Online advertising

“The Tribune Company owns businesses (which) make money by placing ads in between (broadcast) or alongside (print) scarce content. That model, I’m afraid, is dying for two reasons. One, content isn’t scarce anymore. Two, advertisers have other, cheaper ways of reaching the people formerly known as the audience. I’m not sure there’s any form of government help that can protect traditional media from that.”

— Terry Heaton on Tribune bankruptcy

“This change has been more like seeing oncoming glaciers ten miles off, and then deciding not to move.”

— Clay Shirky

Online future of journalism?

Here's what Mindy McAdams foresees:

  1. Breaking news will be online before it’s on television.  
  2. Breaking news — especially disasters and attacks in the middle of a city — will be covered first by non-journalists.
  3. The non-journalists will continue providing new information even after the trained journalists arrive on the scene.
  4. Cell phones will be the primary reporting tool at first, and possibly for hours.
  5. Cell phones that can use a wireless Internet connection in addition to a cellular phone network are a more versatile reporting tool than a phone alone.
  6. Still photos, transmitted by citizens on the ground, will tell more than most videos.
  7. The right video will get so many views, your servers might crash (I’m not aware of this happening with any videos from Mumbai).
  8. Live streaming video becomes a user magnet during a crisis. (CNN.com Live: 1.4 million views as of 11:30 a.m. EST today, according to Beet.tv.)
  9. Your print reporters need to know how to dictate over the phone. If they can get a line to the newsroom, it might be necessary.
  10. Your Web team must be prepared for this kind of crisis reporting.

She concludes by wondering "…whether the mainstream media are superfluous in these situations — or can they perform a useful service to the public by sifting and filtering the incoming reports from the center of the events?"

I hope Ms. McAdams will forgive my reposting here. She, like Seth Godin, is a blogger who deserves not to be edited or excerpted.

People with news, and people who want news

Those are two points of view examined in a recent post by Dave Winer.

“If the people with the news can publish it themselves, and they can; what’s to stop the people who want the news from reading it directly.”

Which puts me in mind of High Street Beat, a blog written by the mayor of Jefferson City. Ultimately, his readers get to decide if what he writes is “fair and honest,” but he can speak directly to them, as well as through MSM.

“When professional news people consider the Internet they think of it replacing them. Not so. It reduces their role to a bare minimum, makes them less necessary. I still want soundbites from the sources, but I want them to link to the full blog post behind the quote.”

“If reporters are to remain relevant they have to recast themselves, more humbly. Don’t think about “deputizing” us to do what you do. Instead think of the value of your rolodex, your sources. Cultivate and develop that rolodex. To the extent that you know who to call when a bit of news breaks, that’s the extent of your value in the new world, the one we live in now.”

Most of the reporters I’ve known and worked with work very hard. For not much money. But more than a few of them have viewed the companies they work for a the necessary infrastructure that makes it possible for them to report the news.

While the people running those companies viewed the newsrooms as a cog –a BIG cog, but a cog– in a machine whose purpose was to turn a profit. A classic dog and tail situation.

I’m reminded of that classic scene in Network where Arthur Jensen explains things to Howard Beale:

Jensen: The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime, and our children, Mr.Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and famine, oppression and brutality –one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you to preach this evangel, Mr. Beale.

Howard: (humble whisper) Why me?

Jensen: Because you’re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

One thing, not the only thing, but one important thing that has distinguished reporters from their readers/viewers/listeners is the reporters had a platform or medium from which to report. That distinction has blurred, if not disappeared.

Newsroom change

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I only snapped one photo of Bob Priddy in action on election night. Through studio glass (you can see my reflection in this larger image) with producer John Simms in the background. MacBook Pro and video camera are streaming live video to Ustream. Big screen TV’s on the walls, high-speed connection to the Secretary of State’s website with up-to-the-minute returns.

When I joined the company in 1984, Bob was still writing stories on this manual Royal typewriter (below). Audio was captured on reel-to-reel tape recorders and “dubbed” to analog carts. We had a UPI printer spewing out the news (on long rolls of paper), and election returns were phoned in by a reporter sitting in the Secretary of State’s office.

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Can’t imagine what we’ll have in four years. Bob Priddy’s memory of those days is better than mine:

“Actually, we were using cassettes, not R2R in ’84. We relied on UPI for election returns with reporters at various gatherings of candidates. We didn’t put anybody in the SOS office until the Presidential primary of ’88, after studying what AP and UPI did in the 86 general election.”

Putting Ana Marie back on the plane

AmcblogAna Marie Cox was covering the McCain campaign for Radar Magazine until it shut it’s doors on Friday. AMC tweeted us to her blog for the story:

“It will cost about $1500 to cover just the last day of the campaign, and over $1000 a day for each day leading up to it. While I still blog for TIME’s “Swampland” * — and I will for as long as they let me! — I am without a source for travel funds. So, you know, anyone interested in sponsoring a foul-mouthed blogger, slightly used?”

Like a public radio fund drive, she offered premiums for different levels of giving.

“Over $100: My instant message screen name, regular personal updates via email and/or instant messages on election night.”

I kicked in$150 because I’m a fan and liked the idea of helping a blogger. Seems like I wasn’t alone.

“At the moment, donations come to about $2500 — a thousand past my goal of simply seeing the McCain campaign off into the gentle night come Nov. 4 (literally! sort of!), and just about enough to cover spending election eve out on the trail as well.”

Ana Marie is hardly the first blogger to ask her readers to support her work. But I think I would have been willing to pay $5 or $10 a month for a year to fund her efforts. Is this some kind of model for the future?

Update: 10/28/08

If the boat is leaking, learn how to swim

Had a chat with an acquaintance who now lives and works in another part of the country. He’s a long-time radio news guy and he called to get my advice on how his newsroom can better take advantage of “new media” (which ain’t that new anymore). As he talked about his newsroom and the company he works for (a good one), it became clear there was no clear direction for making the transition from Old Media to New Media. And unlikely to be one. So what can he do?

First, what he cannot do. He probably cannot change (or provide) the larger online strategy his company needs. But he can begin learning the skills he needs to survive. In no particular order:

  • Start blogging (any topic)  This includes reading other blogs
  • Start using an RSS news reader
  • Set up a twitter page (get a grasp of social networking)
  • Get a smart phone and learn how to use it (see above)
  • Keep a small digital (still/video) camera on his person at all times
  • Get a YouTube and flickr account and start using them. (any subject)
  • Begin the process of creating your brand

To an old radio dog, all of this sounds like a lot more work than it really is. But here’s the question I posed to my friend: If your current job went away overnight, what would you do? Try to get a job at another radio station? A newspaper? TV station?

What kind of skills to you think they’re looking for these days? Will it be enough to give them a cassette tape of your best work? Maybe a list of the RTNDA awards you’ve won?

The skills he learned in J-school are important. His many years of “radio” experience are valuable. But it’s a new game, that demands new skills. You got ’em or you don’t.

Blogging: “A basic right of being in the media business”

The always-plugged-in Amy Gahran insists your blog is “Media Career Insurance” for journalists.

“Because in a professional environment where staying findable equals sustained opportunity and flexibility, search engines are a key arbiter of your career. The more findable and linkable you are, the more search engines will reward you. … And search engines really, really love blogs.”

“Having your own blog is media career insurance. It will serve as your “home base” where you establish your personal reputation, track record, abilities, interests, and aspirations.”

Ms. Gahran offer some tips for starting a blog. Read her post where she explains each:

  1. Get a good domain name.
  2. Map your domain to your site, so every page on your site bears your domain.
  3. Stick with your domain.
  4. Don’t work for anyone who won’t let you keep blogging.
  5. Join the conversation, and link back to yourself
  6. Keep your blog going even if you also blog elsewhere

I particularly liked: “Consider blogging a basic right of being in the media business.”

Most of the journalists I know and work with do not have a personal blog. I think most of them would insist they don’t have time to blog. A few don’t think it’s “appropriate” for a journalist to blog.

“How important is local, really?”

“I’m not saying local doesn’t matter. Local is important. It’s especially important for people who are newcomers to communities. It’s especially important for identifying accessible resources and services that people might need in their daily lives. But in many senses, “local” is just one set of ripples on the lake of information — especially when it comes to “news.” And for many people, it’s not even the biggest or most important set of ripples.”[Amy Gahran/E-Media Tidbits

And it occurs to me that “local” is much more important to people with children than to those of us without.

“News is a business, not a public service”

I recently asked my friend Bob (a really fine journalist) about an idea I came across in a WSJ column by Peggy Noonan. The following line sort of sums it up:

“Great reporting is what every honest person wants now, it’s the one ironic thing we have less of in journalism than we need.”

Bob responded with this quote by Alex Rohr, President of Rohr News Network, a fictional character in a novel (The Race) by Richard North Patterson:

“The old model was that news is fact, and objectivity the ideal. Today’s truth is that “news” like anything else we sell to the public, is a product. Our news product isn’t some abstract notion of truth, or even reality. It’s a story–consistent and repetitive, with a message that’s emotionally fulfilling to the viewer. We mislead no one. Turn on (our news), and you’re getting exactly what you want. I can help you feel better about this war, or fighting terrorists, and you don’t have to think about them anymore. If we also use that power to promote our friends and advance our interests, so be it. News is a business, not a public service.”

And our nation is poorer for it.

Terry Heaton: Media Elitism

Terry Heaton takes a thoughtful look at the charge the media has a liberal bias. I’ve pulled two paragraphs from his thoughtful essay:

“I believe the press is inherently biased towards a liberal perspective, because educated people, among other things, are generally more exposed to the value of tolerance than those who are not. Chesterton wrote that “Tolerance is the virtue of people who don’t believe anything,” and that is a core component of conservative thinking. It’s not that conservatives aren’t tolerant; it’s just that it isn’t elevated to the status of core value as it is with liberals.”

“One issue I do see is that because conservatives are predisposed to law-abiding and put faith in hierarchy, they are more open to direction from the top. In that sense, the qualities and character of the person at the top are critical.”

“Conservatives ride the wind of the esoteric when it comes to certain issues, but liberals have their feet firmly planted on the ground and in the middle of those issues. In this sense, the two never talk with each other, because they’re not even in the same space.”

Which reminds me why I decided to stop discussing politics. A vow I quickly broke but now renew. It’s like getting off crack.