Print for older readers, online for rest

Steve Outing cautions that style-over-substance print newspaper redesigns miss the best chance to retain loyal readers from older audiences:

"The key ... is to retain older readers by making the thinner print edition emphasize serious, quality journalism, retaining or expanding your paper's watchdog role in the community. Forget the stuff that's solely geared toward attracting young readers; they're for the most part gone from print.

"Then use the print edition to guide your paper readers to the extra stuff and the goodies that are on the digital side of the business."

Outing's advice seems solid. For years, I cautioned that newspapers spend too many resources on print design. In an industry with what I call design affluence, almost all print redesigns I see seem only modest, incremental improvements. Under Outing's logic, some actually would not be improvements at all, since they move print newspapers away from their loyal customers.

Considering Outing's second recommendation -- guide print readers to online features -- I would add one thing: if loyal print readers trend older, promote the online features older people would be most likely to use. E-mail, for example, remains in heavy use among older Internet populations. So rather than steering people to a Web site for breaking news updates, consider pushing them toward sign-ups for e-mail alerts.