10 More (Web-Oriented) Questions for Gary Pruitt

These additional questions for Mr. Pruitt,  just in from a web-savvy colleague who prefers anonymity given the tossing and turning of the publishing world. They highlight the kind of smarts McClatchy will now be expected to bring to its web publishing efforts, given its rank as the #2 newspaper company. (It will still have that rank after selling off Knight Ridder's Dirty Dozen, with first bids due tomorrow.)

What questions would you add?

1. Did you think twice before deciding to jettison the online audience (55% of KRD’s total unique users and 36% of pageviews in Feb '06) the “dirty dozen” papers would have generated for you? 

2. What’s your plan for winning more online ad dollars, when the vast majority of those dollars seem to flow to online portals and aggregators with much greater scale of audience? 

3. Do you have a plan for transitioning your company to an era when the bulk of a news publisher’s revenue must be derived from online rather than print media, or do you plan to be out of the industry before that happens? 

4. If a recent college graduate asked you why they should pursue a career in either A) journalism, or B) the business of newspaper publishing, what would you tell them? 

5. Jon Fine reports that according to you, “The growth of craigslist and other almost wholly free classified sites ‘does not mean that [newspapers’ classified] revenues over time will shrink’”. Did you really say that, and if so, can you explain your thinking?

6. Do newspapers need to do a better job of reaching younger audiences? And if so, what’s your plan to achieve this? 

7. If you had to choose, today, between running a company focused exclusively on news generation or one focused exclusively on classified ad revenue, which would you choose, and why? 

8. Do you believe that superior journalism is a direct driver of superior financial performance? If so, can you explain the link between the two? 

9. Which blogs do you read on a regular basis? And which RSS feeds to you subscribe to? 

10. In economically stagnant markets, is the need for quality local journalism greater than, or less than, the need for such journalism in rapidly growing markets? And in either case: who should be responsible for providing that journalism?  

Comments

[Paul Bucalo]

I think these are great questions for every publisher.
In fact, I adapted them to be a little more generic and saved them for a future presentation to the publishers in my company.