Want to make money? Hire these two people …
Number 1: A local historian. Reporters who have been around forever are great, but not enough. Hire a history wonk obsessed with your local area.
Number 2: A librarian. A real, dedicated professional who can catalog and archive your paper’s assets, such as reporters’ notes and unpublished correspondence. Sadly, you can hire a good librarian for a ridiculously low salary.
Why these positions in a time of cutbacks?
First, long-time residents are turned off by reporters and editors who know and care little about their communities. Aggressive historians and librarians can be invaluable as resources for reporters and as watchdogs for when you screw up.
Second, these positions can generate revenue and goodwill with your customers. Newspaper editors claim to be the best (and sometimes only) source of information about their towns or cities. They are delusional. Papers are usually unable or unwilling to provide any information beyond what they choose to print on a given day or leave online.
A case in point: I’m researching the history of a famous Native American in the Detroit area, Chief Sashabaw. The Sashabaw name is everywhere in Oakland County, on highways, schools, cemeteries, and more. Yet no one at any of the papers I have contacted back there knows, or cares, a thing about this man whose name they see or hear almost daily. They can’t find old stories they ran about incidents involving him. I would happily pay for information, but they have none to offer me.
OK, these positions probably won’t generate enough revenue to cover their cost, but then neither do reporters, photographers, etc. But when you add in the value they provide to your staff and the goodwill they can generate with your customers, they can be invaluable. Add to that the books and special sections they could contribute, and the proposition looks pretty attractive.
If newspapers don’t start investing in knowledge and the technology necessary to support it, their claim to being a source of information, rather than simply manufacturers of a paper product, will be laughed at by customers.
