NPR Gives Up On News Comments; After All, Who Cares What Your Customers Have To Say?

from the this-muzzle-represents-my-love-for-you dept

We've noted time after time how the trend du jour in online media is to kill your news comment section, muzzle your valuable on-site community, then couch the decision under all manner of disingenuous prattle. Reuters and Recode, for example, killed visitor news comments several years ago because, they claimed, the companies really value conversation. The Verge also tinkered with killing comments, purportedly because it just really valued relationships. As we all know, nothing quite "builds relationships" and gets the conversation going like a muzzle, a wave, and a swift digital kick in the ass.

Other websites couch their decision to mute their users under the pretense that it's just an "experiment," and the website will return with something more interactive and wonderful down the line. More often than not, this never happens. Case in point is NPR, which announced last summer that it too would be banning all public community feedback out of a deep rooted love for building community and audience engagement:

"After much experimentation and discussion, we've concluded that the comment sections on NPR.org stories are not providing a useful experience for the vast majority of our users. In order to prioritize and strengthen other ways of building community and engagement with our audience, we will discontinue story-page comments on NPR.org on August 23."

Ironically, public comments on NPR's post at the time were hugely negative, with numerous loyal readers saying the act of pushing them over to Facebook was, in effect, a giant middle finger to the readership. But because interesting discourse and community can't always be directly monetized by bean counters, this blowback was largely ignored. While NPR hinted that it might bring back comments eventually after some experimentation, a new blog post points out that won't be happening. Why? NPR traffic went up anyway despite the decision:

"At the time commenting was ended, there was speculation that the number of users coming to NPR.org would drop. In fact, the number of users for the May-to-July period grew 18 percent in 2017 compared with the year-earlier period, according to Google Analytics numbers Goo provided. (Year-over-year monthly growth has been as high as 37 percent.)"

Except the spike in NPR traffic many have had nothing to do with comments one way or the other, and could be easily attributable to the fact that the current U.S. political environment has obtained historical levels of batshit. It's also myopic to weigh the benefits of news comments by just traffic. Comments, when managed to minimize idiocy, provide an easy, public way to hold writers and publishers accountable for misleading claims or story errors in a highly visible location. Though few publishers can admit it, eliminating this public forum and returning to era of non-transparent letters to the editor is a major incentive for this shift.

At the end of the day, this fashionable assault on ye olde comment section has little to do with valuing community and conversation, and everything to do with illusory control and trying to save money. NPR admitted as much to the latter last year when asked about the decision on Twitter:

Except this narrative that giving a damn about your online community has to be time consuming and expensive is also not really supported by the facts. Studies have shown it's not really that hard to cultivate a healthier on-site comment section by simply having site employees and writers show up and treat the readership like human beings. Again, though, because the act of actually caring about quality discourse can't be directly monitored and displayed on a pie chart, it's being ignored. And that's a mistake in an era where news as a community conversation is more important than ever.

Will the world end with the loss of online news comments? No. But they do provide users with an easy and transparent way to debate, discuss and treat news as exactly what it is in the modern era: a conversation. Removing this public forum is a disservice to the news industry at large, and pretending it's being done out of some noble regard for higher human interaction only adds insult to injury.

Filed Under: comments, community, npr
Companies: npr

Can Someone Explain How Sponsoring NASCAR Is A Good Use Of Taxpayer Funds, If Funding Sesame Street Is Not?

from the just-curious-which-standard-to-use dept

I'm sort of amazed at the silly and childish political games being played concerning attempts to cut funding here and there, but, seriously can anyone give me a logical explanation why the same folks who are so quick to demand that we stop funding NPR and PBS are so vehemently in favor of sponsoring NASCAR? Frankly, as a fan of both NPR and PBS, but not a fan of governments overspending, I actually think the complaints against pulling the funding from both are a bit overblown. I think there are some creative things that both NPR and PBS could do to make up the difference if they lost federal funding. However, if we are going to cut public broadcasting, then it seems only reasonable to cut sponsoring NASCAR as well, doesn't it? I'm curious how folks who claim to support smaller government are defending such sponsorship of a private, for-profit operation with taxpayer funding?

Filed Under: budget, federal government, funding, nascar, npr, pbs

Financial Podcast Buys A Toxic Asset To See How It Works

from the reporting-by-getting-your-hands-dirty dept

I've written in the past how wonderful NPR's Planet Money podcast is. During the "dark days" of the financial crisis, it was one of the true beacons of light explaining in easy-to-understand detail what was happening, and exploring aspects of the story that the mainstream press glossed over completely. In the process, they broke some stories, highlighted some key aspects of the debate, and really brought a lot more people into the discussion about how we deal with the economic situation of the day. I still listen to every episode on the day it comes out, but in the last few months there really hasn't been that much going on in the economy that needed a really thorough breakdown.

Given that, it seems like the Planet Money crew has hit on a rather brilliant idea. Back when this whole thing started, of course, much of the focus was on the so-called "toxic assets," the derivatives made up of slices of mortgages that had been packaged and repackaged together in creative ways -- in theory to minimize the risk, but in reality, often putting all of the risk in one big basket made to look artificially safe. The focus on toxic assets has mostly fallen off the mainstream press radar, but the folks at Planet Money decided to check in on those toxic assets and dig into what a toxic asset really means. But they were having trouble getting their heads around what a toxic asset really is, how it functions and how to best explain it to their audience.

So they bought a toxic asset.

Literally, the four reporters on the team, along with their producer, each pooled about $200 of their own money, in order to buy $1,000 worth of toxic asset. They'll be tracking whether or not they make their money back, and if they make anything on top of that as well (any profits will be donated to charity). The podcast itself is fascinating, as two of the reporters spend a couple days with a company called Mission Peak Capital, based out in Kansas, which has been analyzing and buying up toxic assets. They go through the whole process of analyzing and bidding on a few of these things until they find the one they wanted. Mission Peak bought the whole asset for $36,000, marked down from $2.7 million, and then sold a $1,000 sliver to the team at Planet Money.

The Planet Money folks have set up a detailed interactive website that goes into great detail about what's in the asset -- probably a lot more detail than most previous owners of the asset knew about themselves -- as well as how much they've made and how long they have until the asset runs out for them (as more of the houses whose mortgages are included in the asset get sold, they get closer and closer to being kicked out of getting any of the remaining revenue).

The story itself is fascinating, but what really drew me to it is what a great example of modern reporting this is. This goes way beyond what we normally think of as reporting, and breaks down that mythical "impartial reporter" barrier in a very effective and useful way. Some people have suggested that the reason why journalism may be struggling these days is that people can go directly to sources themselves (or sources can broadcast themselves) without needing an intermediary to "write the story." Of course, that doesn't mean the role of a journalist goes away, but it changes drastically. In this case, the team at Planet Money has realized that in order to "report" on this story, they need to become the source themselves, and open that up wide to their audience. It's a fascinating and incredibly effective modern form of journalism, and I can't wait to see where they take it. They're already planning to try to track down some of the mortgage holders whose mortgages are in the asset, as well as homeowners and former holders of the asset. Even if you're not that interested in the details of a toxic asset, it's hard not to find the whole thing incredibly compelling. It's useful and educational interactive storytelling at its finest, which is what true journalism should be.

Filed Under: journalism, npr, planet money, toxic asset
Companies: mission peak capital, npr

NPR Recognizes It Makes Business Sense To Give Up Content Cash Cow And Go Free

from the good-for-them dept

A few months ago, Newsweek ran an excellent interview with NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, who only recently joined the organization, after leaving the NY Times. The interview showed that Schiller totally understands the problems and issues facing journalism today. She's embracing better web interaction, recognizing that NPR isn't a "radio" operation, but a news operation, that NPR has strong advantages in terms of having local reporters on the ground around the country -- and, perhaps most interesting of all, that "free" is not a bad thing:

While employed by The New York Times, you helped the newspaper stop charging for online content. Now it's reconsidering. Generally, why do you oppose paying for content?
I am a staunch believer that people will not in large numbers pay for news content online. It's almost like there's mass delusion going on in the industry--They're saying we really really need it, that we didn't put up a pay wall 15 years ago, so let's do it now. In other words, they think that wanting it so badly will automatically actually change the behavior of the audience. The world doesn't work that way. Frankly, if all the news organizations locked pinkies, and said we're all going to put up a big fat pay wall, you know what, more traffic for us. News is a commodity; I'm sorry to say.

But the Times did get people to pay, right?
We far exceeded our expectation--225,000 subscribers paid $50 a year, in addition to the home delivery subscribers, who got all of the Web for free. But guess what, that's $10 million. Instead of 225,000 who pay the $50, let's say it's one million subscribers. OK. That's $50 million a year. That's not going to save any newspaper. It's going to kill your advertising base. The numbers don't work.

It appears that she's putting this realization to work in other ways, a bunch of readers have been submitting an NPR blog post explaining why it has stopped charging for transcripts of programs, and started offering them for free on its website. Despite being something of a cash cow for NPR, the organization realized that it was short-sighted to lock up the content, and went against what people wanted:

Why did we give up this revenue stream? First and foremost, the users expect to be able to come to our site and read the story they heard on the air. As rich as the radio stories are, reading is faster than listening, our users told us. Although we were writing Web versions of many radio stories, a number of stories still didn't have much text. Making transcripts free solved that.

But a bigger realization was recognizing the basic trendlines. Paying for transcripts is a shrinking business. Getting more people to the website and making money in other ways? That's an opportunity:

There are solid business reasons for making transcripts free. Sales have been dropping over the years. As people search for, discover and share content, offering free transcripts will boost the traffic to NPR.org, traffic that can be monetized with sponsorship. Finally, search engines like text. Many of our stories could not be found by the search engines because they did not have enough text. Now it will be easier for the search engines -- and ultimately the users -- to find and enjoy NPR's stories.

Now, of course, as a partially gov't supported non-profit, NPR has some different issues in how it operates, but those differences aren't nearly as big as many people might think. The gov't support only goes so far (hence the annoying pledge drives and pushes for corporate sponsorship). It'll be interesting to see what other business model ideas NPR and its new leadership comes up with in the future, and it'll be fun to see if the big newspapers put up paywalls, allowing NPR to increase its traffic, as planned.

Filed Under: business models, cash cow, free, journalism, news, npr

All Streisand Effects Considered

from the drive-time-radio dept

The Streisand Effect is getting a bit more coverage these days. After the Associated Press mentioned it the other day, I got to sit down and talk with Robert Siegel for today's "All Things Considered" where we discussed The Streisand Effect starting with the Wikileaks case and moving on to some other cases where the Effect clearly made an appearance. If this keeps up, maybe we can look forward to a day when lawyers think twice about trying to force perfectly legitimate content offline.

Filed Under: all things considered, npr, streisand effect, wikileaks