Newspapers Realizing The News Is Really Interactive

from the it's-about-time dept

For quite some time, we've been pointing out that newspapers that are struggling to figure out how to survive on the internet need to get past the idea that they're delivering a final product, "news," and that's it. Internet savvy folks see themselves as a larger part of the news process -- whether it means contributing to the story or spreading the story. Unfortunately, too many newspapers seem to think that "interactivity" just means adding comments to the stories they've posted on the web. But that doesn't actually engage an audience and bring them into the process.

However, some newspapers are figuring this out. Check out this great story of how the Chicago Tribune interacted with some folks on Twitter to both get alerted to a story, report on it, and then spread the news. There's been plenty of talk about how breaking news often first appears on Twitter, but it's often mentioned in a way that suggests that Twitter and news organizations are somehow "competing." But that's not what happened with the Tribune.

Someone on Twitter in downtown Chicago noticed a bunch of scared people running out of Daley Center, claiming their lives were in danger -- so he Twittered about it, asking if anyone knew what was going on. Others started asking about it, and one user alerted the Chicago Tribune's twitter account. Then, the folks at the Tribune did what good professional reporters should do: checked out the story and twittered the details, while alsoposting a full article on the Tribune website about a bomb scare at Daley Center. And, following that, a bunch of folks who had originally helped alert the Tribune to the story, Twittered the Tribune's story as well.

It's a much more interactive role, where the Tribune relied on the community to help alert it to a story, and then did what it should be able to do better: professionally gather the details and report on the situation -- and then let the community share and discuss the story as well. Slowly, but surely, it looks like some news organizations are figuring this stuff out.

Filed Under: interaction, news, twitter
Companies: chicago tribune, twitter

Newspaper Content Is Advertising For More News Content

from the follow-this-through dept

I haven't had much time lately to add any new posts to my series of posts on how content is advertising, but a great post from Steve Yelvington is a perfect example of how this works in the news business. Yelvington refers to a blog post by Jay Rosen where he explains how listening to the radio show This American Life explaining the credit crunch (titled "The Giant Pool of Money" -- which, indeed is an excellent explanation) brought him up to speed on the story, and made him hunger for more news on that topic:

I noticed something in the weeks after I first listened to "The Giant Pool of Money." I became a customer for ongoing news about the mortgage mess and the credit crisis that developed from it. Previously I had skipped over such reports because I just didn't understand the story. Now I did. 'Twas was a successful act of explanation that put me in the market for information. Before that moment I had ignored hundreds of news reports about Americans losing their homes, the housing market crashing, banks in trouble.

In other words, the good content that made up the radio program advertised other news stories about that topic. At the same time, it helped advertise This American Life as a good source of information, and will certainly make Jay Rosen go back to that program in the future if they run similar "explain this big confusing mess" type programs. So, if you were a news organization, perhaps in the financial space, that wanted more and more people looking at your coverage of the credit crisis, wouldn't it make sense to help finance a popular radio program to do such a "layman's explanation" knowing that you'd make up the money in greater readership (and greater ad volume)? Once again, we see how good content is advertising -- though not in the way that people traditionally think of it.

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Other posts in this series:

• Advertising Is Content; Content Is Advertising
• On Content, Promotions, Basic Economics... And Loutish Statements
• Content Is Advertising... In The Newspaper Industry
• Content Is Advertising... On TV
• Newspaper Content Is Advertising For More News Content

Filed Under: advertising, business models, content is advertising, news, newspapers

Not All Newspaper Chains Are Facing Doom And Gloom Scenarios

from the local-local-local dept

The common refrain on the newspaper industry is that it's dying out, being replaced by online news sources. Of course, that leaves out some important facts: such as the fact that there are newspaper chains that are actually doing quite well, even when they mostly focus on the old dinosaur of actual newspapers. Romenesko points us to a story about David Black, a Canadian newspaper publisher who owns a ton of local newspapers around Canada and the US that are actually doing quite well. But, that's because they're not competing with the big dailys, but focus on having a lean staff that writes almost exclusively about local news. His papers are all local papers, that don't try to provide all that other news that you can already get online, but the news that is only going to be interesting to a small group of folks. But, as Black has learned over many years, those small groups of folks are a lucrative audience. While other newspapers have trouble competing, Black's are full of ads -- many from local businesses which find those papers an effective (and cost effective) way to cut through the clutter.

Filed Under: local, news, newspapers

While We're Making Suggestions To The AP, How About Not Disappearing The News?

from the join-the-21st-century dept

In the wake of the ridiculous dustup between bloggers and the AP, where the AP threatened bloggers who help promote AP articles, some are starting to point out that the AP's problem goes well beyond a seriously distorted view of copyright law. The reason this came up at all was because the AP's business model is pretty screwed up in a web world. This was clear from the fact that the more involved the AP gets online the more it ends up competing with all its member newspapers. Almost every action it takes seems to help the AP's business model, while hurting its members. With the latest skirmish, the AP is ensuring that those partner sites get fewer links in and less traffic. Back when the AP signed a deal with Google News, we pointed out that its member newspapers should be pissed off. Basically, the AP and Google had worked out a deal to keep traffic away from the member papers. That's no way to survive. Eventually, if this keeps up, those members freak out and stop supporting the AP.

That leads to great suggestions from Danny Sullivan on how it's time for the AP to totally rethink its business model, recognizing what the web does for its business:

Well, wake up call. You need a new model. Really. Or you're going to die.

The AP should have a news portal. You should take in content from your members, put it up in an easy-to-find way and generate the ad dollars to be redistributed back to your members. Like do it now, before since the entire licensing thing ain't going to live that long.

It's worth reading the whole thing, as it's right on point. However, there is one additional thing that's worth mentioning: the AP really needs to learn to keep its news online. Back when I would link to AP articles, one of the most annoying things was that they would disappear after a couple weeks. We used to get complaints all the time from readers who would find an older post and the underlying AP article would be gone. I had thought that maybe its deal with Google would change this, and started pointing to the Google versions of AP articles... but, nope, those disappeared after a few weeks as well.

In the narrowminded world of an AP exec, they probably think this leads to more licensing revenue, since it will make people search out and license the article after it can't be found any more. Nope. It just makes people pissed off. Many newspapers have realized that there's tremendous value found in freeing up the archives, and monetizing that long tail of traffic via advertisements. That's a lot more effective than pissing off large groups of folks (including the people who promote your articles) and hoping it leads to a little more licensing revenue. So, while I agree with Danny's recommendations for the AP to join the internet era, I'd also add a recommendation that it open up its archives and recognize that URLs should be permanent rather than fleeting.

Filed Under: archives, disappearing, news
Companies: associated press

Can The News Be Held Back?

from the probably-not-any-more dept

In this internet age where everyone has a huge publishing platform at their disposal, and people are encouraged to become "citizen journalists" is it even possible anymore to keep "news" events quiet? A key example under discussion was the recent passing of famed TV news anchor Tim Russert. About a half an hour after he was confirmed dead at a hospital, someone had updated his Wikipedia page with the information -- a full 38 minutes before NBC announced his death. It turns out that the edit came from someone working at a company that managed various NBC affiliate websites. The employee was apparently fired -- though, you could question why. We've reached an age where many people feel that sharing the news is the best way to interact with news these days.

Still, it does raise some ethical questions. As Mathew Ingram asks:

Was the person who changed the Wikipedia page committing an act of journalism, or divulging privileged information?

This used to be a much simpler question when journalists were journalists -- and privileged information was privileged information. But the boundaries of both things have become quite blurred these days, and that's only going to result in more questions being raised before society agrees on the answers.

Filed Under: holding back the tide, journalism, news, tim russert

Readers Want Context and Organization, Not Just 'Content'

from the web-as-afterthought dept

I wrote last fall that the New York Times was finally starting to get the web, and I think the Washington Post is in the same category of taking the web a lot more seriously than it did a few years ago. But although the biggest newspapers are now taking the challenge seriously, they still have work to do. Case in point: the Washington, DC, area had a big storm a while back, and Scott Karp went to the Washington Post website expecting (reasonably enough) to find information about it. Unfortunately, despite being a DC-based publication, the Post's home page had very little information about the storm. Indeed, the home page wouldn't have mentioned it at all if there didn't happen to be a story on the most-read articles list. Unfortunately it was a formulaic story from the print edition that was great for a non-Washingtonian who doesn't know anything about the storm, but it's not terribly useful to a Washingtonian who can see the storm happening outside his window. What locals need is detailed, real-time information. After seeing nothing relevant on the WaPo's website, he went over to Google, typed in "power outages in northern virginia," and the first hit was a page from Dominion Electric showing power outages around its service region. Karp went back to the Post's website, and after more searching finally found a blog focusing on DC area weather—precisely the sort of thing that the Post ought to be making more prominently displayed during major weather events.

I think there are a couple of lessons to be learned from this. First, as Mike has said before, good content is often less important than useful services like organizing and filtering information. The Post had the content Karp wanted -- an up-to-date blog and links to useful resources -- but because its website was poorly organized, he wasn't able to find it easily. Some newspapers claim that Google lives parasitically off of other content producers, but I think this is a good illustration of why that's not true; there was plenty of content out there, but without Google, Karp might not have been able to find it. The other problem is that for all of the Post's progress it still seems to regard itself largely as a newspaper that happens to publish its articles on the web, rather than a general media company that happens to publish a paper edition. Sometimes a traditional newspaper article is the best way to cover a story, but often (as in this case) it's not. The Post, like a lot newspaper outlets, still seems to put too much emphasis on its print content, even in circumstances were a shorter, timelier, and more densely-linked story would be more useful to readers.

Filed Under: context, news, newspapers, organization, websites

Aggregation Is Competition

from the future-of-news dept

I'm currently attending a workshop on "The Future of News" at Princeton's Center for IT Policy. One of the most interesting things about the conference is that it has proven to be a kind of "meeting of the minds" between the "old media" (the Wall Street Journal and the San Diego Union-Tribune are represented) and practitioners of Internet journalism. One of the frequent complaints we've heard from some of the newspaper folks is that they're losing business to aggregators like Google News. On the surface, this doesn't seem to make sense, because as we've pointed out before, aggregators drive traffic to news sites, and it's silly for an ad-driven website to complain about another site sending them traffic.

Yet complain they do. And indeed, the complaint seems so common that there has to be something behind it. It has become clear that incumbent media outlets hate aggregators because aggregators increase competition. Incumbent media outlets -- especially local newspapers -- grew accustomed to a cozy relationship with their readers in which their readers had few alternatives for their daily news. That meant they could maintain high circulation (and advertising rates) without worrying too much about the quality of their product. When newspapers migrated to the web, they expected to maintain this captive audience.

What aggregators do is make it a lot easier for readers to find new news sources. That's good for an up-and-coming site with a lot of great content, because aggregators enlarge the potential audience for the content. But it's not good for a mediocre site with a large readership based largely on inertia. The easier it is for readers to find news sources of news, the faster mediocre news sites will bleed readers. We tend to think of competition in terms of price, but competition is important even when a business is already giving its product away for free. More competition forces sites to create more and better content, have fewer and less intrusive ads, and offer content in formats that are convenient and appealing. The increased competition enabled by aggregators may be bad for some websites, but it's unambiguously good for consumers. Google News isn't a competitor to newspapers. Rather, Google News forces newspapers to compete with each other. And when newspapers compete, readers win.

Filed Under: aggregation, competition, news, newspapers
Companies: google

Can A Print Magazine Compete With Internet By Being Slower... But More Analytical?

from the depends-on-the-execution dept

The press is happily covering the news that some journalists are launching a new (paper) magazine called "Dispatches" by focusing on the supposed "contrarian" nature of the operation: it's focused on print, rather than the internet (though it will have an internet presence), and it's only going to publish once per quarter. The folks behind the magazine say they're trying to slow things down a little, and will focus on providing better analysis than the rapidfire approach of internet reporting. That makes sense -- but it's hardly new. Plenty of other press outlets have done the same thing -- and, realistically, the analyst business is based on this same premise (just with the idea that the content is paid for by companies receiving it rather than advertisers). Either way, even if the concept isn't particularly new, at the very least it's nice to see a magazine launch with a plan as to how to differentiate. That said, the differentiation is meaningless if it can't execute well and get people interested in the sort of in-depth content it hopes to provide.

Filed Under: competing, internet, journalism, news, print magazine

Mainstream Press Finally Realizing That Kids Want To Share News, Not Read News

from the it-took-them-this-long? dept

In an interesting followup to our earlier post about the state of the news business, Robin writes in to point us to a NY Times article all about how a younger generation of news readers now focus on sharing the news, rather than just consuming it. Mathew Ingram highlights the key sentence in the article, from a college student: "If the news is that important, it will find me." Very few mainstream publications have grasped that concept, even if some folks have been saying the same thing for years. It's time for those in the newspaper business to stop thinking of readers as straight consumers. They're distributors, promoters, creators and analysts of the news as well. Once you recognize that, you start to change how you approach the news business. You certainly get rid of paywalls and registration walls, and you start enabling your users to do more, rather than less, with the news.

Filed Under: generations, journalism, news, sharing

Is Twitter The Future Of News?

from the not-quite dept

The Loose Wire blog has a fascinating example of "crowdsourced" journalism in action: When the UK experienced its largest earthquake in decades, the story was covered first not by the BBC or a traditional wire service, but by a twitter-only news service called BreakingNewsOn. And that service, run by a 20-year old Dutch student named Michael van Poppel, got its leads directly from Twitter users in the UK who were surprised by the quake and made Twitter posts about it. I think this highlights some important trends in the future of journalism. First, when news happens, there are almost always some people around to observe it first-hand. So if enough of those people have ways of sharing their observations with the world -- via Twitter, blogs, Flickr, YouTube, or some other mechanism not yet developed -- then news reporting may consist largely of tracking down these various first-hand reports and synthesizing them into a story. It may not be necessary to send out a flesh-and-blood reporter to cover a story if there's already a ton of information about it on the Web. Second, the line between professional and amateur journalism is blurring, and will continue to do so. Someone we would ordinarily consider just a blogger can break news if he happens to be at the scene of a story or he happens to be the first to notice newsworthy happenings being reported elsewhere on the Internet. Finally, this story suggests one answer to the frequent hand-wringing over the decline of newspapers. It's true that some newspapers are being forced to reduce the number of reporters on the payroll. But that lost news-gathering capacity is likely to be outweighed by the vastly increased news-gathering capabilities of the Internet. If mainstream news outlets can get better at tapping these kinds of decentralized news sources, they should be able to report more news with fewer reporters.

Filed Under: news, twitter
Companies: twitter