Robert Niles: November 2010 archive
My 2010 holiday gift guide for independent online journalists
November 24, 2010
The holidays can be a good time to stock up on the gear that you need as a journalist - either by putting it on your "wish list" or by picking up a few goodies while you're shopping for family and friends.Here are some of the essentials for a journalist who's setting up his or her own shop. I've also included the specific item I'm using or have my eye on, to help you build your 2010 Independent Journalist's Holiday Gift Wish List.
Of course, I should remind you that, if you are planning to set up your own news business in 2011, or just did in 2010, the best gift you can give yourself this holiday season is… to apply for the 2011 KDMC News Entrepreneur Boot Camp. Here's why, and how to apply. /plug
A few more notes before I jump in: These are the items I feel are most important for an independent journalist to own, in order of importance. While I've listed the items I have or like, I would love to hear suggestions from other OJR readers. Please submit your personal "wish list" in the comments. And if you have what you feel is a better suggestion in any of these categories, I'd love to hear that, too.
Finally, since we're writing for independent journalists here, I'm operating under the assumption that either you or a loved one will be spending the money here - not a corporate IT budget. So I've tried to keep costs reasonable on things such as video and DSLR cameras. If you're a visual specialist, of course, you'll want to go with higher-quality equipment. This is a start list intended for a text-driven journalist who happens to shoot some photos and video, too.
Smart phone
If you limited me to just one item with which to run my website and remain connected to the digital world, it'd have to be a smart phone. If you've not yet upgraded from a feature phone, this year's the time to do it. With ubiquitous Web connectivity, plus the ability to take photos and video and connect with social media, a smart phone allows you to stay connected with your website and its community whenever you are away from your desk, and to cover breaking news even when you're not fully equipped.
What I'm using: Apple's iPhone 4 (AT&T).
What I've got my eye on: Motorola's Droid X (Verizon) or HTC's EVO 4G (Sprint).
The iPhone has become the popular standard for smart phone, and the iPhone 4 resolves some of its predecessor's issues, notably a lack of native video camera and sketchy battery performance. Still, the specs on Motorola's and HTC's top Android phones meet or beat iPhone's, and I would love to have better connectivity than AT&T's network offers. More...
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Don't forget the global option when starting a news website
November 19, 2010
Note: If you haven't opened your application yet, here's why you should apply for the 2011 KDMC News Entrepreneur Boot Camp.First, thank you to all the OJR readers who submitted such thoughtful comments to my piece last week outlining the five essential beats for a local online-news start-up. I especially appreciated the smart comments about the health beat, which I now would include on my must-do list for a local news site that wanted to forge rewarding connections with its community.
But I'm still sticking with my starting five, too. :^)
Many readers have made great cases for the importance of other beats, including health. But I want to remind OJR readers, especially our would-be publishing entrepreneurs, that local isn't the only market into which you can launch a business.
Most niche topics work better on a broader scale. While foundations and journalism schools are giving so much attention to local news, don't forget the reason why they've chose to focus on cultivating local.
Because they figured, correctly, that launching a global niche-topic news website would be easier.
Many journalists have been conditioned, by the nature of their employment, to view journalism within the context of a geographic community. So, naturally, when they consider stepping out on their own and starting their own news site, they assume that it will have a local, geographic focus.
But the geographic focus of journalism was an accident of old technology. A daily newspaper could cover only the community to which it could deliver a fresh newspaper each day. The switch from shoe-leather and horses to trucks expanded that range a bit, but most newspapers have remained focused within a single metropolitan area.
(I'll go ahead and mention that, in Omaha and in Denver, I worked for two print newspapers that serviced some of the most ridiculously expansive daily distribution areas in the country. In Omaha, we delivered all the way from central Iowa to the Wyoming border. I joke that I drive a Prius today in penance for that. But those papers were the exception in the industry.)
The point of my piece last week was to provide a potential approach to the troublesome challenge of building an engaged community of audience members. Given that difficulty, why limit yourself to people in your neighborhood, or even metropolitan area, if you don't have to? More...
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It's time to apply for the 2011 KDMC News Entrepreneur Boot Camp
November 17, 2010
Where are you at in your journalism career? Are you worried about your future with an employer, and thinking about starting your own online news site in response? Have you started a site, but need to take it to the next level to make it a financial success for you?We've been talking about entrepreneurial journalism here on OJR for longer than just about anyone else. And not just here on the website - we've been showing readers in person how to launch their own news businesses, too. We hosted our first conference, devoted specifically to entrepreneurial journalism, back in 2006. For the past two years, we've worked with our new home at the Knight Digital Media Center to create and present the KDMC News Entrepreneur Boot Camp. This week, we open the application process for next May's camp.
If you're thinking about starting an online news business, or looking to take your start-up to the next level, trust me, you need to apply for this camp.
As helpful as I hope our articles have been for you, there's simply no replacement for in-person, one-on-one, personalized instruction. That's what we offer as part of our boot camp, and it's a uniquely valuable experience that you don't find at many of the other industry conferences and gatherings devoted to entrepreneurial journalism.
Here's what we offer with the camp, and it's not just one week in Los Angeles. More...
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The five most important beats for a local newspaper or website
November 12, 2010
Even though I no longer subscribe to a newspaper, I hope that fact won't lead you to infer that I don't support local newsrooms. I just believe that newspapers must reinvent themselves to survive in the Internet era. Online news start-ups must structure themselves not along traditional newsroom beat line-ups, but choose instead a new design that better connects their reporters with the community they work to serve.With that in mind, here are the five beats that I believe should form the core of any local news publication, in print or online. These are the beats which best reflect the activities of readers' daily lives - the ones most likely to elicit a connection between reader and publisher, which I believe is the primary requirement for success in news publishing. A publisher might choose to expand beyond these five beats, but these five remain a must for any publisher who wants the best chance at forging a strong connection with local readers.
If you're starting on your own, focus on these subject areas. If you're staffing a larger news organization, you might be able to assign multiple reporters to each beat. But make certain that all five are covered. Unfortunately, even some of the nation's largest newsrooms give the majority of these beats little, or even no, regular attention. And that, even more than competition from the Internet, provides the reason why so many readers have disconnected from their daily paper.
The "dream" publication I'm outlining here carries no wire services reports and no syndicated features, either. It's 100% locally produced and 100% directed at the local community. So don't think I'm writing about marginal change here. The structure I'm proposing would create a news publication that looks radically different than today's typical newspaper.
I know that many publishers over the years have found it far more cost-effective to load up their papers and websites with wire copy and syndicated features than to hire local reporters. But with that content available at thousands of other URLs online, every dollar spent on wire or syndicated services is a dollar wasted. If you feel that you need to reference those reports for your readers, link them online or publish the URL in print. As so many others have said before, do what you do best and link to the rest. If you want better performance, you're not going to get it by doing the same old thing, are you?
Here are my five essential beats for local news publications, in their order of importance:
1. Food
People eat every day. In every community across the country, food is an industry that never can be outsourced. Even if a community's food is grown elsewhere, people will be buying and eating it close to home.
People crave information about food. They're as insatiable for it as they are for, well, food itself. A strong local news publication should remind people when it is time to plant what, what's in season in their local markets, and who's doing something creative with food in local restaurants. More...
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MSNBC messed up with Keith Olbermann and campaign contributions - but other news publishers don't have to
November 8, 2010
The Keith Olbermann fiasco last week provides another chance for news publishers to talk about their policies on political activities by their employees. If you've read my most recent column, you probably know where I'm going to come down on this issue. But before I get into that, I want to say a few things about the Olbermann situation.MSNBC suspended Olbermann, the host of its evening "Countdown" news opinion show for what turned out to be two work days, after Politico reported that Olbermann had made several contributions to Democratic political candidates. MSNBC, like most old-school news organizations, has a policy prohibiting editorial employees from making contributions to political candidates and causes.
However, several blogs quickly searched Federal Election Commission data and discovered that other MSNBC hosts, conservatives Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan, had made contributions to Republican candidates, without action by MSNBC. The cable network clarified that Olbermann had been suspended for not securing permission from his bosses before making the contributions, as, presumably, Scarborough and Buchanan had done.
If you're going to have a policy that some employees can make contributions and others cannot, it seems to me that you ought to figure out who can and cannot in advance, and actively communicate that distinction to your employees. Waiting to make that decision on a case-by-case basis, only after employees ask permission, seems to me a lazy way to manage a news operation. In essence, you're saying to employees: "We have this ethics policy, but we're not going to tell you if parts of it apply to you or not. If you have a question about it, though, just come on in and ask."
Why not just paste a sign on your office door that says "Sue us"? More...
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Engagement is the key to winning back readers and advertisers
November 3, 2010
So how does a newspaper publisher reverse the industry-wide decline in circulation? How can newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times win back people like me as subscribers?Last week I posted the reasons why I dropped my LA Times subscription, leaving me without a newspaper subscription for the first time in my life. But as much as I'd like to see the Times' and Tribune's current management fail, that desire is rooted in my hope that their failure will clear the way for a better management team, not because I want to see professional newsrooms disband.
News publishers must understand that their duty is to the communities that they cover, and not to the industry of journalism and its conventions. Take a look at the comments on a typical newspaper's website to get a quick indication of following that newspapers have attracted. That is the community newspapers are now attracting. Remember, these are the folks who care enough to take the time to make a comment on a news story or blog post. Do they represent a healthy community that's engaged in productive discussion, or one that's angry? (For a more accurate picture, you'd need to consider the comments submitted, not just those published. Which in most cases, would compose an even scarier picture.)
Not every website elicits the crude, bitter and hostile commentary that pollutes too many newspaper websites. This isn't an Internet thing - other websites elicit far different reaction from their readers. What you often see on newspaper websites provides another sign of a troubled community, one where thoughtful people too rarely take the time to engage, fewer customers pay for subscriptions and more advertisers cut back or cancel than sign up for new ads.
Publishers need to change that. They need to find ways to reconnect with their communities, and to forge stronger relationships than the community of convenience they had with their readers and advertisers before. Readers and advertisers have more choices online now. They're looking for conviction, not convenience. News publishers need to offer their communities more to entice them to engage, to subscribe and to advertise.
Unfortunately, the conventions of journalism too often steer publishers away from the engagement that they need with their communities. More...
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