March 17, 2008
What are the lessons for online journalists from the 'State of the News Media' report?
By Robert Niles
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Two graphs in PEJ's summary of its report struck me: "In many ways the audience for news—and for what traditional newsrooms produce—appears to be growing. Nor are journalists failing to adapt. There are more signs in 2008 than ever that news people embrace the new technology and want to innovate.
"The problem, it is increasingly clear, is a broken economic model—the decoupling of advertising and news. Advertisers are not migrating to news websites with audiences, and online, news sites are already falling financially behind other kinds of Web destinations."
The PEJ report is not based upon a single survey or study; rather, it provides a handy summary of other research, surveys and commentary about the news industry over the past year. It includes a Pew Research Center/PEJ survey of 500 journalists, conducted last fall, as well as overviews of research conducted about newspapers, network, cable and local television, magazines, radio, ethnic media... as well as online.
While the PEJ has expanded the report's focus to include many so-called "hyperlocal" news websites, the bulk of the information in the online section of the report derives from studies of websites from major established offline news companies, as well as from large online portals and search engines such as Yahoo!, AOL and Google. Unfortunately, that leaves unexamined a wide swath of online information sources, from discussion forums to topical blog communities, where many readers are finding timely and relevant information.
That said, here's the good news from the report for all online news publishers: "Eight in 10 Americans 17 and older now say the Internet is a critical source of information — up from 66% in 2006. According to the same survey, more Americans identified the Internet as a more important source of information than television (68%), radio (63%) and newspapers (63%)." (From http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2008/narrative_online_audience.php?cat=2&media=5)
And with readers comes revenue, though the rate of yearly increase in advertising income is beginning to slow: "Through the first nine months of 2007, online ad revenue grew by 26% to $15.2 billion, according to Interactive Advertising Bureau. But that number was down from a 36% growth rate through the same period a year earlier." (From http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2008/narrative_online_economics.php?cat=3&media=5)
The PEJ report put part of the blame for that slow-down on the online industry's failure to develop standard methods for measuring who is looking at what websites, and for how long: "As online measurement firms experiment with the most effective way to count online viewers, advertisers can only guess how many consumers are seeing their ads." (From same page.) We wrote on OJR about the metrics problem last summer, and the PEJ cited that OJR commentary in its report.
Of course, accurate metrics won't ensure revenue gains if the global economy tanks, which it is showing disturbing signs of doing. But if the economy slides into recession, or worse, sites will find accurate and honest accounting essential in holding on to those advertisers who remain in the market.
Fortunately, major news organizations, finally, are starting to "get it" in devoting significant attention and resources to online publishing. In a section of the report with the subhead "The Primacy of the Web," the PEJ wrote: "Up until a few years ago, the Web was frequently characterized as a tool to supplement or improve news on traditional platforms, particularly newspapers. In 2006 and 2007, however, media executives and editors started to speak of the Web as a front porch rather than back door for their older, legacy properties."
The PEJ cited a Bivings Group study of the websites of the top-100-circulation U.S. newspapers, which found that:
"- Virtually all (97%) of the sites offered RSS (Really Simple Syndication), a technology that allows users to subscribe to regularly updated Web feeds, up from 76% in 2006.
- Eighty-eight percent now allowed readers an opportunity to post comments on blogs hosted on the newspaper sites, up from 67% in 2006.
- More than half (51%) included a “most popular” articles listing determined by reader usage, a number that increased from 33% the year before.
- Forty-four percent offered readers the ability to bookmark news articles, compared to just 7 percent in 2006.
- A third (33%) allowed readers to make comments on news articles, up from 19% in 2006."
Perhaps ironically, the PEJ report noted that hyperlocal websites that it studied were not more open to reader-contributed content than their so-called mainstream media competition:
"For all that citizen journalism might imply openness and interactivity, the majority of sites analyzed tended to demonstrate the instincts of 'strong gatekeepers' who control the content and are somewhat more difficult to interact with than the ideals of citizen journalism suggest. Now, instead of professionals, those gatekeepers were the bloggers or citizens who ran the sites."The majority of sites did not allow users to post news and feature stories, information about community activities, letters to the editor, photographs or videos, the study found.
"The one form of openness was that the majority, indeed almost all, did allow users to post comments about the material on the site, but the staff reserved the right to edit or otherwise screen the comments to meet its standards of civility."
Why would that be? I suspect that it is because small-scale publishers have learned the same thing that mass-market publishers long have known: managing reader content is hard work.
Let this be the year that news publishers recognize as fantasy the idea that readers will -- for free and without guidance -- produce accurate, enduring, engaging, multi-sourced news reports on any consistent basis. They will contribute information to someone else's report, whether it be a comment on a news article, a response to a discussion thread or a submission to a news database. But eliciting and managing even that amount of information takes enormous forethought and ongoing commitment from a Web publisher.
Many individuals who and small staffs that have started their own blogs or news publications quickly find that they haven't the time, technology or expertise to handle much of that user-generated content, in addition to keeping the blog or website fresh. This is where it would have been nice to have read more in the PEJ report from established online content communities, which have found ways to elicit and manage UGC that could help guide both MSM and start-up hyperlocal websites.
In that vein, I would love to hear from OJR readers what, if anything, the PEJ report has inspired you to change or to do in the year ahead. Here are the three things I'd love to see the online news industry do in 2008, in response to the PEJ report:
1. Diversify. If news websites are falling behind other online destinations in attracting advertising money, let's expand the definition of what kind of sites newsrooms ought to be publishing. Move into national and global topical communities, local social networks, data-driven mash-ups. Lose the focus on print- and broadcast-driven narratives and instead decide that anything offering accurate and enduring non-fiction information to people who need that information is "news" and within our ability to deliver better than any non-journalist's start-up.
2. Come together on metrics. A newspaper industry-driven solution will not suffice. The real solution to the advertising industry's confusion about Web readership must include a wide range websites, from the New York Times to The Brady Bunch Shrine. Millions of dollars are flowing from major publishers to "long tail" websites, and a metrics solution must allow potential advertisers to compare accurately readership levels across all of them. Google to the rescue?
3. Sharpen efforts to elicit and manage UGC. I hate watching sporting events on TV and seeing sideline reporters make some obvious statement, then shoving the mic in an athlete's face for a response. Umm... was there a question in there? Many industry attempts at eliciting content from our readers seems just as clumsy and fruitless. Robust online communities have been welcoming reader content for more than a decade now.
Better quality UGC can attract more readers. Better quality metrics can attract more advertisers. Better targeted publications can do both. As the PEJ report notes, the audience for news online is massive, and growing. Let's take advantage of that.
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