Count the digital devices. Photo by debaird, via Flickr CC

Anyone in the business of trying to communicate in a substantial way with younger people - and while this generally falls into the subset of “Anyone With A Web Site that’s not aarp.org,” I’m thinking here mainly of higher education and news web sites - should waste no time in picking up a copy of Don Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital, a look at the age cohort he calls The Net Generation. Net Geners are those currently between the ages of 11 and 30, who have grown up completely steeped in technology and, for the past 12 years, the internet.

But who are these digital natives? And what makes them different from those of us Boomers and older? Tapscott gets to that list early in the book:

THE EIGHT NET GENERATION NORMS

If Wonder bread builds strong bodies in 12 ways, this generation is different from its parents in 8 ways. We call these 8 differentiating characteristics the Net Generation Norms. Each norm is a cluster of attitudes and behaviors that define the generation. These norms are central to understanding how this generation is changing work, markets, learning, the family, and society. You’ll read about them throughout the book.

1. They want freedom in everything they do, from freedom of choice to freedom of expression. We all love freedom, but not like this generation. Choice is like oxygen to them. While older generations feel overwhelmed by the proliferation of sales channels, product types, and brands, the Net Gen takes it for granted. Net Geners leverage technology to cut through the clutter and find the marketing message that fits their needs. They also expect to choose where and when they work. They use technology to escape traditional office constraints and integrate their work lives with their home and social lives. Net Geners seek the freedom to change jobs, freedom to take their own path, and to express themselves.
2. They love to customize, personalize. When I was a kid, I never got to customize The Mickey Mouse Club. Today’s youth can change the media world around them - their desktop, Web site, ring tone, handle, screen saver, news sources, and entertainment. They have grown up getting what media they want, when they want it, and being able to change it. Millions around the world don’t just access the Web, they are creating it by creating online content. Now the need to customize is extending beyond the digital world to just about everything they touch. Forget standard job descriptions and only one variety of product. As for government portals, they want “my government” customized online.
3. They are the new scrutinizers. When I was young, a picture was a picture. No more. Transparency, namely stakeholder access to pertinent information about companies and their offerings, just seems natural to the Net Gen. While older generations marvel at the consumer research available on the Internet, the Net Gen expects it. As they grow older, their online engagement increases. Businesses targeting the Net Gen should expect and welcome intense scrutiny of its products, promotional efforts, and corporate practices. The Net Gen knows that their market power allows them to demand more of companies, which goes for employers as well.
4. They look for corporate integrity and openness when deciding what to buy and where to work. The Internet, and other information and communication technologies, strip away the barriers between companies and their various constituencies, including consumers, activists, and shareholders. Whether consumers are exposing a flawed viral marketing campaign or researching a future employer, Net Geners make sure company values align with their own.
5. The Net Gen wants entertainment and play in their work, education, and social life. This generation brings a playful mentality to work. From their experience in the latest video game, they know that there’s always more than one way to achieve a goal. This outside-the-box thinking results from 82 percent of American children aged 2 to 17 having regular access to video games. It’s a fast-growing industry: in the United States, video game sales were $8.4 billion in 2005, with worldwide sales expected to hit $46.5 billion by 2010. This is a generation that has been bred on interactive experiences. Brand recognition alone is no longer enough, something leading companies recognize.
6. They are the collaboration and relationship generation. Today, youth collaborate on Facebook, play multiuser video games; text each other incessantly; and share files for school, work, or just for fun. As evidenced by sites such as Yub.com, they also engage in relationship-oriented purchasing. Nine out of ten young people we interviewed said that if a best friend recommends a product, they are likely to buy it. They influence each other through what we call N-fluence Networks - online networks of Net Geners who, among other things, discuss brands, companies, products, and services.
7. The Net Gen has a need for speed - and not just in video games. Real-time chats with a database of global contacts have made rapid communication the new norm for the Net Generation. In a world where speed characterizes the flow of information among vast networks of people, communication with friends, colleagues, and superiors takes place faster than ever. And marketers and employers should realize that Net Geners expect the same quick communication from others - every instant message should draw an instant response.
8. They are the innovators. When I was young, the pace of innovation was glacial. Today it’s on hyperdrive. A twentysomething in the workforce wants the new BlackBerry, Palm, or iPhone not because the old one is no longer cool, but because the new one does so much more. They seek innovative companies as employers and are constantly looking for innovative ways to collaborate, entertain themselves, learn, and work.

Again, there’s a whole lot of good information between these covers to chew on. Me, I’m still working my way through, so a more considered analysis will have to wait. But until then, you can also hear Tapscott interviewed at length by Leo Laporte and Amber McCarthy on the net@night program here.

How are your sites changing to meet the increased expectation of Gen Net?

My name is Gina Chen. I’ve been a newspaper journalist for 20 years, and I’m worried — but excited — about the future of the industry I love.

Gina Chen is really no different than the thousands of journalists in newsrooms around the country, trying to make sense of where the news business is heading. Except this: She’s doing something to help her colleagues along.

Save The Media, Chen’s recently-launched blog, exists, as she puts it, as a “kick in the pants”:

I got into this business with the typical idealism. I wanted to be a voice for those who had none. I wanted to expose the wrongs in society. I wanted to make a difference. And in my small way, I have.

But like a close relative who sometimes needs a kick in the pants, journalism needs to get its head together, I think.  New media is here, and you need to use it.

I’m worried because so many journalists I know are  stubbornly digging their heels in and refusing to change quickly enough with the times. Yes, it would be nice if this were still the 1960s, and people had nowhere else to get their news except the mainstream press. Wake up. Those days are gone.

Each of the posts so far is direct and full of valuable information on a specific topic. Take the current post, on Search Engine Optimization for journalists:

First, what is SEO? In the very simplest terms, it’s using words in your post and headline that will help search engines find your content. So it’s back to “thinking like Google” as I explained in my post about picking your blog name. You need to use words that will let Google and other search engines — which are computers, not humans — understand what your post is about.

Why does it matter? One of your goals as a journalistic blogger is that people will find your post on a given topic. So when they type a search into Google, you want your blog to be among the first few sites that come up. (The first few sites are the ones that most people will go to.)

She then outlines 10 specific steps any writer, copy-editor or producer can take to increase readership to their stories, simply by changing their approach to headlines.

This kind of simple, actionable advice is what Save The Media is all about. As Martin Langeveld, who first noted Chen’s blog on his own excellent News After Newspapers, says, it’s well worth putting into your feed reader.

A few are smartassed screeds, one of which takes apart some recent (I’ll still say it) idiocy by Paul Mulshine in the Wall Street Journal.

Guess which post got linked from Romenesko and unleashed what I like to call a robust discussion in the comments?

So, just a quick reminder. This isn’t a blog that takes any joy from the current condition of the U.S. newspaper business. I spent 12 years of my life inside it and would probably still be cheerfully toiling away on change from within had that buyout offer not been so timely and irresistible.

Here are some ideas I’ve floated over the past few months in these very pixels that might benefit from further discussion:

• A proposal for a network ad model
• A proposal for creating a “sales and deals” beat
• A proposal to rethink the local news product mix for a major metro
• A discussion of how my old organization made decent money creating local, long-form video
• Five simple, cheap ideas to increase engagement with local audiences for news organizations
• Four ideas to help fix the classified problem
• My soapbox: journalists need to become better curators of their beats

When my colleague at the Newark Star-Ledger John Farmer started off in journalism more than five decades ago, things were very different. After covering a political event, he’d hop on the campaign bus, pull out a typewriter, and start banging out copy. As the bus would pull into a town, he’d ball up a finished page and toss it out the window. There a runner would scoop it up and rush it off to a telegraph station where it would be blasted back to the home office.

At the time, reporters thought this method was high-tech. Now, thanks to the Internet, a writer can file a story instantly from anywhere. It’s incredibly convenient, but that same technology is killing old-fashioned newspapers. Some tell us that that’s a good thing. I disagree and believe that the public will miss us once we’re gone.

Why are newspapers disappearing? Those damned bloggers in their pajamas:

The problem is that printing a hard copy of a publication packed with solid, interesting reporting isn’t a guarantee of economic success in the age of instant news. Blogger Glenn Reynolds of “Instapundit” fame seems to be pleased at this. In his book, “An Army of Davids,” Mr. Reynolds heralds an era in which “[m]illions of Americans who were in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do this stuff.”

No, they can’t. Millions of American can’t even pronounce “pundit,” or spell it for that matter. On the Internet and on the other form of “alternative media,” talk radio, a disliked pundit has roughly a 50-50 chance of being derided as a “pundint,” if my eyes and ears are any indication.

The type of person who can’t even keep track of the number of times the letter “N” appears in a two-syllable word is not the type of person who is going to offer great insight into complex issues.

I agree with this: It sucks that journalists are losing jobs and that newspapers are failing. But the marketplace of ideas is not a zero-sum game. And just because the author seems to have run across an inordinate number of people who are unable to pronounce the word “pundit” that’s no reason to dismiss the whole of the blogosphere, as he does.

And it’s a sham argument anyway. I’d bet that a sizable percentage of any newspaper’s readership is equally idea- and spelling-challenged. The leaders of the social media movement are no more average members of the rabble than are the ink-stained wretches Munshine beatifies here. Reporters, pundits, thought-leaders — whether in print or pixels — become who they are because of the value of their skills and ideas, not the medium they choose to disseminate them.

The bigger question is this: who will do the reporting, and who will pay for it? If newspaper companies get smart about business models and stop trying to prop up the old institutions of ink and paper, there’s a very good chance that they will survive. But they will survive in a world where Reynolds and others have an equal share of the voice, assuming the quality of what they’re saying is high enough to warrant attention.

But then I saw this, and I realized the terrible truth of exactly what business it is that they’re still trying to save:

Robert McCartney, assistant managing editor for metropolitan news at The Washington Post, said the two newspapers will be able to publish each other’s stories online, but only after the story has appeared in print in the originating newspaper.

I confirmed this directly. There will be no sharing of online content until it is first - say it with me - published in the paper.

If this were, say, 1997 and print was booming and the online division comprised just some geeks in the basement, I could almost understand this logic. But I thought we’d settled this question: Digital is the future, not an afterthought. And where will The Sun and The Post publish all this shared content anyway? News hole is shrinking rapidly. Why not make the first and most comprehensive point of sharing online?

Imagine this: a regional online powerhouse that not only would bring in huge audience numbers, but for the first time just might be big enough to start eclipsing withering print revenues. Smart regional buys for national advertisers and targeted local ads sold against the combined reporting of the two largest newsrooms in the Mid-Atlantic just might sell well, even in this recessed economy.

That won’t happen just yet, because The Sun and The Post have chosen to focus on the papers first. Here’s hoping they soon turn their attentions to building something even greater online.

1. Print just might be in its death throes
2. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Here’s his conclusion:

The medium of print will not die, but its spot atop the mountain of mainstream content distribution is in its final days. This could bring about a rebirth of design innovation online. We can help bring about change and find new ways to connect with audiences. This is an exciting time to be a designer, assuming we can all hang onto our jobs long enough to see what happens.

The post itself is a nice Cliff’s Notes to the Resolved: Print May Not Be Dead, But It Certainly Has A Nasty Wet Cough And A Certain Yellow Tinge Around The Eyes crowd. But the comments are even more interesting as Jason and his readers offer the kinds of astute observations about print and digital that it took newspapers 12 years to make.

The latest is actually a 1-2 punch, presenting practical advice for the sales team and the newsroom at newspaper companies.

He gets off to a very good start:

1. Lead with the DotCom brand. Publishers: take out your wallet and check your business card. And have a look at the cards your salespeople hand out. What’s more prominent: the name of your newspaper, or the name of your web site (if it’s even listed on there)? If the biggest element on the card is not your online brand, confiscate all the cards and replace them. Do the same thing with all other printed or online sales materials, rate cards, media kits, whatever. In other words, make sure your graphic message is: we are first and foremost an online news and marketing organization.

This got me thinking about an idea I’d been pitching at my old company earlier this year: A variation on the network model.

For 10-12 years, most local news markets have grown audience and revenue the same way. Flagship news brands benefitted from the rising tide of internet adoption in all markets, the growth of available and cheap broadband, and, somewhat, by a growing focus of newspapers’ former print-only newsrooms on digital media.

In recent years, some markets have embarked on audience diversifcation and growth efforts through the launch of niche sites. These sites are adding to audience and revenue, but are growing slowly and all are based on the traditional strategy of building comprehensive content-focused sites with a newspaper’s own staff and freelancers.

But consider, at least, the network model.

The network model recognizes that the internet is an interconnected space where, in any given audience niche, there exists already rich content, widely dispersed, yet very little smart aggregation and monetization of that content. In my city, Baltimore, for instance, there are more than 270 individual community organizations, most with web sites that are rich in the kind of hyper-local content newspapers wish they we could create and gather. Under the old model, we’d try to replicate that content. Under the new network model, we’d recognize those individual sites - each with a small but passionate audience - as part of a larger potential advertising and content network.

Now imagine that niche - neighborhoods - combined with local moms, and soccer dads, and music fans and book nuts and weight watchers and job seekers and shoppers and church-goers and pet owners and barflies. Imagine all of the little slices of interest in our local markets reassembled into one audience pie.

That’s a business.

Because if we can tag their sites with our ad code, we can help them sell their audience. Newspaper companies - still the dominant local online brand in most markets (though not for long if they’re not careful) can raise their effective reach in their local markets without creating one piece of content or one line of code. And the individual sites? Each month they get a check in the mail. Everybody wins.

This is not untested. Glam Media serves as an example of what you can do when you stop trying to build all your content and “capture” the audience and instead work to leverage the audience that is already there. Last year, Glam overtook iVillage in audience and revenue by embracing the network and finding sites that were already producing content that women in their target wanted and encouraging those sites to join the Glam network.

The chart below (originally from Glam, via Jeff Jarvis)  is instructive. The yellow/brown circles represent owned and operated web sites. The purple are independent blogs and web sites that neither iVillage or Glam own. Notice how few of the circles on the Glam side of the chart are yellow.

The Glam model is to spend a whole lot less time building O&O sites, and more time building the network. And it pays off. Last year, Glam earned as much as 70% of its revenue through the network, not through its O&O sites.

To me, that’s a smart way to build both audience and revenue - leverage the content and the efforts of independent sites through the power of the network. That’s one way newspapers can begin to grow their online revenue beyond the existing banners and clicks model.

On December 2, Chris wrote a sponsored post on his Dad-o-Matic blog about K-Mart. K-Mart gave him a $500 gift card to go on a shopping spree and write about it. He took his kids. They bought some clothes and toys for a Christmas charity. He wrote it up, with prominent disclosure, talking about how K-Mart isn’t the wartime-in-Beirut hellhole you thought it was. End of story.

Are you twitching yet?

Because some people were. They questioned whether this foray into “advertorial” by Chris called his entire body of work into question. A Forrester analyst in a Twitter post called Brogan a “bought” blogger. Another Tweet, from Ben Kunz, said “Nothing wrong w bloggers making $ from ads. But writing Puffery for Pay clearly diminishes @chrisbrogan ’s voice.“

To those of you sitting in the newsroom, this probably seems like a waste of breath. “Of course any paid writing is advertorial, pure and simple.”

But what happens when the advertorial is written by your star reporter and not some kid in the marketing department? Because that’s the equivalent here. Brogan is a star of the emerging social media movement. He’s written tens of thousands of words, spoken at dozens of conferences, influenced untold numbers of people. Does this one post (or, if he decided, dozens of sponsored posts?) undermine his credibility?

I say no, it doesn’t. The wall between editorial and advertising exists for a good reason, but there are many ways to honor it. The traditional newspaper model is just one.

The key is disclosure. As a reader, I know before I read a word, that Brogan has been paid. I can then filter at will. If I think that the money exchange is unseemly, I can move on. If I stay, I have a crucial fact available to help me evaluate what I’m reading.

But this is all a very long introduction to the real reason why I’m typing this post on a Sunday morning rather than doing all the other things I need to finish before the sun smacks the horizon: Chris Brogan’s explanation. Anyone who cares about communication, journalism and business models for such should take a few minutes today and read his thoughtful debriefing on the matter:

There’s a whole stripe of people out there who argue that the sponsored post corrodes my editorial integrity, and that I’m not unbiased if I do something with sponsorships, etc. I want to address that, because it really hits to the core of the story, in my mind. Simply, they’re saying that one cannot be editorial-minded and manage a paid sponsorship. (Which, if you think about it, you’re saying that humans can’t separate their perspectives appropriately.) I have a few points with regards to this.

1. Newspapers and magazines are dying. If you’re not reading Newspaper Death Watch and Paid Content and BuzzMachine, then you’re missing some of the most riveting and depressing news of our generation.
2. Those models all work on advertising-to-pay-for-editorial and editorial-to-keep-eyeballs-to-support-advertising. In fact, all previous media works that way. TV, radio, etc. Lost isn’t on TV because it’s cool. It’s because people can advertise against it.
3. Those models are dying because advertising and marketing have lost their impact in those spaces.
4. Since the early 90s, people have hoped to figure out how the web will fix this.
5. I have some opinions on this.

I’m not a journalist. But I am a publisher. I am a reporter. I am a media maker. And here’s the difference: as a publisher, I have all the jobs of the newspaper. I am both the editorial staff and also the business side of the house. In this piece by Barbara Gibson of IABC, Barb Gibson says in her comment to me: “One more note in answer to your points above: while magazines do indeed do advertorials, they’re usually not written and bylined by their star journalists.”

That’s the crux right there of what has people hackles raised, I venture. In larger operations, there’s a bag man to take the advertising money and leave the journalists pure. I’ll get back to that point, because there is a line still, and that line must be respected. That hasn’t changed, and won’t change. But because there are many of us who are the publisher, the writer, the researcher, the customer service department, and the public relations staff, you’re going to have to seek a slightly different way to manifest that distinction.

There’s much more at Chris’s site.

“We’re awash with cash to spend!”

It would just be that - an oddity - until you read a piece in the New York Times which notes that the newspaper industry over the past few years followed the same bubble of cheap money that drove the housing bubble.

And, like all bubbles, eventually it pops:

The bankruptcy filing of the Tribune Company on Monday is just the latest, largest evidence that the American newspaper industry is suffering the hangover from an immense buying spree in 2006 and 2007 at what turned out to be the worst possible time for the buyers, just as the business was about to enter a drastic decline.

Newspapers would be in trouble either way. The steady leak of advertising and readers from print to the Web has become a widening torrent in this recession year. Most newspapers remain profitable, but the margins are dropping fast, with the industry losing about 15 percent of its ad revenue this year.

But the companies in the weakest condition are there largely because they borrowed a lot of money to buy papers, often at inflated prices, and the biggest of those deals were struck in 2006 and early 2007.

The full story is here.

Photo by Hushed Lavinia

Martin Langeveld reports on a conference focused on the notion of an “InfoValet.” It sounds like attendees at the conference spent a lot of time thinking of ways to describe what they’re onto, but I’d put it this way, from a consumer perspective:

A universal logon system whereby users “pay” for access to information with (secure) information about themselves, rather than with dollars.

Langeveld says, “While a system like this will not necessarily save newspaper publishers (because, for one thing, it will take some time to gain traction), it has the potential to help save journalism by enabling online news publishing at a different scale. While the New York Times could be an InfoValet network member, so can a blogger or micro-local news site, and each can benefit proportionately to their traffic and content value to advertisers and consumers.”

Interesting idea, though any attempt to build a new ecosystem from scratch is going to meet with a certain amount of stubborn resistance. Perhaps the recent announcements by Google and Facebook, opening their logon systems to other sites, might provide some readymade structure for the InfoValet idea.

Put that all together, and 2008 may be the year that the Death Eaters start coming for some of the biggest names in the business: Big chains or papers that are overextended financially and find themselves undermined by the gathering storm of problems. Wall Street and bankers aren’t going to put up with that, and executive heads—not to mention those of a lot of unfortunate rank and file employees—will roll. Watch for still more consolidation and, um, innovative financing that will further roil the industry.

Just look at the tumult that accompanied Sam Zell’s closing of his deal to buy Tribune Co. this week. The bankers were squeezing the deal right up to the last minute. Even Zell called it “the transaction from hell.” And Zell’s going to have to pedal—and peddle—as fast as he can to keep the company afloat financially. It’s not just the Chicago Cubs that are going to be sold by Tribune. Look for a fire sale of real estate and newspapers (Los Angeles Times, anyone? Anyone?) as Zell strips the company for cash. And at this holiday time, say a prayer for the poor Tribune employees, who could be left holding the bag—through their retirement plan, which now owns the company through Zell’s creative accounting—if things turn sour. Memo to Tribune employees: Get. The. Hell. Out.

(Emphasis mine.)

Photo by William Couch. 1/31/2008

Both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times are reporting tonight that the Tribune company has hired an investment bank and a law firm for a potential bankruptcy filing as early as this week. This is definitely a long way down the road from a year ago when the arrival of Sam Zell was seen as a bold move toward the reinvention of a once-great newspaper brand.

Now?

Here’s the New York Times take:

Tribune has hired bankruptcy advisers as the ailing newspaper company seeks to stave off a potential bankruptcy filing, people briefed on the matter said.

The newspaper, which was taken private last year by billionaire investor Samuel Zell, has hired the investment bank Lazard and the law firm Sidley Austin, these people said. Tribune has been hobbled by debt related to that sale last year, which has been compounded by the growing drought of advertising for newspapers.

The Wall Street Journal puts the Tribune distress in perspective:

The appointments underscore the deepening distress for Tribune and other publishers. Newspaper businesses are being battered by dwindling advertising sales and carrying debt loads that are unmanageable in current market conditions. People in the industry expect some papers will need to seek bankruptcy protection or fold in coming months.

Tribune has been on wobbly footing since last December, when real-estate mogul Sam Zell led a debt-backed deal to take the company private. Tribune so far has stayed ahead of its $12 billion in borrowings with the help of asset sales, but now dwindling profits are tightening the noose. The company’s cash flow may not be enough to cover nearly $1 billion in interest payments this year, and Tribune owes a $512 million debt payment in June.

Based on the state of declining revenues at the company and its lenders’ likely unwillingness to allow Tribune to simply sell off assets to make its payments (as it did with the sale of Newsday in 2008), bankruptcy looks increasingly inevitable. These actions seem to imply that the question may be called sooner than the mid-2009 period I had seen mentioned previously.

Yes, there will be financial downsides at first, but especially in the many markets with only one daily newspaper, this risk may be minimized by the fact that local and national advertisers still need to reach that market, and the audience that newspaper organizations gather remains uniquely strong when measured against other mass media television and radio.

Martin Langeveld, former newspaper publisher and VP and current hive-whacking mediablogger, recently took a look at the numbers behind such a leap. The short version: newspapers won’t get rich in the short term, but they just might survive.

This week, Langeveld digs deeper into what it would take for one market to make the leap, and introduces us to a publisher in Cedar Rapids (who will be familiar to readers of this blog) who just may be laying the groundwork for his own leap forward.

The strategy sounds simple: Transform the business from its manufacturing roots into a digital enterprise. I proposed a version of it in my second-ever post, back in September: “To have even a chance of survival, the mindset of the industry needs to become: We are in the business of publishing information content continuously on our web sites; every 24 hours (for now, and this may ultimately change to once or twice weekly) we gather some of that information into a printed product and distribute it, but our business is focused on and driven by our online operations.” And I’ve explained it again more recently when I explored the economics of a daily that morphs into a web-first weekly or twice-weekly, and previously as part of my Six Theses, and elsewhere. I’m not alone on this. “Digital is first” is at the top of Steve Outing’s list of suggestions for the industry as well; others have hammered away at it; it should simply be on everyone’s list…

Can any of this be even discussed in an organization demoralized by waves of layoffs and cutbacks? It won’t be easy, obviously, but it has to be done. A newspaper organization that chooses not to adopt, embrace and fully implement a strategy of becoming a digital enterprise will remain a manufacturing enterprise with a product that fewer people want or need, every day. Perhaps it will be remembered one day by a nice brass plaque on the historic printing plant.

Langeveld doesn’t yet get the attention of some of the usual suspects (Jarvis, Yelvington, Mutter, Potts, Rosen - all big thinkers worthy of your feed reader), but he should. He combines an insider’s experience with a sharp, analytical mind, and adds a willingness to consider the radical notion that there may yet be a future in the news business.

Work 20% harder.

It was our collective sloth, consumption and sense of entitlement that
got us into this mess, and the only thing that will get us out of will
be lots of hard work.

If you’ve got a good job, you should bust your butt to make your
company as successful and profitable as possible.  That way, salaries
can increase, jobs can be created and your products and services
become so world class, the phrase “Made in America” will come to mean
something other than “not worth buying.”

If you’re working at a government job, you should be putting in extra
hours to reduce government spending. Come in this weekend and make the
government more efficient. (Yes, I just told a government worker to
come in on Saturday.)

If you’ve got credit card debt, pay it down if you can.

If you’ve got a mortgage, pay it off if you can.

If you work in the service industry, try to work 20% faster and come
up with ideas to make your team more efficient.

Like all great ideas, it’s over-simplified and a little flawed in the details if you poke at it, but it’s still brilliantly direct, and easy to remember: whatever you’re doing, kick it up a notch.

Our grandparents and great-grandparents got this. They all sacrificed so that we could get fat and happy. Now it’s time to start thinking of the kids of 2050, and what kind of country they’re going to inherit, based on our work ethic now.

Take a few moments and read it. As is the case with all good advice, it’s both memorable and attainable.

The list of potential expense reductions includes squeezing staffing, shuttering bureaus, carving out layers of middle management, telescoping multiple sections of the paper into one, tightening newshole, scrapping syndicated features and wire serevices, axing op-ed pages and book sections and eliminating classified ads on certain days of the week….

Another alternative will be to ask employees to accept voluntary pay cuts, to agree to work longer hours, and to ease manning requirements and other work rules. Bonuses may be reduced or eliminated for the fortunate few who still would have qualified for them.

He then walks through the increasingly extreme cuts papers could and, in many cases, will make, ending with this cheery thought:

This will last as long as the newspapers continue to generate operating profits. But it is highly unlikely in this environment that any creditor would provide additional cash to prop up a money-losing newspaper.

In other words, a newspaper that cannot sell enough advertising or cut enough expenses to sustain profitable operations is not likley to make it to the other side of 2009.

Is it time for a newspaper dead pool?