Nozzl Media, Inc.

A few days ago, I wrote that the most valuable thing newspapers can learn from the technology world is the optimistic geek attitude that says anything is possible.

Here are 10 more lessons from technology:

10. Appoint a staff futurist. Or mad scientist or lookout or whatever you want to call him or her. The important thing is to have someone who is responsible for observing the world beyond the impending deadline. While newspapers bemoan their fate at the hands of Craigslist, the next Craigslist is already out there, preparing to wreak havoc once again.

9. Play offense, not defense. Too many newspapers continue to pour the bulk of their resources into the paper, even while proclaiming an Internet-first philosophy. But this is war. The paper is nothing but a rear-guard action now, to be protected by a small, but sufficient garrison of troops. The front lines are online and mobile, where the paper’s best and brightest should be driving forward with energy and intelligence.

8. Hire a UX person. User experience — UX — and its cousin, user interface (UI), are technology terms, but they should be newspaper terms as well. UX experts parse websites like anthropologists studying ancient tools: Is the design optimal and intiuitive? Does it answer the user’s needs? Is everything where the user expects it to be? How can the user’s experience be enhanced? The UI designer translates the analysis into a final product. Newspapers, in contrast, too often redesign for their own sakes, not for readers. They create front pages with “multiple entry points” to draw readers inside, while creating half a dozen story jumps that readers consistently say they hate. They print on broadsheet, while young readers say they want tabloid-size papers. They take for granted one of their greatest opportunities: people who love reading their paper with their morning coffee. What other mass medium triggers such an emotional attachment? Good UX can help take advantage of and enhance that emotion and cut down on circulation attrition.

7. Two words: form factor. When U.S. Robotics launched the Palm Pilot 1000 in 1996, the handheld personal organizer became one of the most popular consumer electronics products in history. Most of its success had to do with its utter simplicity. But one other factor was critical: It was small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. Inventor Jeff Hawkins and his team literally measured shirt pockets to ensure that users could slip the Pilot in and go. That attribute — the perfect marriage of physical form with user experience — is known in the hardware world as form factor. Good form factor means giving young readers a tabloid. It might also mean building an ultrasmall paper version for buses and coffee shops. It certainly means creating editions for mobile phones and e-readers. Maybe you can think of other physical forms that newspapers should adopt.

6. Amazon the news. In 2001, newspaper consultants Ellen Kampinsky, Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis published a groundbreaking whitepaper titled “Amazoning the news: What if we told stories the way Amazon sells books?” They argued convincingly that Amazon is the Internet’s consummate storyteller. They aren’t stories in the sense of a traditional narrative, which eventually becomes an historical artifact buried under the sands of time. Rather, Amazon creates a social context in which news takes root, grows and continues to blossom with ongoing input from the community. Amazon recognizes the five reasons people use the Web: to share, inform, create, entertain and transact. Amazon applies the Internet’s five rules of engagement — the network, time and place, interactivity, data and personality — to help its users tell one another the stories they came to Amazon to hear.

5. Sell the notebook. This isn’t a technology idea, but it’s worth considering. Any good reporter will tell you that only 10 percent of the information he or she gathers actually makes it into the final story. Why? Space is at a premium. Overly long stories bore readers. Much information is redundant. Or sometimes, one person’s quote is just more interesting than another. But that 90 percent of information on the cutting-room floor might still be valuable to someone. Package it and sell it at a premium. For most readers, a published story is all they want, but for others, every last detail will be more than worth the price.

4. Become the competition. Technology is a breeding ground for unholy alliances: sworn enemies lying together like lions and lambs in unlikely partnerships. Not only is Intel Inside my Dell desktop PC, but it’s also inside my MacBook Pro. In the world of mass media, the analogy is relevant to advertising sales, where newspapers, TV and radio compete for the same ad dollars. A win for one medium is a loss for another. But what happens if a newspaper acts as an ad network, placing ads not only in its own pages but also in other media? By becoming a broker, albeit a self-interested one, a newspaper can position itself as a one-stop solution to a local advertiser’s needs.

3. Go D-I-Y. Many newspapers have adopted Google’s practice of do-it-yourself advertising for the little guys. But few promote it, concentrating instead on their expensive feet-on-the-street sales forces, who prefer to romance the big accounts (and generate the big commissions). Studies indicate that more than 85 percent of all potential local advertisers are never asked for their business. That means a local market’s sales forces are all chasing after the same 15 percent of low-hanging fruit. Technology offers a simple solution: self-service advertising. Technology marketing offers an equally simple solution: Concentrate your initial efforts on early adopter advertisers, then cross into mainstream by initially targeting narrow niches for whom self-service makes the most sense. Eventually, self-service will gain momentum as its spreads into adjacent niches and, ultimately, into the full mainstream. (See “Crossing the Chasm” and “Inside the Tornado,” two superb books on the subject by Geoffrey A. Moore.)

2. Display ads are the past. It’s widely acknowledged that newspaper display advertising is a broken revenue model for sustaining large news organizations. But few realize that newspapers are relying on yet another broken revenue model: online display ads. The newspaper industry draws more than 90 percent of its entire online revenue from display ads — and display ads will peak this year, followed by a long, inexorable decline. What will replace them? Search, video and mobile ads. Newspapers already are far behind the curve on these ad technologies. Search-marketing firms have been around a dozen years or more. Video marketing is spawning startups every day. And just this week, Google bought AdMob, a mobile ad network, for $750 million — a move that should send chills up the spines of every newspaper publisher in the country. Display ads are the past. The future has already arrived.

1. Don’t sleep. Seriously: Don’t sleep. Now that I have moved from the newspaper world into the technology world, I can tell you that when I send an e-mail or a tweet to a tech colleague at midnight, the odds of getting a return message almost immediately are surprisingly high. If I send a similar message to a newspaper colleague, I know I won’t get a response until sometime the next day and sometimes not at all. No knock on my newspaper colleagues. People on daily deadlines are extremely busy, and it’s not healthy to work around the clock. On the other hand, there’s a serious lesson here for newspapers. Complain about competition from the Internet all you want, but remember: It’s tough to beat a competitor who doesn’t sleep.