Robert Niles: March 2010 archive
If you can't manage comments well, don't offer comments at all
March 26, 2010
I've long advocated that newspapers include comment sections on their online stories, to provide readers with the opportunity to discuss, extend or even correct those news articles. Independent news websites and bloggers have used comment functionality to build large and loyal audiences, who by their participation can help the publisher provide more, and more accurate, information to the larger, non-commenting community.Unfortunately, even after all these years, too many newspaper comment sections don't live up to that ideal. The unmoderated comment sections in many of the local newspapers I read remain cesspools where the most bigoted, selfish and crass individuals in a community find a welcoming platform to verbally assault readers.
So I'm taking this opportunity to change my advice: If, after all these years publishing online, you still can't manage the trolls in your comments, don't offer comments at all. Shut down that functionality. Leave online community to bloggers and other publishers in the community who can manage them responsibly.
To that end, here are Robert's Revised Rules for comments on online news story pages: More...
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How to avoid what's happened to American newspapers: Part two
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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How to avoid what's happened to American newspapers: Part one
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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Creation or aggregation: What is the real added value of today’s journalism?
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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