You don’t hear “The [Cedar Rapids] Gazette of eastern Iowa” and “leads the way” in very many sentences, least of all from Mark Potts and Jay Rosen. But there it is–my hometown paper is leading the charge in reinventing their product:
[W]hat Buttry is suggesting, correctly, is that the newspaper should strive to be an active, aggressive participant in any sort of business transaction that it touches or causes to happen. Or, as he writes, “We need to connect the business with the customer and collect the money, taking a reasonable cut for ourselves.”
Editorial purists will shudder—it seems so…dirty. But it’s not, if the right protections are in place, and these are obvious revenue—and hell, reader-service—opportunities that papers have been foolishly ignoring for years, or paying little more than lip service. The Gazette is actually trying to do all these things. How radical.
Small newspapers are primarily middlemen–something happens somewhere, they tell us–and don’t have much investigative flex (I can’t remember the Gazette ever breaking a real story), so it makes sense for papers to take Google’s revenue-generation blueprint a step further, using their local connections and knowledge to target a specific niche.
If you’re interested in the fate of newspapers, read the whole thing. It’s long, but it’s worth it.
HT: @Steve Buttry via @Jay Rosen
On a side note, this marks the second time in a month Iowa has been cited as a “leader.” Combined with swine flu, that has to be at least two horsemen, right?
After some initial swine flu terror (All the victims were between 25 and 50?), I got curious*. There are two drugs currently being prescribed to treat the disease, oseltamivir (branded Tamiflu from Hoffman-La Roche) and Zanamivir (branded Relenza), so I did a quick search on Google Trends.
The full country-by-country results are interesting, too–Mexico is the only country where oseltamivir searches even come close to Tamiflu (In the US, Tamiflu outperforms oseltamivir 64:1). It might be a good time to invest in Hoffman-La Roche. As long as you don’t die.
*Okay, I won’t lie. I’m still terrified of this stuff. I’ll probably have a panic attack on the metro or something.
I’m surprised at how easily I got a loan for Clara. Literally thirty seconds after I handed over my $25 deposit to join the Hopkins credit union, I asked who I should talk to about a loan. The guy typed in my information, my salary (self-provided, and at a job I’ve been at less than a month), and hey presto! Approved!
Admittedly, the loan was chump change in the grand scheme of things–Wachovia doesn’t even offer loans for less than $5000*–but I walked out feeling a little unsettled by the whole thing. Matthew Yglesias felt the same way about his home loan experience:
I got a mortgage back in October and found myself a bit taken aback by how little was involved in it. I gave some information about my income, about the size of the loan I wanted, and about my credit rating. Then in went a formula and out came approval. If someone was asking me for a big loan in the middle of a recession, I would want to know more. Like what’s the guy’s employment situation? Are there decent odds he might get laid off and have his income drop to $0?
I’m being responsible about the whole thing–the loan’s for a year, and I could pay it off in about six months**–but this experience left me feeling a little uneasy. On the plus side, it’s made me realize that I essentially do this every time I take out my credit card.
* Probably to encourage people to use their credit cards. They also won’t loan for vehicles older than 1990.
** Knock on wood.
Financing approved. I could own a Triumph by Monday.
I don’t know if this vague, complimentary comment spam is a new thing (I’ve only noticed it in the last month or so), but I hate it.