Seth Godin writes about he would start a newspaper with roughly six people or so. What about the institutions that have many more people already writing for publication?

When I was at The Times, a few of us had this idea, trying to capitalize on everyone’s belief that focusing on local news is the way for a newspaper to survive. Since everyone lives in a neighborhood, why not use that for the beats? Make sure everyone has a laptop which can handle the reporting as well as any video / photo editing that needs to happen as well as a camera which can also do video.

Editors should lay down the law that anyone seen in the office more than once a week would be in serious trouble. Instead, they should be talking to local businesses about what’s going on, interviewing local high school athletes and becoming a known entity at all city meetings. This would allow for local stories to be reported on in a much different way. Blogs could be started for cities that would become must-reads for everyone involved. A few times a week, have blog entries reverse-published into the print edition but overall make everything focused on the Web.

Would this work? Would this save a newspaper? Who knows but really at this point, what do they have to lose?

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