Managing newspapers is like managing a garden.

You really can’t make things grow; you can only try to establish and maintain conditions that help the various plants take off and hopefully produce.

You need to watch where you position specific varieties in your preplanning or the pumpkins will cross with the squash, and the corn will block the sun that the beans need.

Likewise, with a newspaper, you don’t want your TMC shopper choking the main news product to death.

Not too long ago, a publisher could simply scratch a shallow hole in the dirt, drop some seed money into it, make sure it received plenty of water and maybe spread a little manure over it now and then.

With a little hard work and luck, that same publisher would be able to reap a substantial harvest. Today, with all the new fertilizers and other technology flying around, making the right choices to grow a newspaper is that much more complicated.

Free versus paid

Take, for example, the “free versus paid” discussion, which is somewhat akin to “volunteer” seeding versus planting.

Because of churn ratios and other factors relating to the cost of circulation sales, some metro dailies are now paying more to maintain paid circulation than it would cost them to give everyone in a market a free paper. And they are losing the war as paid circulation continues to lose ground.

At the same time, readers, and more importantly, advertisers, are becoming less impressed with paid circulation, especially when some of the best things in life now are free.

In the words of Craig McMullin, executive director for the Association of Free Community Papers, “Give people something they need free and create an audience and the advertisers will pay the freight.”

But that is not the complete answer for newspapers.

Our competitors have also figured that out. The business models of Craigslist, Google and to some extent, eBay, all are based on the same principle.

Redefining roles

Additionally, even as newspapers redefine their marketing, the role of journalism itself is being recrafted.

Dan Gillmor’s recent book, “We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People,” explores that possibility.

“Technology has given us the communications toolkit that allows anyone to become a journalist at little cost... Nothing like this has ever been remotely possible before.” Gillmor wrote.

To Gillmor, news is no longer a lecture in which the media tells you what the news is. Instead, it’s a conversation, with blurred lines between producers and consumers of that news.

Embracing change

Gillmor’s suggestion: Media needs to embrace those changes by encouraging readers to become a big part of the process. Facilitate event blogs that let readers contribute and become a part of the coverage, he says. Ask for and post readers’ information, pictures and audio so they become extensions of limited staffs and resources.

Today, a person with a cell phone or other digital device might be able to produce the photos or audio clips nearly as easy as the major players in the news business.

The bright spot? The news industry’s traditional weeding function will help it survive.

After all, with all the citizen reporting and info gathering taking place in the democratization of the news, it’s more necessary than ever for a good editor to take the hoe to those pesky mistakes, misinformation, hoaxes, spin doctoring and other weeds that can render the garden plot useless.