Designing a destiny for future editorial pages: Opinion Pool to provide deep research.

By this time next year, NCEW members should have a lot more valuable research information about their audiences and some new, innovative workable ideas for adapting to the future. Specifically:

* Eight to ten newspapers will have volunteered to be experimental pilot sites for audience research and editorial page innovation led by NCEW with the help of several new partners, including the Reynolds Institute for Journalism at the University of Missouri, the Kettering Institute in Dayton, Ohio, and the Gannett Corporation.

* Focus groups and phone interviews will have been held in the eight to ten communities where the newspapers publish.

* That local research may lead to a national survey of the audience for opinion journalism in the U.S.

* The pilot newspapers, using the research, will have undertaken a number of experiments to try to figure out the best ways to operate in print (or broadcast) and on the Internet. Then, Web surveys will be undertaken to gauge how the Internet audience assesses the new work by the pilot newspapers.

All of these fall under the rubric of what we are calling "The Opinion Pool" This is an urgent, disciplined effort to build a model online template for opinion journalists. It is the result of efforts by the NCEW board and members over the past twelve months.

A year ago, in a speech to the 2006 convention, I tried to summarize the thoughts of the board and my own ideas, which had grown out of a strategic planning effort that I helped lead for NCEW. My talk was pretty downbeat.

The newspaper industry (and some local TV stations) were facing economic decline: Advertising revenues were dropping and audiences were diminishing; there were staff reductions almost everywhere and less space (or time) for editorializing.

And I hate to say I was right, but over the past twelve months, some newspapers have done away entirely with their daily editorial opinion pages and others have killed their weekend opinion sections.

I said in 2006 that it seemed to me that institutional (newspaper and local television) opinion journalism had about three years to figure out its future and take some action to guarantee that it has a future.

But I also stressed that editorialists retain marvelous, unique advantages: a great deal of knowledge of their local communities, especially public affairs; a high level of competence in analyzing and presenting ideas; strong connections to other opinion leaders; real credibility and broad brand identity.

My pitch then to NCEW members was: Build on your strengths and plan a new future. It seemed obvious that you needed more information about your audience and you needed to do some experiments--maybe radical ones--to figure out where you stood with the print audience, how you relate to the expansion of bloggers, and how you are going to evolve.

Several things happened over the past year.

First, I was asked by NCEW to speak to the collected publishers at the Newspaper Association of America convention in May in New York. I stressed to the audience there that they all have a possibly undernourished and unappreciated asset--their local opinion journalists--that is one of the few strategic, sustainable competitive advantages left to newspapers. I got what I took to be a positive response, both in supportive questions and informal conversation with publishers.

Second, I joined some NCEW board members in a meeting at the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio, on June 26-27, which was set up with the help of Eddie Roth, an editorial writer and NCEW member from the Dayton Daily News. Kettering does much research in the area of how to make democracy work better, and its interest lies in what I have termed the intersection of editorial opinion and democracy, especially in how the public civic dialogue in this country operates for the common good.

It was clear during the discussion at Kettering that all around the table believed institutional opinion journalism is important to democracy, that it is in serious jeopardy, and that action needs to be taken. There was specific concern that few editorialists had adequate research on such questions as who their audience is, what people under forty want in an opinion format, how the audience for bloggers intersects with the audience for newspaper and local TV station editorialists, etc. We need that research.

Out of that meeting, Roth developed some suggested ideas that he called "The Opinion Pool" He proposed a network of several editorial operations, each working on a model online effort, as he put it:

"... each toward assembling, developing and operating what they see as the model fully integrated opinion site--integrated between the print and online operations."

So far, three newspapers have signed up to be pilot sites: The Tampa Tribune, The Kansas City Star and the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers in Florida. NCEW expects to have a total of eight to ten in short order.

In addition, the Kettering meeting was attended by representatives of Gannett and Cox newspapers and Stanford University and the University of Missouri, along with academic associates of Kettering.

As a result of that meeting, Gannett has pledged to help design, lead, and pay for focus group work in the pilot site cities, and Pam Johnson, head of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute of Missouri's School of Journalism, has offered to design, carry out, and pay for in-depth local research of the audiences in the eight communities and Web research after experiments are launched in the various communities.

Except for competitive markets where there may be some restrictions, all the findings of the research and the experimentation will be transparent and shared with everyone else in NCEW and the public.

So, we hope that in twelve months--or sooner in some cases--you will:

* Have a lot more information about what readers (or viewers) and non-readers (or non-viewers) think about and care about local opinion journalists, both institutional and non-institutional, in print and online.

* Be given a lot of fresh and new examples of how to leverage online your traditional print and broadcast strengths.

* Be armed with new ammunition to approach publishers and station managers about why they should--and how they can-take advantage of and build on one of their best assets, their opinion journalism.

* Develop a clearer, and much more positive, view of your own futures and capabilities.

In short, there is a lot going on right now being fostered and generated and collected and distributed by NCEW. I believe this is a great time to be a member of this outfit, and there never has been a time when all this could be more important.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is adapted from remarks made to the NCEW convention on September 29, 2007.

John Oppedahl, a former editor and publisher, works as a strategy consultant NCEW. Email joppedahl@yahoo.com