TEMPLE: Personalized papers not far off

By John Temple, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Imagine a supermarket where everybody gets handed the same bag of groceries.

It's unlikely shoppers would like it.

Journalism professor Vin Crosbie used that image in his keynote speech at a conference in Denver this week to emphasize why the idea of an "individuated" newspaper, essentially a newspaper customized according to the wishes of each individual reader, is so compelling.

Crosbie's point was that the newspaper industry, because of the limitations of the printing technology it's been using, has been giving people a broad mix of content to choose from, knowing full well that many people only read part of their newspaper.

But now it seems we're tantalizingly close to being able to deliver publications - print and electronic - that more closely match readers with the news and information they want. If we did, the hope would be that they'd read more.

MediaNews Group, owner of The Denver Post, sponsored the conference on the Individuated Newspaper in the auditorium of the Denver Newspaper Agency building Thursday and Friday. It's to the credit of MediaNews,and especially Peter Vandevanter, its vice president of targeted products, that such a conference was held here.

The Post's publisher, Dean Singleton, couldn't attend. But he prepared a video welcome that was striking. Here was the leader of the fourth-largest newspaper company in America and chairman of The Associated Press calling for a radical transformation of his own business.

"It seems we can turn all the new-found power of the Internet - that so easily empowers people to personalize their news - and generate a whole new type of newspaper with greater relevance and value. Call it the reverse- published newspaper," he said.

Actually, we've been experimenting with reverse-published newspapers in Denver for more than three years. The YourHub.com print sections that metro-area subscribers receive with their Rocky or Post every Thursday are reverse-published from the Internet. Everything in those publications appears first on a Web site.

But Singleton was pointing to a larger possibility that YourHub.com only hints at, personalization using digital printing, where every copy could be different.

Singleton is a figure in the mold of old-style media moguls, a la William Randolph Hearst. But it's hard to imagine you would ever have heard something like the following from earlier generations who held the power of the press.

"If we let our readers participate," Singleton said, "we will succeed."

His words might not sound like strong stuff. But trust me, the idea of readers participating beyond the letters-to-the-editor page has been a tough sell in most American newsrooms.

The newspaper business has long been based on editors selecting stories they thought everyone should be informed about, along with a smorgasbord of topics they think might interest different groups of people.

What's new in the Internet era is that people can find ways to satisfy their own individual interests. They can go on the Web and find a wealth of content on a topic they care about - from biking to badminton.

Technology is emerging - electronic and print - that would allow us to deliver a publication that directly responded to those interests customer by customer.

We'll need to clear a few hurdles to get there, Crosbie said. The first is that news organizations will have to win the trust of consumers to the point that they'll be willing to tell them their interests. In this new world, it all starts with the consumer.

We'll need content management systems that allow us to handle individuated content. That, of course, is much more complex than our current model.

And then we'll need a system to distribute the product. But we're seeing examples on all three fronts.

The most common criticism of this concept is that we'll lose America's common culture and that people will opt out of learning about serious issues affecting our society. It'll be all Britney Spears for some people.

Crosbie disagreed. He argued that we're entering an era where control will be shared between editors and users. He believes news organizations will be able to retain their traditional mission - and thus help sustain our democracy - because there will always be a need for stories important to all of us. The big ones are obvious. The presidential election. 9/11.

But his argument is that news organizations are now in the position where they don't have to give the same thing to everybody, and they need to start seeing themselves in the business of mass customization if they want to remain successful.

I know this might sound like a stretch. But I think it's a hopeful and exciting vision for our future. YourHub.com, of which I am very proud, is a primitive, but in my view, important step in this direction. But there are many more steps we can take and need to take.

John Temple can be reached at editor@RockyMountainNews.com or by mail at 101 W. Colfax Ave., Suite 500, Denver, CO 80202.

• June 30, 2008

  1:45 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  edwardallen writes:

  I think this is a recipe for boredom. The excitement of reading a newspaper is finding unexpected things. Think of it yourself. You are leafing through a newspaper and come across a story that catches your attention. You were not looking for it, and did not intend to read it. But you do and find it interesting and maybe it is filled with facts you can use. You move on and find another. Giving me tailor-made what I want would mean I wouldn't find those interesting stories and facts I didn't know I was looking for, but I need.

• July 4, 2008

  5:19 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  Who_Me writes:

  You mean I wouldn't have to see Penny Parker's Up My Butt column in the paper anymore? That would be awesome.