Dear Newspapers: Time To Focus On Enabling The Community; Not Limiting It
from the try-this-again dept
As we keep hearing from newspaper execs (and sometimes, reporters) insisting that paywalls or micropayments are the solution to what ails the industry, we keep asking why people will pay. The whole reason why newspapers used to work as a business model was that they collected a community around news. But, these days, there are much better communities out there. The newspapers haven't kept up. And, when it comes to news, people want to participate. They're not passive. That might mean contributing to the news or commenting on the news, but just as likely it means sharing and spreading the news, as well. But nearly every proposal from newspapers looks to limit that ability, which only makes it less valuable to the very community the newspapers need, driving them elsewhere. We've been saying for years that newspapers need to focus on enabling communities, but that still seems to be the last thing on most of their minds.For example, this rather depressing discussion of research presented at the Future of Journalism conference concerning participatory media suggests that many in the newspaper business view the whole "participation" thing as a pain to be dealt with. Very few look for ways to better enable the community -- most seem focused on how to prevent the community from doing something bad, or looking for other ways to somehow limit the community.
And then you have situations like this:
Finding newsworthy material in contributions from the public is a challenge. In his study about Dutch newspapers and UGC presented at the conference, Piet Bakker found that there was little news contained in comments on stories.They're viewing the entire thing backwards. First, they're complaining that there's "little news contained in comments." But who said there was supposed to be? It's the basic difference between reporting and a discussion. But the newspaper folks are so focused on having to be "reporters" that they're missing the fact their community wants to have a discussion around the news. Instead, it's seen as a bad thing that it's "not news." Furthermore, rather than being seen as a way to enable the community, comments are reduced to a way to attract more visitors. If you're just looking to attract more visitors, there are all sorts of things you can do. If you want to enable the community, it takes a different mindset.
From the point of view of the traditional journalist, the amount of news in comments was minimal. Instead, comments were seen as a way to attract more visitors and increase loyalty, but these benefits were counterbalanced by problems with abusive comments, a lack of contributions, and the cost of moderation.
Of course, not every newspaper person thinks that way. Techdirt reader Shane Richmond, who is the head of technology for the Telegraph, has written up a report for the Nieman Foundation, discussing the various ways that paper is looking to enable the community. As you read through it, it's not about page views or having the community submit stuff for journalists to do the real work on, it's actually all about enabling the community: enabling them to have a voice, enabling them to connect with one another and even enabling them to have an audience. As Richmond notes, there's still a lot more to do, but it looks like the Telegraph is approaching this with the right mindset. It would be great to see more newspapers follow the same path.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: community, journalism, newspapers, participatory journalism
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
What is value
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Until THAT policy was brought into question, the editor actually started to bash anyone who questioned him as living in their parents basement, calling them freeloaders, and then closed the entire forum in a huff.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Free networks vs. free stuff
"Both sides of the debate about Free do not seem to acknowledge how fundamentally different the relationship between suppliers and consumers is on the web. Services are not offered for free at all. There is an exchange of value between users, the creators of the raw material - data, content, and meta-data, and the network where that data is converted into insight."
Source: http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2009/08/chris_and_malco.html.
The problem isn’t that news organizations gave content away for free, it’s that having done so, they never set out to capture the other side of the exchange that users seem only too happy to provide in return – sharing, voting, recommending, commenting, discussing etc – by building the network. This was (and still is) because news organizations do not see the shift to or the benefits of a free network: they only see the free stuff they are giving away.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The Web has moved us to a world of "publish, then filter" (see 'Here's Comes Everybody' by Clay Shirky) and online media now follows a Paretian (power law) rather than Gaussian (normal) distribution. It's basically a long tail as you describe, a few gems and loads of crap, and it accentuates the more comments there are.
The same problem exists for content in general but we already have much better filters in place for news and blogs. The first thing I'd do if I was a news site is let people follow the comments of other users rather than wade through 100+ on every article a la Backtype. If someone I follow comments on something, I think there is a good chance that is an article I want to read. And that is just one instance of enabling a community around news.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I also advocate leaving comments to the professionals, like Disqus, who already have all this functionality built out. Plus, it is also possible to edit comments so I don't have to leave things like "Every smart people..." for posterity ;-)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
If the point is to create a "community," isn't the fact of the community more important than its content?
I suspect that newspapers tend to downplay the importance of community for the same reason some of the commenters here are complaining about the nature of communities: lack of control.
It's scary, I guess. If you can't control it, you feel like it has no value for you.
But your feelings may be leading you astray. Look at YouTube comments. Everyone hates them. They're unpleasant, extreme, and often unreadable. But people continue to use the comments. Maybe it makes people feel like they're part of YouTube. Maybe it just gives them a chance to vent. But YouTube is much healthier for the input.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Filtering comments could be powered by editors, journalists, interns, users, technology or a combination. The NY Times has editors picks and reader recommendations in their comments pages but in my experience the former is frequently blank and the latter is often filled with 3/4 of the comments and neither is useful. I'd love to be able to follow smart commenters and see where they show up next. (You can actually already do this with TimesPeople but functionality is limited and it is way in the background of the experience of using the site.)
I think managing communities is absolutely scary because it is a different role - for the companies and potentially the journalists too. Brad's post was terrific at explaining why the services organizations provide might more closely resemble those provided by governments (think municipal rather than federal) than companies today.
I'm not sure if you meant YouTube is or is not much healthier for the comments, but either way it is a great example. Firstly, on YouTube the content itself clearly filled with power laws and there really isn't much of a filter on the site. Instead, and again this is my experience, I see most YouTube videos embedded elsewhere by people that I follow via social media. That is my filter and it means I don't wade through a lot of irrelevant videos. Secondly, I think the content can influence who shows up in the first place and certainly who stays. And that speaks to relevance or usefulness as much as it does to intellect or political persuasion.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Actually I can kind of see their point here... With the way warmed-over press releases, pundit hype, and celebrigossip are passed off as so-called reporting, it would sure help if SOMEONE injected some news into the process. If the news media won't do it, maybe the commenters should.
Heck, then maybe us readers could get micropayments from big media in exchange for putting news in their comments.
[ link to this | view in thread ]