We’ve got a pretty small staff, which is a major obstacle, but I think the biggest roadblock to overcome is getting everybody on staff (myself included) out of the print-minded rut and into the shorter news cycle (we’re aiming for weekly before 24-hour, just because we don’t have the staff size for daily).

Another thing we’re trying to do is to get writers to think about the whole presentation of a story, how to visually present it with photos/videos.

We’re using our print to promote our online as well. We’re cutting story-sizes down and placing small house-ads. A huge part of transitioning, I think, is getting your audience on board too.

-Matthew Boyle
Co-Editor
The Gargoyle, Flagler College
gargoyle.flagler.edu

You are guys are kicking ass. I love to see this come along so well!

Neat ideas, but you’re preaching to the choir. I didn’t mean to suggest anyone should just use the Web just to promote a print weekly. I assume weeklies will use the 24/7 Web to post breaking news, get feedback, make the news a conversation, and be more valuable to readers. But if there is still a weekly paper, instead of repeating the same news in print, are campus weeklies doing something new?

Are they following the http://CSmonitor.com model with more depth, more “why it matters” stories, becoming more interpretive, more magazine-like with longer articles, or trying more creative visual design (http://en.akzia.com/), more color, infographics and layouts that take advantage of the larger “display” of a double page spread?

I’m just curious what’s already going on… and plan to point a couple of local editors at this discussion.

My interpretation of the video as we were working on it was also that the web can be at the center of a workflow that publishes to both mediums. For instance, with the longer-form features, you could have reporters write blog posts that serve as iterations of the story, manage the editorial workflow and planning with your open source CMS, and then synthesize that content for the long form print piece.

This is excellent. I’m sending it to my editors tonight- these are some of the big principles I’m trying to push in our newsroom (Central Michigan Life). Right now, the biggest weakness is linking to content on the Web, but my hope is all of us get better at doing it. We have an entire semester to get better.

I’ll be keeping up for updates.

That being said, I do realize that it’s too early for many to make that full transition.

Is your only online content the same as print content? If so, that’s the first thing you should re-think before worrying about web first. Get unique, timely content online in between issues.

One idea for keeping readers interested in print would be to do Twitter trivia. Tweet questions about something that they could only find in print, like a sidebar infographic. Give a prize to the first person to at-reply you with the answer or run a little house ad with a photo of the winner. That’s one simple way of integrating social media into print readership, but it’s not a very strong one.

Again, the focus of using the web isn’t to get people reading print, but to prepare yourself for the day when they stop reading print.