Newspapers and the World Wide Web

OK, let me say this upfront. Newspapers are not dead. The heralded institution of journalism is not on life support. It is in a metamorphism stage if anything. And if your paper is not changing - you are missing the purpose of your business reason for existance - to inform the public.
I am a strong beleiver in the Internet. It has so many wonderful facets that everyone can find what they want, in a matter that they want to find it.
What the GLOBAL Internet is not is LOCAL. ESPN is great for the National Sports news and on rare occassion a sensational story from Hometown, USA. Show me the area on ESPN TV or ESPN.com where I can see local high school track results, bowling league scores or youth swimming meet results.
Google is the greatest search engine in the world, but try and find a business in your hometown is about as frustrating as using the multiple versions of the Yellow pages you probably have propped under a coffee table.
Try it sometime, put in a Google search leading with your hometown, and I would bet that the majority of returns in the first screen are going to be national sites that are not within a 100 mile radius of your location.
Everyone knows this and I am still amazed that local media outlets have not capitalized on this inherent flaw - before Google figures it out and adds Geographic coding to everything in their generic search and users don't ahve to go to local.google.com.
But wouldn't it better yet if the local media were to use their years of advertising contacts to build a better service directory that was actually functional? And wouldn't it be great if the local media outlet - which wants the advertising income - actually became a web resource for the smaller businesses?
i think it seems logical, but I guess we need to ask the question. Follow me here. The Media wants your advertising dollars, they want you to advertise in Print, TV, Radio and Online. They will build a print ad for free. They will probably cut audio for the Radio for free and depending on the size of the buy, they might even shoot your TV spot for free. They may go as far as build a banner ad, but find one that actually has the capability to build, host and maintain your website.
It seems logical to me that if the owner of the site trusts you to help them get online, they would trust you with building a marketing scheme that would include.....ADVERTISING in your product offerings.
I would think the famous line "Build it and they will come" fits perfectly here.

Next time I'll talk about the insanity of online banner campaigns. I'm daft on this, but why would you sell ice to Eskimos in their igloo. Drive traffic to your site from other means, but not with banner ads.

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Let's start with a business assessment and a few sample questions that we will ask as part of the Business Tech Check.