I have some lessons from ONA 08 over at BeatBlogging.Org (version 2.0 nonetheless), and I wanted to highlight the supply and demand part of the post:

This is an issue facing journalism on the Web and not just beat bloggers. Right now, there is simply more supply of written content than there is of demand for it from advertisers. This means low CPMs for written content. It also means that text-only beat bloggers need to get a lot of page views to make a decent amount of revenue.

On the other hand, there isn’t enough supply of video content on the Web to meet advertisers demands. Advertisers love video ads and pre-roll. They want to stick it on your content, but are having trouble finding enough content.

I’m not suggesting that everyone jump to doing video, but diversifying content can help boost revenue. This could be a once-a-week podcast or vodcast with a few ads in it. It could mean shooting some video for your beat blog. But realize that video content can get a much higher ad rate than printed content can.

News organizations need to diversify their content. This means more audio, more video, more multimedia and — yes — less written content. Now, none of this matters if our multimedia content has terrible SEO and exist within ghettos.

CNN.com understands how to get people to watch lots of video. CNN.com automatically plays a new, related clip after a clip is finished. Users can build custom playlists and watch hours of video — and ads.

Most news organizations, however, allow video and other multimedia content to exist within arbitrary ghettos where that content is not connected to similar content. When a clip ends, the content stops. Related content is not linked together.

And the biggest crime of all: A lot of multimedia content on news Web sites is not properly indexed and searchable. That my friends is one of the worst ideas ever. Search is the key to content distribution.

News organizations need to address this supply and demand issue. Trust me, redundant, non-local news is not in demand. And it’s probably not that in demand by users either.

The real question is why he stuck around so long.

If fact, I don’t understand why any star print columnist or beat reporter doesn’t just start his or her own Web site. The Dallas Cowboys Blog for The Dallas Morning news can get hundreds of thousands of page views in one day. And that’s without a really good beat blog that really harnesses the power of the Web and social networking.

Imagine the possibilities. More on that in a minute.

Mariotti threw a few bombs on his way out, including about how he believes that newspapers are dying and how the future is on the Web. He is absolutely correct, however.

First, let’s look at Mariotti’s claim that newspapers are dying. Vin Crosbie believes more than half of today’s 1,439 daily newspapers in the U.S. won’t exist by the end of the next decade. In fact, the Sun-Times is a prime candidate to not be around much longer.

The Sun-Times Media Group was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. That doesn’t happen for being too good. It happens when a stock falls below the minimum trading value.

Despite what many curmudgeons would like to believe and like to have you believe, newspapers are not in a cyclical down period. Many are about to be down for the count.

For a sports columnist like Mariotti, there is little incentive to stay in print. He can make more money in other mediums that have less turmoil.

Many of the best sports writers like Rick Reilly are being bought up by ESPN (for $3 million a year), Yahoo!, CBS Sportsline and other Web sites. Before the Web, print — especially newspapers– was just about the only place for a star columnist to work.

Because of the monopolies that newspapers had, columnists were at the mercy of newspapers. That has flipped with the Web. Now anyone can be their own publisher and become successful like Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.

I’m sure Mariotti was well paid by newspaper standards, but those standards aren’t very high (and just a fraction of Reilly’s new salary). Frankly, the standards of most newspaper Web sites aren’t very high either, which is one major reason why Mariotti left the Sun-Times:

To showcase your work … you need a stellar Web site and if a newspaper doesn’t have that, you can’t be stuck in the 20th century with your old newspaper.

If I were Mariotti, I’d start my own Web site and post my work there. Yes, he could go work for ESPN full time like many of his former print colleagues have, but then you are at the mercy of ESPN, which is notorious for being overbearing and controlling. Or he could join an online-only sports site.

But why bother? If I were Mariotti, I’d focus on building my own brand with my own Web site and social networking presence. With the right technical help, he could have a kick-ass WordPress installation, where he can publish his latest thoughts about whatever, whenever. He could also embed video clips, build interactive features, have a weekly podcast, interact with users and do all sorts of things that he couldn’t do at the Sun-Times.

Plus, his Web presence would be very 21st century, unlike the Sun-Times. If you’re a columnist, imagine a site that has all of your posts tagged, so that users can quickly and easily discover content. One of the most frustrating aspects of newspaper Web sites is the disarray that is their archives.

And most newspaper Web sites are unsearchable. So many page views are lost because of these technical deficiencies that a basic, free WordPress install doesn’t have.

I’d also start a Twitter account and begin building a fan base with strong user interaction. I would, of course, interact with users on my beat blog as well. Then I’d look into other social networking opportunities.

This is what Mariotti and any sports writer needs to get started: a laptop with a Web cam for video columns, a smart phone, a beat blog (WordPress is a great option), Google Apps for mail and word processing, a Twitter account and Viddler/YouTube and Seesmic accounts to put that Web cam to use.

He probably already has a laptop and smart phone. The Web technology I listed is all free. The only things that will cost money are the domain name (about $10 a year), hosting (might only be hundreds a year) and probably some technical and consulting help to set this all up.

Mariotti, if you’re reading this, start a beat blog. Don’t wait.

We have already seen a lot of top sports writing talent leave for ESPN.com, Yahoo! Sports, CBS Sportsline and others in the past year. I think the exodus of sports writing talent from traditional print publications is just beginning, because not only can big-name sports writers leave for online publications, but they can also now easily and cheaply start their own Web sites.

It’s depressing.

It feels like my girlfriend broke up with me and took my dog with her. Yes, I’m talking about The Wall Street Journal’s assessment of the failure of LoudounExtra.com. Maybe failure is a little harsh, but according to Rob Curley, his sites in Lawrence, Kan. got better traffic than LoudounExtra.com.

For those keeping score, Lawrence has about 80,000 residents, while Loudoun County has about 270,000 residents. And it’s not that LoudounExtra.com is a complete failure, it’s just that it’s not what it could have been or what was expected of it when it launched (it probably has lost a bit of money too).

And of course Curley and his team have left for Las Vegas, which doesn’t give me a lot of faith that LoudounExtra will be getting much better anytime soon. All the Web talent and vision are gone now — so, who is going to innovate on their forthcoming hyperlocal ventures?

To be fair, LoudounExtra is a site with a lot of information, databases and stories. It does cover Loudoun County better than the Post could have ever dreamed of before. But the site doesn’t have a lot of the user-generated content features that were envisioned when the project was announced, and it never really engaged the community.

Simply put: the return on investment wasn’t very good, and there was a hell of an investment in this site. There appears to be a fundamental divide between the Post itself and Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, and that may have been a large part of why this site is failing (and why the Post may not be able to do hyperlocal properly):

Though LoudounExtra.com seemed to promise an ideal combination of innovation and marketing muscle, it has failed to benefit from the reach of Washingtonpost.com. Mr. Curley says whenever a big story breaks involving Loudoun County, the Post typically publishes it on Washingtonpost.com without a link to LoudounExtra. That deprives LoudounExtra of potential traffic. Nor does the Washingtonpost’s own dedicated Loudoun County page send visitors directly to its online sibling. In September, when Time Warner Inc.’s AOL unit announced it was moving its headquarters from Dulles, Va., to New York, the Post linked to the story on LoudounExtra.com for a couple hours before moving the story back to its own site. That window of promotion fueled the Loudoun site’s best traffic day to date, Mr. Curley says.

The Post couldn’t even link to LoudounExtra.com? That’s absurd. The Post site doesn’t interact well with LoudounExtra.com either (there is a separate Loudoun County page at washingtonpost.com that is a hold over from before LoudounExtra.com, which steals traffic from the hyperlocal project).

The mere act of linking to LoudounExtra.com with every story about Loudoun that was posted at washingtonpost.com would have brought in huge amounts of traffic to the fledgling hyperlocal project. It’s called free marketing. It’s also called synergy.

This may be a symptom of a larger problem at the Post — namely the divide between WPNI and the Post. WPNI is in Virginia, while the Post is in D.C. Obviously, that makes combing cultures into a unified newsroom (ala The New York Times) very difficult.

The future of news is a unified operation with the Web (and mobile) taking a lead roll. Currently, the majority of staff resources are still at the print destination in D.C. The Washington City paper had a scathing article about the huge rift between the two operations:

The geographic separation takes its toll on the Post in two ways. It causes frequent communication breakdowns whose remedies invariably involve costly investments in training and outreach, and it creates overlapping functions in which both the print and online operations assign reporters to the same beats. The result is waste, a luxury that no newspaper, including the Post, can afford in this era of slumping print circulation and advertising.

Other newspapers have begun to realize that the idea of separate newsrooms makes little sense. It’s a 1990s-era anachronism when people thought that the Web product would be a rehash of the print product with some Web exclusives filled in. Now people realize that news operations have to be platform agnostic — from the publisher on down to every reporter:

Other papers, meanwhile, have abandoned the Post’s separate-but-unequal model. A year ago, the Los Angeles Times integrated its news and Web functions after an internal report called the paper “Web-stupid.” The New York Times began combining its Web-paper operations in August 2005 and accelerated the process when it moved to a new building last spring. “It’s very much a two-way street,” says Jonathan Landman, the Times’ deputy managing editor and top editorial voice on the Web site.

It doesn’t sound like the Post will be rethinking its separate staffs model, but it will have to rethink how it does hyperlocal if it wants to be successful in that arena. It is going to need to dedicate more reporters to the areas it wants to cover, require its reporters to live in the local areas they are covering at a hyperlocal level, build up a grass roots following, allow for much greater user interaction (allow your local assets to improve your project and become invested in it) and, finally, the Post may have to reconsider its county model altogether.

The D.C. region is largely comprised of transplants like me who have little history in the area. I still consider Ohio my home and probably will be out of D.C. in under five years. D.C. is a very poor area to try to establish a local project, ala small-town Kansas.

But I do think hyperlocal projects can succeed. How about a project dedicated to politics and the political elite/junkies in D.C.? How about a site dedicated to the Redskins? Those are areas the Post could really clean up in.

I do not have high hopes for FairfaxExtra (the second hyperlocal site from the Post has coming this summer), unless the model is drastically changed. We’ll know soon enough if the Post is mixing things up with hyperlocal.

Curley, on the other hand, will probably find Vegas a much better place for his innovative brand of journalism. Honestly, it was probably a good move for his sanity, happiness and career. He told me he is going to work harder than ever in Vegas to make successful products, and I think he will. It sounds like he has gotten a lot of inspiration from what transpired at the Post.

In a year or two the dust will finally settle on the Post’s hyperlocal efforts, and maybe they will be successful with some tweaks and hard work. Or maybe WSJ will write an even more negative piece about the Post’s efforts.

Don’t assume that my post from yesterday means that I rarely watch video on the Web.

I watch a lot of video online, with sites like Hulu.com and YouTube.com geting the vast majority of my time. I also enjoy niche sites like SouthParkStudios.com.

Outside of CNN.com, I almost never watch journalism-related video on the Web. I suspect I’m not alone either.

Video is just one tool in our reporting bag these days. Newspapers should be wary of putting too much time and resources into video. Instead, newspapers should concentrate on making sure their Web sites are strong Web products in general — not just print products shoved online with some multimedia mixed in.

And maybe one reason I don’t watch a lot of newspaper video is that most of it’s not very good. I’d rather read good written content than watch poor video content.

These are going to be some dangerous confessions from a new media guy.

While we should try to make cool, new features, we should always keep an eye on what is useful. Written content is immensely useful. It can be viewed in a variety of formats, even mobile, and when written well, it delivers a form of immediacy that video, Flash and other online content cannot.

I suspect my preference for written content is not that far off of what the average Internet user feels either. It helps explain why 57 million Americans read blogs in 2006, while 50 million Americans still buy daily newspapers.

Now, when I say written content, I mean much more than just standard journalism writing with an inverted pyramid (And a lot, lot less feature ledes. Please?!?). I want writing with immediacy, impact and focus. A lot of what appears in newspapers does not fit that description.

One reason I love tech blogs like TechCrunch, Silicon Alley Insider and Engadget so much is that they are not encumbered by the legacy of journalism. Their posts are written with an amazing sense of immediacy, and their headlines are clear and concise. I can get in and out within a matter of seconds.

That’s news I can use in a fiber optic world. I’m a RSS loving, Google Reader using, on the go kind of guy. Do you really think I have time to watch video news reports?

Speaking of video, I can’t remember the last time I watched a newspaper video clip. Why watch a video at NYTimes.com when I can watch one at CNN.com? Although, often I just want to read CNN’s stories, instead of watching their long videos.

Even short videos take time to watch. So, they better be good and often they aren’t. With a written story I can get the gist of the story in under 10 seconds. I could never say the same about video content.

I confess, I’m not a big fan of Flash. I think some newspapers have hitched their futures to this technology for unclear reason. At it’s worst, Flash makes a user experience worse by causing users to wait for some slow loading content that has serious accessibility issues that adds nothing to a Web site. At it’s best, Flash be can an incredible, interactive info graphic or database-driven story.

Most uses fall in between. The problem with using too much Flash is that it is a resource hog. I keep around an old computer so I can do usability testing. Yes, I have a Core 2 Duo Macbook, but that’s not what the average Internet user has, and we should always keep that in mind.

Flash has an uncanny way of tripping up my older computer, especially when I have multiple tabs open on my browser. There is also another rule of thumb that newspapers have a hard time following: If it can be done with a standards-based solution, it should be.

Far too many times I see Flash used on a newspaper site, when the same could be done with CSS or javascript.

Now this doesn’t mean there isn’t Flash content I like, because there is some that really gets me going. There is also Web video I like from news organizations. But it is to say that written content is still king.

This doesn’t mean we can keep writing like we have for decades in newspapers. It means we have to rethink written content on the Web. Many of the top blogs have the right idea.

The Internet and the Web are here to stay, but how we connect with both will be changing.

The personal computer isn’t going anywhere, but people are increasingly accessing the Internet and the Web via mobile devices like smartphones. The iPhone in particular was a watershed moment for the mobile Web because of the power and grace of its user interface and how easy the phone makes using the Web.

Unlike virtually every other mobile device, the iPhone has a full Web browser, Safari 3. It can display Web content like it was meant to be displayed. Despite lacking 3G support (a much faster data network than what the iPhone uses — EDGE), the iPhone’s Web browser is used a lot more than the browser on the typical smartphone.

In fact Google says it gets 50 times more search requests from iPhones than from any other mobile handset. Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations, told the Financial Times that mobile Internet searches may overtake fixed Internet searches within the next few years. People want access to information from anywhere, not just when they are seated at a desk.

Apple has caused other manufactures to step up their game in order to compete with the iPhone. Samsung has several phones that will operate on their new TouchWiz UI. The interface looks quite similar to the iPhones, and many other handset markers are looking to mimic Apple’s groundbreaking touchscreen UI.

Mozilla announced late last year that a mobile version of Firefox is in development. A mobile version of Firefox, with its strong standards support and extensibility, might be another watershed moment for the mobile Web. Imagine having access to a full version of the best Web browser available wherever you go.
Te iPhone should improve considerably this year when Apple releases its second-generation iPhone with 3G. The EDGE network that the iPhone connects to is alright for surfing Web pages, reading news, checking mail, etc, but it’s not very good for consuming rich multimedia content. 3G isn’t as fast as the broadband that many people enjoy at home, but it still has a good deal of bandwidth (and other data networks will overtake 3G within the coming years).

That’s bandwidth that can support streaming video, audio slideshows and other bandwidth-intensive task. This is the kind of content that newspapers should already have on their Web sites. All those newspapers struggling to get the Web, are really positioning themselves to fall further and further behind.

And, frankly, many of those papers will probably die within the next 5-10 years. I’m continually amazed by how many newspapers have bad Web products that are merely poorly recreated versions of their print products. A lot of publishers, editors and journalists are saying that they finally get the Web and why it’s important for the future for journalism.

The time for getting the Web was 10 years ago. Now you need to get the Web and the mobile Web. People want to consume content on the go.

Why do I need to be by a computer to get access to the information I want? I shouldn’t, and I no longer have to be tethered to a computer to have access to the Web.

Waiting to meet someone at Starbucks? Why not surf over to NYTimes.com and read a few stories? (NYTimes.com looks great on the iPhone by the way. Many Web sites do not because they were not properly coded using Web standards) Maybe you’ve been out all day, away from your computer and you want to be updated with the latest going on in the world.

That’s the power of the mobile Web. A lot of journalists will say, “why would I need the Web when I’m away from my computer?” These are the same kinds of people who have willfully kept newspapers in the dark ages and have allowed for the catastrophic erosion of a cherished institution.

If you don’t get the Web, you sure as hell won’t get the mobile Web. But then again, the kinds of people who don’t get the Web and why it should be our focus are the kinds of people who should be unemployed.

We have to go where consumers are going. They are going mobile.

I’ll meet you there.

I remarked to my girlfriend last night how useless the wire stories about Super Tuesday were each time I saw a new one pop up.

Every time a candidate won a state, a new story was released. Reading over the wire stories made me realize how inadequate the printed word is for election coverage on a day like Super Tuesday.

Why read over a bunch of text that is incapable of conveying the whole picture? Well, I won’t anymore when organizations like CNN, New York Times and others build compelling online features that do the job much better.

The NY Times feature blows my mind with the shear amount of data it has and how beautifully and elegantly it is displayed.

It’s one thing to know what percentage of the vote a candidate gets in each state or how many delegates each candidate gets, but it’s another thing entirely to be able to break the results down by county.

Missouri perfectly illustrates the power of this feature. Hillary Clinton won 119 of 115 counties in Missouri and still lost the state. Barack Obama won the state largely because he won 63 percent of St. Louis County and 55 percent of Jackson County — home to St. Louis and Kansas City, respectively.

I’ve been impressed with CNN’s election coverage for awhile too. It has given me a much better birds-eye view of the election than any written story. And, frankly, why do I need to read a new story every time a candidate wins a state, when I can look at a map showing me exact vote totals and, more importantly, delegate counts.

I also really like how CNN tracks the amount of money each candidate has raised, spent and has on hand. Money is very important to politics, and I’m glad someone is tracking where the money is.

Combine these two features with a political fact-checking site like Politifact and you have the perfect election coverage, which is infinitely better than a newspaper could ever deliver in print.

I love the written word. I’m a writer myself, but some stories are just told better in on other formats. Elections are one of those stories.

I just told you how journalism is not a good career choice for most of you, but I know many of you are going to attempt to change journalism and I salute you.

Therefor, I would be remiss if I didn’t offer you advice on how to get a good journalism job and how to be prepared for the changing landscape of journalism. What do you need? Lots of skills and a willingness to learn even more skills.

This is advice, however, is only for those j-school students willing to take risks and who aren’t afraid of trying something new — the j-school students who are willing to try to make a difference in the industry during these difficult times.

This is for the few j-school students willing to do whatever it takes to make a difference. This is for the students who don’t believe that only writing is “real journalism.” This is for the students who want to make journalism that matters in the formats and mediums that matters to the people. We serve the people — not ourselves.

This is what you need to do to prepare yourself for modern-day journalism and to be able to land a job in today’s ultra-competitive market place (nothing breeds competition like scarcity):

You must have an online presence – It’s the 21st-century, are you honestly still sending packets of clips out to employers? And if employers want you to snail male them clips, do you honestly want to work for them? The answer to both is, of course, no.

When I built my personal site a few years ago, I set out to develop a place to showcase my work and talents. I knew I needed a digital résumé. A paper résumé might be fine for a print reporter, but for an online journalist it’s laughable.

Want my contact info? Go to my Web site. Want to view my work? Go to my Web site. Want to find out about me? Go to my Web site.

Business cards, printed résumés and biographies are so last century. I wanted to land a job in the 21st century, so I had to figure out a21st century way of marketing myself.

Professor Mindy McAdams tells students to make sure they have a respectable online presence. The key there is respectable. Don’t waste your time with an ugly, mistake-filled Web site that isn’t compatible on a lots of browsers and has very little content on it. Remember, your personal Web site is a reflection of you.

Even if you want to be “just a reporter” you need an online presence. Why? Because many jobs will ask you if you have a blog or personal Web site.

They won’t be impressed with “no.” Some employers might not care if you have online skills or an online presence (there are still many employers out there like this), but many do care deeply and won’t hire a technophobe. They certainly won’t hire a technophobe not in this job market and with the demands modern journalism.

Luckily for all of you, I already wrote a post on how to make a personal Web site: Build a digital résumé and make yourself stand out. If all j-students left school with the ability to launch a personal Web site and blog, journalism would be infused each year with new talent and skills. Journalism needs people with technical skills and a firm understanding of the Web.

But don’t wait on starting that personal Web site. Meranda Watling says to just do it.

You must have at least some online and multimedia skills — If you have a lot of online and multimedia skills and the flexibility and willingness to learn new things, not only am I confident that you can make a difference, but I’m also confident you would be extremely employable should you choose to leave journalism (and you might have to one day whether you want to or not).

Last year I made a summer reading list for j-school students who wanted to learn new media skills. It covers HTML, CSS, audio, video, Flash, blogs, etc. The list is for learning technical skills, but you’ll also want some more general online skills. Do you belong to social networks? You should at least try a few out.

Try them all and see which ones you like. I guarantee you won’t like them all, but I’m confident you’ll like a few. Understanding social networking is very important for journalists moving forward. The No. 1 thing that most news sites lack is the kind of conversation and community participation that blogs and social networks foment.

If you look at the way most new sites integrate with social networks, it’s a very me-first strategy. News companies are only interested in finding ways of getting users to push news content onto social networks, but it doesn’t really serve the readers. Instead of asking our audience to seek us, we should go out and seek our audience.

The problem, however, is that the majority of people working at and running news sites don’t get social networking and its power. Make it your mission to get social networking. The Web is going to be increasingly social in the years to come.

And I would never, ever consider hiring a new grad who didn’t use social networks. Almost all college kids do, and if you don’t, it would be a huge red flag. Huge.

It’s not too late to learn — It’s never too late to learn skills, whether you are a last semester senior staring at graduation in four months or a 65-year-old reporter. If you’re younger than a college senior, you have no excuse for not learning lots of online and multimedia skills.

If your j-school doesn’t teach the skills you need to succeed — and they probably don’t — make it your mission to learn on your own. Most j-schools will teach you how to be a good interviewer and reporter. Now you just need to learn how to translate those skills into new mediums.

And frankly, it’s not that hard. Sign up for a Lynda.com account to learn lots of online skills. A years worth of great training videos, tutorials and work sheets is less than a lot of you pay for a semesters worth of books you’ll barely touch.

Finally, forget all that talk about how journalists only produce content while we leave the business and marketing to others. You need to understand business and marketing, because you are in the business of marketing yourself.

Go out and grab yourself the computer, online and multimedia skills you need to compete in the 21st century. Then market the hell out of yourself with a great personal Web site and a strong presence on social networks in the blogosphere.

What are you waiting for? Do it.