Finding out what readers want: Stage One

In an earlier post, I took up the challenge by Alan Mutter who said

"It’s time for editors, publishers, academics and foundations to pony up for serious, in depth and disciplined study of what consumers want, what they need and how journalists and media companies can provide it."

While it may not be to the scale Mutter is suggesting, we have commissioned a study with the Organizational Effectiveness Research Group at Minnesota State University in Mankato for such a study. Breaking away from the templates usually employed by research firms used by newspapers is no small feat and some feedback would be welcomed.
We were trying to get away from the traditional survey questions: "Do you want more orless of ..." "Are we doing a good job reporting on...." These types of questions are drawn from the perspective of the newspaper than the reader.
Instead, the charge to OERG was to ask as though you were a consumer. We also are using motivators drafted from the Readership Study conducted by Northwestern University.
Here are summaries of some categories being explored:

What information do you need to:
-- Help plan your day?
-- Assist when thinking of dining out?
-- Know more about working in south central Minnesota?
-- Help better understand what is happening at your child's school?
-- Help decide your entertainment and cultural choices?
-- Get a closer perspective on local higher education (we are in a university community)
-- Better understand local and state government actions or decisions that affect you?
-- Get closer to what is happening in your neighborhoods?

We do offer some suggestions on what those pieces may be. For instance, on local K-12 schools we suggested: Features on local teachers, unique classroom activities, after school activities, local school funding, school board meetings, standardized test results, advances in effective teaching methods, etc.
We also left an open-ended slot for further advice.
For each category we then will ask what medium (newspaper, radio, tv, internet, friends, family) is best used to provide that information now and how well that medium is performing.
This is not meant to replace the newsrooms ability to spot and choose what stories are occurring in our communities but help us understand what our readers are telling us they need.
This is a draft so we welcome any additional suggestions on questions. The one requirement we gave to our research team was the result has to be actionable. So such things as "Reading the Free Press makes me feel good about myself" while is nice to know doesn't get to the heart of what changes need to be made to be more relevant.