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James Moroney, publisher and CEO of Dallas Morning News, and executive vice president of the Belo Corporation kicks off the 9th International Online Journalism Symposium.

Moroney says the challenge for the industry is “making this business of the hard copy newspaper last long enough” to make the transition into the digital world. But, he adds, we need to figure out how to make this transformation in a way that can support journalism.

“This is the most transformational period in the history of the US newspaper industry”, he argues, adding that we are in the middle of a decade of change, from 2002 to 2012.

The most important thing, he argues, is having an attitude that we can change things.

If you are I the newspaper business, you are in the business of managing decline. If you are I the news and information business, then you have a healthy future

He berates a room full of newspaper folk, asking them, “why is it so hard for us to say we are not in the newspaper business”. For him, newspapers just a way to package news and information. So newspapers need to think of themselves as a news and information company.

Moroney’s prescription for short-term measures to lengthen the lifespan of the newspaper:

• Decide on margins. They are going to lower, so decide how much lower they are going to be and how to manage it

• Get rid of unprofitable circulation
• Monetize surplus printing and distribution capacity - beyond just your own product
• Raise prices where there is an opportunity
• Might need to lower advertising rates
• Outsource where the can improve profitability and productivity

But to survive in the long-term, Moroney stresses the need to embrace change and look at ways of developing your newspaper into a news and information provider. The essentials:

• Build a culture that embraces change, as the status quo will fight change at every turn

• Build a strategy to superserve local niche audiences
• Reorganise the company to focus on local

For the rest of the talk, Moroney focused on how the Dallas Morning News had changed, to focus on its key strength, which he argued was its local reporting capability.

This involved closing foreign bureaus, a handful of sections, focusing its coverage in certain areas and
eliminating the newspaper circulation outside of 100 mile radius, except for Austin.

Instead, the investment went into more granular local news, with specific metro sections in the newspaper, weekly neighbourhood print publications with content from the community but edited by professional journalists and some 50 local micro-sites, again pulling in content from the community.

For Moroney, local newspapers need to focus on what they can do well and better than anyone else and own those local niches, be it in high school sports or in entertainment.

He concludes with: “We need to make this transformation. It is important to the democracy and liberties we enjoy in the US.”