Content Marketing Today

Naples Daily News Reaches Out to Spider Man for Help

But Can He Save This Newspaper?

In a recent editorial, Phil Lewis, editor of the Naples daily news, wrote about increasing traffic to the newspaper web site. His editorial was frighteningly notable for two reasons:

• He admitted that he and his fellow editors had no idea what articles were being read in the print product: “The best we can do with the print edition is guess how many people picked up the paper each day and which stories they read.” That’s pretty scary. This suggests that they either lack the resources or the interest to determine what is really important to local citizens.

• The best read story online, by a 3 to 1 margin, involved a woman backing over the driving teacher. Next in line, a very distant second, was coverage of the dismissal of Collier county school superintendent, Ray Baker. Following close behind was a story about teenagers collecting mushrooms and getting in trouble for it. Yikes!

Amazingly, Lewis indicates that they will not use information about what readers are actually reading to determine how the cover the news. I’m not sure that approach is very encouraging when you look at the cover story and graphic that focuses on a local Spider Man.

One wonders about their editorial judgment, if Spidey is the best Lewis & co. can do for their online Sunday lead.

Perhaps the Spider Man gambit is the newspaper’s attempt to recapture all those young readers who have abandoned newspapers in droves over the past several years. Spider Man has faced incredible challenges in the past. But, I doubt that even he will be able to rescue our local newspaper from looming disaster.