A year ago, someone I knew who was an editor for one of the Bay Area newspapers was telling me about how paper news is suffering a huge downfall due to online media. We discussed a bit about the shortcomings of paper media, and I had thought of a solution which I told him he would have a year to implement and credit for himself (as I’m not interested in doing it). It’s been a year, so now I will share this idea, and if you ever decide to try this idea out, I demand 1% of all profits generated from the idea (hey, it’s my idea).

One of the problems with paper news compared to online outlets is it lacks social interaction between the reader and the writer/newspaper. My idea is simple: enable readers to perform this engagement easily and rapidly.

Idea #1  – Full Feedback

- The interactions will be done via text messaging, or SMS. A shortcode would be issued to the newspaper (let’s say 12345), and each article would have an “e-code”, which gets appended after the short code. So if I wanted to make a comment on the article I just read that had an e-code of “A123″, I would text the following: “12345 A123 I felt the writer’s tone was a bit harsh on this.”

- This would be posted to the newspaper’s “portal” where an electronic version of the article appears, along with the text message posted.

- An account would be created from the person’s cell phone # on the portal where they can later use to login to their account to see the stories they commented on. This information would be the response for the cell phone.

Idea #2 – Limited Feedback

- As in #1, each article has an e-code, but the user has only two replies – YES or NO. Yes means the article was liked, while no is did not like. So if I liked the article “A123″, I would text “12345 A123 YES”, which would register a YES vote for the article.

- This vote would be recorded on the website, and feedback to the cell phone would be provided with how many people liked or disliked the article, along with a link to their portal account, where they can find more articles by a particular writer, or even see statistics on the top writers / categories.

How this benefits everyone:

- Readers can quickly give their feedback on a writer and the article they’ve read. This enables the newspaper to understand what readers enjoy reading and the writers they favor.

- Newspapers can perform segmentation and reach analysis. Since the cell phone number is given along with the text message, they can get an understanding of the reach of the newspaper by area code, and possibly gather more stats from those numbers.

- Having a portal where readers can log into will allow them and the publisher to see stories from their favorite writers, understand who are the popular writers, and what articles are being read the most.

- The portal can be used to advertise services and gear it towards specific audiences.

- Writers will be able to have immediate feedback on their articles.

- Newspapers can tailor their newspaper to show articles that are more favorable to their audience.

- Readers feel they have a part in the organization of the newspaper and the promotion or demotion of writers and articles.

Well, that’s my idea. I’m not sure it will save the newspaper industry, but I’m sure it would keep it going.