A lesson from Tip O’Neill?

When I was growing up in Massachusetts, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill was a congressman and (for ten years) Speaker of the House.  He is well-known for many things, and the one that sticks with me is his response to losing his first campaign: “All politics is local”.

After I posted yesterday about Newsday’s anemic paid-subscription results, I read a parallel blog post by public relations executive Larry Meltzer.  He makes the point that in his neighborhood, it is the targeted local weekly that persists.  In his view, “becoming the go-to source for everything local” is a recipe for smaller-paper success.  Niches can be geographic, too.

After falling short in that first election (for Cambridge City Council), O’Neill never forgot the lesson, and he never lost another race.

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