For department stores, many chains found their death in a trojan horse — the mall. With the rise of the mall, department stores were asked to anchor these megaplexes. But inside the smaller stores were more nimble, better competitors who specialized in deeper lines of products. Electronics, women’s shoes, hardware, whatever it was, from big box to pretzels chains took shoppers away from many department stores.

Ironically, like the mall, the Internet was supposed to be the future of newspapers. But for some reason the 90s passed and the opportunity was never realized. Perhaps that crack known as print advertising was just too good to give up. Or maybe, change was really that hard.

And he’s right. Department stores for decades was the jack of all trades families turned to for one-stop-shopping. But then malls came along, inviting specialist stores who then competed within feet of one another for foot traffic and business. Department stores couldn’t compete – sure J.C. Penney’s has a shoe department, but it’s no Foot Locker when it comes to selection, brands and sometimes price (well, maybe not price, but still).

Specialization and one-stop-shopping met at the mall.

For over ten years now that’s been happening with the news on the internet: newspapers have come to anchor media coverage online but other operations have set up that specialize and do some things better than those aiming to do all things. Sure the New York Times has a sports section, but ESPN is just a dot-com away.

So it’s adapt or die. But how to do that?

“Cover what you do best. Link to the rest. inkheart dvdrip download “

This changes the dynamic of editorial decisions. Instead of saying, “we should have that” (and replicating what is already out there) you say, “what do we do best?” That is, “what is our unique value?” It means that when you sit down to see a story that others have worked on, you should ask, “can we do it better?” If not, then link. And devote your time to what you can do better.

As I linked to in March (Newspapers: Adapt Or Die), Newsweek is already doing this:

Newsweek is about to begin a major change in its identity, with a new design, a much smaller and, it hopes, more affluent readership, and some shifts in content. The venerable newsweekly’s ingrained role of obligatory coverage of the week’s big events will be abandoned once and for all, executives say.

“There’s a phrase in the culture, ‘we need to take note of,’ ‘we need to weigh in on,’ ” said Newsweek’s editor, Jon Meacham. “That’s going away. If we don’t have something original to say, we won’t. The drill of chasing the week’s news to add a couple of hard-fought new details is not sustainable.”

If you can’t make it your own, focus on what you can make your own and hat tip others for the rest of it.

For some that may not be enough. Sarah Lacy has advice at TechCrunch that’s a bit more aggressive but sounds like a perfect business model for succeeding online and off:

There’s an obvious option for these magazines, and I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about it: Ruthlessly collapse the print and online staffs, run everything online as soon as they write it, except one or two cover-length, long-form glossy pieces. Those will anchor the print issue, rounded out by the best stories from online. Then cut the money spent on trying to court new subscribers, shifting the entire marketing budget to promote the Web or real-life conferences and branded events. You could even use reader comments to flesh the online pieces out more for the print edition, driving more engagement in both the print and online versions. Voila! One publication, not two pretending to be one. And guess what? One publication is a hell of a lot cheaper, even if it’s printed on dead trees.

Give them something online many times a day, save the meat for the print and utilize your audience for filler when the magazine/paper comes out. Now a reader can participate and have a vested interest in the success and invest in the media accordingly.

Not only does this allow media to remain relevant but also supports newspapers and magazines doing what they can do better than most any other blogger out there: WRITE ACTUAL ARTICLES. Real meat, investigative pieces that take up 5-10 pages and really involves some journalism the reporting that they are better trained, equipped and financed to do. Get a handful of kids fresh outta college to do your online content for $25-30k a year a starting, pay a couple veterans the bigger bucks to deliver the meat, groom the kids to eventually be able to do the same, and suddenly you have yourself a working paper on the relatively cheap.

This isn’t the way newspapers have worked, nor is it how they’re adapting. Instead they’re cutting the bigger bucks veterans, stocking up on prospects on the cheap, and leaving them with no one to learn the real ins and outs of journalism from. At some point its unsustainable, the kids don’t know how to provide any real meat and the hemorrhaging of money continues without anyone with the know how to stick their thumb in the dike.

Papers are going to keep failing. Even if some make the harsh adjustments, it may be too little too late. Just as many department store chains are now long and gone, so will many papers. Others will survive, linger on as a shell of their former selves, or maybe convert and become something different, something better.

UPDATE: David Simon, creator of The Wire, gets it wrong:

Simon told the Senate Commerce Committee today bloggers don’t go to city council meetings, or know what the hell is going on if they do — a clichéd, out of touch refrain common among newspapermen who can’t be bothered to do any reporting on the assertion. The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed from a Newark Star-Ledger columnist to this effect:

Don’t expect that Web site to hire somebody to sit through town-council meetings… a lot of bloggers will be found gasping for breath under piles of pure ennui. There is nothing more tedious than a public meeting.

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I found this argument odd, because as a newspaper reporter who spent a few years covering a town much like Baltimore — Oakland, California — I often found that bloggers were the only other writers in the room at certain city council committee meetings and at certain community events. They tended to be the sort of persistently-involved residents newspapermen often refer to as “gadflies” — deeply, obsessively concerned about issues large and infinitesimal in the communities where they lived.

The whole Gawker piece by Ryan Tate is good and has some fine examples of citizen journalism.

(Originally posted at J’s Notes.)

As a political issue, “sunlight” is gaining traction.

In this case “sunlight” means ordinary citizens being able to see the inner workings of their government. It means making it easy for anyone to go online and see records of what decisions government departments make, and how they spend money.

Other than to hide something potentially embarrassing, what good reason does any public official have for denying taxpayers access to such information?

Given the trouble with money governments and financial institutions have had in recent times, calling for more scrutiny seems more practical than radical. Hey, since the government already watches us all the time, why shouldn’t we be able to watch it?

Today’s technology makes it possible for City Hall to open itself up to scrutiny via the Internet. If Richmond wants to do it, this city could allow the taxpayers to follow their tax money through the machinery of government to where it gets spent. Ordinary people could see how much goes in and how much comes out. They could see who gets that money, too.

Perhaps Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) put it best: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

So, why can’t any Richmonder look at a map of the city with every property publicly owned highlighted? Why can’t that map be interactive, so one could click on each property and see how long The City has had it, what it’s worth and how it’s being used?

Richmond owns the football stadium south of Carytown. For years it has leased that facility, with all of its acreage to the University of Richmond for a dollar a year. Since the university has been taking care of the grounds that may have been a good deal for the owners of that land, the taxpayers. Or, should Richmond have sold off that primo property ten years ago? What’s it worth?

How many other properties owned by The City are being used with similar sweetheart deals? Perhaps, more important, how many properties are not being used at all?

As it is now, if you look at the City of Richmond’s web site for answers that sort of information is just not available. If you call and ask for such a map, with the data about the properties listed above, it’s likely you’ll be told you need to file a Freedom of Information Act request.

In other words, the departments of The City that have that information in hand have been told by policy-makers to make it difficult for an ordinary citizen to get a handle on how Richmond manages the property it owns. While that doesn’t necessarily mean anything dishonest is going on, doesn’t that attitude need to change?

As new as this notion might be to some readers, it’s been bubbling in the blogosphere for some time. One noteworthy step has already been taken toward more citizen oversight of routine government business. Waldo Jaquith, one of Virginia’s best known political bloggers, launched a website a couple of years ago to track bills through the General Assembly. It’s called Richmond Sunlight.

Now Richmond’s Mayor Dwight Jones has the power to make a savvy move that would put him in a good light. He could tell one and all, including employees of The City of Richmond, he is going to break with the old style that depended on keeping John Q. Public in the dark.

Yes, Jones could turn his back on yesterday’s cloistered way of doing the people’s business. Richmond’s new mayor could call a press conference and say, “Let there be sunlight.” Or, Jones might call no press conference.

Like his predecessor, he can go on clinging to yesterday’s routinely paranoid way of running a government that wanted as little kibitzing from taxpayers as possible.

Whatever Jones does with this aspect of serving the people who elected him, “sunlight” is a political issue that is only going to get bigger. Young voters are going to demand it, because they understand it is feasible. All of which means that from now on smart candidates for public office are going to be hip to the attractiveness of this growing interest in openness and scrutiny.

As a campaign issue, advocating more transparency into government’s handling of money and its properties is eventually going to get politicians elected, whether they are liberals or conservatives.

Is time on your side, Mayor Jones?

Note: Reprinted from a June 22 article at Richmond.com. by F.T. Rea

A severe electrical and rain storm rolled across the bridge-tunnel Wednesday night, causing power outages and power surges. Apparently the power issues damaged a water main pump and possibly caused a water main break in the westbound tunnel. The malfunctions caused the pump house to fill with water, eventually overwhelming it and water seeped into the tunnel’s travel lanes.

The water pooled 4 to 6 inches deep at the mouth of the tunnel on the Hampton side. Tunnel staff were unaware of the problem until about 6:30 a.m. The problem was not detected earlier because the alarm system alerting the control room of a failure is electric and also malfunctioned. Water was shut off and the westbound lanes were closed.

Traffic was diverted from the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel to the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel. Of course, there is no direct route on the Southside of Hampton Roads to the MMMBT (the convoluted route back down 64 to 664 doesn’t count, in my book). So that dumped a lot of traffic onto the streets of Norfolk, which, due to HarborFest and light rail construction, already has a lot of closed streets.

I watched this drama unfold via Twitter yesterday from the comfort of my home. I saw reports of 20-mile backups at the MMMBT, delays at the James River Bridge due to downed electrical lines, a 3-vehicle accident inside the MMMBT and more. The Downtown and Midtown tunnels were overwhelmed.

That Hampton Roads finds itself in this predicament is an indictment of a whole lot of folks, both locally and in Richmond. This wasn’t a major storm – Wednesday’s storm bypassed my neighborhood – but the results were horrible. I think I’m most bothered by the fact that the water was able to pool in the tunnel without anyone knowing for a while – what happened to the folks that used to walk through the tunnel? Where are the backups to the sophisticated alarm systems that don’t work when there is no electricity?

This should be a wake-up call for Hampton Roads. It is beyond time to get serious about our transportation mess.

Despite lots of recent evidence to the contrary (see, e.g., Michelle Bachmann and Norm Coleman), I cling to the idea of Minnesota as a place that produces good politicians in a climate of genuine decency.  I’ve got high hopes for Franken.  Very.