The transition from mere a newspaper to full-blown social news organizations (SNO) requires a significant investement in technological infrastructre. That’s not an easy bullet to bite when ad-revenues are falling and potential investors are increasingly wary of a fledgling industry. So perhaps print publishers should be looking at technology VCs, rather than the more conventional sources of capital.

After all, becoming a social news organization is more of a technological undertaking than an editorial one. After all, an SNO requires more than just taking on technical infrastructure. It also requires internalizing tech culture and making sure that you have the resources and people and over see it.

Just consider how (1) approaching readers as users so that you can (2) offer them cross platform interaction through APIs to (3) can collect behavioral data, and (4) replace your ad-sales departments with a comprehensive marketing agencies (like Vice Magazine) that can (5) help mine that user database, and then (6) use your users to target advertisers and (7) diversify their ad offerings accordingly and (7) subsequently collaborate with editorial to develop symbiotic content model.

Internalizing a tech culture is so important for a newspaper to survive because it’s technology and new media that have eaten in to readerships, ad sales, and classifieds revenue. Simply put, it’s adapt and overcome. This is more than a media revolution. It’s evolution, and if outlets don’t evolve into media entities, they will simply go extinct.

Consider, recent comments by Vanity Fair‘s editor Graydon Carter:

The Internet is partly to blame for all of this, and perhaps micro-pricing or gated content will be part of the solution. “Youthing” down a paper to attract 21-year-olds isn’t the answer: the only way you’re ever going to get the average 21-year-old to read a daily newspaper is to wait 9 years until he’s 30. My suggestion to newspapers everywhere is to give the public a reason to read them again. So here’s an idea: get on a big story with widespread public appeal, devote your best resources to it, say a quiet prayer, and swing for the fences. [emphasis my own]

Say a prayer, indeed! While original and compelling content is part of the solution (something that both Nick Denton and Tom foremski agree with), it’s only part of the solution.

Where Carter is kinda wrong is in “youthing down” a paper, and I say “kinda wrong” because papers should actually be “youthing up rather than down. You see, content devlivery is another integral part of the solution, and if newspapers are going to survive, they have to start accommodating the 30-year-olds of 5 years from now — not necessarily the 30-year-olds of 9 years from now, but definitely the 30-year-olds of 5 years from now. ‘Cause if they don’t, the 25 year-olds of today are going to get into the habit of going elsewhere for their (less authoritative) content, and we’re all going to be the worse for it.

This is why social media APIs are so much part an parcel of a symbiotic editorial model: because readers are now users, and users interact with content. They don’t just consume it. As Alan Rusbridger, the Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian, noted in a recent interview, there is a blurring between the reader and the journalist, so it’s become necessary to involve the reader more and create a community around your journalist core.

And everything from approaching your readers as user to diversifying your revenue stream and targeting advertisers through user-data is a technological undertaking. So tech VCs may not only provide newspapers with the financial resources to make the transition to an SNO, they might also provide access to a network of resources and people who can help ensure that the transition goes more smoothly.

Image: "Newspaper dispensers" by MY Montreal

Maybe what’s plaguing so many local newspapers these days is that they aren’t so “local” anymore. I mean, one of the ideas that Tom Foremski had about how newspapers, especially local ones, could reinvent themselves was by owning their local stories — from community reporting to business and political stories that originate within their beat. The crux of this approach is that it’d allow newspapers to offer wholly original content, something that people might be willing to keep paying for (whether through subscriptions or their eye-balls).

After all, most of what online media has done to over-saturated the content market has been through regurgitation. Even though the mainstream media (MSM) has lost revenues, it’s not like the up-and-comers have captured their marketing sure. These up-and-comers are costing the MSM more than the up-and-comers themselves are worth (i.e. generating in revenue).

So there’s still a demand for oringinal content if only because it seems even scarcer on the high-seas of content-up-chuck. Consider a recent AdAge interview with Nick Denton , the founder of Gawker Media:

On his way to the bunker, Mr. Denton sold two non-core blogs, Consumerist and Idolator; folded Valleywag and Defamer into Gawker itself; and shed some staff. Now he’s hired some new journalists at Kotaku and Gawker, and while they’ll still live and die (or at least dine) by their page views, Mr. Denton said he believes traffic rewards scoops and original reporting over snarky reheats. [emphasis my own.]

Why should we listen to Denton? Well, because he seems to have pulled up Gawker’s boot straps and gotten its head above the water while the undertow was pulling a lot of other publishers down by those very same boots.

So how does a local paper focus more on original content? Well, maybe by becoming more verticalized. And since no media does “vertical” better than blogs, maybe successful blogs offer a clue on how to save local newspapers.

Blogs have verticals. Well, so do local papers. Their veritcal is the municipality. And where blogs have categories, local papers can also learn a lesson. Instead of categories, local papers could have neighbourhoods.

Right now, the majority of local papers syndicate their national/international news to cut costs, and they are failing there because news off the wire doesn’t put it into the context of the community. Providing that “community context” will be an integral part to becoming news media organizations rather than mere “papers” (as Tom suggests), and will make it all that more viable to reinvent their revenue model for an increasingly mobile and personalized web.

Whatever “it” is, Monty Python seems to have it by the short hairs. I came across this on Johnnie Moore’s blog (who found it on Geoff Jones’ blog). First, the strategy it is exemplar of an established media brand rolling with a fury of punches it can’t deflect. Second, the content is perfectly formated for the web video consumption patterns. Finally, the strategy has a revenue stream component. Now how many video bloggers can claim that they “get” all three of those — especially the last one?

Mainstream Media 1, User Generated New Media Free Hippy Love 0.