OJR front page archive for March 2009
Seven essential resources to help protect your website from technical attack
March 27, 2009
Kevin Roderick publishes the widely read and highly acclaimed (among Los Angeles-area journalists, at least) blog LA Observed. But this week, Roderick's been living a Web journalist's nightmare. Earlier this week, many Web browsers started blocking access to his website, following Google's determination that LA Observed included links to sites that were distributing malware - malicious code that could infect readers' websites with viruses and other nasty stuff.Roderick ultimately traced the problem to ads running on his site, and took that section down while he worked with his hosting provider to purge the links. A day after clearing the site, Google cleared LA Observed, and traffic is able again to flow normally to Roderick's site.
I don't want to write about Roderick's specific situation, beyond using it as a peg to remind all independent online publishers of the importance of keeping an eye on the tech side of publishing.
Tools such as Blogger and Moveable Type have allowed writing with no tech training to become popular and self-sustaining online publishers. But tech gremlins can attack anyone, and even novices need to pay attention to the threats.
In that spirit, here are seven essential resources for online publishers who don't want to get burned:
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News businesses must think about content, not just products, to ensure their survival
March 25, 2009
I work for a 126-year-old start-up company.Since our founding in 1883, Gazette Communications has revolved around the newspaper that gave the company its name. As time went on, the company added a television station and various other products, but our focus was always on the products, especially that venerable core print product.
We developed a pretty good staff to provide content for the products, but their work always revolved around the products. Editors would meet daily in a conference room and talk about the stories that would be in the next day’s paper, writing slugs and story lengths on a whiteboard. The story lengths were not based on the amount of relevant content a reporter might develop. They were based on the interests and attention span of a mythical average newspaper reader and on the price of newsprint.
After two newspapers that were older than ours, the Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, folded within the past month, it’s clearer than ever that a proud past doesn’t ensure a prosperous future. We are feeling the same pressures as all newspaper companies. In fact, beyond the national economic problems and the industry turmoil, our community is reeling from a historic disaster. Our company is cutting its staff from about 600 before the flood to about 500. I had to tell 14 journalists last month that their jobs were eliminated. But whatever turmoil our products face, the demand for content is stronger than ever.
So Gazette Communications is unhitching our content generation from product management.
If you just thought, “Huh?” you’re not alone. Our staff and some of our leaders are still working on understanding this concept. Content and product are so closely entwined in newsroom organizations and in the minds and hearts of journalists that “untangling” would probably be a more accurate verb for the paragraph above than “unhitching.”
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Start with the public schools to build a successful local online news start-up
March 20, 2009
A short while ago I had the pleasure of meeting with some local journalism graduate students, who are working to create an online news site covering the Los Angeles suburb of Alhambra.You'll find Alhambra a few miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. Despite its proximity to the center of LA, the community is lost in the local media landscape. The Los Angeles Times ventures there only for feature and major crime stories. The Pasadena newspaper covers a few of its high school sports teams. Council? School board? Church activities? Lots of luck finding frequent stories about those. So there is an opening here for an entrepreneurial group of journalists, or journalism students, to provide regular coverage for a community that could use it.
Like many communities around Los Angeles, Alhambra is diverse, and that diversity sometimes impedes public discussion. The community includes a large percentage of people who's primary language is Spanish or Mandarin, in addition to those who primarily speak English. This group includes students proficient in each language, giving them the opportunity to create a publication that is not limited to serving only part of the Alhambra community.
But where to begin? That's the question I addressed when I spoke with the group. And it is a question that many journalists now face, as they consider a change for traditional print newsrooms to "hyperlocal" and community online news start-ups.
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Maybe what your news organization needs is a 'spontaneous bashing together of ideas'
March 18, 2009
[Editor's note: The past week roiled the journalism business, as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer went to online-only, the former Rocky Mountain News staff tried to revive the paper as an independent website and Clay Shirky painted a revolutionary picture for what is happening in the industry.Rather than take a hipshot off those headlines, though, we're going to be proactive on OJR this week, starting with this piece from Eric Ulken, who offers a roadmap for established news organizations to enliven their online efforts.]
In a nondescript training room in the BBC's White City building in West London, about 80 people are huddled around tables with placards bearing names like "Dr. Who" and "Top Gear" [BBC TV show titles], engaged in discussions on topics ranging from user-generated content to alternate-reality gaming.
The assembled thinkers and tinkerers represent many different arms of the British media behemoth, from radio news to Web production to technology. About the only things they have in common besides an employer are an interest in innovation and an eye to the future.
They're taking part in the second BeeBCamp, an "unconference" in the tradition of BarCamp (and partly inspired by the Guardian's GameCamp) that aims to bring together forward-thinking staffers and a few outsiders to talk about themes loosely related to the future of the BBC. [Disclosure: I was one of those outsiders, and, in the everybody-pitches-in spirit of the unconference, I talked about my work in data journalism at the L.A. Times.]
BeeBCamp, according to the BBC blog's write-up of the event, "is designed as a collective, spontaneous bashing together of ideas, with no set structure to the day." A whiteboard goes up first thing in the morning, and anybody who has an idea for a discussion or presentation claims a spot on the schedule. For example, one participant wrote: "We own twitter.com/bbc. What should we do with it?" (Some ideas here.)
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Local news media needs dual business models, not dueling business models
March 13, 2009
I own and run a hyperlocal site www.sunvalleyonline.com. While we've managed to be one of the few pure-play local Internet media ventures to eke out a profit, the financial returns aren't anything to write home about. This resulted in a minor epiphany when it comes to thinking about the viability of local media.If you think about what made newspapers viable for so long it was the fact that they had two products/businesses that were largely unrelated but delivered by the same organization. Newspapers have had a news-and-information business monetized by display ads and a classifieds business monetized by classified ads. The classified business was enabled by the distribution and audience of the news franchise. However, it's been clear that that second revenue stream doesn't translate on a sustainable basis online.
To date, most local Internet plays have struggled to make it work relying solely on display ad revenue. I've come to the belief that it's going to take a similar dual business model to support local media (we're working on doing that ourselves). Unfortunately for many local news organizations, it has been more about dueling business models (i.e., worries of cannibalization) than recognizing that what they need is a dual business model to make their online business much more successful.
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Life, online, after the Rocky Mountain News
March 11, 2009
When Denver's Rocky Mountain News closed last month, hundreds of journalists found themselves looking for work. Some of them, though, aren't waiting for another newsroom to call. They're busy building their own, online.OJR talked this week with Steve Foster, up until last month the Rocky's assistant sports editor for interactive, who has launched his own effort [America's Fish] to provide an online home for several other former Rocky reporters and columnists. Foster is a graduate of the University of South Dakota who has done stints at the Longmont (Colo.) Daily Times-Call and Chicago Sun-Times, in addition to the Rocky Mountain News.
Foster has helped build a collection of WordPress-powered sites that are provided a new home for the Rocky's former sports cartoonist and major-league baseball beat staff, among others. His efforts provide one blueprint for other journalists who soon might be facing the same situation, as other newspapers around the country slip toward closure.
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How the Web can help the WaPo (and other papers) write a new chapter about the world of books
March 6, 2009
Book lovers mourned, some angrily, the Washington Post's decision to kill off its free-standing Book World, which, until Feb. 22, was part of the paper's Sunday print package. But the good news was the Post's promise that the estimable literary section would stay alive online. "We intend to develop a strong, easy-to-navigate, well indexed Book World site," new Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli (who wielded the ax) wrote in a response to the 122 Book World contributors who protested the decision.But just how "strong" will Book World be online?
When the Los Angeles Times eliminated its free-standing print Sunday Book Review in 2008 as part of its nonstop cost-cutting, the section was reincarnated online as Books in the Living section of the Times website. In addition to reviews, book-sale reports and a literary calendar, Books features a blog called Jacket Copy. But the blog, with its multiple authors, lacks personality. Overall, the online Books isn't capitalizing on the strengths of the Web – particularly community building – and it doesn't seem to have preserved the critical authority that was a hallmark of the print Book Review. Browsing through the skimpy site, you get the feeling it's produced on a shoestring. There is no Steve Wasserman or Digby Diehl – past editors of the Book Review – setting and executing high standards.
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Essential reading for journalists caught in the meltdown
March 4, 2009
Lost amongst the angst and anger over the bankruptcies running through the news business like a cold through a kindergarten is the wisdom that a few smart voices have offered, and continue to offer, this industry. Not everyone was caught asleep by what has happened over the past few years. If the people running the nation's newspaper companies had listened to those voices before, more newsrooms would be thriving now. If they would listen now, perhaps more newsrooms could be saved.Here are four essential articles from the past two weeks that anyone concerned about the future of news should read. They do not speak with unanimity, but do provide a sample of the voices that ought to be leading any discussion about the future of journalism online.
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