Hey, geezers: Click here

October 15th, 2008 at 05:55pm Linda Grist Cunningham

The definition of “geezer” is fluid, depending on where one is in the birthday count, so cut me a break, and think about this: Everyone knows youngsters are Web savvy; everyone thinks geezers are not — and therefore newspapers can continue to do news on printed pages until the current crop of geezers-in-’60s-bell bottoms is replaced with geezers-with-tongue-studs.

I’ve believe that, for at least 15 years, we’ll be printing a daily “something” from the News Tower and delivering it to your door. I believe that today’s geezers (baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964) will read newspapers into their graves. My generation will remain a print-reading group — not exclusively print, but we’ll be far more likely than our children to include a steady diet of newsprint in our media menu.

We will turn to our newspaper for advertising content, news content — especially local — and general information right up to choosing our caskets. We will, however, make ourselves connect digitally. Not because it’s “us,” but because we have to, it’s efficient and we can get the dumpsters-full of information we crave. That’s very different from our children who connect digitally because, well, that’s the way they’ve always done it.

For boomers it will be print-plus-digital. For our kids and their kids, it will be digital with maybe some specialty print thrown in for good measure.

So, what’s the next newspaper going to look like? I do not believe the “print thingy” we’ll be delivering will look like today’s Register Star. As newspapers make the turn on the road to transformation, and as multiple platform access to information becomes the customer standard, the big format newspaper with multiple sections will give way to a smaller, perhaps single section, daily digest of the best of around-the-world news with an even stronger local news report.

We’ve been thinking about and prototyping something like that in the News Tower for a couple years. For now I call it the “stealth paper” because it’s totally concept. I just want to see what a different kind of print thingy might look like. When might you see it? You might see prototypes early next year. On your doorstep? Could be months, years, or never. But, what we’re seeing so far is pretty cool.

In the Rock River Valley, where the Rockford Register Star reached 78 percent of the adults this week, the traditional daily and Sunday newspaper rules the market.  That’s a giant footprint and it means no other medium — not television, not radio, not even my beloved rrstar.com — comes close. No matter how challenged the economy, no matter how chaotic the newspaper industry, the newspaper on your doorstep is going to be there for a while.

But, I am writing this first for the Web on Wednesday; a lot of you are reading it for the first time in Sunday’s paper. The Web — or some yet-to-come digital medium — is pushing hard and perhaps sooner than traditionalists would like, the Web dog will own the yard.

Here’s a link to a delightful blog post that asks and answers this question: How will geezers adapt to “web mobile for news.” Enjoy.

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