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?

A newspaper journalist offers practical online advice to her colleagues

My name is Gina Chen. I’ve been a newspaper journalist for 20 years, and I’m worried — but excited — about the future of the industry I love.

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.

Save The Media, Chen's recently-launched blog, exists, as she puts it, as a "kick in the pants":

I got into this business with the typical idealism. I wanted to be a voice for those who had none. I wanted to expose the wrongs in society. I wanted to make a difference. And in my small way, I have.

But like a close relative who sometimes needs a kick in the pants, journalism needs to get its head together, I think.  New media is here, and you need to use it.

I’m worried because so many journalists I know are  stubbornly digging their heels in and refusing to change quickly enough with the times. Yes, it would be nice if this were still the 1960s, and people had nowhere else to get their news except the mainstream press. Wake up. Those days are gone.

Each of the posts so far is direct and full of valuable information on a specific topic. Take the current post, on Search Engine Optimization for journalists:

First, what is SEO? In the very simplest terms, it’s using words in your post and headline that will help search engines find your content. So it’s back to “thinking like Google” as I explained in my post about picking your blog name. You need to use words that will let Google and other search engines — which are computers, not humans — understand what your post is about.

Why does it matter? One of your goals as a journalistic blogger is that people will find your post on a given topic. So when they type a search into Google, you want your blog to be among the first few sites that come up. (The first few sites are the ones that most people will go to.)

She then outlines 10 specific steps any writer, copy-editor or producer can take to increase readership to their stories, simply by changing their approach to headlines.

This kind of simple, actionable advice is what Save The Media is all about. As Martin Langeveld, who first noted Chen's blog on his own excellent News After Newspapers, says, it's well worth putting into your feed reader.

The story so far: I actually want the news business to succeed

So here's how these things go. You write 85+ posts over the course of a handful of months. Some of them are are considered, thoughtful pieces, many with even a modicum of original reporting. Others are appreciative notes and links to discussions elsewhere.

A few are smartassed screeds, one of which takes apart some recent (I'll still say it) idiocy by Paul Mulshine in the Wall Street Journal.

Guess which post got linked from Romenesko and unleashed what I like to call a robust discussion in the comments?

So, just a quick reminder. This isn't a blog that takes any joy from the current condition of the U.S. newspaper business. I spent 12 years of my life inside it and would probably still be cheerfully toiling away on change from within had that buyout offer not been so timely and irresistible.

Here are some ideas I've floated over the past few months in these very pixels that might benefit from further discussion:

• A proposal for a network ad model


• A proposal for creating a "sales and deals" beat


• A proposal to rethink the local news product mix for a major metro


• A discussion of how my old organization made decent money creating local, long-form video


• Five simple, cheap ideas to increase engagement with local audiences for news organizations


• Four ideas to help fix the classified problem


• My soapbox: journalists need to become better curators of their beats

Pros vs. Pajamas: The trope that will not die.

The zombie lives, this time in an op-ed in the WSJ from the Newark Star-Ledger's Paul Mulshine, who conflates the shout of "Copy!" and the pounding of six-part carbons with some golden age of "real" journalism that the modern internetses are killing:

When my colleague at the Newark Star-Ledger John Farmer started off in journalism more than five decades ago, things were very different. After covering a political event, he'd hop on the campaign bus, pull out a typewriter, and start banging out copy. As the bus would pull into a town, he'd ball up a finished page and toss it out the window. There a runner would scoop it up and rush it off to a telegraph station where it would be blasted back to the home office.

At the time, reporters thought this method was high-tech. Now, thanks to the Internet, a writer can file a story instantly from anywhere. It's incredibly convenient, but that same technology is killing old-fashioned newspapers. Some tell us that that's a good thing. I disagree and believe that the public will miss us once we're gone.

Why are newspapers disappearing? Those damned bloggers in their pajamas:

The problem is that printing a hard copy of a publication packed with solid, interesting reporting isn't a guarantee of economic success in the age of instant news. Blogger Glenn Reynolds of "Instapundit" fame seems to be pleased at this. In his book, "An Army of Davids," Mr. Reynolds heralds an era in which "[m]illions of Americans who were in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do this stuff."

No, they can't. Millions of American can't even pronounce "pundit," or spell it for that matter. On the Internet and on the other form of "alternative media," talk radio, a disliked pundit has roughly a 50-50 chance of being derided as a "pundint," if my eyes and ears are any indication.

The type of person who can't even keep track of the number of times the letter "N" appears in a two-syllable word is not the type of person who is going to offer great insight into complex issues.

I agree with this: It sucks that journalists are losing jobs and that newspapers are failing. But the marketplace of ideas is not a zero-sum game. And just because the author seems to have run across an inordinate number of people who are unable to pronounce the word "pundit" that's no reason to dismiss the whole of the blogosphere, as he does.

And it's a sham argument anyway. I'd bet that a sizable percentage of any newspaper's readership is equally idea- and spelling-challenged. The leaders of the social media movement are no more average members of the rabble than are the ink-stained wretches Munshine beatifies here. Reporters, pundits, thought-leaders -- whether in print or pixels -- become who they are because of the value of their skills and ideas, not the medium they choose to disseminate them.

The bigger question is this: who will do the reporting, and who will pay for it? If newspaper companies get smart about business models and stop trying to prop up the old institutions of ink and paper, there's a very good chance that they will survive. But they will survive in a world where Reynolds and others have an equal share of the voice, assuming the quality of what they're saying is high enough to warrant attention.

The Sun and Post leap forward with sharing agreement, fall back with print-centric focus

I thought the Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun made a brilliant move today, announcing that, beginning on January 1, the two newsrooms would start sharing news and sports coverage. The stated goal is to eliminate overlap and to create efficiencies. The real goal is to forge ahead boldly to help save the business.

But then I saw this, and I realized the terrible truth of exactly what business it is that they're still trying to save:

Robert McCartney, assistant managing editor for metropolitan news at The Washington Post, said the two newspapers will be able to publish each other's stories online, but only after the story has appeared in print in the originating newspaper.

I confirmed this directly. There will be no sharing of online content until it is first - say it with me - published in the paper.

If this were, say, 1997 and print was booming and the online division comprised just some geeks in the basement, I could almost understand this logic. But I thought we'd settled this question: Digital is the future, not an afterthought. And where will The Sun and The Post publish all this shared content anyway? News hole is shrinking rapidly. Why not make the first and most comprehensive point of sharing online?

Imagine this: a regional online powerhouse that not only would bring in huge audience numbers, but for the first time just might be big enough to start eclipsing withering print revenues. Smart regional buys for national advertisers and targeted local ads sold against the combined reporting of the two largest newsrooms in the Mid-Atlantic just might sell well, even in this recessed economy.

That won't happen just yet, because The Sun and The Post have chosen to focus on the papers first. Here's hoping they soon turn their attentions to building something even greater online.