The entire model has to change. Readers already know what the “news” is, they hear about it or read it online well before the print edition comes out. That means the print edition offers stale “news” that we already heard. What we need is a comprehensive and detailed analysis that can’t be offered by online sites and radio news summaries. The routine stuff like Obama says “x” should be printed from a wire service or a pool of reporters. No way should a reporter from every paper be sent to take dictation.

Local is important, but again, it has to be investigative or in-depth. No more blurbs or summaries, those are already available for free and if newspapers want to publish that, then just get it from a wire service, there’s no need to assign a writer to summarize what we already know.

Stop the obvious biased slant. In other industries, the customer is always right. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re biased or not, if the reader thinks so then you have to change. The readers’ opinion is all that matters so it’s time to change the writing/writers until the readers feel the paper is no longer biased. Many say the biases are cultural and ingrained within the newroom. If so, then perhaps the entire staff has to be fired and replaced over time. Because we all tend to hire people who are similar to ourselves or who we can identify with, this may not be possible without firing all the staff at one time and starting over. Yikes.

However: The fact is, those zoned editions haven’t worked. Advertising won’t cover the costs and readers essentially ignore them. The problem is that medium- to large-sized papers are terrible at covering small areas or neighborhoods.

Compare the coverage in any truly local independent newspaper and in the large daily’s attempts – you’ll see why local readers by and large are loyal to their weekly newspapers and disdainful of their bigger daily’s attempts to compete.

So, to heck with it. Stop wasting your readers’ time and your advertisers’ money. Buy a small paper if you want to cover small communities – it’ll keep the economies of scale you need – and use the bigger daily to cover bigger stories. That’s what it’s there for.