Yer absolutely right. Hyper local is the only way to win as a newspaper. Sure, you can just reprint the AP stories on the big international news of each day, bu

Yer absolutely right. Hyper local is the only way to win as a newspaper. Sure, you can just reprint the AP stories on the big international news of each day, but a better tactic is to post pictures of locals on the front page, and to let them voice their opinions in the op-eds and column sections. An Ohio paper did this just right a number of years ago, though I forget which city it was. It wasn't the Cox News towns, so not Dayton... Anyway, this local Ohio paper's tactic was to replace its business section with a "Mothers" section, with info for local mothers, like day-care news, preschool listings, parenting tips, and info on places to take toddlers during the day. It worked extremely well, and the paper then opened an online forum for these Mothers, who then became the most common users of their Website. I'm a journalist, as some of you may know. The thing that really makes a printed outlet work is its readers. They should be able to be a community, in the physical sense, rather than the social network sense. It's tough for magazines to make meatspace reader conncetions, as they are national. But local newspapers, they're a perfect place to build local communities.