Could Groupon save local newspapers?

As a journalism student, I found this post on Mashable today interesting. The McClatchy Company, which owns major local newspapers around the country (including the Miami Herald), announced today that it's beginning a partnership with Groupon. Groupon will offer visitors to McClatchy-owned newspapers' sites exclusive deals not available to their own site and, of course, tailored to the city the paper is in.

Companies are not the only ones being forced to listen to the Groundswell. Newspapers and magazines are trying to stay afloat now that their business model can no longer be based on what people should want, but what they do want. Not all journalists are sitting around whining about how the internet is destroying journalism. Some are. But there is a lot of innovation going on, and one of the ideas that's gotten a lot of attention recently is the power of delivering tailored advertising to readers based on very specific locations (instead of shouting at them with generic display ads, which do little good for the paper or the company). For example, what if signing up to use a paper's website and listing some preferences enabled you to receive coupons tailored to your interests on your smartphone for the places you happened to be driving by?

This particular partnership not only gives people what many of them wanted the paper for when it was delivered to their door (coupons!), but also harnesses social networking. In order to get a Groupon deal, enough people have to sign up for it -- that means reaching out to your friends through social media to get them to buy. Now, they'll be sending links to the papers' websites.

While this is no silver bullet, it's a step in the right direction.