News for the Non-Newspapered
This was TOO GOOD not to pass along in it's full format...not my words, and credit is given at the end....enjoy...:)
This was TOO GOOD not to pass along in it's full format...not my words, and credit is given at the end....enjoy...:)
"News for the
Non-Newspapered
Imagine you are a journalist at a
small-town newspaper. Because of the size of the operation, you not only
initiate stories, but write them up as a reporter, and then help distribute the
paper to those interested in getting a copy.
Your paper has around five
thousand readers.
One day it occurs to you that
while you have five thousand readers, you live in a town of over fifty thousand
people. So while you are reaching a large group, it is far from the majority.
Over forty thousand people are not reading your
news.
You decide to reach them.
But
how?
One thing is clear: designing, and
then marketing, a newspaper to people who demonstrate no interest in reading the
existing newspaper presents a challenge. You can’t simply do what you’ve
already been doing. If it was working, they would already be
readers.
You decide to go with some “blue
sky” thinking, freeing yourself to reflect on the situation in ways you may
never have considered before. After many hours, over many days, you come to
three significant understandings:
First, you realize you are not
really in the newspaper business, but the news business, and thus you can be
free of older, traditional “newspaper” formats and pursue newer, more
contemporary mediums.
In other words, you realize you
are in a similar situation as the old railroad barons who were confronted with
the development of the car and truck. When automobiles came along, the railroad
companies were uniquely poised to take advantage of the new breakthrough.
Instead, they fought it, clinging to trains as if that was their business. They
failed to realize they weren’t in the train business at all, but the
transportation business. If
they had made this realization, they would have led the way into the new
century. They didn’t.
This leads to your second
insight: It isn’t news itself that people are rejecting, but way that news is
being offered. News in print is not as up-to-date, convenient, portable,
accessible, or cheap as news online. This is the day of the internet, and
content is increasingly preferred to come to iPads and smart
phones.
You see, as never before, that
it’s not the message, but the medium; it’s not the content, but the delivery.
You are free to convey the news in whatever medium seems
best.
Finally, you understand that
because of the tsunami of news and information available to the average person,
you have to find a way to gain their attention. You don’t want to become akin
to a tabloid, and you don’t want to give up the importance of serious
journalism. But somehow you have to find a way to gain a hearing, win their
loyalty, and then earn the right for them to read the more thoughtful,
challenging pieces you’ve given your life to
convey.
This means you will have to find
out what news is considered relevant to
their life, and then use that interest to create lead articles that hold value
for them. This will encourage them to delve deeper, and expose them to a wider
spectrum of events that are more critical for them to know; even more than they
realize.
You know there is much more to
understand, but you have a new sense of true north, a new freedom to innovate,
and a new set of challenges that never occurred to you
before.
Now, imagine you are a pastor at a
small town church…
James Emery White"
Editor’s
Note
James Emery White is the founding
and senior pastor of Mecklenburg
Community Church in Charlotte , NC ,
and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell
Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president. His newly
released book
is A Traveler's
Guide to the Kingdom: Journeying through the Christian Life
(InterVarsity Press). To enjoy a free subscription to
the Church and Culture blog, log-on to www.churchandculture.org,
where you can post your comments on this blog, view past blogs in our archive
and read the latest church and culture news from around the world. Follow Dr.
White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.
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