Remaking The ‘Inquirer’ (To Lose Lots Of Money)

One of the best things a newspaper can do is solicit reader input on what to do with the newspaper. I don’t mean figuring out how to more involve the community for those who volunteer input or feedback or comments or whatever, I mean a thing like the Inquirer did recently: Ask readers what they’d do if they owned the paper.

Why is this such a good idea? Because the results are almost always hilarious, with ill-informed ideas, ridiculous rhetoric, and — of course — accusations of both liberal and conservative bias. Take the Inky article: It reported on the “more than 100″ letters the paper got.

Here’s how good it was: The suggestion to put a popcorn machine in the newsroom was the best one. My favorite suggestions happened to be the ones accusing the paper of liberal bias, not because the paper isn’t biased liberally (I don’t really know), but their ideas were amazing: “I would fire half the reporters and editors for news and sports, and hire a like number of conservatives.” Yes, that Bob Brookover, always injecting liberal bias into his Eagles recaps! (The other good liberal bias letter was the one saying he’d replace the paper’s staff with the Evening Bulletin staff. I’m not sure how their one staff reporter will put out five sections a day, though.)

But, the best suggestion by far attacks the one thing standard in most newspapers: Astrology. It comes form a worker at the Edelman Planetarium: “If I owned The Inquirer, the first thing I would do would be to remove the astrology column and replace it with the real thing: a column on the night sky and modern astronomical discoveries.”

Oh, wait: “In the middle of the front page I would write a paragraph of 250 words, once a week, on jokes (clean jokes), gags, situation comedy. Everything would be clean and no filth.”

There you have it, people. As much as asking for these suggestions is one of the best things a paper can do — and, to be fair, some of the suggestions were fairly level-headed — one of the worst things a paper can do: Actually implementing them.

If I were in charge of The Inquirer… [Inky]