These articles are the work of their author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of nor an assignment by OJR.
March 17, 2010
Following my
talk in Singapore last month, I decided to delve deeper into the question about what newspaper publishers outside the United States can do to avoid the market meltdown that's already claimed a few papers in the U.S.... and endangers the survival of many more.
Last week, in part one, I urged managers at news publications to become eager consumers of online communication technology - "Management should use and consume technology like a starving man at a free buffet." I wrote that people in the business of producing communication in new media first must learn as consumers of that media. Too few managers actually use the platforms that they are employing people to develop for, leaving them clueless about that technology and unable to provide leadership in those media.
This week, it's time for....
Step 2: Management should use its experience with communication technology to build a social network that drives reporting and revenue at its publication
Jeff Jarvis urged attendees at the Singapore event to "think like a network." With that, he meant that rather than look to do everything in-house, with paid staff, news organizations should begin to look for opportunities that a network of readers, customers and partners could provide.
At this point, most news managers should be well familiar with asking readers to help "crowdsource" news reports. This is the Web 2.0 version of the old "tip line," but with far more sophisticated data management. Instead of some intern working the phone, writing down tips from readers, those tips can be incorporated into an online database in real time, creating emerging narratives of data for reporters and other readers to construct. And if you don't want to get that sophisticated, crowdsourced tips at least can fill a reporter's in box with plenty of eyewitness reports, helping strengthen and enliven a story.
But if all you are using your network for is crowdsourced story tips, and the occasional database, you're missing the full power of what a reader network can do for your news publication. Networks provide not just editorial power to a news organization, they could provide economic power, as well. More...
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March 10, 2010
Following
my talk in Singapore last month, I'd like to delve deeper into the question about what newspaper publishers outside the United States can do to avoid the market meltdown that's already claimed a few papers in the U.S.... and endangers the survival of many more.
This advice applies not just to newspaper publishers outside the United States, but to all news publishers, including online start-ups and still-profitable U.S. papers, who haven't yet had to resort to crippling staff or feature cutbacks to remain in the black.
Of course, much of what I'm going to say today is reflex for OJR readers. Consider this, instead, a second source that you can quote to a boss (or print out to show), to, uh, persuade her or him to do what you've been urging her or him for months to try.
My advice will come in two parts, the first today and the second half next Wednesday. So, let's get started.
Step 1: Management should use and consume technology like a starving man at a free buffet
The leaders of any news business must be able to understand new communication technology - not simply as an executive, reading reports from an underling - but as a consumer.
Every success newspaper person I know started learning the business by reading the paper as a child. They all had a passion for the paper, and for news, and started reading their local papers, cover to cover, at an early age.
So when time came that they worked within the industry, the understood - from thousands of hours of reading its products - what a paper was and what the people working there should produce.
Just as every great writer and editor first learned by reading, every great tech developer I know learned by playing with, tinkering with, then hacking and rebuilding technology, from computer programs to entire systems. You learn to become a producer by being a consumer first.
So why should anyone be surprised when newspaper companies led by executives who communicate via printed memos and land-line telephone calls fail to produce digital products that resonate with their local audience? More...
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March 2, 2010
The following is an edited transcript of remarks I delivered last week at the WAN-IFRA Future of News Media and Journalism Conference in Singapore.Generating original content, or aggregating someone else's? If you're running (or starting up) a news website, which model should you choose?
Actually, this is a trick question... because they're the same thing. In journalism, our "original" content always has been the product of aggregation.
Let's take a look at the newspapers where I've worked over my career, from a small daily in Bloomington, Indiana to the Los Angeles Times. Each paper has published reports from wire services, from feature syndicates, from freelancers... even letters and op-ed articles from readers. That's aggregation. Even the supposedly "original" stories ultimately were works of aggregation. We aggregate interviews from sources; we aggregate documents that we ask find or ask for; we aggregate our observations of people, places and events.
If we weren't publishing aggregation, if we truly were creating original content, we'd be writing fiction, spun from the creativity of our own imaginations. As journalists, we try not to do that.
This is a false choice: creation versus aggregation. The newspaper industry long ago optimized the use of aggregation for its medium. So the choice really becomes: Shall we use aggregation the way that the newspaper industry has always done it, or aggregation the way that it's being employed by a new generation of online start-ups? More...
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February 23, 2010
Lots of folks have been bashing US broadcast network NBC for its coverage of the Winter Olympics from Vancouver, Canada. But allow me to take some space today to congratulate NBC. Thanks to the network's decision to delay broadcast of many Olympic events - sometimes as much as 10 hours after their completion - I haven't had so much fun watching an Olympics in, well, ever.
Huh? I hear folks asking. People have been roasting NBC's decision. Do I actually support it?
Heck, no! But by denying me the chance to watch the Olympics live (which are taking place in the same time zone where I live, by the way), NBC's pushed me to search the Web for live video and coverage, allowing me to find lively, even wildly entertaining, streams of coverage that I'd never have found if I'd been able to watch the games live on my TV.
That's an important lesson for all news publishers. If you don't provide the information that your audience wants, in the manner that they want it, people not only will they seek alternatives... but they might find ones that they strongly prefer to yours. More...
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February 18, 2010
You have until midnight Friday (Pacific Time on February 19, 2010) to apply for the
2010 News Entrepreneur Boot Camp.
Why should you apply? Because we'll be bringing 20 journalists to Los Angeles in May for an intense, one-week camp in entrepreneurial thinking, and showing you how that applies to publishing a news website. By the end of the camp, you'll not only have been trained in the right mindset to run a successful publishing business, you'll have materials in hand with which you can pursue the funding that you'll need to continue your journalism career.
Oh, and we won't charge you a thing for this: It's free. (We'll even kick in $250 to help get you to LA.)
You need more reasons to drop whatever you were planning to do today, and apply? Here are 10: More...
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February 5, 2010
[A reminder: We're taking applications for the 2010 News Entrepreneur Boot Camp. Please consider applying if you're looking for better training on how to make your online news publishing efforts an income-producing business.]What's the value of journalism?
The short answer is, of course, "whatever someone will pay for it." But a more thoughtful response gets at why people are willing to exchange something of value for news information.
Economics 101 teaches that if more people want something, and the scarcer it is, the higher the price. With millions of new websites competing for people's attention, advertising rates across all media have plunged, threatening news businesses that depend upon advertising income.
But the Internet hasn't just created more advertising space, driving down its price. It's also developing millions of new writers, diminishing the economic value of writing itself as a craft. More...
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February 3, 2010
To encourage OJR readers to apply for our
2010 News Entrepreneur Boot Camp, I'm writing again on some of the things you need to know, and skills you might need to develop, to become the successful publisher of a thriving news website.
Much of what you'll learn at the camp, should you be one of those selected to attend, focuses on mind-set. The skills necessary to run a news website are remarkably similar to the skills needed to work as a reporter. But the mindsets of a successful entrepreneur and a newsroom reporter, unfortunately, are very often quite different.
To that end... have you talked with a customer lately? (Or a potential one?) By "customer," I mean a person who writes - or might someday write - you a check to fund your site. (Your current boss does not count!) It could be an advertiser, a subscriber or a non-profit foundation. You can't publish a website - or run any business - without customers, and if you're even just thinking about doing that one day, you need to learn what your potential customers are doing... and what they want.
So for my post this week, I offer not some provocative opinion but an assignment - some entrepreneurial homework. Find some people, at least one, who you think might someday, possibly, provide some financial support for that website you might start (assuming you don't have one already). Then start a conversation. More...
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January 29, 2010
Will Apple's new iPad help the news industry?
Sure. Any new device that encourages people to read and watch more information will help publishers. With a larger screen than Apple's iPod Touch and iPhone, and far better display than we've seen from the Kindle or other e-book readers to date, people moving to the iPad from those devices should be expected to increase their "screen time," since they'll be using a more aesthetically pleasing device.
But can the iPad save the newspaper industry? What features in the new device might help financially struggling newsrooms encourage more people to pay for news delivered online?
Slow down, folks. First, if you haven't watch this years-old clip from Fox's old Mad TV sketch comedy show, please do now. It's best not to place any industry's hopes for survival upon a device whose name elicited so much ridicule from one half the population that Twitter users immediately moved "iTampon" to the top of the Trending Topics list in response.
I know that many news managers desperately want some technological innovation to come along that will turn back time and make people fall in love with printed content again. But paid circulation and readership were falling at most U.S. newspapers long before the World Wide Web made it easier for people dissatisfied with their local newspapers to find many more alternatives. The problem isn't the Web - it's that people have been rejecting and, in increasing numbers, continue to reject paying for the content offered by newspapers' newsrooms, in any medium. More...
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