Great article. I agree with most of your points, especially regarding Personalisation and better design of the printed product. But I disagree with the statement “They need to remember that their main customers are advertisers.” It’s a chicken and egg type scenario. Without engaged readers there can be no effective advertising. You kind of touch on this by arguing that newspapers need more engaging advertising, but I think that they need more engaging content in general, which clever ad campaigns like your marathon campaign can leverage.

5 years ago I was a daily buyer and reader of the paper edition of the Sydney Morning Herald. I moved house 2 years ago and had a shorter commute to work, so switched to the online edition. Recently, I ditched the SMH (print and online) completely for a number of reasons:

1 – Those bloody pop-up video ads that appear every time I open the Home Page. You couldn’t actually make anything more annoying to a news reader than these pesky pop-ups. I don’t know who is stupid enough to pay for these.

2 – There is no depth of content, especially online. Take the letters to the editor for example. Almost every letter comments on a particular article or major public event. But there are no hyperlinks from within the letter to related articles. If I had some context and related content to view, I might just check it out (and increase page views and my time browsing the site).

3 – Tell us who’s behind the news. Journos are always banging on about how and why their talents are superior to citizen journalists and bloggers. Why not show us how great each writer is? Readers should be able to click on the “by-line” of each article to find out more about the writer. This page could detail the writer’s background, where they studied, what jobs they have had over the years, links to Walkley Award winnning articles, links to selected articles they have written, books that they have published, video commentary etc.

4 – The broadsheet format. The last time I bought the SMH was before boarding a plane. Try folding the paper back on itself whilst the person next to you is taking a sip of their miniature Coke can. I’ll get the Telegraph or a magazine next time I fly.

5 – The SMH mobile browser. News Ltd have a browser that is so much better for the iPhone. You see, Fairfax only display headlines in the mobile version of their site. It is really hard to tell what a story is about (and whether it is intersting) with just a headline. If they included the section and a short synopsis or the first 25 words, people may read the article.

These are all simple fixes to help the reader engage with their product across all platforms – print, online and mobile. If Fairfax spend some time seriously looking at how people consume news then I think they can survive and prosper, and will continue to generate advertising dollars.