Atlanta Journal Constitution rethinks everything
A lot mega-dailies have been shedding staff in recent years — The New York Times, Dallas Morning News, the AJC and many more. But it at least sounds like the AJC is doing more than just cutting staff.

They are rethinking their whole approach to news. I don’t have a problem with cutting staff if less and less people are buying the product. No one would think twice is Apple laid off employees if the iPod stopped selling. But Apple would also try to think of the next big product to sell.

Newspapers just cut staff without thinking of anything new or big. Certainly, you can eek out another profitable quarter by cutting costs, but eventually if you cost too many costs, you don’t have a product. The AJC decided to try to position their new product as Web first, print second.

That’s exactly how newspapers will succeed in the future. There will always be people who want to read newspapers. They are older, “settled” adults. They have established careers, make good money and are educated.

They, however, aren’t the only people who want news. A lot of younger people (like, say, me or my friends or my generation) aren’t settled and certainly aren’t thinking of subscribing to a newspaper. That doesn’t mean we don’t like to be informed.

It just means we need a medium that fits our lives and our schedules. The Web is it. I can get up-to-the-minute coverage of what I want to know on the Web, at any time.

The same cannot be said of TV or newspapers. But newspapers still serve an important role and have a dedicated following. That’s why newspapers need an online product that has up-to-the-minute news coverage and features that really harness the capabilities of the Web.

You know, sometimes I just want to waste time on the Web. I could waste time on your newspaper’s Web site, but only if there is something for me to do there. Perhaps a new Web special feature with a searchable database with results displayed in Flash or a photo gallery or a blog on something interesting.

The print edition should be for the “what’s next?” pieces after a big event happens, more in depth stories, longer feature stories, and it should be a showcase for really good writing. It shouldn’t, however, try to compete with the Web or cable news by providing updates (always a day late) on events in the world.

AJC.com, unlike what the linked article suggests, is not one of the best journalism sites in the country. The site itself is ugly and has way too many loud ads on it. Hopefully, this new focus on the Web will get them a Web site that has some focus.

A little FYI, online journalism legend Adrian Holovaty’s first job out of college was at the AJC. I bet the AJC wishes they were more forward thinking a few years ago. They might have realized what they had on their own staff.

Of course, that never happens.

Do less video?
Pete Clifton, the head of BBC News Interactive, wants to do less video. Wait, what? But video is Web 10.0, and we all need to have video everywhere.

Right?

Wrong.

Clifton correctly argues that the BBC needs to do better video and strive for quality over quantity. Viewers want video that compliments stories.

Instead I see countless examples of journalism sites adding videos (and blogs and podcast and etc) just so they can say, “look we are cutting edge! We have all that!”

Well, it’s all poor journalism. Viewers expect high quality, and they expect your video to enhance your site, not just simply sit there.

Clifton said it best:

“What irritates the hell out of people is if they click a story which says ‘Britain buys 100 new tanks for the war in Afghanistan’ they then click on the video and it’s just a bloke standing in Whitehall saying ‘they’re going to buy 100 new tanks for the war in Afghanistan’. The viewer could say ‘you’ve wasted my time’.

“We have done a lot of that. We have put up hundreds of pieces of video on the news site and too often they have replicated what the story has already said.

“We should think more about what that page does in the round and come up with a piece of video that absolutely complements the text… we should do less video but be much more focused on how it works and give it a higher profile where it can work alongside the story.”

I encourage all of you to consider adding new media to your sites, but do it in a journalistically sound manner. Don’t just add something for the sake of adding it. Add it because it enhances your viewers experience.

We take photos for stories to add another layer or story telling. Good photos do something that written text cannot. Good video will do something that neither written text nor still photography can do.