The Pareto Principle, sometimes also called “the law of the vital few,” is named after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist of the 19th Century. What, you may ask, does a man who died nearly a hundred years ago have to say to the newspaper business of today? Pareto discovered, studying the economy of Italy at the time, that 20% of the population produced 80% of the gross national product. Lest you think this said something about the productivity of Italians at the time, Pareto took this principle and applied it other European economies and found not only did the principle hold true, but the benefits accrued similarly: 80% of the income went to 20% if the population.

In post-war America, business management guru Joseph Juran built on this idea, beginning with the notion that what was valid for countries must apply to micro-economies: 20% of what a business produces supplies 80% of the revenues, just as 80% of the problems a business has are caused by 20% of the management. (Juran referred to this as “the vital few and the trivial many,” a phrase many a manager can relate to.)

Over time other business thinkers built on this idea, proving that 20% of a given company’s staff produced 80% of the results until this 80-20 rule was extrapolated to the ultimate, personal conclusion: 20% of your actions produce 80% of your results.

While some have seen this idea as a justification for Draconian layoffs, plant closures and other reductions in the name of efficiency, a good businessperson sees the other side of the theorem. Your glass in not half full; it is 20% full.

In the good eyes of a publisher, this could mean the Pareto Principle at newspapers. But just how?

You can apply this principle to the most essential aspect of your business: your reader. For what I have found is that 20% of a paper’s stories produce 80% of the reading experience –or the value of a newspaper. They are the most satisfying, the best remembered and most talked about. Whether they are longer features or simply more imaginatively packaged and striking stories, these are the ones that give the most bang for the buck. So concentrating more on less not only makes good sense in terms of managing resources; it supplies the reader with a richer and more rewarding experience.

The idea is that designers and writers as well as editors – should put more time on the 20% of the editorial that matters the most, that which produces the greatest reader experience. They need to carefully plan how they will tell the story, how they will unfold the narrative –both visually and in text; how they will seduce and engage the reader; and how they will make him coming back. Of course, in order to do that you need to know what you’re about, and what your reader cares about. In other words, that 20% will bring the relevance to your newspaper.

Beyond the compartment: sections versus categories

Most newspapers still think of themselves as very rigid constructs: This is my newspaper. It has six or seven sections – national news, metro, sports, entertainment and so on – three weekly sections and a Sunday magazine. The business model is to go out and sell against those sections, and pray for the economy.

I encourage newspaper people to think outside the section and think of themselves more organically: “I am not a newspaper, a finite, disposable thing that you can later use to line the bird cage or make children’s hats from. I am a team of people with these core areas of interest I share with my readers, and part of our reader’s interest in those areas can be seen in the form or revenue. I need to report on the known world but speculate more on the unknown and the possible.”

A newspaper is a brand not a paper. A brand that engages distinct categories of readers. What they offer are narratives, not printed pages or sections. So a brand should feel more fluid than ink and paper.

I see this in the newsroom: editors spend much of their time managing pages and workflow. You hear this all the time on deadline: “Where’s that story that’s going to fit this two-column space?” “We haven’t closed this page!”

Instead, editors should be looking at each day’s edition and saying, “What is our story today? What are we about?” Focus on the narrative. It is what got you into this business and what keeps you coming back. Worry less about the actual form (paper versus web, what section a given story fits in) and more about the story itself.

Think of it: when you are free from the form, you exploit the channel. When you think less of a page, you focuso on connecting more effectively with the reader, regardless the media you use!

Human beings live in stories, narratives about who they are, what they care for and the meaning of their lives, family, community, etc. And that’s precisely our business: helping readers construct useful stories of the world around them! If we do this effectively, we will help them live better lives.

People need stories. The urge to give shape to our experience is as timeless as the impulse to look at a cloud and see a man chasing a lion (or vice versa). The heralds of ancient cultures, to say nothing of traveling poets like Homer, filled a role like unto that of a reporter today. The need for news is not something we need to worry about. As long as events unfold and need human interpretation, the role of the herald, the reporter and the critic are essential.

Let me now reference this to a newspaper: the newspaper, as a whole, is a narrative. The front page is a narrative. The lead story is a narrative. The headline, the deck, the text – narratives are nested within each other in a newspaper and, again, the need for narrative is as old as the human race (heard the one about Adam and Eve?). By devoting more of your energy toward that and less toward the minutiae of the process you not only keep you and yourself from burning out, and operate more efficiently, you serve a higher calling – and the needs of your reader. When you start looking at newspapers as narratives you see how weak most of them are – and just how bold and engaging they could be.

So stop looking at your paper as a bunch of printer pages, but instead, think of it as one impression of the conversations that your brand offers to your community (no matter where that community is, locally or on the web) to help them deal with today’s world and lead them to a better life.

In future posts I will explore all of these ideas in greater detail – it is all part of the unfolding narrative.