(Michael P. Smith)

In Bogota for a seminar on the future of newspapers for the national press association ANDiarios, you can't help but feel the positive energy around the press.

A new national tax on newspapers looms (advertising is already taxed) and the papers there face the same issues with newsprint costs, demographic challenges and technological threats as do their northern neighbors. Overcoming and yet still aware of the years of kidnappings, threats, and killings, Colombian newspapers are full of positive energy. They are seeing circulation and revenue growth, pouring their hearts into the Internet, and creating new products.

Here are a few examples:

El Tiempo in Bogota seems serious about getting readers involved in producing content. So serious that they have a blog doctor (Doctor Beta) to assist readers in posting to blogs, forums, and photo galleries, and to help them download podcasts and videocasts. They are so serious about interactivity that they ask their readers, what else can we do for you.

Vanguardia Liberal in Bucaramanga is a national leader in advertising growth and shows a 25 percent ad gain in the first half of 2006. Even in a down economy two years ago, Vanguardia Liberal was growing by using the sales force management techniques taught by the Media Management Center. Now publisher Alex Galvis-Blanco is working with director (editor) Sebastian Hiller to apply some of those management principles to the newsroom. I posted about Alex here. Read more about how Vanguardia benefited from the Center's sales force program. Watch the Readership Institute site for more information on how Vanguardia Liberal is building its newsroom around reader experiences. As a baseline for its editorial changes, Vanguardia Liberal completed the first national Reader Behavior Score survey.

El Pais in Cali is making progress in a variety of ways. Director (editor) Francisco Jose Lloreda attended the Media Management Center's Advanced Executive Program and went home to Cali between sessions and launched a popular daily that is rivalling the respected El Pais. Now he is using the excellent reader councils from Reforma in Mexico and Zero Hora in Brazil to model an advisory board for El Pais using the Internet as a recruiting tool and meeting place. This is a development that we will follow closely.

While in Colombia, I met a fellow American over dinner with the director of El Tiempo and the executive director of ANDiarios. Teresa Calkins is a Knight Fellow working closely with newspapers around Colombia. Teresa is a former Gannett VP of Market Development. I asked her about the positive vibes I was getting. She sees it, too. While she has been working since early May of this year to share ideas with circulation, advertising, new media, and human resources, some of her most exciting and rewarding conversations have been cross departmental and with a focus on readership and growing audience.

She said that on her visits the newspaper management staffs, in particular the news staffs, have been very receptive to the concept of using reader groups and informal access groups and surveys online and in person to generate much needed information for directional purposes in the newsroom and in other departments. They have also been receptive to being asked to look at their layout, designs, photos, and content through the eyes of their readers.

She gave an example of a recent discussion was held with a newsroom staff over front page placement of a photo of a bombing in Lebanon. The question posed, after finding that the franchise for this newsroom was local, local, local news ... then, why, when there are deaths, car bombs, and guerrilla murders here locally, would you lead with this particular photo from around the world?

The group assembled was interdepartmental at Teresa's request and the discussion was animated, not acrimonious. The conversation was assisted by a circulation director who indicated a local car bomb photo would have been easier to sell and more local. The new media person said he didn't use that photo online for that very same reason, and the photojournalist piped up and said he had great local murder photos that could have been better positioned there.

Teresa also noted an excitement around creating a center in the newsroom for encouraging "community conversation" through more reader outreach through discussion groups, forums, blogs, photo galleries. Plans are afoot at several papers to strengthen their knowledge of their readers and create content plans, in news and advertising to meet their readers' needs.