How to Save Our Newspapers, and Other Whimsical Notions

Is flossing the only daily habit left to us?

By Ed Goldman

American newspapers continue to plummet from daily-habit status, supreme influencer and convenient training aid for recalcitrant puppies (rolled up and deployed to gently pat snouts or bottoms for disciplinary purposes or laid on a kitchen floor to accommodate bodily functions when the weather is forbidding).

I’m wondering why publishers can’t be more innovative. For example, the daily-except-Saturday Sacramento Bee apparently believes it’s saving money by running stories as many as four days after the event it’s reporting on. (You’ve heard of breaking news? Try oozing news.) This must be based on the notion that people will buy pretty good day-old doughnuts and used cars at a serious discount.

Scooped!

For a time, the Bee also established a separate non-profit—in addition to its daily unintentional non-profit—to encourage donors to pay for the journalism the paper was already supposed to be providing. This ploy was doomed to failure, especially if one of the readers knew basic math:

1 subscription + 1 donation = 1 smaller and smaller newspaper.

Therefore, in the interest of supporting a free press that comforts the afflicted and afflicts none of its advertisers (this is 2024, not 1776) here are some ideas to bring subscribers back to the (tee-hee) fold:

1. SCENTED PAGES. Whey, it works for fashion magazines. The all-important question is: What should the aroma(s) be? My suggestion is that each section of the paper should have its own distinctive bouquet. For instance, the urban news should smell like the diesel exhaust from a crosstown bus. The sports page should emit a whiff of the locker room. And the opinion pages may want to consider pumping out a wretched fragrance of some sort so readers can agree that any opinions contrary to their own completely stink. One cautionary note: A few magazines had to dial back on its heavily perfumed pages when allergy sufferers objected.

2. EDIBLE PAGES. I think it would be well-advised to pilot these with the Wednesday food sections—and to remember that not everyone loves vegetables, so don’t commit yourself to vendors of kale flavoring. The same dilemma could crop up for that hearty group of nutrition gamblers I call “las vegans,” people who believe that God gave them canine teeth so they could fiercely masticate quinoa. They may very well eat the pages showing Porterhouse steaks and thick French fries but they may use the rest of the section as receptacles for their literally purging themselves of guilt. It may be best to find a neutral taste on which everyone can agree, like Nutella spread or seafoam Jell-o salad.

3. EVEN MORE SPORTS SCORES. Most local papers think they’re “giving back” to their community by running high school football scores alongside pro-football outcomes. Well, what about printing the results of all those K-12 after-school dodgeball games? What about telling us who made it to the finals of the Extreme Frisbee playoffs? Perhaps a daily rundown of pickleball injuries? And is covering the seniors-in-the-park chess tournament all that difficult? You can cover the latter as it begins, write down the names of the players, then go home and take a refreshing nap. By the time you come back, I guarantee you, no one will have executed a game-winning “back rank”—the most popular checkmate pattern, though I’ve seen a few kilts that exceed that in sheer busy-ness..

4. DISCOUNT COUPONS FOR EVERYTHING! Direct-response advertising can be the most effective—so why not offer discounts beyond the usual fast-food, carwash and Martinizing categories? I’m thinking of the following:

(a) Buy-one-newspaper building/get a second one free;

(b) Happy-hour savings on any operation ending in “-ectomy”;

(d) Funeral rebates (next-of-kin only, please!); and

(e) Price cuts on the purchase of your next Fax machine, IBM Selectric (II!), and landline telephone service in the Sierra Nevada.

5. SILENT AUCTION OF OUTDATED NEWSROOM EQUIPMENT. Includes wire-service and ticker-tape devices, police-band radios, filled ashtrays, used typewriter ribbons and burnt-out reporters (one to a customer).

Don’t forget! A new Goldman State Podcast drops every Friday!

Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).