The Paperless Media

“Paperless” has become a somewhat overused catch phrase in the context of clearing out the law office filing cabinets, and the rise of e-filing. We are all supposed to be scrambling to buy scanners and teach our staff to create searchable .pdf client files so we can be paperless too.

But ‘paperless’ in a more literal, media-related sense --the loss of the nation’s newspapers—is not necessarily a sign of progress for the nation, or its law firms.

As word circulated last week that the venerable Boston Globe [with a history longer, and some would say richer, than most American states] dying, practitioners may wish to watch and ponder. The Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Intelligencer are already gone. Others are certain to follow.

In one economically devastated state, Michigan, every one of the state’s largest newspapers are either closing or undergoing the sorts of drastic restructuring that would have been unthinkable even three years ago.

Much has already been written about what a ‘paperless’ news media might mean to communities and to newsgathering itself. If you are interested in these broader topics you can find a riches of such commentary online [irony intended].

For attorneys focused on building or growing a practice the loss of daily papers is a bit more confusing. What does a paperless future mean?

Your relationship with the media

A major theme of this blog is that you need to cultivate and maintain a relationship with your local news media. You want to be the “go to” attorney journalists call for information on legal news. But how to do that as local papers are replaced with ‘news aggregation’ Websites and generic news centers where content is written in New York or Atlanta or L.A. for use in your area?

Reaching the public.

Whether you regularly run an ad in your local paper or just follow advice like that given in this blog to create earned media, the loss of your local paper is going to leave a gap in your ability to communicate with your local community.

In the old fully newspapered world local families saw your ad –or the mention of your charity giving, or your comments on the latest newsworthy holding—as they leafed through the Community Shopper or Big City News looking for pizza ads or high school football scores.

Will locals in the brave new paperless world see your name online among the ads for Toyota and Viagra as they look for the weather or follow the NBA?


Competition.

An ‘online presence” [like a Website] is a necessary part of practicing law these days, but while your Community Shopper or Big City News ad clearly shows you as a member of the community; online your Website is just one of thousands.

Online your Website is competing with out-of-town firms that have six figure advertising budgets. With a paperless absence of local news media, can you keep and build your client base amidst the flood of online “1-800-Law-Suit” ads?

Premature prediction of demise?

But wait. Predictions of the demise of newspapers [which have been declining in number for 100 years as movies and radio and TV emerged] may be a bit premature. After all, the ‘news aggregate’ services that are all the rage merely steal content [work product] created by more conventional news media like newspapers.

Without newspapers and their a crack local journalism staffs to research, track down leads, contact sources, confirm facts, interview key players, and edit the result, how will news be created at all?

What can be aggregated if no one is producing news?

Can ‘online only’ news outlets field the sort of savvy, in-depth investigative journalism that were newspapers’ primary strength?

The answers are still emerging.

It is the emerging questions from our paperless future that you need to ponder.