Doctor prescribes how to fix what ails the biz news desk

Daily newspaper business news desks — struggling because their standalone sections and stock pahes have been cut — should focus less on covering the public companies in their area and more on the smaller companies that make their communities unique.

They should also begin publishing all breaking news online and turn all of their staff writers into bloggers.

Those are some of the conclusions by Ken Doctor, a former vice president of editorial for Knight-Ridder Digital in a report on local business news for Outsell Inc., a market research firm.

The report is for sale for $695 from Outsell here. Doctor, who was also managing editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, provided Talking Biz News with a copy.

Doctor also recommends that business desks try to match up specific content with targeted advertising, and that they seek content-based partnerships with news agencies such as AP, Reuters and Bloomberg.

“The task is deceptively simple,” writes Doctor. “Build new local business news audiences online and use state-of-the-art web tools to monetize them highly.”

Doctor argues that business news has been nationalized and globalized, meaning that most metropolitan newspapers are losing the battle to cover those stories uniquely to competitors such as The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

And daily business desks are losing readers to Web-only business news sites such as Seeking Alpha and the weekly business papers run by companies such as American City Business Journals and Dolan Media.

In addition, most business news desks are far behind in using the Internet to maintain readers. He estimated that daily newspapers have only about 5 percent, or $35 million to $40 million, of the estimated $750 million online ad market in business news. That compares to the 10 percent to 15 percent share newspapers have of the online ad market in other news categories.

“Overall, it’s about first recognizing business news reality and re-connecting with both local reader concerns and advertiser needs,” writes Doctor. “That formula has led a number of websites in new directions. As Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and now a columnist for the newspaper, told Outsell, ‘When the bulk of coverage is online and some in print, it’s a great opportunity to experiment.'”