Eight (or nine) reasons to feel better

Howard Owens is a newspaper guy. Maybe that makes his optimism suspect in some quarters, but not around here. He's a smart guy who's been thinking about (and working on) online journalism for a long time, and he knows as much about it as anybody.

So take a moment to read his post Eight reasons to be hopeful if you work for a newspaper company.

Here's a taste:

In most communities, newspapers are seen not just as big media, but as part of the community. This is especially true in smaller communities, but even in large metros, the love/hate relationship that is sometimes displayed by readers for the local rag is still brand equity. So long as we are around, large segments of our communities will need what we do, and turn to us first for not just the big stories, but the small stories other media ignores. We don’t need to reach everybody, just enough (and we can always develop other products to reach the people not interested in general purpose news).