Tag Archives: value

Friday link roundup

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Aussie working the herd

Aussie working the herd. Round em up, pup!

Rescuing The Reporters, shirky.com
This is a great post. Clay Shirky breaks down the hometown paper and asks hard questions of what’s locally produced and puts some of the “newspapers should do x to survive” into context.

The Audacity of Free, chrisbrogan.com
Hey, I like free stuff as much as the next guy. I like getting paid, too.This post makes a great case for charging something for stuff. But the tricky question is how to boost value of the something enough that someone will part with sheckles for it.

NPR lands $3M grant for hyperlocal initiative, lostremote.com
Look out. Take a look at this report about how National Public Radio’s growth has tracked over the past few years, most importantly in how they’re working to create bonds with audiences.

With msnbc’s purchase of everyblock and local tv stations poised to launch local blogs, local is going to get pretty crowded. NPR will be a force to be reckoned with.

Google unveils new local search for mobile, lostremote.com
This is great: star stuff while searching and get an interactive list on your phone. But it skews toward chain stores in my quick tests. Will have to experiment to see if local joints can be preferred.

Is the revolution over?, collegemediainnovation.org
Is it safe to say that the rehash of micropayment proposals or bitching about comments signals a completed technology distribution curve. Game over.

I’m not so sure. In fact, I’m afraid there’s much more pain as advertisers really get a handle on (and more savvy than ever about) what they really want for their dollars spent.

I do think, though, that the pace of change in types of new tools will slow. That means microblogging as a concept will stick around, but self-hosted solutions or outright competitors to twitter, for example, are likely. Mobile as a viable platform is established, but how people interact with it is sure to change. Etc.

That circular talk, though, will continue as long as the old guard is still waking up to the discussion and cycles through the phases of how to “save journalism.”

Someone ought to make a primer! “So you think you can save journalism: A primer on what’s already been talked about so wired journalists at the bar don’t roll their eyes when you walk away.”

Happier, getrichslowly.org
There’s a whole blog post wrapped into the concepts that come to mind with this post. Until then, chew on this:

The shift from being a rat racer to pursuing happiness is not about working less or with less fervor but about working as hard or harder at the right activities — those that are a source of both present and future benefit.

Creating distinct roles for print and online

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I was asked by my boss this week to respond to some strategic planning coming from the company, specifically related to crafting distinct roles for print and online in newsrooms.

I think it’s a great idea and I’m really hopeful that the concept moves forward. The big issue is deciding how to divide the two products and what they’re naturally good at doing.

Here’s an excerpt of my reply:

First, we’ve got to know the things we do in print that really work:
1) condense a lot of information;
2) create a product that combines good writing with a familiar structure. And it’s portable!
3) take the time to slow down, put things into context, tell stories and draw some conclusions;
4) invite readers to slow down, draw connections, take a journey through information and craft thoughtful responses;
4) deliver a lot of our product to a lot of places in a big damn hurry. Daily.

Next, look at the Web’s unique strengths:
1) immediate delivery using reader-supplied hardware (low overhead);
2) interactivity invites people to help report the story with tips, corrections and original reporting (contributed photos, etc);
3) can offer text, audio, video to provide other angles, tell stories in different ways;
4) searchable;
5) transparent (more on this later).

Print stops and takes the long view. The Web is a stream of networked information. That’s how they are distinct and how we craft different roles for them.

I think we stop posting full print stories to the Web and instead post incremental updates, heavily linked, with reporters standing in the stream splashing information out, if you will. We become curators of the information stream, highlighting interesting bits and directing people to the right places and conversations.

This also means that we’ve got to be taking part in the conversations to make the most of tips and feedback that come over the transom. (Here’s where we break the notion that a blog is not dirty word nor a reader comment stream nor a dumping ground for reporters’ musings. They are a powerful CMS tool that reach a large audience and invite a particular kind of give-and-take.)

This is where the transparency comes in: people can see where our tips are coming from, how we’re reporting a story, and how the organization has reported it in the past. They can easily read more by following links, etc. Active consumption of news. (Read David Weinberger for more on this.)

In print, we do what we’ve been doing well and what people depend on, while ramping up our game on all fronts. We tell important stories and guide people through complex subjects. We focus on crafting dynamic designs that grab people’s attention and energize them. We present vetted feedback and general interest information. We understand the gravitas of print and make use of it by offering some exclusives and reprints suitable for framing.

This isn’t mutually exclusive. Short posts online as a news item develops can lead to an in-depth story in a few days. A series of quick hits on government decisions can culminate in an analysis of the kinds of issues a council takes up and how it discusses them. Multimedia of an event can drive interest in a printed feature story.

Even if all of this became top priority, it’d take a lot of work to get newsrooms to embrace them. But that’s part of the fun.

Other ideas? Send them my way and we’ll discuss.

“One size” solutions don’t really fit anyone

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Ryan Sholin posts this morning on a topic that has kind of rankled me for some time now: blanket pronouncements about about what “newspapers” should or shouldn’t do.

…if you’re in the business of publishing pronouncements, predictions, prayers, analysis, criticism, or full on takedowns related to the current state of the newspaper industry, please understand that despite the convenience it would provide for said ruminations, there is no such thing as a monolithic, uniform entity called “newspapers.”

I’ll say.

While we’re at it, let’s stop making the “save journalism” discussion all about saving newspapers. Good journalism isn’t only done on newsprint. To think otherwise is elitist and myopic.

Acts of Journalism will continue and practitioners will thrive. It’s professional journalism that is soul-searching.

One size doesn’t fit all. The sooner we accept it, the sooner we can move forward with solutions.

Adding value to print by letting online be its own animal

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Here in the mid-Willamette Valley, we’re in the process of switching from a really archaic copy-and-paste content management system to a vastly more powerful system in our newsrooms. I’m not doing as much reporting as I used to, instead I’m picking up more work moving this process forward and planning where we’re going. Good times.

While we lose some options in design and navigation as the company moves toward standardized design across properties, we’re expecting to gain tenfold in our ability to serve content better through tags and categories and a vastly improved (we’re told) search function.

I’ve been burned before so I don’t want to put my eggs in one basket, but I’m pretty excited about the options we’ll have once we understand the system more completely.

More importantly, though, is that we could (hopefully) be on the verge of a sea-change in how and what we post to the Web. First off, everyone in the newsroom is to be trained and will be expected to post their own stuff to the Web.

This led me to wonder if our Web content system could become our primary tool for managing and creating content. Maybe, but the system is primarily a publishing tool and doesn’t handle drafts and note-taking, so could lead to more problems than it’s worth right now.

This hasn’t stopped me from pushing for change in our newsroom processes.

My question for the past couple of weeks as we work through the specifics has been “Does it add value?” I read an interesting post this week by Tom Foremski about how the Web devalues anything it touches, or at least anything that can be digitized: music, TV, newspapers and magazines and software.

Foremski emphasises that this devaluation isn’t in the social value of these items, but rather in the cost necessary to produce and, especially, distribute them, a take on an idea developed by Clay Shirky.

It’s a point that’s clear to folks working to keep news organizations afloat these days and it calls for a new way of thinking about content and its relationship with readers. It’s also why the pay-for-online-journalism idea won’t, I believe, ever gain any real traction, especially the general interest publication I work for.

Information is everywhere and it’s free. Yeah, yeah, we know it’s not free to produce, but nobody cares about your bottom line. Find a way to get it done.

So why not make the Web operation into one big beatblog about the mid-Willamette Valley and break away from duplicating print and online?
Here’s the vision:

  • Take advantage of what the Web does well, including breaking news and deep connections through hyperlinks. Moving forward, we’ll be able to easily add hyperlinks and suggest related stories. That deepens the experience for Web readers in a way they expect and can benefit from.
  • Feature local multimedia more prominently and more effectively present related and source material.
  • Use tools like Publish2 to allow journalists to share what they’re reading and source material for stories they’re working on.
  • Move beyond simple (often nasty) commenting on stories toward a chat model, hosted by the reporter.

What I’m still working on are details about how to add value into the print edition.

To start, it’s important that we let online be online and stop posting the print version of stories to the Web site.

Those pieces are snapshots written for the newspaper and should maximize a readers’ experience with that medium with longer, more reflective stories and clip-and-save utility.

Let online carry the feedback, the early versions and the long tail.

Both have value at different times and for different people. Our goal should be to make a print subscription attractive to those who get immediate news online and teach print subscribers how to join the online experience.

This could develop into completely distinct print and digital products (I hope) and a new set of skills and workflow in the newsroom. I’m excited about the possibilities.