Having worked for a leader in the web content management space (Clickability), the plight of newspapers is a topic near and dear to me. Helping bridge the gap between life and obsolescence is something Clickability is helping major papers ranging from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Minneapolis Star Tribune, to the San Francisco Examiner achieve.

The theme isn’t necessarily a new one, but has been garnering additional attention over the past year, as the economy has tanked and more papers have had to cut staff, editions, or ultimately cease to exist in print form. Price Waterhouse, in cooperation with the World Association of Newspapers, has published this up-to-the-moment report. Click here to download the 56 page pdf.

Recommendations for newspaper companies from the report:

• - Meet increased demands from customers for specialized, targeted, relevant and timely information while not losing sight of the need to continue providing general news to a wider audience.
• - Leverage content online by creating compelling information for specific niche markets and distributing it across multiple platforms. Use strategic partnerships with other content providers to enable targeting of specific audiences to keep costs low.
• - Adopt a flexible and innovative approach in working with advertisers across a spectrum of economic arrangements.
• - Redesign marketing and sales efforts to capture the opportunities delivered by multiple channels to market.
• - Reinvent the newsroom by off-shoring/syndicating generic editorial content and consolidate the general newsroom to create content that can be tailored at a local level.
• - Have a team of journalists who work within a multiplatform environment (online, blogs, social media, citizen journalists), in which they have total editorial control for creation and delivery of content ranging from photographs and video through editorial copy.