OJR front page archive for December 2009
An online journalist's 10 resolutions for 2010
December 30, 2009
We've talked often on this site over the past 12 months about what online journalists (and journalism entrepreneurs!) should be doing to both prepare themselves for the changes coming to our field, as well as to take advantage of the changes already here. Now, at year's end, let's remind ourselves of 10 things that we can do in 2010 to help keep journalism vital in our readers' lives... and keep our careers in journalism alive at the same time.1. Make your website more mobile-friendly
Everyone I've spoken with in the industry this year about this has reported the same thing: The percentage of readers accessing their websites on mobile devices is increasing. Significantly. I'm seeing high single-digit percentages on the sites I publish, up from the fraction-of-a-point share I saw last year.
You don't have to build a smart phone app, or even a separate mobile version of your website, to serve the mobile audience. But if you don't, you must, at the very least, offer clean code that performs gracefully on a mobile Web browser's small screen. A basic three-column Web layout can perform well, especially when the content displays in a center column of between 250 and 500 pixels. I offered more tips on this topic last summer.
2. Don't redirect mobile viewers requesting an article on your website to your mobile homepage
I couldn't resist repeating this tip. Redirecting deep links requests to a mobile home page is my biggest annoyance with Web design in 2009. Give these readers either the mobile version of the page they requested, or the regular version of that page. But don't break deep links to your website, for anyone.
Like the blink tag, framed navigations and scrolling tickers in the past, let's ditch this lousy design idea in the new year.
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The business model for news is and always has been broken and Rupert Murdoch can't fix it
December 22, 2009
In his remarks to the Federal Trade Commission's hearings on Journalism and the Internet, held at the beginning of this month, Rupert Murdoch made some characteristically bold statements about his views on the future of journalism.In Murdoch's world, the new model of journalism is one where people pay for journalism online.
Murdoch said: "In the new business model, we will be charging consumers for the news we provide on our Internet sites. The critics say people won't pay. I believe they will, but only if we give them something of good and useful value. Our customers are smart enough to know that you don't get something for nothing."
Murdoch is right when he asserts that the old model based on classified advertising is a failure, but he is wrong to suggest that people will actually pay for news. They never have paid for general interest news – not really, anyhow – and there's little to suggest that this historical precedent will change.
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Ethnic media's four-step model for the news industry's future
December 18, 2009
Disclaimer: While the following post describes the many things ethnic media are doing "right," by no means am I implying that they don't face the same problems plaguing the mainstream media. In today's market, all media organizations must find viable models to stay in business.Recently, I was asked to gather expert interviews on the future of advertising for a University of Georgia journalism class that is taking part in the OurBlook.com University Partnership Program.
Diverse types of industry experts were interviewed who ranged from techie gurus to journalists-turned-marketers. While opinions varied on what the future holds, the majority of experts agreed that newspapers needed to focus on both niche marketing and community building techniques to be successful. This automatically reminded me that ethnic media outlets, in many ways, have been doing these things for years. Obviously, while they still face the same challenges as their mainstream cousins, it seems as though they can provide valuable guidance and wisdom on certain philosophies that mainstream newspapers will have to adapt to be successful.
Forget the Numbers. Who is your Audience?
Historically, ethnic newspapers have been less concerned with numbers than thoroughly reaching a specific audience, whether it be a Colombian community in Queens, or a growing Asian population in Central Florida. They have been successful in becoming both liaisons and voices for their targeted population, so much so that they are regularly targeted by both national and international entities seeking to interact with their specific community.
Why should mainstream models follow suit?
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No! to newspaper bailouts
December 15, 2009
A. Michael Noll is Professor Emeritus of Communications and former dean at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He writes in response to American government: It's always subsidized commercial media.There will always be a need for the reporting of current events, but because of the Internet, journalism is undergoing revolutionary change in terms of how news is distributed and accessed. Conventional newspapers are thus in crisis, and there are some who propose a Federal bailout. No way!
Back in the 1980s, a couple of newspapers investigated the prospects for electronic information through a service known as videotex.1 I was involved while working at AT&T with the planning of a trial of videotex jointly conducted by AT&T and Knight-Ridder Newspapers in Florida. AT&T and Knight-Ridder correctly saw the coming of a day when news and information would be accessed and obtained electronically over telecommunication. However, the use of the home TV set for display and the concept of a single large centralized database of information were all wrong – and videotex ultimately failed.2
After the failure of videotex, newspapers became smug and mostly ignored the coming of the Internet. They did not seem to realize that although much of their profits came from classified ads, this was exactly the kind of information that could best be obtained on-line over the Internet. When they finally woke up, it was too late.
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Specialized Journalism: A Program Designed for the Future
December 15, 2009
As the director of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, I'd like to introduce OJR readers to our Master's Programs in Specialized Journalism.These are not your typical journalism M.A. programs. (Though we also have an excellent one of those.) In this innovative nine-month program, we have a different aim: As journalism is reinventing itself, we are reinventing the journalism academy, here in this incomparable learning laboratory of the future, Los Angeles.
Consequently, your fellow students will be atypical, as well. The remarkably interesting group we assemble each year brings artists and arts journalists of every stripe together with journalists eager to go deep into science, demographics, education, religion and a feast of other disciplines. Their work has appeared in the legacy media as well as Neon Tommy, Huffington Post and other online sites.
You will design your own curriculum, ranging across the offerings of this vibrant and richly interdisciplinary University. Along the way, we throw in some key enhancements: The updates in digital skills and social networking, an entrepreneurial mindset and a sense of the emerging lay of the journalistic land that will equip you to be a leader in journalism's reinvention. As online journalists, you have a head start on this journey. Together, we'll proceed further.
We have hired some of the best minds in the new-media world and melded them with our distinguished journalism faculty. And all of this exists within the exciting environment of a full-service School of Communication and Journalism that values the creation of new knowledge about this age-old craft we call journalism, as well as the many different ways we can now serve the public's information needs. And, assuming you can carve out the time, you can participate in Annenberg's news outlets on every platform and take advantage of the unparalleled diversity of experiences that Southern California offers.
I surely hope you will consider joining us here at Annenberg, where journalism's future is looking brighter every day. Please visit our website for application guidelines.
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New AOL's credibility threatened by editorial/advertising marriages
December 10, 2009
It's easy to poke fun at AOL's goofy corporate image campaign as the new Time Warner spinoff tries to look like a winner. My favorite among the "reveals" that are being rotated behind the new capital-lower-case "Aol." (please don't try to pronounce that phonetically) is this one:
If you wanted to visualize the impact of the AOL-Time Warner merger, wouldn't the result be something like this?
But much more important than image gimmickry is the value and integrity of AOL's content, which is spread among 80-some sites. Can the reborn company create a mosaic whole that is greater than the sum of all those parts?
Some of the 80 sites are quite respectable, editorially. Like AOL Money & Finance, or the blog Engadget, or the new Politics Daily. They're clearly run by pros. A few, like Mapquest, are struggling to stay competitive. Then there's Netscape, once the No. 1 browser (before Microsoft's Internet Explorer), which still has a ghostly presence in the AOL lineup.
But what I really wonder about are those blogs with the weird names and even weirder rationales for existence – like Lemondrop, Luxist and Holidash?
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What should the government do to help journalism?
December 9, 2009
Last week's Federal Trade Commission hearings on the journalism industryPlenty.
Now, before the libertarians within online news community fire up their torches for my march to the stake, hear me out.
OJR's David Westphal last week detailed the many ways that government has, uh, helped the news business in the past. Perhaps subsidies of that sort can continue in the future. But I see two, much larger, steps that the government can take that would help ensure a more stable and diverse journalism industry, one that would have the financial ability to fund more in-depth reporting over a longer period of time that today's newspapers and emerging website can support.
Ready? Here goes.
#1: Raise taxes on the rich. A lot
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Here's what newsrooms can learn from the Tiger Woods story
December 2, 2009
By this point the Tiger Woods story (or, at least, should be) the domain of the celebrity gossip sites, such as TMZ, and the sports gossip sites, such as Sports by Brooks.What? You didn't know that there were sites devoted specifically to sports gossip? Hey, how many times do I have to tell ya that the future of news publishing is all about working a niche? :-)
Leaving that topic aside for this post, however, let's instead talk about how so many news organizations came to cover the Tiger Woods story, when ultimately they really didn't want to. Then, I'll offer some suggestions on how newsrooms can extricate themselves from a story like this in a way that helps enhance their reputation, instead of damaging it, as I believe many newsrooms did with their handling of the Woods story on its first day.
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