Doc Searls' Ten Point Plan

Ran across the following on Doc Searls today thanks to an anonymous reader -- it's good stuff for our friends at the News-Press to consider...listing them below doesn't do his post justice, it's worth reading via the link above and is written under Thursday's date (10/05/06).

Doc Searls Ten Point Plan: Newspapers 2.0

• First, stop giving away the news and charging for the olds.
  
• Second, start featuring archived stuff on the paper's website.
  
• Third, link outside the paper.
  
• Fourth, start following, and linking to, local bloggers and even competing papers (such as the local arts weeklies).
  
• Fifth, start looking toward the best of those bloggers as potential stringers.
  
• Sixth, start looking to citizen journalists (CJs) for coverage of hot breaking local news topics
  
• Seventh, stop calling everything "content".
  
• Eighth, uncomplicate your websites
  
• Ninth, get hip to the Live Web.
  
• Tenth, publish Rivers of News for readers who use Blackberries or Treos or Nokia 770s, or other handheld Web browsers.
  

A value-added subscription would be worth the price. These are relatively simple things they could do and really might have to do if the present management team and owner continue at the helm -- recreate the paper entirely and become bleeding edge. Would that make a difference? It would have to be part of a much broader series of changes in my mind, but it would be a great start.