Paying for foreign reporting requires creative financing

Whether the shuttering of foreign bureaus by metropolitan newspapers and some TV networks in recent years -- to refocus efforts stateside as budgets tightened -- was a good thing or bad is certainly worthy of debate.

But what is certain is that, as a result, there are now fewer reporters covering fewer stories in foreign countries for American news organizations.

Some of those that do remain are still in the employ of the few remaining deep-pocketed organizations with bureaus. But an increasing number are independent or loosely confederated reporters, chasing stories first and finding buyers for them second.

Read more at The Media Lab...

How to grow local revenue, despite the ad inventory glut

So, what to do about this over-abundance of advertising inventory in our local markets?

Unlike some in this industry who are looking, again, at some form of paid content as the solution to the revenue crisis, I still believe that there's a lot of life left in the ad-supported model. We haven't been particularly creative in building ad solutions that work well for advertisers and that generate sustainable revenue for newspaper companies.

Given the diminishing returns of the CPM market outlined yesterday, the move is on to find a better model. Recently, The New York Times' David Carr looked to Apple for inspiration:

Those of us who are in the newspaper business could not be blamed for hoping that someone like (Apple's Steve Jobs) comes along and ruins our business as well by pulling the same trick: convincing the millions of interested readers who get their news every day free on newspapers sites that it’s time to pay up.

For a long time, newspapers assumed that as their print advertising declined, it would be intersected by a surging line of online advertising revenue. But that revenue is no longer growing at many newspaper sites, so if the lines cross, it will be because the print revenue is saying hello on its way to the basement.

The iTunes Solution.

And yet there is no parallel between selling songs -- which customers will play over and over -- and selling a recap of the City Council meeting. Apple didn't simply say "What do we have that we could sell to people?" They looked for a need in the marketplace -- a better way to buy music -- and created it.

Continue reading at The Nieman Lab...

Five people I wish Jim Romenesko quoted more

(This is a follow-up to Friday's list of five people outside journalism that all journalists should read.)

I will forever be in Jim Romenesko's debt for a number of reasons.

• First, he's a great read, reporting as he does every last scrap of news about the journalism biz.


• Second, he's wicked fast, an example many of our local market reporters could still learn from. If there's a document that has news, he doesn't rewrite it -- he links to it (or reproduces it whole). The joke is that he's already published the internal memo before the publisher has finished writing it.


• Third, for about a year in the early 2000s, he was my handy answer to any reporter or editor who asked, with clear disgust at the word, "What's a blog?" Instead of spending ten minutes explaining the blogger ethos, I'd just start out with, basically, "You're soaking in it!" by pointing out that the venerable Romenesko "page" or "site," as it was called, was essentially a very robust and well-done linkblog. From that point, the conversation was much simpler.

But one thing I've always wished was that he would open up his stable of industry types that he'd quote or link to. For every Howard Kurtz or David Carr, there are dozens of other industry thinkers, some writing and saying quite interesting things.

That's not to say that the voices in Mister Romenesko's Neighborhood haven't grown in number in recent years. If I were writing this in 2007, I'd be complaining about the absence of Jeff Jarvis, Mark Potts, Alan Mutter and the incomparable Jay Rosen, NYU professor (one day of his @jayrosen_nyu Twitter feed features a week of challenging ideas), all of whom are featured with some regularity now on the premier industry blog.

But, never being satisfied, here are a five writers I wish were exposed more frequently to the newsrooms of America:

1. Morris Digital's Steve Yelvington has been striving mightily to get newspapers to look over the horizon for years. So it's no surprise that his recent posts, while acknowledging our current sour turn, often focus on ideas for how to move forward. For instance, he's been offering a peek behind the curtain as his team moves Morris's Jacksonville.com from a legacy system to a home-brewed Drupal solution more attuned to the needs of readers. Also, his post from December, Explaining Twitter to journalists, is a great elevator pitch to colleagues for using Twitter as a listening tool:  "It's like a big caffeine party. Everybody's talking at once. Really fast. But you have magic ears."

2. Roy Greenslade, the media columnist for the UK Guardian, offers the view from Blighty. He's prolific, occasionally maddening, and always a good read. I like that he gets me out of my US-centric view of the journalism business. Bonus points for working at a paper that got blogging and other social media while many news organizations here in the US were still refusing to utter the words.

3. Terry Heaton, a former TV producer and current "blogger for hire" at Audience Research & Development, focuses on the emergence of newer, more participative forms of media. In his essay "2009: The Great Beginning," he uses the example of Kodak's reinvention in recent years as a beacon of hope for the news business:

Kodak embraced the disruption that was decimating its film business. The company is riding the disruption into the future by never looking back at the "good old days." It did not come without real pain, however, for reinvention has no respect for those who fight or otherwise refuse the future it offers, nor does it — or can it — concern itself with the unfortunate souls who are, through no fault of their own, caught in its need to save the many at the expense of the few. Note that 60 percent of Kodak's workforce wasn't there four years ago.

It's like that when customers demand something other than what they've been getting.

4. Paul Gillin is a double-threat, with two essential blogs. The first, Newspaper Death Watch,  is a chronicle, not a celebration, with solid reporting and analysis about the death throes of the old ways, and the shoots of new life that are appearing amid the carnage. His other blog is simply PaulGillin.com, where he reports on the growth of social media. And he writes books. Because writing two high-volume blogs apparently leaves him with entirely too much free time on his hands.

5. As I wrote elsewhere recently, Gina Chen is really no different than the thousands of journalists in newsrooms around the country, trying to make sense of where the news business is heading. Except this: She's doing something to help her colleagues along. In her Save The Media blog, she's been presenting a comprehensive course of steps that reporters and editors can take to be sure that their journalism is ready for the post-paper era. Chen isn't wringing her hands; she's pointing the way.

So that's five. The list clearly could be a lot longer. Who did I miss? Who else should more journalists be reading on a daily basis? Add them in the comments.

Why it's so hard to move revenue from print to online

It's shorthand for the chief problem of transitioning a local news operation's business model from print to online: Newspaper revenue dollars become online pennies. Despite increasing readership online, advertisers continue to pay a much higher price when they place their ads in print.

A lot of that has been laid to inertia on the part of advertisers and a lack of sales imagination at papers. But there's also something very real at play as well: the loss of scarcity.Why it's so hard to move revenue from print to online

Post continued at The Nieman Lab...

Six essential non-journalism bloggers for your feed reader

I have a confession. My feed reader is half-full of journalists writing about journalism.

Which, in itself isn't all that bad, I suppose. But perspective is welcome after an hour wallowing in twelve takes on the latest bad news from the world of publishing.

So that's why the other half of my feed reader is full of people who do not hold journalism degrees and don't work in newspapers or television stations. These are people that are brimming with ideas, many of which are either directly relevant to the business of news, or which fire off some synapses in reaction.

Here are six that I can't imagine going a day without.

1. Chris Brogan. More than even many journalists, Brogan has been exploring what the incredible proliferation of easy-to-use tools and cheap and accessible publishing platforms has meant for average people who suddenly find themselves in the role of publisher. His goal is simple: He want to help you become a better blogger. You can start at his "Best-of" page and dig from there. Side benefit: Brogan shows by example how to manage a highly readable and useful blog. Blogging journalists are urged to crib liberally.

2. Guy Kawasaki. Here's why I know Guy is smart: Earlier in his career, his job was to convince developers to write programs for a computer -- the Macintosh -- that almost nobody owned. And he succeeded! Guy recently bundled up a year's worth of blog posts from his blog called "How To Change The World" into a book called "Reality Check." More significantly,  in the past year, he created Alltop.com, a simple idea that newspapers could have owned if they'd tried: aggregation by category. As he explains, "We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from 'all the top' sites on the web." Among the latest categories: cities.

3. Seth Godin. Seth is the guy who recently wrote that real estate agents with free time on their hands should start hyper-local newspapers. So you can start your hating now. But face it, he's right. If newspapers don't start doing a better job of reporting the kind of local news that matters to community members, someone will -- and they just might just be underemployed mortgage-jockeys. Godin's the kind of guy who'll show them how. When he's not suggesting that newspapers are replaceable, Godin can be found dispensing equally provocative ideas on an almost daily basis.

4. Dave Winer. If you called up Central Casting and said, "Send me a post-hippie programmer-genius with questionable social skills," you'd get Dave Winer, or someone very much like him. But understand this: Dave is the real deal. He created RSS. He helped invent podcasting. He's been promoting the concept of a river of news that flows past as an organizing concept for headlines. And, yet, if you called him a journalist, he'd probably hit you, or at least write some withering comments about you on his blog. And then he'd probably use the experience to inspire work on yet another cool tool. Reading Dave Winer isn't a constant love-fest, but it's guaranteed that your mind will be expanded.

5. Robert Scoble. Appropriately mentioned here, as he's something of the cheerful flip-side of Dave Winer. Technically, Scoble's a journalist at Fast Company, but he's really more of a fan with a camera. That's not a knock; his enthusiasm can be catching, especially when he's raving about a new technology he's just seen that is The Future of All Things (until the next thing comes along). Recently he and Steve Rubel (below) got into an exchange -- that generated much more light than heat -- about whether video or text is the better tool for storytelling and journalism.

6. Steve Rubel. If it's true that great PR people think like journalists (and, often, are former journalists), then Steve Rubel is a great PR guy. His blog offers a window not just into the craft of public relations and how it's being put to use in this time of micro-media growth (think bloggers and citizen journalists), it's also a great ongoing conversation about communication. It doesn't hurt that the man leading the conversation was among the first to move PR into the social realm, taking it online and introducing such now-common concepts as transparency long before other practitioners.

What non-journalists do you read when thinking about journalism? Share your favorites in the comments.

Buy a newspaper or save a newspaper: Your choice

What's the better way to save the newspaper business?

Sign a pledge on Facebook to buy a newspaper on February 2nd?

Or work from within to show journalists how to use Facebook (or MySpace or Twitter or Google or just how and why to link) to advance journalism beyond the old business of ink on paper?

The first may briefly make you feel good about yourself, but the second just might change you, whether you're a journalist or not.

Read more...

CNN and Facebook create the next great news-watching experience

There's no shortage of post-Inaugural commentary available on the web today. So I'll keep this short.

But I have to say that the CNN/Facebook integration absolutely rocked. Look at this:



Read the whole post at The Nieman Lab.

Some news about this blog and me

Starting on January 21st, my journalism-focused blogging is moving to The Nieman Journalism Lab, thanks to a gracious invitation from Josh Benton, the director of the lab. I'll be joining Martin Langeveld and Mathew Ingram as the new additions to the Lab.

In case you haven't already discovered it, The Nieman Journalism Lab is a terrific site focused on the future of journalism. It's a welcome island of hope and energy in these relatively bleak times for daily journalism. As explained on the site, this is the mission:

We want to help reporters and editors adjust to their online labors; we want to help traditional news organizations find a way to survive; we want to help the new crop of startups that will complement — or supplant — them.

We are fundamentally optimistic.

For now, I'll also be cross-posting j-blogging links from here to the Nieman site. And remaining forever optimistic.

I'll also be stepping up blogging around higher ed digital communication and web strategy. Those posts will have their home here.

Confusing enough? At least you don't need to remember all the Wordpress passwords!

Every picture tells a story

Look at this photo (unfortunately a low-res screencap) for what's currently right and wrong about journalism:

[caption id="attachment_871" align="alignnone" width="450" caption="Screencap from Seattle P-I web site."][/caption]

Here's my take. The two women in the foreground are doing the work of a newsroom, reporting news and publishing it. Immediately. Online. Unfortunately, it's the news of the potential death of their news organization.

Everyone else is focused on the man with his back to us, Hearst's Steven Swartz who's giving the news that the Seattle P-I is up for sale and will likely stop printing in 60 days.

If you watch the video of this announcement here, you can see The P-I's managing editor David McCumber on the right in this picture (left in the video) standing and taking the news as best he can until Swartz says that the days of the printed P-I are over. That's when the air comes out of him. That's when it strikes home. That's the worst possible news.

I don't note this to minimize the very real angst of the talented and dedicated people in the P-I newsroom, many of whom find themselves thrust suddenly into a tough job market, but I can't help but see a metaphor in this photo.

The only people facing forward are doing the job of journalism in the new digital reality. Everyone else is sitting vigil for a dying friend, focused on a potentially destructive nostalgia for print.

This business of journalism must change. One important clue is contained in this photo.

(Big hat-tip to Don Day of Lost Remote, who first noted this photo. He and I saw slightly different things in the photo, which is why I decided to make this post here as well.)

Flowcharting the trolls

This is great.

Leave it to the Air Force to bring some semblance of order to a process (HT: Dave Fleet) - monitoring comments and discussions and deciding which to engage with - that has more than a few of us pulling out our hair on a regular basis.

They've even created a simple flowchart, which I'd suggest, is worth printing out and pinning by your desk, whether you're running a university web site, a metro news site or just a l'il old blog like this one:

Who are the digital natives? And what do they want?

[caption id="attachment_848" align="alignnone" width="525" caption="Count the digital devices. Photo by debaird, via Flickr CC"][/caption]

Anyone in the business of trying to communicate in a substantial way with younger people - and while this generally falls into the subset of "Anyone With A Web Site that's not aarp.org," I'm thinking here mainly of higher education and news web sites - should waste no time in picking up a copy of Don Tapscott's Grown Up Digital, a look at the age cohort he calls The Net Generation. Net Geners are those currently between the ages of 11 and 30, who have grown up completely steeped in technology and, for the past 12 years, the internet.

But who are these digital natives? And what makes them different from those of us Boomers and older? Tapscott gets to that list early in the book:

THE EIGHT NET GENERATION NORMS

If Wonder bread builds strong bodies in 12 ways, this generation is different from its parents in 8 ways. We call these 8 differentiating characteristics the Net Generation Norms. Each norm is a cluster of attitudes and behaviors that define the generation. These norms are central to understanding how this generation is changing work, markets, learning, the family, and society. You'll read about them throughout the book.

1. They want freedom in everything they do, from freedom of choice to freedom of expression. We all love freedom, but not like this generation. Choice is like oxygen to them. While older generations feel overwhelmed by the proliferation of sales channels, product types, and brands, the Net Gen takes it for granted. Net Geners leverage technology to cut through the clutter and find the marketing message that fits their needs. They also expect to choose where and when they work. They use technology to escape traditional office constraints and integrate their work lives with their home and social lives. Net Geners seek the freedom to change jobs, freedom to take their own path, and to express themselves.


2. They love to customize, personalize. When I was a kid, I never got to customize The Mickey Mouse Club. Today's youth can change the media world around them - their desktop, Web site, ring tone, handle, screen saver, news sources, and entertainment. They have grown up getting what media they want, when they want it, and being able to change it. Millions around the world don't just access the Web, they are creating it by creating online content. Now the need to customize is extending beyond the digital world to just about everything they touch. Forget standard job descriptions and only one variety of product. As for government portals, they want "my government" customized online.


3. They are the new scrutinizers. When I was young, a picture was a picture. No more. Transparency, namely stakeholder access to pertinent information about companies and their offerings, just seems natural to the Net Gen. While older generations marvel at the consumer research available on the Internet, the Net Gen expects it. As they grow older, their online engagement increases. Businesses targeting the Net Gen should expect and welcome intense scrutiny of its products, promotional efforts, and corporate practices. The Net Gen knows that their market power allows them to demand more of companies, which goes for employers as well.


4. They look for corporate integrity and openness when deciding what to buy and where to work. The Internet, and other information and communication technologies, strip away the barriers between companies and their various constituencies, including consumers, activists, and shareholders. Whether consumers are exposing a flawed viral marketing campaign or researching a future employer, Net Geners make sure company values align with their own.


5. The Net Gen wants entertainment and play in their work, education, and social life. This generation brings a playful mentality to work. From their experience in the latest video game, they know that there's always more than one way to achieve a goal. This outside-the-box thinking results from 82 percent of American children aged 2 to 17 having regular access to video games. It's a fast-growing industry: in the United States, video game sales were $8.4 billion in 2005, with worldwide sales expected to hit $46.5 billion by 2010. This is a generation that has been bred on interactive experiences. Brand recognition alone is no longer enough, something leading companies recognize.


6. They are the collaboration and relationship generation. Today, youth collaborate on Facebook, play multiuser video games; text each other incessantly; and share files for school, work, or just for fun. As evidenced by sites such as Yub.com, they also engage in relationship-oriented purchasing. Nine out of ten young people we interviewed said that if a best friend recommends a product, they are likely to buy it. They influence each other through what we call N-fluence Networks - online networks of Net Geners who, among other things, discuss brands, companies, products, and services.


7. The Net Gen has a need for speed - and not just in video games. Real-time chats with a database of global contacts have made rapid communication the new norm for the Net Generation. In a world where speed characterizes the flow of information among vast networks of people, communication with friends, colleagues, and superiors takes place faster than ever. And marketers and employers should realize that Net Geners expect the same quick communication from others - every instant message should draw an instant response.


8. They are the innovators. When I was young, the pace of innovation was glacial. Today it's on hyperdrive. A twentysomething in the workforce wants the new BlackBerry, Palm, or iPhone not because the old one is no longer cool, but because the new one does so much more. They seek innovative companies as employers and are constantly looking for innovative ways to collaborate, entertain themselves, learn, and work.

Again, there's a whole lot of good information between these covers to chew on. Me, I'm still working my way through, so a more considered analysis will have to wait. But until then, you can also hear Tapscott interviewed at length by Leo Laporte and Amber McCarthy on the net@night program here.

How are your sites changing to meet the increased expectation of Gen Net?