The Star, in transition

I was pleasantly surprised, the other day, to see that our own local paper, the Kansas City Star, updated their website. It's fresher, it looks more "adult", more professional and overall, it's just a good improvement.

It still doesn't reflect the paper itself, as I think it should, but that's clearly subjective. Let's just give kudos to the change and improvement.

Then, today, I went out to get the paper--you know, the actual paper, paper--and holy cow. I know it was Monday but this thing was so light. I didn't actually weigh it but I swear it felt as though it might be as light as a whole 7 ounces. Needless to say, there was extremely little to it.

Today? Tuesday?  It may have weighed in at 10 ounces.

So this, then, is where it gets tricky, possibly outright difficult, for the local paper.

The staff has to put enough in the paper for people to want to continue to still purchase and advertise in it, both, but at the same time, they have to work hard to put enough content in to be relevant and worthwhile and even maybe necessary for the new generations, the "next generations", the younger people who would possibly go there for news, information and entertainment, while building up the online content, too.

What the Star needs to do--what I'd say all local newspapers need to do to gain readership online-- would be, among other things, to partner with area artists and videographers and writers and everyone they can think of, to come up with good, local content so the viewers will come to the site.

For example, one thing the Star could and should do that would likely get them better viewership for their website would be having a young videographer do a compilation of sites and people at at least some, if not all, of the First Fridays in the Crossroads District. It could be inexpensive, I think, for the paper but worthwhile for the person who films and edits it and then would likely draw plenty of people to their site.

It's what I've said before here, the Star needs to realize their online site needs to be a multi-media one, just at the people at the New York Times have done and are doing.

They could and should also send these same videographers to events around town like the car show, for instance, last weekend, and the different art fairs around town, etc. It could give far better coverage, quickly and easily, for the areas bigger events from Briarcliff and North Kansas City and Kansas City North to all parts of Overland Park, Prairie Village, far South Kansas City, Liberty, Independence and Blue Springs, etc.

If they don't do that, I don't know why the next, younger generations will go there. And if the readers and viewers don't go, the advertising and advertisers won't, either.

This is going to be tricky.

Very tricky.