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I recently read an article by Loren Colburn in the August issue of Publish, the magazine of the Association of Community Publishers. The title caught my attention: "Made for Someone."
It got me thinking about newspapers, content and what we sometimes lose sight of in today's race to capture people's attention.
We live in a world of clicks, likes, shares, push notifications and endless scrolling. There is always another headline, another video and another story competing for a few seconds of our attention. Much of today's content is created with one question in mind: How do we get someone to click?
But maybe there's another question worth asking:
Who are we making this for?
That's where I think community newspapers are different.
At The Daily News, we're not trying to be everything to everyone. We're not competing with national news organizations to tell you what happened across the country. We're here to tell you what happened across the street.
A high school honor roll may not generate thousands of clicks, but it matters to the parents and grandparents who see a familiar name. A photograph from a local event may never go viral, but someone in that picture may save it for years. A story about a local business being sold/passed down to another family member may not interest someone 500 miles away, but it matters to the people who own it, work there and visit there.
And then there are the stories that simply help us understand the place we call home -- our schools, our businesses, our local government, our organizations, our events and, most importantly, our people.
Not everything worth reading is designed to be clicked.
Sometimes it's designed to be saved.
Sometimes it's designed to be shared with a grandparent.
Sometimes it's designed to make you say, "I didn't know that was happening."
And sometimes it's simply there because it's part of the story of our community.
That's something I think is easy to forget when we talk about the future of newspapers. Content isn't just something we produce. Content is our connection to the people we serve.
So yes, we will continue to adapt. We will continue to use social media and digital platforms. We will continue to find new ways to reach readers.
But I don't want us to lose sight of the most important part.
We aren't just making content.
We're making a newspaper for someone.
And from where I sit, that someone is you.