Could PR People Replace Journalists?

from the oh,-the-horrors dept

One of the most common complaints about the trouble facing newspapers today is the woeful cry "but who will do investigative journalism?" Of course, that's silly. There are plenty of new entities springing up everyday online that do investigative journalism -- and do it well. On top of that, we noted that especially in the political realm, where partisans had tremendous interest in digging up dirt on opponents, we had little fear that investigations would take place. And while the initial investigations could be biased, getting the info out there would allow more non-biased parties to sort through the details and figure out what is and what is not true.

Romenesko points us to a column by Tim Cavanaugh taking this concept one step further: suggesting that a subset of PR people may end up taking on the role of investigative journalists. Now, I'm sure plenty of journalists are cringing at the concept -- and certainly, as someone who gets bombarded daily with idiotic story pitches that are spun to such ridiculous levels I can only laugh at them (as I hit delete), it makes me cringe a bit. But some of his points are worth thinking about. First, he notes that the number of PR jobs has been growing rapidly -- and that, fundamentally, there are a lot of similarities between the two jobs (in fact, many people go from one to the other), in that a key role is putting together a good "story."

And though it's considered wise to believe the contrary, these communications types are not constructing all these news items entirely (or even mostly) by lying. Flackery requires putting together credible narratives from pools of verifiable data. This activity is not categorically different from journalism. Nor is the teaching value that flackery provides entirely different from that of journalism: Most of the content you hear senators and congressmen reading on C-SPAN is stuff flacks provided to staffers....

But the idea of public relations (and its many fancy permutations, from "image management" to "oppo research" to "crisis") replacing objective journalism becomes less scary when you reflect that, pace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the cast of High School Musical 3, we are not all in this together. Communications is a highly competitive environment, and it is becoming more competitive. Frequently the most valuable information comes out just because somebody wants to make somebody else look bad.

No, it's certainly not the perfect solution (but what is?). But the main point is that there are other ways to get investigations done and get information out there... and then there's still lots of room for others to pour through the info to see what's real and what's not. I don't think that PR people will replace investigative journalism by any stretch of the imagination, but it's worth thinking about how they certainly may pick up the slack in some areas.

Filed Under: investigative journalism, journalism, newspapers, pr

San Jose Mercury News: No One Reads Us Any More, So Let's Start Charging

from the this-will-end-poorly dept

When I first moved to Silicon Valley, the newspaper of record was the San Jose Mercury News. Everyone read it. It did a great job covering the local startup scene, and had some fantastic columnists and writers. But, one by one, those top notch writers left for greener pastures or to start their own things (such as Matt Marshall starting VentureBeat, which came out of the experimental Silicon Beat that he and Michael Bazely created while at the Merc). Then, of course, Knight Ridder came under all sorts of Wall St. pressure and got sold (and some of the papers then were quickly sold again). In the last few years, there's been fewer and fewer reasons to actually read the Merc, and I haven't looked at the paper (or the website) in probably a year or two. That's quite amazing since it used to be one of my first stops every morning. But, these days, all of the news that I used to get from the Merc can be found online from better sources with better writers. Back in March, I was on a panel discussion with a business editor from the Merc, and he and I got into a somewhat heated discussion on the wisdom of charging for news online. I told him that it made no sense, and he insisted that it could work. Apparently, he knew what was coming.

Media News, the current owner of the Merc, has announced that it's now going to start charging for online access to the paper, which seems like a move destined to fail dismally (and quickly). Already it's difficult to come up with any good reason to read the Merc online when it's free, and suddenly they want people to pay for it? All of the info that the paper provides is better provided elsewhere. It's difficult to see how they think that any significant number of people will actually pay to subscribe to the online version that's a tiny shell of what was once a great newspaper.

Filed Under: charging, newspapers
Companies: media news, san jose mercury news

Why Is Washington Singling Out Newspapers For A Tax Break Instead Of Journalism?

from the these-things-make-no-sense dept

We've discussed in the past the rather annoying tendency of some bemoaning the trouble facing newspapers (due to bad business decisions, such as taking on too much debt) of confusing "newspapers" for "journalism." They all too often assume that newspapers are the only source of journalism, when that simply isn't true. Unfortunately, it appears that politicians are guilty of the same basic fallacy. With reports that Washington State has created a special tax break for newspapers, Danny Sullivan is asking why isn't the tax break for journalism? By singling out newspapers, the politicians are effectively punishing journalists who work for other forms of media who didn't screw up their business, and rewarding the newspaper owners and management who made so many bad decisions.

Filed Under: journalism, newspapers, tax break, washington

Media News Trying To Make Its Website Both More And Less Valuable At The Same Time

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Romenesko is running an interesting memo from newspaper publisher Media News on its plans to adapt to the internet era (a bit late for that, right?). There are some interesting suggestions in there, but what struck me is how Media News is trying to make its online property both more valuable on the one hand, and less valuable on the other. It talks about taking away content from the online site and forcing people to buy newspapers:

We will begin to move away from putting all of our newspaper content online for free. Instead, we will explore a variety of premium offerings that apply real value to our print content. We are not trying to invent new premium products, but instead tell our existing print readers that what they are buying has real value, and to our online audience (who don’t buy the print edition), that if you want access to all online content, you are going to have to register, and/or pay.

Note the problem? It's in that third sentence, where Media News claims it's going to tell users that print newspapers have value. Commerce doesn't work that way. You don't tell your customers what has value, they tell you. All you can do is focus on providing more value. So, this first step seems to be a mistake. It's taking away value from the online property in an effort to try to convince people that the paper has more value, rather than actually increasing the value of the product.

Separately, however, the organization is looking to provide more tools and value online -- recognizing that their online site is not just "the newspaper on the web," but that it allows totally new things to occur -- including more detailed local information and community-enabling tools. That's good... but considering the talk of locking up other content, it makes you wonder how far Media News will actually go. It sounds like they're trying to do two contradicting things at once -- which seems likely to make sure the more important one (providing more value) fails.

Filed Under: journalism, newspapers
Companies: media news

Did Google Really Seriously Consider Buying A Stake In The NY Times?

from the seems-doubtful dept

Fortune has a story that's getting plenty of attention claiming that Google "seriously considered" an opportunity to purchase 19% of the NY Times that is being held by hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners. Of course, no one seems to explain why Google would seriously consider such an investment. It seems like any analysis, whether serious or not, would suggest that such an investment would make almost no sense for Google, and almost certainly would cause more trouble than it was worth. It would, for example, freak out other newspapers, who despite their sudden desire to get Google to fund them, would claim that Google was unfairly favoring the NY Times at their expense. It would also raise all sorts of questions about how Google runs a content play. While Google has experimented with content plays with things like Knol, the company's focus has always been on enabling content creation -- not on funding content itself. In fact, it's this fundamental misunderstanding that has newspapers incorrectly thinking Google is trying to kill them, rather than recognizing it's actually helping them.

Filed Under: buyouts, newspapers
Companies: google, ny times

Don't Newspapers Owe Google Money For Helping Them Research Stories For Free?

from the of-course-not... dept

Last month, we parodied the mainstream press' criticism that everyone else "owed" them money because they were the original creators of a story, by noting that the press never paid the newsmakers for creating the story in the first place. Danny Sullivan has now taken a more serious look at this, noting that for all the talk about how Google is "stealing" from news publications, those same publications never seem willing to admit how much they rely on Google for their jobs these days -- and perhaps one could make an argument that these publications actually owe Google for helping make them more productive. After all, the newspapers claim they want a "fair share" of the money Google makes since it's using their content for "free." But, the same argument works in reverse. If it's "fair," then shouldn't Google get a share of the money the news publications make, since its reporters use Google's tools "for free"?

Obviously, the real point is that both sides benefit, and each is responsible for putting in place business models that work. Google has done that successfully. Many news publications have not. But no one should be claiming its "unfair" or that someone else owes them money.

Meanwhile, Sullivan's piece also goes into great detail about how a random AP story he found was written after an AP reporter found some stories on some blogs, and used them to do more research and publish his story. But were the blogs on which he found the story credited? Of course not. Did they get "their fair share"? Of course not. Hell, unlike Google linking to publications' stories, these bloggers didn't even get any traffic or attention from the AP reporter, who simply wants to pretend he came up with the story from nothing.

And the AP wants to claim that it's being treated unfairly?

Filed Under: business models, danny sullivan, fairness, free, journalism, newspapers, research

Free Gone Wrong... Or Free Done Wrong

from the it-happens dept

One of the session's at today's The Free Summit is going to be by Alex Iskold, talking about the "dangers" of free -- a subject he has written on in the past. While I starkly disagree with his position, it is one worth thinking about, and I'm looking forward to his talk. His position (in that article, at least) is that free has consequences, and those consequences can be quite negative. Personally, I find the whole "good or bad" debate to be meaningless when it comes to economics, because economics tends not to care. It's describing what is happening, and I'd rather focus on how to get the best out of that, rather than complaining about why it's somehow bad. But, that said, Alex has a good point that we should at least understand the consequences. We just disagree on how to view those consequences.

Along those lines, our keynote speaker of the day, Chris Anderson, recently posted a story of "free gone horribly wrong" written by Jon Lund, the head of the Danish Internet Advertising Bureau. It's a fascinating and worthwhile read, all about a sudden influx of "free newspapers" in Denmark that weren't just free on street corners, but were freely delivered to homes. Basically, it created a bubble, with everyone getting overwhelmed with multiple free newspapers delivered to their doors every day. The market was overly saturated and it hurt everyone and the whole thing collapsed.

It's definitely an interesting tale -- and one that I think fits with some of what Alex will say. But, I tend to wonder if this is really a case of free gone wrong or free done wrong. First, I'm always a bit skeptical of "free" business models that rely on a "free" scarcity (such as physical newspapers). While it can work in some cases, it's much more difficult. You're not leveraging an infinite good -- you're putting yourself in a big hole that you have to be able to climb out of. Second, in some ways the model that was set up was a static one where everyone focused on the "free" part, and no one looked at leapfrogging the others by providing additional value where money could be made. The trick with free is you need to leverage the free part to increase the value of something that is scarce and that you control, which is not easily copied. That wasn't the case here. Everyone just copied each other, rather than trying to offer something different and better.

Still, it's an important point that bears repeating. Free, by itself, is meaningless. Free, with a bad business model, isn't helpful either. The real trick is figuring out how to properly combine free with a good business model, and then you can succeed.

Filed Under: business models, dangers of free, economics, free, newspapers

Newspaper Folks Go Crying To Congress For Help

from the oh-please dept

Let's just get two points out of the way here before getting on with this post, because they're important, and they're repeatedly ignored by journalists and newspaper folks who want to play the victim, rather than recognize the future (I'm not saying all newspaper folks are like this...):

• Advertising has been the real business model for newspapers for ages. Subscriptions have really only covered (maybe/barely) the cost of printing and delivering the paper.
• The biggest problem facing newspapers going into bankruptcy or shutting down these days is not a lack of subscriber revenue, or even a downturn in advertising (though, there has been a downturn), but the fact that they had massive debt, because they borrowed way too much money. Many, many, many newspapers are still quite profitable -- but not profitable enough to service the massive debt taken on by management.

You would think that these two points would be key to any discussion on the future of newspapers, but they didn't seem to get much attention as Congress held hearings about the newspaper industry. It's not at all clear why Congress needs to hold hearings on this, but it's the sort of thing Congress does. And, of course, the newspaper execs cried about how awful things are, and how they need help and even an antitrust exemption.

Oddly, David Simon was asked to speak. It's not clear why Simon was asked to speak. He hasn't worked in the newspaper business in 14 years, though he did write a fictional TV show, The Wire, about a newspaper. Somehow that makes him qualified to speak about the industry. Now, Simon's a smart, thoughtful guy, but when it comes to this subject, he consistently seems to get the details wrong, even to the point of disproving his own points. In his testimony before Congress (pdf) he lashes out at the internet, aggregators and blogs for no clear reason:

The internet is a marvelous tool and clearly it is the informational delivery system of our future, but thus far it does not deliver much first-generation reporting. Instead, it leeches that reporting from mainstream news publications, whereupon aggregating websites and bloggers contribute little more than repetition, commentary and froth. Meanwhile, readers acquire news from the aggregators and abandon its point of origin -- namely the newspapers themselves.

In short, the parasite is slowly killing the host.

First, Simon seems to be confusing a number of different things here. He's flat-out wrong that not much first-generation reporting is delivered online. Plenty of it is. It's almost silly to have to start pulling out examples. Second, "it" (being the internet) doesn't "leech" anything. "It" is just a delivery mechanism, just like "paper" is a delivery mechanism. Again, if the internet "leeches" reporting, that's no different (and no less ridiculous) than claiming that reporters "leech" off the people they write about. Third, while some bloggers and aggregators may just repeat stuff, not all of them do. Simon seems to be making the classic mistake that if lots of bloggers do one thing he doesn't like, then it means no bloggers do stuff he does like. That's a pretty basic logical fallacy that you would think such a "great thinker" on these issues wouldn't make. Fourth, even if many bloggers do just repeat stuff, that can actually be quite a valuable service in spreading the news and getting it more attention. Fifth, what's wrong with adding commentary? Isn't that what Simon himself is doing? Sixth, I think plenty of people would argue that the mainstream press is known for churning up plenty of froth itself. Seventh, aggregators send traffic to sites. People don't acquire the news directly at the aggregator, but through the aggregator. Eighth, it's not a "parasitic" relationship if the sites get something back (such as traffic).

See? It's amazing how much he gets wrong in three short sentences. And yet he's the expert?

You do not -- in my city -- run into bloggers... at City Hall, or in the courthouse hallways or at the bars and union halls where police officers gather. You do not see them consistently nurturing and then pressing sources. You do not see them holding institutions accountable on a daily basis.

Actually, I do see that all the time. Simon apparently doesn't know where to look. Perhaps it's true that not every city has that going on yet, but that's a huge opportunity for organizations to step in. We're seeing it all over the place.

Why? Because high-end journalism -- that which acquires essential information about our government and society in the first place -- is a profession; it requires daily, full-time commitment by trained men and women who return to the same beats day in and day out until the best of them know everything with which a given institution is contending.

First, how often is that actually true of newspaper reporters? Yes, there are some, but there are many reporters who don't actually seem to really know much about the beat they're covering or end up getting played by those they do cover.

But, more importantly, Simon still doesn't seem to be reading the right sites. There are some astounding blogs out there that are full-time jobs, that involve people returning to the same beat day in and day out until they know everything. He seems to once again be assuming that "journalist" can only mean "writes for a newspaper" and not "writes for a blog." It's just a delivery mechanism.

He goes on to repeat the myth that "new media" commentators believe that there is no need for professional journalists. I'm still waiting to find out who actually claims that. Almost everyone I know and read believes there's still plenty of room for professional journalists, but that they may be working in conjunction with others. The idea that jouralism or mainstream news organizations just die off is preposterous and no one is claiming that at all. It's just that they need to adapt, and if they don't, other organizations can and will take their place. Journalism will live on.

Yes, I have heard the post-modern rallying cry that information wants to be free. But information isn't. It costs money to send reporters to London, Fallujah and Capitol Hill, and to send photographers with them, and keep them there day after day. It costs money to hire the best investigators and writers and then back them up with the best editors. It costs money to do the finest kind of journalism. And how anyone can believe that the industry can fund that kind of expense by giving its product away online to aggregators and bloggers is a source of endless fascination to me. A freshman marketing major at any community college can tell you that if you don't have a product for which you can charge people, you don't actually have a product.

And... so we're back to myth number 1 at the top of the post. The news business does have a product for which it can charge people: that product is the community of readers it brings together, who it then sells to advertisers. That's always been the business of newspapers for as long as any of us have been alive. Repeating the myth that the newspaper industry is "giving its product away" doesn't make Simon sound smart. It makes it sound like he doesn't even understand the news business.

This kind of poorly reasoned logic is coming not just out of folks like Simon, but out of folks like the CEO of Forbes -- who recently blamed Google in one of the most poorly reasoned and factually incorrect statements around. I'd dismantle that as well, except that Danny Sullivan has already done it.

So one would hope that when Google was asked to present a counterpoint to Congress, it would lay out some of these issues. Unfortunately, the actual testimony (pdf) comes off as rather weak. It basically just says "Google is a friend, we help" but doesn't actually counter the myths and falsehoods put forth by those bemoaning the troubles facing the newspaper industry.

What we're seeing before Congress is a scripted play. It's not a real discussion about the problems facing the newspapers. It's not a real discussion on how journalism will work in the future. It's not a real discussion on the role of the press in the public discourse. It's a big scripted play put on by a bunch of bad business execs who made (and continue to make) bad business decisions, failed to embrace certain opportunities, and are now hoping for a government bailout for all the mistakes they made. They don't deserve it.

Filed Under: david simon, journalism, newspapers

New Zealand Newspaper Threatens Blogging Critic With Trademark Infringement Claim

from the is-that-really-the-best-way-to-handle-things? dept

Pete wrote in to alert us to yet another case of a lawyer taking an overly aggressive approach to a cease-and-desist... and, in doing so, drawing a lot more attention to the issue. This time it takes place in New Zealand, where a blogger who runs an entire blog called Editing The Herald, which criticizes stories in The New Zealand Herald, received a legal nastygram from The Herald claiming trademark infringement and giving the guy a day to remove his logo -- which was an edited version of The Herald's logo (basically putting the "Editing The" above the logo -- or it would take him to court. As is standard in these things (though, usually with no legal basis), the lawyer demanded that the blogger not publish the letter, which the blogger ignored.

Now, I don't know enough about New Zealand trademark law to comment on the merits, but the whole approach just seems backwards. Having been on the receiving end of a few too many legal nastygrams, it's never a pleasant experience, and there's really no reason to send them if you haven't first tried a more friendly approach. The blogger in this case did agree to remove the logo and is apparently working on a new one, but The Herald and its lawyers could have approached the site in a much more friendly manner, rather than appearing like massive bullies, and giving the blogger more ammo to draw even more attention to the site. Once again, it appears that there are a lot of lawyers out there who still think that sending such cease and desist letters is a good idea.

Filed Under: editing the herald, lawyers, new zealand, newspapers, trademark
Companies: new zealand herald

The Straight Dope On Why Charging For News Online Is A Bad Idea

from the don't-mess-with-cecil dept

We've had plenty of stories lately explaining why trying to charge for news online is not a very good idea, but Duane alerts us to Cecil Adams from the famed "The Straight Dope" and his take on the matter, after someone suggested that all newspapers should band together and start charging for online content. Cecil's response is so good that it's hard to know just which parts to quote. Since it covers a lot of similar ground to what we've covered in the past, we'll focus on the part that discusses TSD's own experiment with charging for its message boards. It's especially interesting because TSD's experiment "worked" in that they brought in a fair amount of money... but Cecil still thinks it's a bad idea, and explains why TSD dropped the subscription:

Impressive numbers notwithstanding, for years we couldn't figure out a way to make the SDMB generate a dime. Finally at a meeting one day, Mike Lenehan, my first editor, said, "We could charge!" My immediate thought was: I should have beaned this guy with an eraser instead of that brick. However, lacking an alternative plan, we tried it. To everyone's surprise, it worked. Several thousand people paid good money for the privilege of posting, and paid again when their subscriptions ran out. (The great majority of our visitors are non-posting lurkers, in case you're wondering about the numerical disparity; merely reading the board has always been free.) For years we pulled in a tidy sum of cash each month.

But here's the thing. It was a tidy but non-growing sum of cash. What's more, the previously steady increase in visitors flattened out. Tiring of convent life, we decided to rejoin the real world and discontinued subscriptions last August, shrewdly timing this to coincide with the current economic collapse. (Being the world's smart human is one thing; having a head for business is something else.) Visitor growth immediately resumed its upward climb.

In short, subscriptions are self-limiting. But that's only half the story. The other half is this: Your content -- that term is always going to grate -- is your own best advertisement. The Straight Dope, again, is a good example. (The Straight Dope is a good example of a lot of things.) My online archive, consisting of the totality of human knowledge distilled into convenient 800-word chunks, has always been available for free -- currently more than 2,800 columns. We make no effort to promote this, and why should we? Whenever people Google the questions that really bug them, inevitably we pop up. As a result -- I'm looking at quantcast now -- we drew 845,700 visitors last month. Chicagotribune.com pulled in 2.7 million, which, granted, is more. However, the Trib is part of a multibillion-dollar corporation that employs thousands (well, it used to be thousands; what it is after all the layoffs I hesitate to say). TSD employs a few steadfast disciples and me. Lesson: If you're producing a quality editorial product, put it out there gratis. You want the world to know.

This is why I'm still skeptical of the usual suspects trotted out as big "success stories." Let's see how it works in the long run. If you lock up your content -- even if it generates some revenue today -- you're cutting yourself off from the conversation, and making it that much more difficult to grow and be in position to reap the rewards of greater traffic in the future.

Filed Under: cecil adams, charging, journalism, newspapers