Anna Nicole Smith (big-breasted former centerfold), Britney Spears (breakout music video had her in a mini-skirted Catholic schoolgirl outfit, scantily clad on the cover of Rolling Stones as a dress-up doll), Paris Hilton (online sex video), Pamela Anderson (well-endowed Baywatch star who got national prominence with an early online sex video), et. al.

As for newspapers, people are interested in what they care about. Ratings spiked in the Anna Nicole Smith story not because people were interested in the news, they were interested in sex, sexy pictures and videos that the news networks always put onscreen. It wasn’t news it was entertainment.

Just like the judge, Sideling(?), who was entertaining. Roe Conn, a local talk radio host, does a killer impersonation of the voice that’s hysterical.

Speaking of entertainment, that’s what the news has increasingly become. The target demographic for tv news and cable news who are actually interested in news, in information, simply go online. So that leaves entertainment, news reporters being funny or angry or funnily angry (ala Stephen Colbert or Bill O’Reilly) or angrily funny (ala Lewis Black or Keith Olbermann). Or syrupily compassionate ala the flood of newsmagzines and “morning (news/talk/variety) shows” interviewing someone who has gone thru some traumatic and being asked “How do you feel?” or various variation thereof (e.g. “What was your reaction?”, “What’s your take?”, “What’s your impressions?”, etc.).

If you want people to watch or read the news, then report on stuff they care about–or EXPLAIN WHY THEY SHOULD CARE, as in how it affects them. And here’s a concept, show NEW news, not merely repeat the same story and call it “news” or worse “breaking news” (like the same news story is “breaking” for an hour or two or three or four).

As for the news BUSINESS, I think the problem is that news is too small a fish in giant oceans. The Powers That Be over them no longer are the maverick millionaire newspaper owners who cared about the news as a craft but executive who’s only interest and relationship with the news is a single line in an accounting report or a single entry in some electronic spreadsheet. Maybe if the news was a third or even a quarter of the whole business it belonged to then at least those in charge would care or at least know about news other than its profit and loss. Maybe.

– Ken from Chicago

P.S. Also focus helps, targeting a niche market and not trying to be all things to all people.

First of all, Scoble is wrong in thinking that newspapers’ problems began with the Internet. Much of what ails newspapers has been ailing them for decades. That would include the cost of newsprint, difficulty distributing newspapers as populations become increasingly suburban and exurban while highway driving becomes increasingly slow and congested, competition for ad dollars, and, an an audience that is comparatively semiliterate and unsophisticated. (I’ll leave it to others to decide whether American audiences also have poor taste and short attention spans.)

I don’t think I ever worked for a newspaper that did not have hiring freezes and layoffs even 15-20 years ago. There’s nothing new about that. Mergers are old hat, too.

Quote: 3% (of Americans) can point to Kabul on a map, but 96% say they’ve seen Britney’s [naked crutch].