I'm over the newspaper death watch. Where are the new success stories?

Negativity sells, so we get a steady stream of doom-and-gloom regarding the newspaper industry. But a look beyond the surface shows some new trends emerging from newspapers' changing charter -- trends important for marketers who rely on PR as part of their mix.

The "death of the newspaper industry" is a staple of the daily negative news onslaught. Enough already. We get it. Let's find and discuss the business models that will rise from this creative destruction.

So what are the positive changes taking place in the next generation of news reporting? This issue is obviously very important to marketers, as we look for ways not just to replace mass media advertising, but more importantly, to have conversations with customers and influencers, with and without the media as a conduit. So here's a quick look at some of the trends shaping the future of the newspaper industry.

Newspapers eliminating or reducing print runs on strategic days

The Detroit News is one of the latest to limit print runs. Newspaper analyst John Morton says newspapers can only make money with print three days per week. The News, along with its JOA partner the Detroit Free Press, will go to newsstand-only runs on Saturday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Home delivery will still be available on Thursday and Friday, with the Free Press offering home delivery on Sunday when the News doesn't print at all. On newsstand-only days, home subscribers can grab a PDF of that's day's paper.

Newspapers eliminating print altogether

A handful of papers have eliminated print runs completely, or announced they will soon do so. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer being the poster child, which halted production on March 18. The Ann Arbor News also announced it will halt print production in July, operating under the AnnArbor.com URL only.

The Intelligencer's web traffic is off 20% since it halted production. It's strategy to recover and build traffic will provide an excellent early case study for other papers to build on.

(Incidentally, I love how the story on the AA News opens with "It's another sign of the bad times. The newspaper industry is going down the tubes." Really? Or is a poor economy simply accelerating a trend in digitalization and de-centralization that was inevitable? I think the latter.)

With the elimination of print comes the elimination of many traditional news jobs. But many laid-off reporters aren't leaving the journalism industry. Instead, they are launching new sites to make a go of it as independents -- further fueling the de-centralization of news gathering.

The hyper-local news organization

As the LA Times struggles to adjust its business model, Mickey Kaus says the time is right for someone to launch a hyper-local paper covering only West Los Angeles:

Isn't now the time to start a daily "paper" covering the West Side of Los Angeles? Over a million people live here. Affluent people. People semi-obsessively concerned with local issues like crime, traffic, development, city and state politics and ill-served by the magisterial L.A. Times in far off downtown, which has to cover all of Southern California and seems to think paying attention to the West Side is somehow elitist, if not racist. ... You could hire five reporters--cheap, these days--and you'd have about four more reporters covering the area than the Times has. If they're the right reporters it shouldn't be that difficult to steal the Times' richest readers and the advertisers who want to reach them.

Small, nimble, "hyper-local" based on either geography or topic -- this is the future news organization. Again, news gathering isn't dying -- the old business model is. What's emerging, or going to emerge, is a smaller and more focused model.

The hybrid reporter

Some "A-list" reporters have carved out a niche for themselves straddling both traditional media and blogging. It's the current ideal mix; the two media nourish and feed the success of the other for the reporter. Michelle Malkin comes to mind. She is a conservative columnist who appears on the Fox News Channel, writes a syndicated column for Creators Syndicate, has authored books and posts on her highly-ranked blog.

But at a more local level is where I think we'll see this trend really grow. As pointed out in a recent Sticks of Fire post, local reporters like Wade Tatangelo of the St. Pete Times also write for their own sites. We can expect to see the reverse as well -- popular bloggers who are asked to contribute to traditional news sources.

The instant reporter

So many of us are armed today to report if and when news breaks around us. Have a smartphone with a camera? You're ready to deliver content on breaking events. The U.S. Airways emergency landing in the Hudson River is a recent example of this. The first photo was posted via Twitter. Traditional media sources followed on to add depth to the coverage, but "regular people" delivered content first.

So what does all of this mean for marketers?

It means things are more complicated, yet simpler. More complicated because the sources for creating coverage, buzz, third-party credibility, whatever you want to call it today -- are more diffuse, and getting more diffuse every day. Simpler because it's easier for a marketer to reach out directly and create connections with professional, semi-professional and "hobbyist" influencers and reporters. The best public relations are morphing from pitchmeisters to advisors on how to create connections and buzz in this new landscape.

We're in kind of a weird moment. The traditional media lives on, but is shrinking, and it's not quite clear what's going to complement the reduced influence of the media just yet. So as marketers we need to pay much more attention to the emerging success stories than the death watch. The emerging successes are where the future is, where the value will lie for marketers and where we will need to make our new connections.