In your message dated Friday 9, February 1996 you wrote :
> You've done an excellent job of describing the current newspaper thinking
> about how to get local online newspapers to be self-supporting.  That is
> (and please correct me if I've misconstrued your intent here), they have a
> good working relationship with a local audience and local advertisers, and
> therefore they try to transfer that same good local working relationship
> online.
> 
> What I'm suggesting is that perhaps this local focus which worked so well
> in hard copy needs to be rethought for online newspapers where the customer
> is not necessarily local.  Advertising doesn't have to be local.  Neither
> do classified ads.  True, the focus of these things have to be local if its
> business as usual.  Maybe it's time to throw off the shackles of
> business-as-usual thinking.  And I don't mean large injections of graphics
> and quick time clips.

Well, here in the UK, we don't really have this `local` thing.  I mean there are 
plenty of local newspapers, dealing with small areas - a couple of towns, that 
kind of thing - but generally, it's the nationals that set the agenda, and 
they're what most people mean when they talk about the press.

Perhaps the UK model is better prepared to handle being online - advertising 
tends to be of the national - profile raising type (with many exceptions), and 
the stories are generally quite applicable to a global audience.  

I suppose the question is where's the common ground between a service focused on 
local events, and one packed with national and international features?


> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Diane Haugen
> Whiskey Creek Document Design
> P.O. Box 69
> Barnesville, MN   56514
> 
> dhaugen@barnesville.polaristel.net
> 
> 
> 

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| Christian Darkin    EMail christian@                                    |
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End of online-news-digest V1 #513
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From owner-online-news-digest@marketplace.com Fri Feb  9 18:55:38 1996
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