The session I gave at Podcamp Toronto 2010 was titled Saving Newspapers Using Search & Social. It was all about how newspapers could use a blend of SEO, social media, and mobile apps to increase their audience and offer more diversified and targeted ad buys. Some of the audience seemed to thinks that I was on to something, and some of the audience thought I was dreaming.

On the last day of PCTO, I met Dave Coleman. He’s the Director of Marketing for Spreed Inc, a company that’s already working with newspapers to provide the mobile component of what I recommended in my presentation. Spreed is working with some major newspapers, such as the Globe & Mail, which served up 7.5 million page views a month last month through their iPhone App alone.

iPhone Version

So it looks like newspapers aren’t f**ked, after all. They just need to start looking at themselves as Social News Organizations rather than suppliers of physical, printed artifacts. Because, frankly, their business model hinges on providing authority, printed content, and there’s nothing in that which stipulates that that content has to be delivered via a berliner, tabloid, or broadsheet format.

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