Five Things The WSJ Can Do To Make Its ‘Local’ War With The NYT Matter
Five things we think could help make the Journal’s Greater New York Section actually matter.
1) Hello the Internet: I know. This is a very 1999 suggestion. But apparently still an important one. The Wall St. Journal may, at some future unforeseen date, win the newspaper wars because it never fell for the whole free content racket. That day has not yet arrived, and in the meantime they have made themselves nearly irrelevant to an ever-increasing group of people accustomed to getting their news online. I am one of those people. I rarely read the Journal because the NYT is and always has been more easily accessible. And I’m not just talking print articles made available online. The Times has embraced the blogosphere very successfully (maybe too much…I lost track of how many blogs they have a long time ago), in tone as much as format. They do quick posts. Their columnists and reviewers blog. They update constantly. Their City Room and Caucus blogs are on par as go-to news sources for politic and local as their homepage. The Journal does not have this. At all.
2) Hello the Twitter. Is the WSJ on Twitter? I had to look. They are, but not enough — i.e. I was only able to find their WSJNY feed when someone on my feed RT’d it. This is pretty basic stuff, particularly for local coverage which is often fast moving and of a practical nature. Are the subways working? Is there a traffic jam on the West Side Highway because the President is in town? Are manhole covers exploding in midtown? Etc. The Journal’s local section could make huge inroads by providing these sorts of quick, servicey, updates on Twitter that linked back to the actual section online (which I had to look to find). Also, all of their writers should have Twitter accounts. As I said, this is pretty basic stuff, but one of the reasons the NYT‘s news trickles down so successfully is that a number of its journalists are hugely active on Twitter and push stuff out. I am thinking about David Carr, Brian Stelter, Micki Maynard, Patrick LaForge. It only takes a few, but it makes an enormous difference.
3) A sense of humor. It’s something they seem to be fumbling towards in the ad department, at least. But please go look at this page and tell me if you seen anything to smile about. I don’t mean humorous, necessarily, just that little nudge or spark that can be achieved in a well-worded headline. Local news should be two things: informative and enjoyable. I’m not suggesting the Journal go all New York Post (though the question remains: why did Rupe start this section when he already has the Post?) but geez, have some fun. In the visual sense, too. The Times perfected the local fun element in their sadly now defunct City Section, but aspects of it still remain in their City Room blog. Monday’s six sentence post about exploding man hole covers in Times Sq. deserves some sort of t-shirt: “After the explosion, a firefighter yelled: “It’s not Disneyland, people. Get the hell out of the way.” It’s entirely possible the Journal reported this line, also, I just have zero idea where to look for news of this sort on their site, or Twitter.
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