I’ve been newspaper junkie since discovering the sports pages of the old Philadelphia Bulletin in 1964. From the first day I walked into a newsroom more than 30 years ago, I’ve been captivated by the rhythms of putting out the equivalent of a novel a day. The gritty smell of a newspaper fresh off the press still gives me a rush.

So it pains me to see what is happening to the newspaper industry. Three papers I’ve worked for have gone through painful cuts in the last few months with dozens of solid, hard-working journalists losing their jobs. It’s no different anywhere in the country. The villains are precipitous drop in advertising revenue and an unrelenting corporate thirst for unrealistic profit margins. With less quality content, fewer readers subscribe. That means fewer advertisers. Until the bean counters find a way to make a buck off the Internet, the vicious circle will be repeated.

As difficult it is for me to watch as a former journalist, what does the slow demise of the newspaper industry mean to me as a public relations professional? Are newspapers still a relevant part of PR efforts? Should I invest the time and energy it takes to forge relationships with editors and reporters who could be laid off any day? Do enough people read newspapers to make them a worthwhile target?

For now, the answer is a lukewarm yes. But the day is coming – sooner than anyone ever predicted – when printed newspapers will be just an afterthought in most public relations programs. In some cases, that day has already arrived. If your target audience is under 30, forget about newspapers.

So what will take newspapers’ place?

A recent study by the Public Relations Society of America says social media and blogs are becoming a medium for companies to communicate externally - that is, through its public relations. According to the study, “two-thirds of public relations practitioners believe blogs and social media have enhanced what happens in public relations and that social media and traditional mainstream media complement each other.” Furthermore, “61 percent believe the emergence of blogs and social media have changed the way their organizations (or client organizations) communicate.”

While nothing can replace the thrill of a front page story — and I’ll date myself here — “above the fold,” the fact is social media and blogs are the future of public relations.

Popularity: 56% [?]

Everyone knows that the subject line in an email is critical in motivating the recipient to open it. Being descriptive, provocative, witty or mysterious are all ways to catch someone’s attention.

Now comes word that shorter is better.

Most email readers limit subject lines to 45 characters. But a recent study by MailerMailer shows that subject lines that are 35 characters or less have a click-through rate of 3.8 percent.

By comparison, e-mails with subject lines over 35 characters have an average CRT of only 2.1 percent.

Source: Catalog Success, June 8, page 37.

A few more tips :
Act like a headline writer: newspapers know how to catch readers’ attention with snappy headlines. Do the same.

Personalize: talk directly to your recipient.

Create a Sense of Urgency: give the recipient a reason to open the email now rather than later.

Avoid Spamese: all caps and lots of exclamation points are bad ideas. Use a content checker to identify phrases that might get caught in a spam filer.

Be Honest: you can be creative but don’t be misleading. You know the old saying “Fool me once…”

Popularity: 36% [?]

So a local Realtor buys an irregularly-shaped property with a dilapidated single-family home on it.

Except he wants to tear it down and build a twin.

But the neighbors, all of whom live in nice singles, don’t want to see a twin in their neighborhood. It’ll lower property values, they say, and you never know what kind of riff-raff will live in anything other than a single.

When the Realtor goes to Borough Council for a variance, the neighbors show up to protest. Things get pretty heated between the two sides. He threatens to build an apartment building, which he can do by right, and turn it into Section 8 housing.

Strike one.

With no decision forthcoming from council, the Realtor takes another swing. This time, he paints the crumbling house a lovely shade of hot pink, combined with a touch of vibrant plum.

Strike two.

But the outside paint job is just the first step if the Realtor doesn’t get his way. Fluorescent yellow trim comes next, and he has even talked about raising turkeys on the property. Neighbors say he has threatened to deck the exterior walls with polka dots and representations of horses’ hindquarters.

“If I don’t get my twins, it’s going to be the ugliest single,” he said in a newspaper story. “It’s going to become “Green Acres’ north. That’s my guarantee.”

Strike three.

Here’s a modestly successful Realtor putting his reputation on the line by trying to bully elected officials and neighbors in to giving him what he wants. Rather than working toward a compromise, convincing his opponents why a single-family home won’t work and why a nicely-designed twin would, he has resorted to cheap publicity tactics guaranteed to turn public opinion even more against him.

Even if he happens to win this battle, his professional standing in the community will have taken a major hit. Would you deal with a Realtor who is so mean-spirited and spiteful? Probably not.

That, my friends, is how NOT to wage a battle for the hearts and minds of the public.

Popularity: 41% [?]

(Third in a series of articles about improving your writing.)

As a newspaper editor, I used to remind my reporters that there was a finite amount of space for their stories. If they could save one or two words per paragraph in a 20-inc story, it might mean the difference between having their work run intact or having vital information clipped out by a ruthless copy editor under deadline pressure.

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Popularity: 45% [?]

(Second in a series of articles about improving your writing.)

By fourth grade in my Catholic grade school, the good nuns had drilled into my head all the parts of speech, the punctuation rules and grammar regulations that were never to be broken, lest they show up on my permanent record. We diagrammed long, rambling sentences, marking the nouns with one red line and the verbs with two, adjectives with a diagonal and adverbs with a squiggly mark. By the time we were done, our diagrams looked like schematics for the Space Shuttle.

At the risk of getting a rap on the knuckles, I’m here to tell you to forget all those rules.

Writing is about communicating. It’s about making the reader feel comfortable with your words, about setting a friendly tone, about being clear and concise. It’s not about blindly following archaic rules that can get in the way of effective communication.

Here are a couple of rules I’m giving you permission to break without fear of an icy glare from the nun in the front of the room:

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Popularity: 52% [?]