Whether you believe the future of the newspaper industry is “so bright we’ve got to wear shades” or mired in an inexorable decline towards irrelevance, there’s one series of questions every Publisher should be asking her or himself…

What if I was starting a "publication" today? What would it look like? How would it be staffed? What content do our “readers” truly value? Can I create a new business model based upon these realities? How digital would it be?

Or, looked at in a different light, what legacy issues and systems are we trapped in today that we’d be better off without?

Obviously, this general line of inquiry implies a willingness to act upon the answers (even if not 100% certain!!) to such questions and that’s where the real difficulty arises. Few – are there any? – organizations (not just publications, but all the associated products connected to our core) are conducting lengthy analysis and introspection to ask “What If?” but it’s an appropriate strategy.

As a very interested newspaper partner, here are a few of the findings we would predict…

On the editorial/content side, it seems certain newspapers would design their news and information offerings for specific audiences rather than general. Everyone acknowledges the day of the broadsheet, multi-section, all-things-to-all-people, take it or leave it and we know what’s right for you to read product are over. The future riches truly are in the niches…it’s the coalition of these niches that make up our entire audience.

Which we’d submit logically implies a much richer understanding and relationship with all reading/using audiences so the content provided can be as relevant as possible. And, keep in mind that “content” is for more than just reading – useful content like calendars, directories, rankings of service providers, etc. will most definitely be in the mix.

Which therefore suggests the databases we’ve traditionally relied upon to support the circulation and advertising departments (everyone has or is developing these, right?!!) be expanded to include newsroom data points as well.

And, once all registration information captured via the web site does so for a reason, we’ll have the tools to slice and dice all reading and using audiences in ways which:

• Advance the user experience by constantly improving the content relevance;
• Allow newspapers to connect reading and using audiences experientially (think user generated)and;
• Then deliver these more engaged audiences to advertisers in a more relevant way for both sets of customers.
The future news”paper” might very well distribute 30 or more distinct products on a variety of platforms that sometimes do and sometimes don’t leverage the core product. That will be a function of reader feedback.

The total reach of that “paper” will be more than the total penetration of each audience aggregated to provide an overall “footprint”. Rather, some metric (we’re working on it already!) that measures engagement and maybe even accurately predicts advertiser ROI across selected distribution channels.

It seems unlikely we’d see as much commitment to national and international news at most dailies. Locally focused and homegrown investigation, analysis and coverage would be paramount - if that dictated more 3rd parties would be relied upon (or, none at all?) for national and international, so be it.

The advertising model will be modified, too. Much more than finally acquiescing and providing things advertisers have requested for years, but real shifts in thinking will occur. True pay-for-performance will be experimented with - - the pricing which works so well in the online environment (limited big ads targeted towards the core web site user) will find advocacy universal and some papers even trying the same tactic with their core products - - heck, we might even see a genuine focus on solving advertiser challenges and better connecting respective customers.

If newspapers are asking any of the following questions, it would be very interesting to learn the conclusions or answers…

What if we decided to abandon the print product altogether and focus exclusively on the web? Is that possible? What are the financial implications? How does it model?

What if we decided not to publish daily? What days of the week would we abandon and how could we accomplish that?

(The corollary for less than daily would therefore be, what is the risk/reward scenario for increasing our frequency?)

Would we choose a tabloid or broadsheet format? Other?

What if we could genuinely create a customer-centric organization? If we could, what are the resources required to do so – human, technical, distribution, outsourced, etc – and, how would such an organization impact our First Amendment obligations?

What if we allowed customer’s to reward and recognize our efforts to serve them and didn’t rely on the accolades of our peers? How would that impact journalism quality?

What if we could start the conversation with Wall Street anew? What “guidance” would we offer? What realistic expectations would we establish? What are the proper profit margins for publicly traded news and information organizations? (…Which leads to the public v. private question, but that’s an entire quarter of newsletters!)

What if we had to abandon one (more?) of our tried and true convictions – operating or content or values – what would that be?

What if we realized we had only 5 more years of profitability based upon our current operating model, what would we immediately do differently?