been writing about them for a while now and with the exception of going free all of these suggestions are fairly basic stuff, easily implements, and can make a huge difference. And in the end that is usually where the frustration arises: there’s really no reason newspapers, and newsweeklies!, should still be catching up on this stuff so late in the game.

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