Here’s why Pinyadda is the best way to share news on Twitter, including examples from our community:

Know the best articles and blog posts to share

Pinyadda is like your personal assistant for news and information. Instead of having to go site-to-site or do searches (and often dig) for the news and blog posts that you want to click on, Pinyadda sifts through the firehose of content for you and collects the articles and posts you’re most likely interested in. Pinyadda serves the good stuff to you in real-time, filing each article as it’s published into clean pages you can browse based on topics, sites and people you follow (click for a quick 30-sec video overview).

With Pinyadda, you know the articles you’ll be into sharing to Twitter without lifting a finger:

• Want to tweet about news on a particular topic? Go to that topic page and see articles being published about it from sites across the web on everything from your city or favorite sports team to things like celebrities, food, social media, autos or green tech.
• Want to tweet articles from your go-to sites? View a feed of what’s been published most recently from all your favorites, and if you have one site in mind go to it’s individual feed page. (Tip: Here you can even tell Pinyadda to show you only articles published from a few sections of that site. It’s great for big sites like Boston.com where you may only be interested in a couple sections, like sports and events.)
• Want to share an article that lots of people are talking about? Go to your Home feed to see what articles people you follow are sharing (we call it pinning). You can also toggle to the “All People” feed to see what’s buzzing in the whole community on Pinyadda — lots of people use Pinyadda like a digital water cooler to share and discuss articles with groups of friends and colleagues, so you can always find great stuff.

Craft engaging news-related tweets

Since people use Twitter for different reasons, we designed Pinyadda’s integration with it with flexibility top of mind. This way you stay in the drivers seat of your voice and can mold your tweets as you like. Here are examples of some of the most effective ways to share all the news goodness on Pinyadda to Twitter:

1. Share a headline. This is the most basic way to share news to your Twitter followers. Just copy and paste the headline from the feed into the comment box. It’s straightforward, easy, and gets the news out quickly to your followers. (Tip: If you you want to legitimize the source of the link, include its Twitter handle, e.g. I know Boston.com is @bostonupdate.)
   
2. Share a quote, main point, question, or data point from the article. These are great ways to shake up how you share news articles to Twitter. These often grab your followers attention better than a straight headline, and shows you’re putting some TLC into your tweets.
   
3. Add value to the article by including your own commentary. This is a great way to demonstrate your expertise, opinions, or simply add some humor to the news you share with your followers.
   
4. Direct an article to a Twitter follower. Often when we read an article we think of someone – be it an inside joke, something that will help them in their job, or is relevant to other aspects of their lives. If the person you’re thinking of isn’t as ahead of the curve as you and on Pinyadda too, include their Twitter handle at the beginning. (Better yet, invite them to Pinyadda!)
   
5. Share a discussion to Twitter. If you’re part of or come across a great discussion on an article on Pinyadda that your followers on Twitter would like, simply enter  something like “check out this great discussion about X” when sharing the link to Twitter. (Tip: Combining #4 and #5 is killer if you know someone’s really into a subject,e.g. tweeting “thought you’d want in on this convo.”)
6. Promote a site you think is great. If you come across a site on Pinyadda you want your Twitter followers to know about, simply visit that site’s page and click on the big blue “share this site” button. You can even customize the message you want to tweet out with it.
   
7. Share your profile on Pinyadda to Twitter. Want people to know what topics and sites you follow, how many followers you’ve gained, and what you’ve pinned on Pinyadda? (We like to call this your news graph.) Simply tweet out the URL to your Pinyadda profile or include it in your Twitter bio.
8. Share your Yadda shwag to boost your cred on Twitter. Pinyadda’s points system allows you to compete to earn coveted spots as the “Maven” of topics or “Ambassadors” of your favorite sites. You can also unlock fun badges (some even have coupon codes attached) just for pinning the news you’re into. For example, we teamed up with the marketing gurus over at Hubspot and you can earn their Inbound Marketing Ninja badge set by pinning inbound marketing news. You can share all this cred by clicking on what you’ve earned from your profile. Want to be the Maven of Twitter?  Sounds like it’s time to get your yadda on!
   

Connecting Pinyadda to your Twitter account is easy.

Connecting Pinyadda with your Twitter account is simple. Choose an article you want to tweet, enter text you’d like to tweet in the comment box, select the Twitter checkbox, and hit the “Pin it” button (click here for a 30-second video). If it’s your first time doing this you’ll be prompted with a pop-up to enter your Twitter username and password. Once that’s done, the text in the comment box and a unique short URL will hit your Twitter feed.

When one of your Twitter followers clicks on the link, they’ll be brought to a page with the article. If the text you entered in the comment box exceed Twitter’s 140 character limit, Pinyadda automatically truncates. Rest assured, because when your Twitter followers click the URL they’ll see your full comment.

To manage your Twitter account on Pinyadda, visit the Contacts tab of your settings. There you can even see who out of the people you follow on Twitter are also on Pinyadda.

__________

Do you have other examples of great ways to share news to Twitter?  How can we make sharing links to Twitter better for you? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

First off, what’s the deal with Wikileaks recently and why is it being talked about everywhere?  To get a good snapshot on what is going on, I searched for the most popular words in articles about Wikileaks from the Pinyadda index.

(click image to enlarge)

• Notice the high frequency of “Afghan” and “Afghanistan”.  Recently, Wikileaks released over 92,000 documents relating to the Afghanistan war logs
• Julian Assange is the person behind Wikileaks.
• Bradley Manning is the main suspect in the leak.  Neither Peyton or Eli have been questioned (yet).

Second, which publications have been covering Wikileaks the most since June 1st?

(click image to enlarge)

• The Telegraph was one of the publications that Wikileaks gave the 92,000 documents to originally
• Yahoo! is a content machine-> they publish upwards of 1,000 items a day
• Surprised to see a smaller sites like True Slant and Boing Boing on this list

Over June and July, I kind of forgot about the Afghanistan War and I think there is a direct correlation to the amount it was covered in the press.  If any good comes of this Wikileaks story, I just hope that it is a reminder to one and all that there is a war going on.  Check out the number of mentions about Afghanistan pre-Wikileaks story and post.

(click image to enlarge)

• Notice the sharp increase in Afghanistan articles on 7/26/2010, when the Wikileaks story broke
• The relatively high amount of Afghanistan articles throughout July was surprising to me.  I must have elected to ignore these articles subconsciously.

I then asked Austin to write a conclusion for this piece.  Again, he declined and then Greg said ‘Sucks to suck’.

As I’ve mentioned before, we are all about helping publishers succeed online, so I wanted to share the 3 things I think online news sites and bloggers could take from the lean startup philosophy that could help their businesses:

1. Don’t write a single sentence of a post/article without talking to potential readers – Both Ellis and Ries stress the importance of testing the market for a web app before wasting the time of writing any code.  There is no reason journalists and bloggers should be any different.  Before starting a blog or new media property, create a simple landing page through Google docs with a description of the content you will be creating with an email form for interested users to fill out so you can notify them when you launch.  You can simply email the link to the page to people you think may be interested, post the link on social networks or even buy some Google AdWords for targeted keywords relevant to your content type.  From the number of people who fill out the form, you will be able to get a small sample size of early reader’s you can speak to about the direction of the blog that will give you some good data on your target audience.

2. Test several content types and then kill some – Ellis and Ries are big advocates of killing features early in a products lifecycle in order to develop the “Minimum viable product” for adoption in market.  Assuming you see some demand for the general topic you plan to cover, next you should develop several different content types you intend on creating on your site.  For example, some content types might include opinion/analysis pieces, list posts (i.e. top 10’s), summaries or reviews, etc.  Once you have created one or two items for each content type, ship them off to the users who expressed interest in your content type and see which type users like the best.  You should be able to tell from certain metrics (clicks, comments, link backs, retweets/pins, etc.) and from speaking to users what the minimum viable content types for a site would be to continue to retain them as readers.

3. Published doesn’t mean complete, optimize and iterate quickly - If a developer finished writing the code and designing his app, opened it for users and then didn’t continue to improve upon the product after it were live, they probably wouldn’t be very successful.  Now that we are no longer restricted to printing stories permanently on paper, there is no reason we shouldn’t iterate on our content after it is published online and we have been able to collect some data about how readers are taking to that piece of content.  Some of the simplest metrics we can gather to test how a piece of content is performing are click-through rates, time on page and bounce rates.  If an article isn’t getting clicks or retweets, trying changing its title on the fly.  Here is a great example of how the HuffingtonPost A/B tests their headlines in real-time.

These are just a few of the principles we can apply to help us create successful online content.  Are you a practitioner of the lean startup methodology?  Have suggestions for how this can be applied to online news and journalism?  Share them with us in the comments below!

“Pinyadda collects the news from the sources that I usually use and also brings me new sources that I did not know about.  It’s much faster and more efficient than stealing the paper from my boss.“

This week in no user left behind we’re happy to spotlight Sam Butcher. Contrary to Sam’s profile photo, he’s  not a Pinyadda Rookie by any stretch of the road; he’s been using Pinyadda since last fall, contributing to our growth and certainly the development of our community ever since. An environmental consultant, you’ll find Sam spreading his knowledge through pins on everything from China’s carbon emissions to new “peel and stick” solar panels. Here’s how and why Sam has been on Pinyadda all this time:

How did you get your news before using Pinyadda?

Magazine and paper subscriptions, TV and limited on-line outlets.

Why do you use Pinyadda?

Pinyadda collects the news from the sources that I usually use and also brings me new sources that I did not know about.  It’s much faster and more efficient than stealing the paper from my boss.

What’s your favorite aspect or part of Pinyadda?

My favorite aspects are being able to connect with others on topics of similar interest, being able to talk to other experts in the field about topics on which they may have unique insight, and getting involved in a thoughtful, civil conversation with intelligent people about a topic that I am interested in. And some of the people are damn funny.

What would make the experience on Pinyadda better for you?

Not sure – maybe being able to group people with respect to certian topics.

How do you describe Pinyadda to friends and colleagues?

“This wicked cool site you gatta check out.”  Actually, I describe Pinyadda as a site that aggregates news, information and opinion in an format that is easy for me to use and allows me to share it with other people who are intersting and might have similar interests.

__________

Thanks Sam — we love the pins and knowledge you bring to Pinyadda! I’d recommend you follow Sam on:

• Solar (he’s a Maven!)
• Cycling
• Environment (he’s a Maven!)

There are many, many sites that produce helpful content for bloggers.  How does a blogger determine which blog is right for them?  To help out our readers who blog themselves, I figured I’d dive deep into two blogs that have been indexed by Pinyadda for over 6 months: ProBlogger.net (PB) and Copyblogger.com (CB).

Since June 1st, here is some data for both PB and CB:

Chart 1: A comparison of PB and CB by the number of items indexed by Pinyadda since June 1st and each site’s Unique Users value for the month of June, 2010 as reported by Compete.com

As shown, PB has published more items since 6/1/2010 but received significantly less traffic than CB in June.   These numbers are helpful, but continue reading for more information about each site.

About

CB was founded in 2006 by Brian Clark.  By scanning the author names of roughly 25 posts, it appears there are 8-10 writers contributing to CB.  PB was started in September of 2004 by Darren Rowse.  With the exception of a handful of guest posts, it appears most of the content is created by Rowse himself.

Both CB and PB maintain Twitter handles.  Interestingly, CB’s significant lead in site traffic is reversed if you look at their Twitter communities, where  Darren Rowse (@problogger) has twice as many followers as Brian Clark (@copyblogger): 101,647 followers vs. 55,874 followers.

Site Layout

Below is a comparison of CB’s and PB’s homepages.  Recent CB articles are in the tradition center column while PB’s recent articles are aligned left.  I find CB’s interface more accessible upfront, but I found myself spending more time  on PB because of the sheer amount of information on the page.

Content

CB’s content heavily relies on list posts (like Make Your Readers Love You:  5 Lessons from Pixar and The 7 Secrets of Running a  Wildly Popular Blog), which from experience do very well with regards to traffic.  These types of posts, however, generally have a high bounce rate and do not convert article-viewers into consistent blog readers.

PB’s content has some list-type posts (like 10 Common Spelling Mistakes That Haunts Bloggers) but there is a greater variety of stuff on PB compared to CB.  Not only does PB seem less reliant on list posts for blog content, but PB has additional resources for bloggers like a paid forum and a job board.  The community at PB would have to be extremely strong and knowledgeable to justify paying for a community forum, but a job board is definitely a nice touch.

In conclusion, I hope you see the inherent value of both of these blogs as I now do.  Ultimately, you’ll probably read CB for one thing and PB for another.

Here are some more sites about blogging that Pinyadda has been indexing for less than 6 months (thus, not completely accurate data).  I will follow up with these sites on their 6-month Pinyadda anniversary.

First, the shutdown. In what may be an example of the Alamo strategy I described last Friday, Gannett made the decision to shut down the print publication of one of its small UK-based papers, the Hounslow – Brentford Times, formerly the Chiswick Times. According to MediaBistro, both publications will go online-only starting this week. The decision ends a run of continuous print publication that’s lasted for over a century. Somewhat ironically, an article on the web version of the publication describes the paper’s storied history and runs a large picture of the first printed edition. We may as well get used to these announcements and start to embrace the print eulogy as a new genre that everyone should master. Whatever Gannet’s motivations, it seems like the hard reality of print economics is starting to set in for everyone.

WikiLeaks this week released over 9,000 military documents, causing quite a stir among the media elite and prompting several discussions about the place of such an institution in the larger media landscape. Almost every media outlet published about the documents and their implications for the confluence of national security, freedom of information, and journalistic integrity. It’s a debate that’s sure to continue. While my own thoughts on the topic aren’t yet fully formed, I found a wealth of great opinions and commentary in the Media feed on Pinyadda, including this great post from our friends at the Nieman Lab, this post from Dan Kennedy over at Northeastern which includes a great comment thread, this interesting comparison between these documents and the Pentagon Papers from Mediaite, and yet another great rumination on the subject from James Fallows at the Atlantic. There are tons more opinions out there and we’ll be tracking the spread of this story through our index in the coming days. Regardless of your own position on the behavior of WikiLeaks in this incident, it’s certainly an interesting study in the emergence of an important new outlet in the news industry.

On a lighter note, the season premiere of Mad Men on AMC last night saw the news media play a crucial role in the development of the acclaimed series’ plot, as lead character Don Draper’s botched interview with Advertising Age led to unrest within his fictional ad firm. The show ended with Draper taking another interview, this time with the Wall Street Journal, in an attempt to right the ship. While perhaps not the most scientific study, the episode got me thinking about the changing role of newspapers in our public relations and marketing landscape. Set in the 1960’s, the shows characters had no other choice of outlet – any large-scale public image campaign had to run through the newspapers. But what would a firm in a similar situation do today? It seems almost obvious that they’d turn to social media and the web instead of the staid print institutions of today. Instead of a single reporter sitting in a smoky room, it’d be the crowd asking questions:  ”Who is @dondraper?”

To get your daily fix of great news from around the world of media, be sure to check out Pinyadda’s Media topic. From breaking news to in-depth analysis of the news industry’s past, present, and future, we’ve got you covered.

Even though it’s normal and healthy to take breaks during the day from your job, where is the balance? Do bosses frown when they see you surfing the internet or socializing? Is there an online resource that companies would actually encourage the use of? What qualities would a resource have to possess to get the employers OK?

Of course the first few sites that come to mind when talking about socializing on the web are MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. And just as obvious a statement is the fact that 1 out of every 2 companies block those sites. That’s right, even though these social networking sites can sometimes provide value to the user in the form of content sharing, 54 percent of U.S. companies say they’ve banned these sites.

The next thing I want you to think about is how many emails you get during the day to your work account (because we know your personal email is probably already blocked). If you’re like me the number is well over 100. With 100 work emails flying through my inbox, how am I going to find time or even find those email chains from my friends that I actually love answering every day? There is no good answer to that question; just simply reply email jail.

So, let’s take Pinyadda into the workplace and count the top 10 reasons why you need Pinyadda at work:

1. It’s not blocked, has a sharp UI and doesn’t look sleazy like most social networking sites. That’s right, just let your boss know you’re using a new tool that helps you monitor everything that’s happening in your industry.
2. Get served ALL of your news in one place. Instead of wasting the time to go to 10 different sites everyday as you’re drinking your morning coffee, you can get it served to you personal-assistant style on Pinyadda, and all in one place
3. Get trusted news. All of the content on Pinyadda is from trusted sources and does not contain any spam or bit.ly links you might find on Twitter or other social sites.
4. You can socialize! Pinyadda’s community is incredibly intelligent, humorous and witty.
5. Stay on top of info. Need to research a topic for boss? Google just won’t cut it anymore, as it’ll spit out a bazillion different keyword matches. What’s a trusted article and what’s not? Follow the specific topic and get real real-time news.
6. Carry on your private email chains inside of Pinyadda. Forget sifting through email, share articles with friends directly on Pinyadda, and stop fretting that someone will notice the Gmail or Yahoo! logo on your screen.
7. Be ahead of the curve and invite your co-workers. Perhaps pinning an article to your boss with an insightful comment will get you a raise (no guarantees on that one). At the least, you’ve shown your boss how on top of innovation and ahead of the curve you are by introducing him to Pinyadda.
8. Be the most informed worker at the water cooler. How else are you going to stay up on current events other than aimlessly sifting through the internet? Now you can transform Pinyadda’s digital water cooler to the physical water cooler at work.
9. Mentor new employees. Throw the new guy or intern a bone by sharing some awesome work related content.
10. Instantly cure boredom and actually become smarter at the same time! Just visit the All People feed and see what people are discussing.

Well there it is, I challenge a 10 point response on why Pinyadda is not for the workplace.

If this post made you wonder how Pinyadda might be used as an enterprise product, learn more of our thoughts here.

Topic Maven and site Ambassador earners from last week are below.

Know who you should follow and who to catch!

Kyle Alexander
Maven of: Internet, Military

Greener Balikov
Ambassador of: Digital Urban

Dave Bolton
Ambassador of: Tottenham Hotspur

Sam Butcher
Ambassador of: Time, Wall Street Journal

Caroline Cahill
Ambassador of: Boston Globe
Maven of: Food

Zach Cole
Ambassador of: BostInnovation, Potholes In My Blog, Fast Company
Maven of: Twitter, Apple

Shaina Dennis
Ambassador of: Gawker

John DiGilio
Ambassador of: 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, iBrary Guy
Maven of: Tech, Books

Tracy DiMarino
Maven of: Philanthropy

Matt Dunning
Ambassador of: The Tribeca Trib

Brian Fox
Ambassador of: The Economist

Daigo Fujiwara
Ambassador of: New York Times, Boston Globe
Maven of: Red Sox, MLB

Laurie Garbarino
Ambassador of: BostInnovation, JeffBullas.com, Newsweek
Maven of: Media, Home, Wine, Fashion, Boston Red Sox

John Garbarino
Maven of: Investing

Leslie Garbarino
Maven of: Relationships, Health

Chase Garbarino
Ambassador of: Pinyadda Blog, New York Times
Maven of: Television, Google, Boston Celtics

Austin Gardner-Smith
Ambassador of: Pinyadda Blog, New york Times, Wired, HighTalk, HarvardBusiness.org
Maven of: Boston Red Sox, Action Sports

Lindsay Goldner
Maven of: Advertising

Greg Gomer
Maven of: Entrepreneurs, Business, Fitness, Health, Science, A & E
Ambassador of: Pinyadda Blog

Rob Gonzalez
Maven of: Microsoft

Marissa Green
Ambassador of: The Huffington Post
Maven of: Social Media, Food

Dan Greenleaf
Ambassador of: Wine Enthusiast
Maven of: Beer

Tom Jump
Maven of: Boston

Sanj K.
Ambassador of: VentureBeat, GigaOM, HarvardBusiness.org, Media Post Publications, Chris Brogan Blog
Maven of: Innovation, Twitter, Startups, Media, Advertising, Boston

Jonathan Kardos
Ambassador of: Six Revisions
Maven of: Tech

Kristin Maguire
Ambassador of: NYMag, Newsweek, Boston Globe
Maven of: Opinion

Lucas Martinez
Ambassador of: PSFK.com
Maven of: Trends

Kevin McCarthy
Ambassador of: New York Times, HighMag Blog, BostInnovation
Maven of: Web 2.0, Boston Start-ups, Google, Boston

Ashley McGrath
Ambassador of: NYMag

Cheryl Morris
Ambassador of: Social Times, CNN, Yahoo!, The Atlantic, NYMag
Maven of: Fitness, iPhone, United States, Boston Red Sox, Environment, Apple, Health, Shopping, Maine

Josh Nespoli
Maven of: Boston, Nonprofit

Tom Nickerson
Ambassador of: Boston Globe

Dianne O’Neill
Ambassador of: Real Clear Politics

Janet Pincu
Ambassador of: New York Times

Ali Powell
Ambassador of: BostInnovation

Link Reynolds
Ambassador of: Seeking Alpha, Business Insider, New York Times

Max Silver
Maven of: Beer

Scott Soderstrom
Ambassador of: Business Insider, Scott Rafer’s Blog, Inc., Going Concern, My Buenos Aires Travel Guide, ArgentinePost
Maven of: Twitter, Accounting, Travel

Teddy Sullivan
Ambassador of: ESPN
Maven of: NBA, Duxbury, Boston Celtics, Taxes, Movies

Nicole Traficante
Maven of: Marketing, Inbound Marketing

Anthony Tripicchio
Maven of: NFL, Celebrities

Austin Williams
Ambassador of: Wired

Heather Witmer
Maven of: Marketing

———-

This week, Google issued a response to the FTC’s Discussion Draft on the future or journalism in no uncertain terms. Its language paints perhaps the most realistic view of the print publishing industry to date:

“The large profit margins newspapers enjoyed in the past were built on an artificial scarcity: Limited choice for advertisers as well as readers. With the Internet, that scarcity has been taken away and replaced by abundance. No policy proposal will be able to restore newspaper revenues to what they were before the emergence of online news. It is not a question of analog dollars versus digital dimes, but rather a realistic assessment of how to make money in a world of abundant competitors and consumer choice.”

This statement, which I believe to be wholly correct, is the truth that most of the news industry has been running from as their revenue graphs dive swiftly toward the x-axis. But it does shed some light on why some smaller publishers might be willing to stick by their businesses to the bitter end. As Google’s statement hints, what we are witnessing is not an incremental shift in the publishing industry but the emergence of an entirely new model for content creation and distribution. It’s not, as many publishers seem to think, a matter of turning the knobs and twisting the dials until the money starts pouring in the door again. It’s about fundamentally re-thinking the way readers and publishers interact in the digital world. In order for existing institutions to survive, they will have to undergo a metamorphosis on a massive scale. All aspects of the business – from newsroom makeup to management strategies to distribution channels to ad sales – need to be disrupted, re-organized, and cleaned out. Excess infrastructure needs to be dismantled and discarded. Ingrained policies and procedures need to be uprooted, new skills need to be acquired.

All of this represents an investment that can be daunting for many regional publications, especially when the outcome is largely an unknown. Even if the funds to manage the transition exist, it’s likely that the revenue picture will continue to get worse before it gets better, and there are a whole host of questions that need to be answered. When do abandon the print version? Who do we need to hire and where can we find them? How should we change our newsroom? Who should we let go? And most importantly, after we do all this, how will we make money? It’s a terrifying and crippling prospect for most small newspapers, even those with the support of larger media conglomerates like Gannet and McClatchy. And it makes it easier to see why some might just be willing to stick to their guns until the fighting overwhelms them.

At the end of the day, I see three main approaches for small to mid-sized regional newspapers:

• 

  Play It Down the Middle

  The Fairway Approach – Some small newspapers make a valiant attempt to move their products online. They shift resources toward web editors and designers, start producing small amounts multimedia content, and strive to maximize online ad revenue with standard techniques like pagination and SEO. They run into competition from independent local bloggers and local content conglomerates like Patch, Everyblock, Examiner.com and others. Print costs continue to increase. Print circulation, and consequentially ad revenue, continues to decrease. Online circulation increases for a period, then stagnates. Balance sheets tilt toward the red. The newsroom shrinks as long-time reporters are asked to take pay cuts and furloughs. Print revenue continues to decline, and eventually the presses are closed. Local blogs grow in popularity and start banding together to share content and resources. And then one day, probably a Friday, the publisher enters the newsroom and delivers the final blow. The paper is dead. This is the worst case scenario. It optimizes for nothing, and while being the least risky option certainly produces the least reward. The end result is a shutdown with the most possible collateral damage.

• 

  Stay and Fight

  The Alamo Strategy – Others of newspapers in the same category decide to stick to their guns. They maintain their focus on creating high-quality, investigative journalism for print publication. They maintain an online version of the paper but do little to improve it. They raise the subscription and newsstand price of the paper. They hire additional ad sales staff, perhaps at the expense of a newsroom position. Print revenue and circulation decline, but at a slow and steady rate. The publisher makes cost cuts, most likely reducing wages across the board and cutting all extraneous expenses. Eventually, subscription services like LexisNexis and Bloomberg are cancelled. Content quality suffers. Readership and circulation declines accelerate. Revenue follows. More staff cuts. More circulation declines. Local blogs gain more ground, and the downward spiral continues. And then one day, the publisher enters the newsroom and says, valiantly, ‘It’s over. This is bad, but it was expected. People are let go gracefully. Revenues decline smoothly, and the final blow dealt with more dignity.

• 

  Make Your Own Way

  The Trailblazer Method - A small minority reacts swiftly. The presses are shut, their assets sold. Sales people and editors are let go. Reporters are pressed into hard service, producing more content in shorter periods of time. Debt is taken on to manage the transition. New blood is recruited and installed. Web developers are brought in-house. Revenues drop alarmingly but stabilize quickly. Local blogs are approached, embraced, and where possible, brought into the fold. Social media is embraced as the new distribution stream. Additional revenue sources, including premium content subscriptions, memberships with extended benefits, and paid content placements are attempted. Revenues begin to climb. More blogs are brought into the fold. Video content becomes a staple. Revenues rise to cover costs, and then exceed them. Risks taken early pay off.

The third path is the toughest one to take and few seem really willing to commit. It’s risky. It might not work, and it requires an initial sacrifice that’s tough to swallow. But someone out there is doing these things, and these publications choose to ignore these entities at their own peril. As the Google document goes on to point out:

“The ultimate solutions that will result in a new online equilibrium for the news industry …must be driven by the industry itself, working with technology providers like Google and experimenting with its customers to develop new and innovative ways of delivering the news online.”

It’s a tough world out there for newspapers, and there are lots of important decisions that need to be made – quickly – if they’re going to survive.

Pinyadda Paperboys: Joel Abrams, Andrew Decker, John DiGilio, Tracy DiMarino, Amy Dumont, Michael Edwards, Daniel Flynn, Daigo Fujiwara, David Harris, Mitchell Kotler, Katya Laia, Mark Marino, Daniel O’Connor, Mickey Palone, Andrew Parker, Cell Phan, Todd Wallack, Nora McDonald

Pinyadda Curators: John DiGillio, Peter Drumgoole, Matt Dunning, Daigo Fujiwara, Katya Laia, Michael Dichio

Pinyadda Distributors: Caroline Cahill, Zach Cole, Sarah Gordon, Heather Witmer

Pinyadda Franchise: Nicole Traficante

Pinyadda Mogul: Pat Mylett, Tom Nickerson, Gregory Rogan, Casey Sullivan

Pinyadda Baron: Scott Soderstrom

Pinyadda Empire: Kristin Maguire, Sanj K.

Facebook, Zuck it!: John DiGillio

Watercooler Badge: Daniel Devine, Patrice Mitchell, Austin Williams, Tom Jump, Sam Butcher, Michael Dichio

RunKeeper – In Training: Greg Gomer, Cheryl Morris

VentureBeat, Innovator: Cheryl morris

The Second Glass, Vino Convert: Greg Gomer

Mobile Monday, 1 Bar: Lindsay Goldner, Colin Kennedy

Mobile Monday, 4 Bars: Scott Soderstrom

BeIn, Alpha Company: Jason Evanish

BeIn, Launch Company: Laurie Garbarino, Kevin McCarthy, Scott Soderstrom

BeIn, Funded: Scott Soderstrom

HubSpot, Inbound Marketing Newbie: Sam Butcher, John DiGillio

Hubspot, Inbound Marketing Rockstar: Marissa Green, Kristin Maguire, Zach Cole

Hubspot, Inbound Marketing Guru: Ravi Batra

Hubspot, Inbound Marketing Ninja: Scott Soderstrom

Microsoft N.E.R.D., Level 1: Kyle Alexander, John Garbarino, Matthew Growney, Jason Evanish

Microsoft N.E.R.D., Level 3: Scott Soderstrom

Microsoft N.E.R.D., Level 4: Lauren Foye

World Cup Stock Market, Group Play: Andrew Decker

World Cup Stock Market, Finals: Kipp Visi

CSN Chef’s Assistants: John DiGillio, Josh Nespoli, Steve Tarsa, Tatiana Webb, Marissa Green

CSN Sous Chef: Laurie Garbarino

CSN Weekend Trip Badge: Scott Soderstrom

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