RIP newspapers?
This question is more than a little similar to one of the questions about books from last week. In recent years newspaper circulation (the number of printed and circulated copies of each paper edition) has been in steady decline. So what can newspapers do to reverse this trend?
Start by thinking about what might be causing the decline. That should give you at least soe ideas about how they might approach their challenges. You an also consider creative options such as going to a Sunday-only printing schedule.
Increasing pass-along
One of the great things about magazine publishing is the medium's high pass-along rate. The number of readers is greater than the number of copies printed because typically copies are read by more than one person.
You can find an obvious example of how this works in your dentist's office. The dentist gets a copy of the magazine, and when she's done reading it she leaves it in the reception area of her office. Before it finally gets so old that it has to be removed, dozens of bored people with nothing better to do will have opened the copy, exposing themselves to advertisers' messages.
Of course you an immediately see one of the challenges magazines face when trying to keep up their pass-along rates: bored people in dentists' offices now have smart phones, allowing them to message friends, answer email, play Angry Birds and so on.
So think creatively. What strategies might a magazine use to get its pass-along stats back up? Feel free to think outside the dentist's office for this one.