Judy Sims was most recently vice president of digital media for the Toronto Star Media Group.

What will metro media markets look like in five years? 10 Years? There are a lot of people pondering these questions. That’s evident in the sheer amount of chatter – some of it bordering on desperation – about online subscriptions, micro-payments and other revenue models. One of the best and most comprehensive discussions of “new business models for news” is here, a presentation by CUNY’s Steve Shepard and Jeff Jarvis at the Aspen Institute’s Forum on Communication and Society.

The CUNY team gets a lot right. They envision a local news ecosystem that includes blogs, niche sites, non-profits and – drum roll – the profitable New News Organization, one capable of curating, aggregating audiences and yes, even original reporting.

The question is: Who will form the New News Organization? It could be anyone really, but it’s local newspapers that are best positioned to do this. 

Why? Two words: local advertisers. For small businesses, advertising is, was and always will be about return on investment. If the cash register doesn’t ring, the model won’t work. And metro newspapers know, understand and are trusted by local advertisers more than anyone else in their markets. For now anyway.

So here it is: How newspapers can become the New News Organization in four easy steps:

Step 1: Create a separate organization. 

Put an online product person, an online advertising sales person, an editor and a web developer in an office someplace far, far away from the print organization. Eventually, you will need more people, but let’s start with these four for now.

Put the product person in charge.  This may seem self-serving, as I am a product person myself but trust me: this person will act to balance the ideas and requirements of the other three, resulting in a much more profitable organization.

Okay, you’re thinking I’m contradicting myself because I just said that newspapers know local advertisers and therefore are best positioned to become the new news organization. That’s true. This separate team should leverage the brand, the editorial and the advertising knowledge and relationships of the mother ship, but that’s where the connection should end. This team will discover that the best business/editorial/advertising model is considerably different from what the print folks would come up with. And, it will very likely cannibalize the core business.

Step 2: Build verticals

The CUNY team glosses over vertical content sites as a small part of the ecosystem. I think this is an oversight. If you are looking to attract local advertisers and local advertisers are looking for ROI, there are two things you must deliver: audience and context. Vertical content sites are an excellent way to do this.

Analyze market data to find which categories have the greatest potential advertising revenue. Homes, health, parenting and entertainment are obvious ones, but your market will likely have unique opportunities as well.

Use everything at your disposal to make these sites the ultimate online destinations in their subject-area for the residents of your city. Engage your users. 

Here are the elements you need:

News: Use your newspaper’s education reporting on your parenting site, its health reporting on your health site, etc. Aggregate by providing links to your competitor’s reporting too.

Information: Provide links to city information. How do I get a building permit in my city? Where can I get a dog license? Which ER has the shortest wait time?  Most government sites are not well-designed, making this information very difficult to find. Do the work for your users and they’ll start to see you as a resource.

Data: Provide a listing for every school in your city and its quality scores, every daycare and its capacity, every 24-hour pharmacy and every walk-in-clinic. You will be surprised how hard it currently is to find this information quickly online. These databases will be of great value to your users.  Encourage your users to help you keep it up to date.

Business and event listings: Make it relevant to each vertical. Build context for your advertisers. Again, invite your users to become a part of the site with user submissions and reviews. Allow businesses to maintain their listings and update them with the latest sales and specials.

Community:  Allow users to create profiles, submit photos and comments, etc. Ask them to provide story ideas and questions for up-coming interviews. Ask eloquent commenters to write opinion pieces and blogs.

Advertising and Shopping Info: Listings for sales events, coupons, flyers, etc.

Step 3: Curate the ecosystem

Find the best bloggers in the city, court them and recruit them into a partnership. Create a full view of your city: general news, crime, city hall, sports, entertainment and other vertical niches. Fill subject-matter gaps by encouraging experts to start new blogs. Ask an OB/GYN to write for your parenting site or an interior decorator for your homes site.

Make it easy for the passionate to be heard. Train them, mentor them and guide them as they learn this new craft. Sites like Outside.in, Chicagonow and the Miami Herald’s South Florida Blogs are already doing this.

Create widgets and APIs that allow other sites to publish your content. The news media of the future is about distribution, not destination.

Step 4: Create a Glam.com-style advertising network.

Use your ecosystem to create an advertising network. 

Link, link, link, link, link.  Push traffic from the verticals to the blogs and the blogs to the main news site and the main news site to the verticals etc. 

Go beyond CPM-based banners and boxes. Create packages that include listings, display, contests, content integration and sponsorship. Help your advertisers address their challenges, reach their target markets and meet their objectives. Deliver audience and context, demand higher CPMs, deliver higher click-through rates and generate return on investment of advertising dollars.

Can only a newspaper become the New News Organization?  I think not. But I suspect it won’t be long before a small group former newspaper employees in “early retirement” give it a go on their own. 

In fact, it’s probably more likely that a newspaper won’t form the New News Organization – that first step is a doozy.