17 Aug 08 New models for print journalism are popping up all over, so stop whining

If you follow the world of journalism, or even read the newspaper, you know that the industry is in “turmoil,” or so they say. It is chic right now to talk about the death of the newspaper industry, the end of journalism as we know it and a half-dozen other clichéd statements being trotted out on the increasing number of journalism blogs these days.

The tidal wave of buyouts and layoffs industry wide, plus the machinations of Sam Zell & Co., have given both journalists and ex-journalists alike a lot of ammo and fingers to point at the current state of the print journalism world. A lot of this outcry is due to journalists seeing an industry which they love and have studied crumbling and changing before their eyes, a valid concern.

The problem I have with a lot of this is that all of the venom-spitting in the world isn’t going to change the way things have turned out. Sam Zell, Randy Michaels and Lee Abrams have a plan for Tribune and no amount of TellZell whining is going to change that. Blog all you want, it’s not going to change the ad structure and revenue models of your standard newspaper that are in steady decline. Trust me, I hate it too and wish much of it wasn’t happening, but the reality is that it is happening.

Our industry, not just print journalism but journalism in general, is changing and evolving. This is a good thing. The problem seems that many journalists aren’t willing to go through the birthing pains of changing the face of journalism, even young journalists. In my experience there are still kids coming out of journalism school that have that delusion of being the fedora-wearing, beat journalist who just hits the streets with a notepad and their wits. While that’s all well and good, it’s not enough and it’s the old model.

Nothing I’m saying here is new and many others have said it better. My point is, the cure for the death of print journalism is already out there, staring us in the face, all anyone has to do is step up and be willing to take a risk because they truly love journalism. Here are a few examples of what I am talking about:

MinnPost.com
Started by a group of ex-journalists, including former Star-Tribune publisher Joel Kramer, MinnPost was their answer to what they felt was the decline of high-quality journalism in the Twin Cities. MinnPost is a non-profit journalism outfit that uses an online and a print-on-demand model. They focus on investigative journalism with a focus on politics, government, science, health and culture. Last I read they were one of the few news organizations in the black.

SportingNews
Now the Sporting News is not a new organization, they’ve been around since 1886. However, there is obviously a reason they’ve survived so long, they innovate. News designer Charles Apple recently joined the Sporting News to help launch their new e-newsletter. Though the paper is supposed to continue print publication as a bi-weekly later this month, this e-newsletter format is something that more organizations should be willing to try. People still want the portability of a paper so why not give it to them while at the same time saving the organization on printing costs. We’ll have to see how this is working out in six months but I think it is a great idea.

Spot.us
Spot.us is an experiment in non-profit, crowdfunded journalism that is scheduled to launch this fall. The project was started by journalist David Cohn after he won the Knight News Challenge. According to the site:

“Spot Us” is a nonprofit that allows an individual or group to take control of news in their community by sharing the cost (crowdfunding) to commission freelance journalists to write important, or uncovered news stories.

Will it work? Who knows, but its boldness and Cohn’s willingness to try something innovative is more than admirable, it’s what the industry needs.

ProPublica
You may have heard of ProPublica already, the independent, non-profit newsroom that squarely focuses on investigative journalism. Investigative journalism is one of the fastest casualties of the slimmed down newsroom. Less journalists equals less time and resources to dig into those real meaty stories that newspapers are supposed to be known for. According to their site, they are “…the largest, best-led and best-funded investigative journalism operation in the United States.” Whether you agree or not, ProPublica looks poised to pick up where traditional news organizations are losing out.

TheUptake
A citizen-journalism Web site, The Uptake has garnered recent attention for a member-submitted story about the protests in Beijing, China. Their motto: “Will journalism be done by you or to you?” Many trained, educated journalists take issue with the citizen-journalism movement but there is merit to having eyes and ears on every corner. News organizations can’t hope to cover every angle of a story and that is where sites like TheUptake pick up the slack. I’m not sure of the history of the site and couldn’t find anything on it, maybe someone from the site can shed some light.

These are just a few examples of bold new steps for journalism and I’m sure there are more. My point here is that the solution to this supposed destruction of modern journalism is not going to come from new owners, publishers or executives. No, it’s going to have to come from the true journalists that love this business, this life and love getting the news to the people that want to read it, listen to it or see it.

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Tags: journalism, new media

19 Jun 08 NY Times goes social, slighly endorses Firefox over IE

The New York Times has added a social feature to its site called TimesPeople (beta). While not a full-fledged social network, the new feature allows people to create a profile, add friends and share articles.

Its most clever ability is its interaction with social-networking behemoth Facebook. Users can connect it with an NYT Facebook application and when articles are tagged, they show up in their FB newsfeed. As the engineer in the video puts it, “this let’s people who normally wouldn’t be reading the New York Times see and read articles that they might find interesting.”

Again the NYT does it right. They created a new feature, not as an add platform or simply a revenue booster, but as a way to draw more people into the NYT Web site and get their content into the wild. Kudos.

EDIT: Oops, I kind of left this point out.

Right now the app seems to be Firefox exclusive, which may have been an intentional F.U. from the engineers to Microsoft, or it may just be because it is still in beta. Still, I thought that was an interesting choice considering IE still has a larger portion of the Web browser market share (though it is slipping more and more every day.)

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Tags: new media, social networking, Web2.0

16 Jun 08 Online Journalism Review to cease publication

Yup, the OJR is going to stop the publication of it’s Web site. From Robert Niles in the final post:

This is the final post at OJR. After a decade, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication has decided to cease publication of the website. The archives will remain online, but there will be no new articles.

One of OJR’s goals over the years has been to help mid-career journalists make a successful transition from other media to online reporting and production. I’m pleased to say that USC Annenberg will continue to provide support in that area, through the Knight Digital Media Center. I encourage OJR readers to click over to the KDMC website and its blogs, if you are not already a regular reader there.

The decision to close OJR means that I have left the University of Southern California. But I am not going offline. I will continue to write, daily, about new media and journalism at my new website, SensibleTalk.com. I hope that many of you will click over and visit me there.

That’s a shame, I really liked OJR. Niles and his cohorts posed some interesting questions and had some great discussions on their site. I also liked the network and group feel of the site. It made you feel like you were a part of something.

But, the show must go on, as the cliché goes. Thankfully Niles will continue to blog on his own site so we online journalism geeks won’t be without his wise words and inquiries.

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14 Jun 08 NCMR 2008

This is AdBusters’s video from the NCMR 2008 in Minneapolis. I am so upset that I missed this. I left Minnesota the week before this conference began. Hopefully they’ll bring it back to the city next year.

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Tags: media reform, new media, video

01 May 08 Today is RSS awareness day

You know the geek demographic is taking over when they are starting to make holidays out of Web technologies. I for one welcome our new geeky overlords and look forward to toiling away in their underground server rooms. But I digress.

According to Daniel Scocco over at Daily Blog Tips today is indeed RSS Awareness Day. So if you or your newsroom are totally clueless about this RSS thing, what better day than today to hold a quick boot camp or primer on one of the most useful and simple Web technologies available.

Don’t feel like explaining it all, just send this video from RSSDay.org around to your team (it’s a little hokey but it gets the point across):

Then have them read Shawn Smith’s post from yesterday and they’ll be all set. Create a Feedburner account for your news organization, burn some feeds and start syndicating. With the final assimilation of Feedburner by Google it is no doubt going to become a more robust and useful tool over the next few months.

So there you have it, spread the word!

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Tags: new media, online journalism, Web2.0

29 Apr 08 Online feature: Las Vegas Sun, ‘Bomb Demonstration’

I’ve been incredibly impressed with the online presence of the Las Vegas Sun. There’s something about the site that just breathes and feels welcoming. One area where they are shining is their multimedia offerings. Like I mentioned in a post yesterday, they include a multimedia link as an integral part of their navigation.

There it is, right there at the top just screaming ‘Click Me!’

One of the pieces they ran recently was a video piece bomb testing and demonstration held by the Las Vegas Fire Department in the Nevada desert. What I liked most about this was that when you go to the video it is large and in your face with excellent quality. It’s big, loud and begs you to ‘Watch me!’ (Yes, I’ve managed to anthropomorphize Web pages, back off!)

Too often sites have their videos squashed into a tiny box along with the story. While many do offer a full-screen option, sometimes a near full-screen view as the default would better serve the piece. They way I see it, your organization paid the reporter or reporters to check out the story, film it and then paid your video team to edit and package the video. Why not play it up as much as you can? You’re paying these people for their hard work, show it off! The Las Vegas Sun is doing an excellent job of that.

The second thing I liked was that the Sun offers the video in a downloadable, MP4 format, in both iPod sizes and even in 720p HD. The effort may not see worth it now, but if people start downloading your site’s videos, sharing them and then word gets around that you offer these things on your site, the traffic will follow.

As an aside, I don’t know how much the complicated ownership structure the Sun has with the Las Vegas Review-Journal has to do with it (which I’m sure it does), but their site is refreshingly lite in ads. This may be a bad thing for them eventually in an increasingly revenue-centric model, but for now, it’s great.

I could go on and on about the Sun’s site, but I’ll let you decide. Check it out, they are a great example of design meeting journalism in a great way.

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Tags: multimedia, new media, online journalism

29 Apr 08 Dissecting the NYTimes.com with design director Khoi Vinh

Despite what Craig Ferguson says, the NYTimes is still leading the charge in many areas of journalism, most notably in the online world. The Times has been continually improving their online user experience and things seem to have really moved ahead since they took down their pay wall, something that all newspapers should do right now.

The NY Times is running week long, Talk to the Newsroom segment with Khoi Vinh, design director of NYTimes.com. What’s great about the interaction is that the questions are reader questions and not bland interviewer questions. It’s really a great chance to look behind the curtain and see what’s really going on in Oz.

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Tags: new media, online journalism, technology

26 Apr 08 What would make the best news Web site CMS platform?

Right now newspapers use a variety of tools to update their Web sites. Some use proprietary content-management systems similar to Wordpress or MoveableType, while others maintain simple, yet highly customizable HTML pages. Different sized organizations are still getting their online legs and figuring out what works best for them.

None of these systems have been perfected and most continue to evolve as technology increases. Eventually, however, most major news organizations are going to have to either have in-house developers in their technology department or hire contract Web developers create a CMS platform so they can stay competitive and relevant in an increasingly malleable online world.

Here’s a quick list of what I think would make the best news Web site CMS and/or what should be included in any news Web site CMS platform. It should be noted that some of these might be more wants than needs, some might already be in use by news organizations and some might not even be technologically possible, yet.

List below the jump.

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23 Apr 08 ‘New Media Bytes’ is ridiculously informative

All right, that’s it, I’m packing it up. No need for me to be yammering away about online journalism stuff when people like Shawn Smith have everything covered over at New Media Bytes. Smith is a senior news producer at MLive.com, the online arm of Booth Newspapers in Michigan.

Honestly, his blog is the most comprehensive site I’ve seen covering topics such as, but are not limited to, Twitter and journalists, new media metrics and how to coerce your newsroom into accepting the online world. Some notable posts:

• Ultimate guide to Twitter tools for Journalists
• Best newspaper blogs for comments, community and readability
• Blogging basics for journalists
• 6 minimal-effort ways to jumpstart your newspaper staff’s excitement about the web

I’m kidding of course about packing it up, but good grief, Shawn has done a terrific job. Kudos to you sir!

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Tags: journalism, links, new media

22 Apr 08 MSNBC launches Election 2008 MySpace site

In an effort to tap into that ever volatile youth demographic, MSNBC has launched a MySpace page called Decision 08. Showing their age and how behind the times they are, doesn’t MSNBC know that MySpace is sooo yesterday’s news. Everyone knows that Facebook is the where it’s at with kids today.

Though I do have to hand it to them for being able to mask as much as possible that it is, in fact, a MySpace page. It almost looks like a standalone Web site, save for the always brilliant, exclamation point-laden comments at the bottom that are typical of MySpace groupies.

I wonder if MSNBC realizes that MySpace is owned by rival media conglomerate News Corp. Kind of sleeping with the enemy aren’t they?

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21 Apr 08 E & P: Top 30 Newspaper Sites for March

From Editor & Publisher:

NYTimes.com — 18,869 –30%
USATODAY.com — 10,709 — (-2%)
washingtonpost.com — 8,929 — 13%
Wall Street Journal Online — 6,850 — 99%
LA Times — 5,729 — 22%

New York Post — 4,677 — 31%
Boston.com — 4,184 — (-1%)
Chicago Tribune — 3,825 — 31%
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle — 3,793 — (-10%)
Daily News Online Edition — 3,314 — 54%

Newsday — 3,240 — 44%
Village Voice Media — 2,814 — 139%
DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News — 2,727 — 96%
The Houston Chronicle — 2,690 — (-26%)
International Herald Tribune — 2,587 — 33%

Atlanta Journal-Constitution — 2,384 — 28%
Chicago Sun-Times — 2,206 — 8%
The Politico — 2,095 — 58%
Azcentral.com — 2,016 — (-4%)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer — 1,967 — (-8%)

tampabay.com — 1,908 — 6%
Star Tribune — 1,763 — 18%
MercuryNews.com — 1,662 — 36%
Orlando Sentinel — 1,642 — (-31%)
Philly.com — 1,554 — (-12%)

Sun-Sentinel — 1,524 — (-9%)
Detroit Free Press — 1,484 — 38%
Cleveland.com — 1,460 — 89%
MiamiHerald.com — 1,451 — (-17%)
The San Diego Union-Tribune — 1,432 — (-19%)

W00t!

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Tags: journalism, new media

20 Apr 08 Today’s Interactive Feature: ‘How the Pentagon Spread Its Message’ (NYT)

The New York Times has a pretty hard-hitting article today by David Barstow about how the Pentagon and the Bush administration used military analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.

Politics aside, the interactive feature included with the story really brings what could be a confusing and convoluted story and turns it into a coherent narrative. Using a combination of stock video from media outlets, animated graphics and an audio narrative, the story is told in a short, three-act structure. They almost follow a movie’s three-act structure, an impressive feat in just 12 minutes of content. Though it does bog down in the middle (they needed a love interest or something), it does keep you engaged and you want to watch all three pieces.

Also of note is the ‘Document Archive’ item at the bottom. It’s self-explanatory but it is a nice addition to the story, especially the copies of the memos and transcripts the article references. All are viewable in the Flash window or you can download them as PDFs.

An impressive package all around.

Now, a bit of a disclaimer. I’m going to try and stray away from the big three (or four) papers when looking at these interactive features from now on. It’s no surprise that the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and LA Times can churn out great interactive packages when they have a lot more resources than most. So, in the future, I’m going to try and be a little more intrepid and seek out features that smaller and lesser known news organizations are doing. Sometimes the best stuff comes out of where you would least expect it.

CREDITS: David Barstow, Gabriel Dance, Michele Monteleone, Amy O’Leary/The New York Times

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Tags: Interactive, journalism, new media

17 Apr 08 ‘Post’ Staffer Fired After profane-laden postings

In a story pseudo-related to what I was talking about earlier, a staffer from the Washington Post was fired after some profanity-laced statements he made on sports blog. The problem, however, wasn’t so much what the staffer, identified as Michael Tunison, said, but that he associated himself with the ‘Post’ when he did it.

Michael Tunison, who blogged under the name “Christmas Ape” at the “Kissing Suzy Kolber” site, wrote on Wednesday that he had been fired for “bringing discredit to the paper.”

Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. confirmed that Tunison no longer worked at the paper and had left his job on Wednesday, but would not specify if he resigned or was fired. “We don’t discuss personnel matters, but we have standards for people’s outside work,” Downie told E&P. “You need to clear it with your editors here before and it should not be a conflict of interest.”

I am inclined to side with the Washington Post on this incident. Even though Tunison was only an editorial aide, any postings he made while associating himself with the paper hurts the integrity of the paper as a whole.

Does this mean that journalists shouldn’t be able to blog in their off time? Certainly not, but there is some personal responsibility you have to take when it comes to what you post on the Internet. I go with the Golden Rule when it comes to posting.

If you put it on the Internet, it will be seen. If you don’t want someone to see it, don’t hit ‘publish.’ In addition, if you are going to post something possibly inflammatory or negative about your employer, don’t identify yourself as an employee of said place. If you do, you are just asking for it.

I also, on this blog and those I have had in the past, always include a personal disclaimer that states that what I post here is my opinion and mine alone and in no way reflects the opinions or thoughts of my employer.

So to use the tired, and albeit edited cliché, blogger beware.

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Tags: blogs, journalism, new media

17 Apr 08 CoverItLive, live blogging for journalists; Is it too much too soon?

CoverItLive is a , free (sort of) Web-based live blogging platform that can allow news organizations or bloggers to update, in real time, an event or breaking news story. It has been used and touted by both Newsweek and Seattle’s The Stranger. From the creators:

CoveritLive’s web based software takes your next live blog to a new level. Your commentary publishes in real time like an instant message. Our ‘one-click’ publishing lets you drop polls, videos, pictures, ads and audio clips as soon as they come to mind. Comments and questions from your readers instantly appear but you control what gets published. Try our software for your next live blog. Your readers will love it.

I think this might be a little before its time. Live blogging, in theory, works. Through blogs at the Orlando Sentinel, we’ve done live blogging of golf tournaments, NASCAR races, football games and even of the 2008 CES Trade Show in Las Vegas, Nev. All of those worked well with sporadic, well-written updates to their respective blogs.

Having a scrolling, streaming update log, including reader interaction, would seem too easy a thing to spiral out of control and turn into nothing more than a glorified chat session. Live blogging via the traditional method (if you can call something created a few years ago ‘traditional’) still allows you to moderate comments from trolls and put a little thought before posting. Not only that, CIL ties the reader to the page, chaining them to one spot. People don’t have time for that. I think the average reader looks at a news Web site less than five minutes a day. They aren’t going to stick around just to read chatty updates about a sporting event. In this battle, quality will always win out over quantity.

The quicker we post, the more prone to mistakes, errors and lapses in judgment we become. Would journalists live blogging an event in such an instant format be responsible for off-the-cuff remarks or perhaps responding to commenter with a curt response? What about issues of libel? As great as technology is, we can’t let it overshadow that journalistic integrity and those ethics we are supposed to hold so dear.

Admittedly, I have not used this software so I should not be so quick to judge. From a bloggers standpoint, especially if you are one with an established audience, this is a great idea. A blogger is not bound by many of the rules and forces that journalists must hold to, even in the changing technological landscape. From a journalism standpoint I think this would be a dangerous product to implement, even in the most benign of scenarios such as live blogging a parade or charity event.

We put up the walls of copy-editors, senior editors and other checks and balances to not only protect us from ourselves, but to protect our readers from having to sort through the drivel. Breaking down those walls opens us up to more criticism, more liability and a lessening of our credibility as news organizations. All of the information is already out there for the public to find, we are meant to help filter that content into a coherent and cogent conversation. If that conversation is something they can get from an instant message chat room or Web forum, what good are we?

Like I said, great idea, but probably not yet ready to be adopted by a major news organization, even those that are pioneering and championing the online journalism movement. This is related to something I mentioned earlier about “understanding technology before implementing technology.” With each technological step, organizations need to make sure they don’t slough off their journalistic ideals, ethics and mission of truth in order to jump on board with the next new thing.

I’m a geek for sure, but I am also a journalist, and those two things are sometimes difficult to compromise.

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14 Apr 08 Are Newspapers Doomed?

I surely hope not.

That’s the question posed on the Britannica Blog’s extremely lengthy, multiple-post spanning forum, Are Newspapers Doomed? (Do We Care?): Newspapers and the Net Forum. Yeah, that was a mouthful.

Like I said, this is a lengthy read spread out over nine posts. The posts are written by various journalism and new media heavyweights such as Clay Shirky and Jay Rosen and include roughly 30 comment responses from other important folks in the new media landscape. Yeah, it’s a lot to digest and to be honest I haven’t even had a chance to read it all since being directed to it by new media maven Jeff Jarvis in his response to the forum (read this, it has some really fun, crudely-drawn charts drawn by Jarvis).

The initial question though I think is a little too simplistic and hurts the discussion. Are newspapers doomed? That’s no more valid of question than when they asked if radio was doomed at the dawn of television or if the music industry was doomed when the MP3 hit the scene.

If newspapers try and stay exactly the same, making money via the standard business model with owners attempting to reap the 15 to 20 percent profit margins like the days of old, then yes, newspapers are indeed doomed. Doomed, doomed, doomed, doomed…yes, doomed. The better question should be, ‘Is journalism doomed?’

To this I say no, journalism will live on. The medium may change, but news and information will always be a necessity. Media barons, owners and publishers need to embrace this changing of the guard and the change being forced upon them by the Internet, mobile platforms and advances in Web applications. Hanging on to the old model like a child holding on to a favorite blanket is a losing battle and is only going prolong the inevitable.

Cutting news rooms and limiting outgoing costs to maintain those profits is not going to allow a news organization, any news organization, the keep up with the speed of the new media landscape. The age-old adage of “Do more with less” doesn’t apply in journalism. It may work in manufacturing, it may work on a labor union-run dock but it simply does not work at a news organization.

To quote Gus Haynes on HBO’s The Wire: “If the paper is still profitable, why are we making cutbacks?”

Our product has a dual-purpose, one of which is intangible: to inform. We aren’t making widgets here, we’re telling people the news. Regardless of how that news gets to them, people will always need some sort of filter and someone to deliver that news to them. Yeah I’m young, I know, and one day my idealism and love of this business will be beat into submission, but not today.

Even though we are in a semi-dark period in modern journalism, I for one am happy to be embarking in this business right now. Once we finally shed this dark shroud of bottom-line thinking and write first, think later style of journalism, I think the industry will emerge into a renaissance period that will embrace the technology and capabilities at our fingertips.

Either that, or you’ll find me greeting you the next time you step into Wal-Mart.

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Tags: journalism, new media, news