Shopping for readers: a proposal for local news

As she often does, Amy Gahran got me thinking today, this time about the average-at-best job local news organizations do covering consumer news. She asks whether news orgs could focus on shopping year-round, and not just on Black Friday, to do a better job of offering utility to readers.

The short answer: yes. The long answer, though, needs to also address the nagging question of why newspapers aren't doing this already.

Ultimately, I think the problem is how we define what journalism is. And under currently-accepted definitions, helping shoppers find deals isn't up there with Comforting the Afflicted and Afflicting the Comfortable. The irony is - especially in our current economy - data-driven consumer reporting could be of incredible value to local communities.

To figure why this is - why What's On Sale is relegated to the commercial side of the house - let's step back for a second and look at what newspaper do cover.

Is this journalism?

I think we’d all agree that covering the intricacies of local government counts as journalism. Certainly tallying the numbers and types of crimes – whether through narrative journalism or in a database – is journalism as well. Grading a movie? Tracking baseball stats? Charting the financial performance of local companies? All journalism.

But what about sales and deals? What if news organizations reported on that? Where are the best shoe sales? Which grocery chain has the cheapest milk? Which stores have the worst parking lots or the shortest check-out times? Is this journalism?

And what about auto mechanics? Who can you trust? Who specializes in Mini Cooper repair? What’s the going rate for an oil change? Is this journalism?

These examples may not read like dream assignments, even for someone fresh out of J-school. But they could very well be exactly the information that people in our market are looking for, but can’t find. Anywhere.

So, if it is journalism, why not do it?

So the question is simple, but provocative: if it’s just as difficult to report on the machinations of a complex government bureaucracy as it is to scope out the best deals this week at Big Box Mall (both can’t be effectively automated and both require reporting) why do news organizations choose to do one and not the other? And are we sure that readers would agree with that choice?

I'd argue that if newspapers want to grow readership and revenue, they to do both. They need to think even more broadly about what they mean when they talk about “reporting.” And they need to think of new and more useful ways to deliver that information that gets to the user when she wants it and needs it. This flips the existing reporting hierarchy upside-down:

Imagine a team of reporters whose job it is to cover consumer spending – arguably one of the most important drivers of our local economies and something all of our readers spend many hours doing – from the point-of-view of the consumer. And not in the traditional way, through columns and slice-of-life narratives, but with real-world data that will make it easier for people in our markets to live their lives. How surprising and welcome would that be?

And imagine a structure that would allow for data to come from multiple sources - reporting shoe-leather, data-feeds from participating retailers, reports submitted by readers - and distributed at the moment of greatest need: when a reader is at the mall, in the supermarket or in the car.

For a significant portion of the local audience, this is exactly the kind of high-utility, relevant information they need and that a large, organized newsroom is uniquely qualified to provide.

If only we’d agree that it’s journalism.

Who's doing this well? Any examples of any US newspapers marshalling significant forces against retail data reporting?

The revenue slide gets steeper

Alan Mutter was paying attention when The NAA tried to quietly dump its latest revenue numbers on the afternoon before Thanksgiving. And what he saw was grim, including continued falloff in all categories, and the second quarter in a row of declining interactive numbers.

The performance in the third quarter was affected only partially by the worldwide financial panic that froze the credit markets in mid-September, throttling the already waning demand for hiring, auto sales and home purchases.

The outlook for the final period of the year is worse, when the three classified verticals are likely to experience the full impact of the economic meltdown.

So it looks like I'll need to update this chart I created at the end of Q2, showing constant-dollar print revenue at newspapers dropping below 1982 levels. When I made that estimate in September, I said 2008 print revenue would hit $36 billion, a number that needs to come down by at least a half billion (applying 2007 Q4 decline percentages, clearly an optimistic projection), if not a whole lot more.

Jarvis offers a year of good ideas, summarized in one post

Yesterday, 140 characters at a time, I hacked into Sam Zell and his far-ranging interview with Portfolio as signifying a man who is 1. very good at identifying the newspaper industry's problems but (and this extends to his key advisor Lee Abrams) 2. woefully inept at articulating real responses to the crisis (other than to cut costs, which is necessary, and to add visual flash to the papers, which may or may not help), simply because as non-participants in where news is going (digital), he and Lee can't begin to imagine its future.

On the flip side of that coin is Jeff Jarvis, who has been taking flak of late for being a supposed journalism hater, but who, in my opinion, has been a steady source of ideas over the years - mostly solid, a few shaky - for where we might try to steer this battleship.

A few days back, he gathered many of those ideas into one post. It's step-by-step instructions on one (informed) guy's recipe for saving the business:

Note well that none of this is new. The essential functions of journalism - reporting, watching, sharing, answering, explaining - and its verities - factualness, completeness, fairness, timeliness, relevance - are eternal, but the means of performing them are multiplying magnificently. That is why I so enjoy teaching journalism, because we need no longer pick a medium and its tools for a career but can select them every time we need to tell a story - and because journalism is no longer about preservation (it never should have been) but is instead about change and growth.

Could journalism die? Yes, but I have faith and optimism that it will survive, evolve, and grow. I believe there will be a growing market demand for journalism; I know there is a growing need.

Journalism doesn't need THINK PIECES!! It needs solid thinking. Like this.

A cry from the heartland: "Don't let newspapers die"

Thanks to Journalism Iconoclast (Pat Thornton), I just found the "Don't Let Newspapers Die" Facebook "cause" page.

My first thought, especially after reading point #3 ("Newspapers are cool!") was that this was a big fat furry sock-puppet created by the NAA. But instead, it appears to be a genuine effort from an Indiana mom. Who loves newspapers and thinks they're cool. And hopes you'll buy a copy to help save a journalist's job.

I love journalism (as much as anyone can be said to "love" a craft or a skill or, even, a calling). Journalists are underpaid and undervalued by a society that often forgets that they help keep this Democracy thing moving.

But I'm not so sure I feel the same way about newspapers.

For several hundred years, newspapers were the most efficient way to transmit news and information. Cheap. Fast. Disposable. In many ways, the newspaper was the internet long before the httprotocol came along. It was a printed database, filtered for our needs by trusted agents (AKA editors) who did their best to assemble in the daily pages what we needed to know. Or at least what they thought we needed to know.

But do we need newspapers anymore - in paper form? I think the jury's still out.

If you're surer of the answer, you should check out their Facebook page and join the 10,000+ members of the group.

Print less to save the paper and the business

This is just about the most challenging and possibly true sentence I've read in weeks:

Two fat newspapers each week and a robust web platform will have more impact than five or six skinny papers and a site that’s not foremost in the newsroom’s mind.

Martin Langeveld, who blogs at News After Newspapers, makes the case that local newspapers are on the road to ruin if they continue to publish every day in print. His recommendation: Print two big papers weekly, on Thursday and Saturday. Profits do shrink under his new model, but at the end of five years, he says they're much more robust than they would have been following the existing 7-day model to its slow death.

I do hope he posts his spreadsheets, though, so we can all poke and prod at the assumptions.

People like Langeveld are reinventing an industry, idea by idea.

Read the entire proposal here.

Let's put the government in charge of journalism!

Writing in The Mediashift Idea Lab on pbs.org, David Sasaki wins the award for the longest argument yet in favor of government funding of the failing journalism business.

I try not to get into outright arguments here, but this seems to me to be a really, really bad idea. You can't micro-manage every single industry with bailouts and new taxes to support them. If US automakers, for instance, can't build cars that people want, then they should contract, combine or even, in the most extreme outcome, disappear. We won't have any shortage of vehicles, as better-run companies slip in to fill the void. That's cold, true, but that's also the marketplace in action.

Same goes for journalism. If newspapers have created the perfect storm of outdated content and revenue models at the very moment when user consumption patterns are changing radically, then that's a bright neon sign that it's time to change. Not that it's time to find a deep-pocketed government benefactor to allow things to operate as they always have.

But don't tell that to David Sasaki. He's thinking about the National Journalism Foundation, funded by the federal government. Which, as we all know, is really you and me:

The National Journalism Foundation would essentially serve as a re-invented Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Annual funding should increase from $200 million to $3 billion. (One percent of the total cost of the Iraq War; four percent of the federal bank bailout.) Similar to the NSF, the National Journalism Foundation would regularly award grants to individuals, organizations, and institutions that propose projects which serve to better inform the American public about their communities, government, nation, and the rest of the world. PBS and NPR would, of course, continue to receive funding, but other organizations and projects like EveryBlock and FiveThirtyEight.com, which provide important information to the public but don't attract advertising revenue, would also be considered for funding.

As described, it sounds sort of enticing. Let's fund the the cool startups. Let's tax those "telecommunications giants" (who will, no doubt, totally absorb these new taxes out of the kindness of their bleeding hearts) and give the money away to a super-sized Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Yes, let's. And Popsicles for everyone.

Or, publishers could look down the long-barrel of changing realities and change in ways that will allow them to continue in the business of informing people while still making a profit. But they surely won't do that if the Gravy Train is about to pull into town, just like GM won't change if it's guaranteed a future through taxpayer bailouts.

And what's really the worst thing about this? Live for 5-10 years under such a system, and the bulk of the press will be dependent on the government for funding, essentially defanging an already gap-toothed watchdog.

Sorry, I'm not buying it. Journalism is currently screwed, but that's a good thing. It's finally forcing some real change. Let's not screw that up by taking away the only incentive they have to change: fear.

There is great hope for journalism in people like David Cohn

Recent posts have been especially dark on my part. Which isn't entirely representative. I believe that journalism - especially that journalism practiced by the organizations that today publish daily metro papers - is essential, and can have a very bright future if we stop thinking about the last 150 years and focus on maybe just the next 10.

And let the smart people lead.

For instance, people like David Cohn, creator of Spot.us.

I am writing this post physically exhausted but emotionally charged. I feel like a lion. As if I could talk down the curmudgeonist of curmudgeons. Not because I know the answer(s) - but because if we can't even talk those people down, then we might as well just crawl into a whole and give up. F- that! We are moving forward with or without them.

The answers are out there in every startup (journalism focused or otherwise), community, blog, micro-blogging, micro-financing and CMS on the web. The internet is ours for the taking if we only reach out and grab it with as many hands as possible.

Breathe deeply. This stuff is good for what ails you.

$50 to the first API participant to out this newspaper exec.

I will send a fresh $50 bill to the first participant of the API Newspaper Crisis summit to out this guy or gal:

One participant expressed the lone view that the crisis was cyclical, not structural, and that hefty cost-cutting is all that is required to tide companies over until there is recovery.

Seriously. We need to know who's forgotten to sip from the clue bottle for the past five years. This isn't checkbook-journalism. It's public service journalism, with a reward.

This is what's killing the news business: piracy!

[caption id="attachment_521" align="alignnone" width="424" caption="Fully-licensed stock photo, arrrrrrrrr!"][/caption]

The AP is again trying to blame bloggers for bringing about the downfall of the news business. In an article yesterday, AP reports the findings of a recent study by Attributor Corp. which claims that 1.5 times more people read pirated articles than legitimate articles, housed at their originating organization, or at a fully-licensed AP site.

But it's not all gloom and doom. Attributor sees a Step Three: Profit! lining in that cloud:

However, the problem, flagged by copyright cop Attributor Corp., could turn into a golden opportunity if media companies figure out a way to mine advertising revenue from the traffic flocking to their pirated stories posted on blogs and other sites.

Attributor, which makes software that trolls the Internet for copyright violations, estimates the average Web publisher could collect more than $150,000 in additional revenue by selling ads alongside its unlicensed material.

It's an unscientific estimate, based on an assumption that advertisers would pay $1 for every 1,000 pages of unauthorized material viewed on Web sites that aren't owned by the copyright owners.

If anything, Attributor believes its calculations understate the opportunity for fleeced publishers. The Redwood City-based company already is working with a few media companies that could generate more than $1 million in annual advertising by enforcing their online copyrights, said Rich Pearson, Attributor's vice president of marketing.

The problem, aside from still not understanding the benefit of having thousands of blogs pointing to your content? The excerpt above counts as piracy for the benefit of the study.

Attributor's study, conducted from Sept. 12 through Oct. 12, reviewed 30 billion Web pages hosting copies of stories from more than 100 major Web sites. None of the sites belonged to Attributor's current customers. After excluding all properly licensed content, Attributor then discarded any page that copied less than 50 percent or fewer than 125 words of a copyrighted story.

Oops. Just upped the word count again.

If Attributor - and the AP - wanted to find actual piracy, they should look for whole-article lifting. That happens every day, and should be attacked and stopped.

But focusing only on the actual pirates wouldn't get them to the big shocking number they want, to make their wrong-headed point, now would it?

Drain, circled?

Alan Mutter, The Newsosaur, returns with another smack-in-the-face post this morning, which analyzes the numbers from 12 newspaper companies and notes, with some horror, how much faster profits are falling than revenues.

The average profitability of newspapers tumbled 18½ times faster than sales fell in the third quarter of this year, according to an analysis of a dozen companies that segment their financial statements in sufficient detail to isolate the performance of their newspaper divisions.

In a three-month period when advertising and circulation sales among the 12 publishers dropped by an average of 10.3% from the prior year’s level, the average operating profits of the group in the third quarter plunged by a staggering 198.3%.

What I appreciate about Mutter's posts is how he 1) does original reporting and 2) often bases that reporting on numbers.

Numbers may prompt emotion, but they're not emotional themselves. They tell an ugly story, but there's little doubt that the story is true.

For at least a year, if not longer, it's been clear to anyone who would look at the numbers that the old cliche is especially true now: Newspapers can't simply cut their way to profit. There needs to be a reset of the business, a fresh look at the business model and the cost structure.

There will be more cuts, but if they're not strategic cuts, executed as part of a rebuilding process, the blood will be wasted and, like Tribune's payday loans to itself, merely forestall the inevitable.

But if the business (or just one brave paper) doesn't heed the warnings of such events as the recent CUNY summit on business models or (one would hope) this week's API summit, then the circling of the drain is only going to accelerate once the advertising money starts drying up in Q1.

Dispatches from behind the locked doors of the API Summit

Mark Potts brings news of a rogue liveblog that made it through the virtual razor-ribbon today at the super-secret API newspaper crisis summit in Reston.

Big ups to Chuck Peters, CEO of The Gazette Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for 1. knowing how to use Twitter and coveritlive.com to get the news out fast attempt to bring more participants into the room, even if only virtually and 2. having the guts to do it, at the risk of the rolled eyes and possibly hostile glares of his CEO co-summiteers.

Chuck Peters:  Just cutting costs is most likely "incorrect action", without reengineering to meet key consumer needs.

Chuck Peters:  Do you agree with Steve Yelvington that we have "painted ourselves into a corner" by following our success, like GM?   Check out http://www.yelvington.com/node/501

Peters kept the news conversation flowing for several hours, eventually fielding questions and suggestions from participants on the liveblog and on Twitter. It ultimately became impossible for one person to both participate in the conference and field all the questions and suggestions flowing through his liveblog. Too bad the room wasn't filled with others such as Yelvington, Potts, Jarvis and others to bring some perspective and other voices.

But for now, Chuck Peters, your colleagues and friends salute you. And congratulations for making it out alive!

UPDATE: What kind of coverage can you expect to get when 50 newspaper CEOs gather in one place to discuss the future of desperately struggling industry? Apparently, once you get past one brave soul with laptop and an EVDO card and some media-bloggers outside of the mainstream media, not much. Run a Google search for "American Press Institute" and, as of this writing at least, there's nothing. Search the Romenesko blog - the industry gossip and tip sheet - and there's nothing, not even a link to Chuck Peters's liveblog.

What's wrong with the U.S. newspaper industry? In this case, a stunning lack of curiosity, it would seem.

UPDATE 2: Made a few edits based on Chuck Peters's comments below. I still think what he did today was great, but if he chooses to not call it strictly reporting, I'll abide by that.

Quiet day in Zero Percent Idle land

I spent my day on Twitter today, arguing about Jeff Jarvis (Me: generally pro) and learning about the Higher Ed Web space, where I'll be focusing my daily efforts, starting tomorrow, in my new position with Johns Hopkins University.

I will still blog here as well, though things might continue to be a bit quiet for a few days as I get my bearings at my new office on the waterfront in Fells Point. Unless you count my time in the World Trade Center (Baltimore!) at The Inner Harbor (and, on balance, I don't), I've never worked in an area that was actually interesting and loaded with good places to eat and with a real, non-chain coffee shop within a few minutes of my desk. So this should be fun.

Until I get back, look for me in 140-character chunks, on Twitter.

The newspaper biz pokes a thumb in the eyes of those trying to help

One of the most tireless supporters of fixing the news business is Jeff Jarvis. But today, you can practically hear the frustration and resignation in his voice as he describes the API's closed-door conference:

What they should be doing is asking for help, ideas, perspectives, models, worldviews, and suggestions from outside their industry.

Instead, they will be “a facilitated discussion of concrete steps the industry can take to reverse its declines in revenue, profit and shareholder value.”

If they haven’t figured out those steps by now, I’d say getting them into a room together isn’t going to do it.

If you've lost Jarvis, you just may have lost the war.

Saving newspapers from the scrap heap: a plan

So the American Press Institute has declared a national emergency, grabbed the newspaper industry by the lapels and summoned its leaders to a hotel ballroom the API campus in Reston Virginia.

The API Summit on Saving an Industry in Crisis happens on November 13th. Here's what they're saying about it:

The summit conference will be a discussion on the theory, practice and application of techniques of corporate renewal. Facilitating the discussion will be James B. Shein, Ph.D., a former turnaround CEO for several companies and currently clinical professor of management and strategy at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Prof. Shein will lay out for us:

• The predictable path to decline that our industry is taking


• How to determine where an organization is on that path


• Strategies for reversing the decline.

All discussion will be on a non-attribution basis. At the end of the day, participants will have a greater understanding of available tools for engineering the renewal of our industry, and a shared vision of the way forward.

Lauren Rich Fine of paidcontent.org, recently made the intriguing point that, until newspapers start forcing advertisers to take a hard look at interactive, the industry will remain locked in the same 10-20% range for interactive revenue as a slice of the whole pie. She suggests killing the print edition, as painful as it will be, to be the bitter but necessary medicine that will start the healing.

I wonder, though, if there isn't a bridge to that future that allows for a hybrid print-online model that would be worth discussing at the API summit. So, with all the hubris I can muster, herewith is my straw man for the publishers in Reston later this week.

1. Combine all your staffs. If you have an interactive team, a community newspaper team, an online entertainment product team, a TV interactive team and a print newsroom, put 'em all together. You're going to need a multi-disciplined content team for the plan I'm proposing.

2. Pour out a 40 for your beloved daily broadsheet. Here's your new product mix:

• Daily free tabloid, limited to 48-60 pages. (Editorial/Ad mix 50/50 or 45/6555) It's not time to give up on print. The readers you have aren't ready and lots of your advertisers aren't ready. By printing a Monday-Friday news tab, you continue to serve their immediate needs, while keeping a significant piece of the print revenue pump flowing. Assuming you do a good job of it, and you actually pick up readers through a combination of smart editorial focus and zero-friction for pickup through the free price-tag, you could very well get into the kind of scarcity-pricing that is common in television and radio. When demand from advertisers increases, you don't add pages; you raise the prices on the ad spaces you have.


• Weekly Magazine, paid, 100 pages or more. (Editorial/Ad mix 60/40) This is where you publish your best print work. Think of this as a Newsweek for your local market. It's the publication that doesn't get recycled at the end of the day; it sticks around for a week (or longer). For years have been telling daily newspaper publishers that they don't have time to read a paper every day, that they felt guilty dumping so many unread papers. This solves that, providing the insight and perspective that only a major newsroom can, at a print frequency more attuned to the needs of modern readers. (Big question to be solved: how to carry inserts, a huge part of weekend revenue. Should this be a standard magazine size, poly-bagged, or would a stitched, tabloid-sized publication work? Need to balance the revenue needs with the shelf-life objectives for the publication.)


• Significantly enhanced digital presence. A 24/7 digital newsroom is a given. Everybody who is in your newsroom - with the possible exception of the page designers - works for digital first. This is where you will meet the promise to your local market of being the preeminent local news organization, reporting news and data in whatever digital form your market needs it, including enhanced phone delivery, consumer-searchable databases, open APIs into your reporting and datastream, and an aggressive program of outreach to the rest of the local web in your market. And, yes, web sites. Not just one uber-site (though that's welcome), but also a family of niche-focused thin sites that meet the unique needs and desires of your markets. These thin sites, built around events databases and social media tools, can be run by a single reporter-blogger who's passionate about a topic that ma

Even writing this, I can think of a dozen arguments for why this is not the perfect answer. Good. Because these aren't times for perfection. These are times for experimentation. The readership trend and the revenue trend are both heading in the same direction. They'll eventually hit zero if we do nothing. But with the right attitude and a little bit of risky behavior, I believe both of those trends can improve.

Why people had to have a paper today, and what does that tell us about a business model?

[caption id="attachment_452" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Photo by Adam Fagan"][/caption]

I'm hearing and reading a lot today from people, largely inside the newspaper business, who say today's coast-to-coast sellout of newspapers proves that people really do respect the power of the newspaper and that the public maintains an emotional connection with the paper that lives just below the surface, ready to be reborn with the right stimulus.

I think that overreaches. I do, however, believe we were shown some key facts today that just might serve as guideposts for newspapers looking to pump some life back into the print edition. Here's what I believe we saw:

If you have created something people want...

And if it better suits their purposes in paper form than in electronic form...

Then they will buy your paper.

Notice there's nothing in there about emotional connections or even journalism. The people buying papers today had an emotional connection with Barack Obama, not the paper. They used the paper as a permanent, undeniable record of the moment. Look how many people you can find in flickr posing with the paper, in the mirror image of a hostage photo taken to prove the captive was still alive on a particular day. The paper better serves this purpose than a print-out of a web page. It's more real, it's cheap, and it is easily portable through time.

Of course, we all joked that this solves the newspaper industry's business model crisis: simply have Barack Obama win the election every single day from now until the end of time. Funny. But we need to ask how we can fulfill the logical flowchart above in smaller ways on a daily basis.

We spend so much time thinking about how to make digital better than print, but if we're going to keep print alive or even turn it around, we need to ask ourselves in what ways can print be a better delivery vehicle than digital? Are there ways in which the daily paper can better suit some readers' need than digital can? And, if so, is that how we are focusing our newspaper efforts?

What do you think?

Newspapers are *gasp* selling out today

[caption id="attachment_436" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="New Yorkers queue to buy newspapers, 11/05/2008. Photo by Jeremy Zilar."][/caption]

Barack Obama may have ushered in the future, but one of his coattails has a distinct must of the past: heavy print newspaper sales.

Brian Stelter of the New York Times tweets: "I'm hearing that we're printing another 50,000 papers this afternoon for the P.M. rush."

A friend in the DC area tells me papers are sold out, but then cautions "Today may be one of the few days left this century where a lot of people cared about having a newspaper"

But, as Steve Outing says, on Twitter, "Lots of print newspaper copies sold today. Great short-term boost, but souvenir sales won't save the industry. What's next could be sad."

Take the windfall when you can, of course, but don't think this is anything but a souvenir grab.

Update: Steve Outing reports the San Francisco Chronicle is selling "commemorative" issues at a hefty markup. Also The Sun's Gus Sentementes tweets that The Washington Post and Atlanta Journal-Constitution are also running afternoon reprints/editions.

Update 2: If you'd rather just print your own, there's a good collection here, chosen from a design perspective. And, as always, The Newseum has a comprehensive collection of front pages as well, though their flash module on the home page can't be linked, so knock yourself out.

Update 3: Lots of good stuff on flickr. Who knew newspapers were the new sexy?

One more: Khoi Vinh has (of course) a nice shot and story about the reaction inside the New York Times to word that people were lining up for copies of the print edition: "People working on that floor hadn’t noticed yet that the line was forming, and when they realized its purpose, a feeling of delight swept over the newsroom like the friendliest wildfire I’d ever seen. Reporters, editors, photographers, everyone started clapping, hooting and hollering that people still find the newspaper valuable enough to wait dozens of people deep in line for their chance to buy a copy."

RIP banners, hello video

Do you miss the Camel Cigarettes advertising card just below the anchor's head on the evening news? How about long-form testimonial ads for hair tonic in your newspaper? Mitch Miller-style singalong jingles on the radio?

No? Then don't wring your hands too much over the latest report from Borrell Associates (previewed by Terry Heaton, and available now from the Borrell site) which essentially begins to carve the headstone for traditional online banner advertising. Banners were great as a transitional medium - something to help advertisers and consumers alike get their heads around the notion of digital advertising - but they've never been a good idea in the long run. Endlessly looping enticements to punch a monkey aren't going to wind up in the Advertising Hall of Fame. Or rather, if they do, they'll be there in the same ironic sense that reprints of Ronald Reagan hyping Chesterfield Cigarettes are - as a head-shaking reminder of how wrong we went.

But do read the Borrell report when it's available. And note this: Streaming A/V - AKA video advertising. Borrell projects it to be up, in huge numbers. 37% locally, and 138% nationally. And, given the higher rate such ads command, this is promising news indeed for a business in which print advertising continues to grope around desperately for its fainting-couch. The numbers are still small in comparison, but they're the ones that are moving quickly in the right direction.



One recommendation to capitalize on this change: hire a video shooter/editor. At The Sun, this hire, which we made in 2007, paid for itself many times over with the production of local, long- and short-form video advertising. Immediately. And, from all indications, this category continues to grow dramatically. Local "newspapers" are best poised to capture this growth in demand for streaming A/V, but only if they can work with their advertisers to turn this pent-up demand into production.

Don't mourn the passing of banners. Celebrate the arrival of the next wave of smarter, more engaging local and national online advertising. And get out there and sell.

Crowdsourcing just got real

Today is election day in the U.S. And, for social media, it's a signal day as well as people across the country report their votes by text, by video, by photo and by tweet.

The effort that strikes me as the most valuable is TwitterVoteReport.com, which is attempting to be a real-time report on conditions at polling places across the country. Here's hoping their servers can handle it.

12:18 pm UPDATE: The site's been down for some time now, so, despite a valiant effort, perhaps it's premature to call this the first great crowdsource project - at least as a live report. From what I can tell, though, data collection continues so, once the server issues get fixed, this will still hold as a useful piece of the historic record.

5:01 pm UPDATE: What's worse? That I had a HOWLER of a typo on this page all day (actually, it's worse than a typo - I just misspelled a word I know well (crowdsourcing spelled as croudsourcing, ugh) for some reason)? Or that nobody noticed? Or cared? Anyway, at least Twittervotereport.com is back up and working well.

Thinking of the journalist as a DJ instead of a curator.

[caption id="attachment_388" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Photo by Thomas Hawk"][/caption]

Jeff Jarvis points to what may be a better analogy for the role of a modern journalist: A nightclub DJ.

Previously, I'd suggested journalists need to become a curator, but I agree that the messier, noisier role of a nightclub spinner is closer to what journalists do as they run toward constant deadlines, and serves as a less fussy example than curator. Elevator speech: changed.

The original article, in French, translates to something like this (thanks to my daughter Anna for helping Google with some of the idioms):

The job of the press is redefined by new technologies and new relationships with readers, listeners and viewers. The new journalist acts as a filter, a "packageur" of information produced by multiple sources and heterogeneous sources (other media, agencies, experts, witnesses, fans).

Information is no longer a product, it became a process, it is no longer an object it is a service and the media become facilitators. (This does not mean that the report or the investigation died, it simply means that this activity, extremely expensive, can no longer be their only activity. Exclusive content is a loss leader, a product for "the reputation...")

The whole article is here.