Category Archives: State of journalism

Not offending people is not an option for newspapers

“Not offending people is not a business model. You have to have something to say” – Dan Froomkin, PDF 2009.

Inoffensive, “objective” journalism isn’t good journalism, it’s good business. At least it was before the Web. In a world where printing presses — and by extension, competition — are scarce, it’s good business to try to appeal to the largest audience possible. A good way to appeal to the largest mass possible is to try not offending anyone.

This naturally leads to journalism that tries to triangulate both sides and sit somewhere in between. Not every story or issue has two correct sides. Good journalism is about trying to find the truth, but the truth can be offensive to people who don’t want to hear it.

Writing a story about climate change? Get a scientist on the record talking about how it is happening, then go find someone to say that it is not happening or that man isn’t causing it. Then make no determination of which side has more evidence or what the preponderance of science supports.

Instead, take the inoffensive — often ineffectual — middle ground. Let readers “decide” based on the “evidence” presented. This will usually lead to many stories and issues appearing as if there is consensus. Offense minimized.

Then came the Internet, and smart people didn’t want this limp reporting anymore. They wanted experienced and knowledgeable journalists to help them make sense of it all. People want journalists to help them find the truth, no matter how offensive that truth may be to some.

This has become a problem for newspapers. The notion of modern objectivity doesn’t serve journalism, it serves making money. At least it did.

After the Web took off, niche publications, blogs, social media, etc began to flourish. Suddenly it was OK to offend people. Suddenly it was OK to tell people what they didn’t want to hear.

Why? The barriers to entry for starting a Web site or blog are incredibly low. Building a printing press took a large investment. A good way to pay if off — and rack in monster profits — was to try to appeal to as large of an audience as possible. But starting a blog is free and building a professional Web site is a fraction of the cost of a printing press (let alone operating and running said press).

Now appealing to everyone doesn’t make business sense. At least, it’s not a requirement. Suddenly it makes sense to appeal to niches. The nicheification of content is at the core of the Web. People have diverse interests, and the Web allows those interests to flourish.

Want to write about just science stories? Start a blog for free, and you’ll probably find more success by not trying to be in the middle ground all the time. If you’re knowledgeable about a topic, people want to hear what you know and think.

I don’t envision a future where we see giant 1,000 person newsrooms anytime soon. But if newspapers want to survive, they’ll have to consider creating passionate journalism again. They’ll have to consider offending people.

They key to offending people is to be right. I can respect someone who challenges my beliefs when they are right. After all, that’s a main way my beliefs change over time.

To bring this back to the lede, newspapers need more Dan Froomkins, not less. Dan was not afraid to offend people, and at one point, he probably challenged everyone’s views. He was willing to tell the truth and be fair and honest.

His brand of objectivity wasn’t to give both sides to every story, but for him to try his best to find the truth. And that can often be “offensive.” But that’s also what made Dan so popular and respected.

People are turning to blogs and new media outlets precisely because they find much of traditional media too afraid to tell the truth. But if newspapers accept that objectivity isn’t about telling all sides to every story, but rather about finding the truth, I believe they’ll find better success moving forward on the Web.

Transparency comes before objectivity

This is a comment I left on today’s Poynter Chat on teaching social media:

The notion of “objectivity” has been a big part of the downfall of traditional journalism. It turned into passionless, he said-she said nonsense. And people are smart enough to know that no one is truly objective. That’s why transparency trumps all.

The ideal would be to be transparent about who you are, what you do and what you believe and then try to go about objectively reporting. That’s what I strive to do.

The altar of objectivity has led traditional journalism down an unfortunate road of giving both sides of every issue equal time. That’s not objective. That’s just perverse.

Being objective should be the quest for finding truth, not for equivocating on every issue.

But no matter how we define objectivity, transparency should be the key to what modern journalism is about. It’s at the heart of the social Web.

On reinvesting profits

Microsoft gets a lot of grief for many of the things that it does, but we should at least give Microsoft credit for being willing to reinvest profits into research and development.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he is willing to invest up to $11 billion in search over the next five years. I have a much better idea for Ballmer. Instead of investing in the future, why doesn’t Microsoft consider buying yesterday’s companies — with yesterday’s business models — instead?

That model has been a rousing success for the newspaper industry. The supposed high-minded, civic-minded Fourth Estate has been mostly about profits the last few decades (with some exceptions), while supposed money-grubbing companies like Microsoft take nothing for granted.

Imagine that, a company with robust profits using those profits to invest in the future? Get out. Unheard of.

Beware of that crazy Internet (and bad advice from professors)

“When I was in college, a professor said, ‘Beware of the Internet.’ Everyone and anyone is a ‘journalist’ or ‘writer’ because of it. Six years later, I owe the Internet a big hug, because before my memoir Rattled! there was Storked! on glamour.com. But I do consider myself a real writer, and my stories are genuine.”

That quote comes from well-known blogger Christine Coppa. She has been making a living off of her blog and now has a book out based on her blog. She’s very fortunate that she didn’t listen to her professor.

I can’t help but wonder how many aspiring journalists received sage advice like that only a few years ago. Imagine how much that has impacted the journalism industry? Worse still, many journalism professors still don’t get the power of the Internet and openly believe it will be (or has been) the downfall of journalism.

That’s a shame. So what if everyone is a journalist because of the Internet? As we are seeing right now in Iran, the revolution will be tweeted.

Bloggers like Andrew Sullivan are helping to make sense of it all. In fact, the mainstream media has been woefully inadequate when it comes to covering Iran and the recent election. Thank God for Twitter, blogging and social media.

When everyone becomes a journalist, we’ll be a more active, engaged and informed citizenry. When everyone is a journalist, corruption will find it tough to incubate; tyranny will have no place to hide.

There is still a place for professional journalists. Citizens can help report what they experience in their lives, but journalists can still put together the trend and analysis pieces. Professionals can also curate citizen content.

The Internet is a win-win for everyone. Well, accept the corrupt, the despotic, the tyrannically, the unethical.

It’s clear, however, that students should avoid the Internet at their own peril.

Thoughts on charging for news (and succeeding)

A group of newspaper execs met this week to discuss the best ways to collude; I mean “support and preserve the traditions of newsgathering that will serve the American public.”

Rather than comment on these legally-challenged meetings, I’m here to offer some suggestions for charging for news. Let’s assume that newspaper leaders have committed to charging for news. Here are my suggestions for what to do and what to avoid:

  1. You can’t charge for something that has been free for years without drastically improving it — The idea of putting existing journalism content that has been free for years behind a pay wall is laughable at best. More realistically, it’s suicidal. People simply will not find value in it. After all, it was free for years. What’s changed now? Your balance sheets? People don’t care about that. Unless you are suddenly going to hire all those reporters that you laid off back, don’t even dream about charging for existing content. In fact, most newspapers offer an inferior product today than they did five years ago.
  2. People won’t pay for the police blotter – Just because you spend time “reporting” on a subject, doesn’t mean people will pay for it. Consider carefully what you want to charge for and not charge for. I’m not saying to give up the police blotter, I’m just saying to not even dream about charging for it.
  3. It’s much easier to charge for a new product or feature that was never freely available — It’s much easier to convince someone of the value of a product or feature that was never available before. It’s new. It can be “premium.” If the feature rocks and adds value to people’s lives, it might just work. This is where news orgs need to concentrate their efforts on. “What can be create new that people will find valuable?” That’s what newspaper execs should have really been discussing.
  4. Even if a news org develops products & content worth paying for, it still needs plenty of good, free content – A uniform pay wall with all content behind it is suicide. How will a news org find new users? It won’t. Any news org hoping to survive and thrive long term needs a strategy that caters to current users while also cultivating new users. Even though most people coming from search engines, Twitter, aggregators, etc aren’t loyal users, they all offer the ability to convert random users into loyal users. Even pay wall-hero The Wall Street Journal has a mix of free and premium content. Same with ESPN.com. There must be a free-premium model at work. And the free content should satisfy 90 percent of users.
  5. Premium products for premium users — You want to develop premium products for premium users. Premium users are dedicated and loyal. They check a Web site several times a day, not a month. Not all users are created equal. Steve Yelvington points out that news orgs offer a tale of two audiences — one casual, one dedicated. We want free products for the casual, while also developing premium features, products, access and even user interfaces for the dedicated.
  6. A pay wall won’t protect print — People who left aren’t coming back to print. This is the worst possible reason for a pay wall, and yet some news orgs are hoping that a pay wall will save print. MediaNews president Jody Lodovic said, ”The whole idea is to stop the erosion from print to online and encourage people to become print subscribers.” Many people simply don’t want to be print subscribers anymore, especially to a daily newspaper. Everyday that goes by another person from a previous generation dies, while several more who will live their whole lives with the Internet are born. I’m 24; I’ve spent most of my life with the Internet. I’m not going back.
  7. Think outside the box — I’m not a fan of charging for content. Most newspapers have never done this. We charged for a product — a printed newspaper. People also paid for delivery of said product. I already pay for Internet access and a computer (printing and distribution in the digital world). I’m not also paying for basic content. Instead, newspapers should concentrate on charging for what they always have — platforms and products. That’s really what a newspaper is. Ideas like the Times Reader are a step in the right direction (premium user interfaces and experiences for premium users). Mobile apps present another avenue to charge with. Why not charge for access and community? That’s one thing newspapers should do well.

Getting people to pay for a product isn’t rocket science. It usually starts with understanding what people are willing to pay for.

    Job application for CEO of Tribune

    Dear Sam Zell,

    I recently noticed that your company has filled for bankruptcy protection. I think I can help.

    Can I turn things around? No, but I think I can run things less poorly. You and your management team managed to sink Tribune into bankruptcy in less than two years.

    Those are skills far beyond what I offer. But I offer my skills for less. If you’re going to fail, why not fail cheaply?

    I’m confident that I can run any number of businesses into the ground — whether they be newspapers or financial institutions like AIG. Unlike, however, business executives who claim that they deserve their high salaries and bonuses even when they perform poorly, because “it’s the only way to keep ‘top talent,’” I can deliver the same caliber of results, without having a drastically overinflated view of my self worth.

    I know I’m not worth millions a year in salary and bonuses, especially when my company is filing for bankruptcy or asking for a federal bailout. I understand that in a real capitalistic society, you get paid based on your performance, not based on what you the little elf in your heads tells you you’re worth.

    Would I have foreseen the wisdom of an over-leveraged $8.2 billion buyout for a newspaper company in 2007? No, that level of incompetence is usually reserved for the most incompetent incompetents. I cannot go toe-to-toe with you or the new Tribune executive team.

    But I can do it for less. If you’re having financial problems, why not consider somebody just as unlikely to turn around your sinking ship, but who is willing to do it for less? I’ll accept a salary half of what the average top Tribune executive makes and will only accept a bonus if the company does well and isn’t receiving a federal bailout or in bankruptcy.

    I also guarantee that I have better ideas how to turn your company around.

    To illustrate why I believe I’d make a better CEO for Tribune, I’ve put together this handy pros and cons list.

    Pros of Sam Zell:

    Cons of Sam Zell:

    • Doesn’t have the first clue how to run a newspaper company (at least one with $13 billion in debt).
    • Can convince people to help him purchase companies that have little future for a lot of debt.
    • Once told employees that “Everyone likes pussy. It’s un-American not to like pussy.” He’s 67-years old. It was creepy.

    Pros of Patrick Thornton:

    Cons of Patrick Thornton:

    • Doesn’t have the first clue on how to run a newspaper company as poorly as Tribune.
    • Tweets too much.

    Sam, even if you insist on keeping yourself on staff, why not get rid of all those overpaid motherfucker executives at Tribune and hire me to do their collective jobs. What’s the worst that could happen? Tribune goes bankrupt?

    News orgs have forgotten that people really love photos

    15 billion photos have now been uploaded to Facebook:

    The latest numbers the company has shared with us include 15 billion photos uploaded in total, an average of 220 million new pictures posted each week, and at its busiest, 550,000 images being loaded each second.

    Somehow news organizations lost sight of the fact that people love photos.

    Instead they poured money and resources into newer, trendier fads, while neglecting a market they should be owning. What makes this even more inexcusable is how much money news organizations — especially newspapers — spend on cameras. Why give a photographer $10,000-20,000 worth of equipment for just a few shots to appear in the newspaper and online?

    Still today most news organizations are only uploading a few photos from events that they take hundreds or even thousands of photos at. Still today news organizations are passing up events like high school proms, even though they are fantastic community and brand building events (and they will generate a ton of traffic and time spent). Still today most news organizations don’t allow users to upload photos to their Web sites.

    Instead, people are uploading billions of photos to Facebook, Flickr, TwitPic and other sites. Imagine if those photos (and those eyeballs) were instead on news orgs’ Web sites? Imagine if news orgs tried to aggressively sell photos? Imagine if news orgs sold user-submitted photos and developed a profit-sharing model?

    I hear all this talk about videos and databases and iPhone apps and Web ninjas, when news organizations could be making a killing by just utilizing something they have done well for decades: photos. Why have we lost sight of the fact that people love photos?

    A few suggestions:

    • If you attend a community event like a high school football game and take hundreds of photos (or thousands), upload hundreds of photos.
    • Make photos big and beautiful. If my high school can do it, any news organization can too.
    • Make buying photos incredibly easy. Again, if my high school can do it, any news organization can too. Check out their awesome photo buying system. Just click on the photos you want (with add to basket button under each photo), go to check out and select the sizes and quantities you want. Really simple.
    • Allow users to upload photos. This is especially big for community events like parades, festivals, proms, sporting events, etc. Just check out how many people are at each of these events with digital cameras. We want their photos.
    • Forget about captioning every photo. It’s a huge time sink that often delivers zero value (how many original captions could one sporting event really have?). Stop thinking about captions for community events and start thinking about tags.

    This is how it’s done (executive bonus style)

    “Bankrupt newspaper companies are following the lead of AIG and Lehman Brothers and rewarding executives with large bonuses. The Tribune Co. is trying to pay out $13 million in bonuses, the Journal Registers Co. is trying to pay $2 million, and Philadelphia Newspapers has already given hundreds of thousands in bonuses to its corporate officers.”

    Ganett CEO Craig Douchebow racked in $3.1 million for his outstanding performance in 2008. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that the newspaper industry is rolling in the money!

    I have to hand it to newspaper companies. Since we can longer reward success (due to a lack thereof) we might as well make lemonade out of lemons and reward failure.

    It’s a morale booster of sorts. Think about it: What would make you want to work harder and innovate more after your furlough/pay cut than hearing that your fearless leaders are getting bonuses? Sure you might be struggling to pay the mortage on your $40,000 salary, but think about how executives will now be struggling to pay for maintanence on their yachts?

    This is an unorthodox strategy for sure, but I have full confidence that giving bonuses to executives at failing companies is the best path forward.

    Are newspapers just guessing on what to do?

    Kent Fischer told me that about a year ago newsroom managers at The Dallas Morning News approached reporters looking for volunteers to learn to shoot video.

    The managers sold these reporters on the idea of learning video by telling them that it would increase job security. You know, video is the future and all of that, and the Morning News has been through several rounds of layoffs.

    Of course, a year later all of those journalists were laid off. Turns out video wasn’t the future.

    One of the most depressing things I have seen with newspapers and other mainstream news orgs is how newsroom managers often follow the latest fads. They hear buzzwords like podcasting, hyperlocal, blogging, RSS, video, databases, link journalism, etc and think they have to jump on those bandwagons. Of course, they often don’t get how to fit in these new technologies or journalism techniques with what they are already doing.

    Or, more importantly, if said technology even makes sense for their newsroom. And the truth is, each newsroom is unique. I can’t make blanket recommendations.

    It seems like a lot of newsroom managers are trying to attempt the latest trends and stay up on the latest buzzwords for job security. But there is a large difference between learning about the latest techniques to try to make a better journalism product (and thus something more desirable to people and advertisers) versus  jumping onto the latest buzzword in an attempt to prove one’s worth.

    I’m not trying to say that it’s 100 percent clear on what newspapers should be doing. But guessing isn’t it. Newspapers need a plan of attack.

    And that means, if they’re going to invest money in training journalists to do video, they should stick with that commitment. Better yet, they should think carefully before committing time and resources to something like video. Video is not something you just guess at.

    Either you want to make video a big part of your journalism operation or you don’t. And yes, experimentation is the path to salvation. But good experimentation requires a lot of research and forethought. Guessing is just following the latest buzzwords and trends.

    I think a large part of the problem is that there are newsroom managers who don’t use or understand the technologies they are recommending. Hence why they are so prone to follow buzzwords and trends. Imagine newsroom managers from a decade ago not reading newspapers.

    Unfathomable right? Then why would someone seriously take suggestions on blogging from someone who doesn’t read blogs (or better yet, have one)?

    When I added podcasts to BeatBlogging.Org, I already understood the technology, and I had a reason for wanting to add that kind of content to the site. Podcasts allow for us to deliver a product that works really well on mobile devices like iPods and smartphones. Plus, I wanted a format that would allow in-depth interviews to shine.

    Since I had experience with podcasting, I was able to quickly and cheaply start up a podcasting series for the site. Same thing when I added screencastserbium-doped fiber amplifier. We knew we needed a better tool for training people and screencasting just made sense.

    Is screencasting the latest or sexiest buzzword? No, but it is a great training tool for the Web. So, I started a screencast series, and it has been quite successful.

    Neither the podcasts nor the screencasts were guesses, however. I had reasons for thinking that both might serve a niche for BeatBlogging.Org. More importantly, I understood the technology and how to deploy it.

    I just run a small non-profit Web site with a tiny budget. Certainly someone helping to run a newsroom with revenue in the millions should be as knowledgeable as me. Right?

    It’s time to reinvent the newspaper industry

    The Internet didn’t bring the newspaper industry down.

    Debt didn’t bring the newspaper industry down.

    Declining advertising rates didn’t bring the newspaper industry down.

    Complacency did.

    When an industry goes from so high to so slow, so fast, it’s ultimately because its leaders became complacent.

    They never thought that the monster profit margins would end. They never thought that diversification was important. Instead, they gleefully doubled down on print in recent years with ill-advised acquisitions.

    After all, why diversify away from newspapers when they make so much money?

    When you look at industries that ultimately fail, it’s because their leaders never thought a new technology or a new way of producing a product could come along. They thought they would be able to do the same thing forever. That short-sighted thinking is ultimately doomed to fail.

    After both radio and TV tried to supplant newspapers for news delivery, you would have thought news industry leaders would have been on notice. Radio news was always destined to be a supplement, not the main event, but it still changed how some people consumed news. TV news has permanently stolen eyeballs and advertisers from newspapers, and yet newspapers were caught flat-footed when the Web hit.

    The irony is that the Internet and Web should have helped newspapers make even more money. They are both vastly superior information content dissemination vehicles than newspaper trucks. The cost of making a good Web site is a fraction of that of a newspaper and is falling over time, while the cost of printing and distributing a newspaper is rising.

    Even when America was enthralled by America Online, it didn’t become apparent to enough in the newspaper industry that this was the future. Nimble, non-complacent industries would have loved that millions of homes were getting Internet. Here was a much cheaper and easier to scale venue for content distribution.

    Right off the bat, executives should have seen that the Internet and Web could do a few things exponentially better. Classifieds are one of the first thing that comes to mind. Rather than make a searchable, easy-to-use classified system online, newspapers shoveled non-Web friendly newspaper classifieds onto the Web. These weren’t searchable, didn’t contain links and photos were an afterthought.

    In fact, they were such shovelware that they even carried the same space restrictions over from print onto the Web. Space in print is limited. The whole print model was built around scarcity.

    There is no scarcity on the Internet. There never will be.

    So, when people started seeing ads on the Web advertising homes with a frpl, instead of fireplace, it’s not hard to see why when Craigslist hit, the gig was up. Craigslist is not a technological wonder, its UI isn’t very good and it feels quite dated.

    But it at least didn’t have ridiculous print abbreviations. And it was searchable, it allowed for links, it had photos and it was easy to use. Years later, it still looks and feels much the same as it did back in the 1990s, and yet Craigslist is better than virtually any newspaper classified system on the Web.

    Complacency gave away to defeatism. After Craigslist caught on, newspapers began to give up on classifieds, thinking that we’ll never get them back. But we can get them back.

    Nothing is lost forever. That’s the whole point of technological change. The newspaper industry has to reinvent itself.

    Apple went from the brink of bankruptcy to current darling. The Internet, and products that utilize the Internet, are a big part of what has allowed Apple to turn things around. Apple recognized that it had to change from a computer company into much more.

    Even Apple’s name went from Apple Computers to just Apple. Executives at Apple realized that they were no longer just a computer company; they are so much more. They had to be so much more — it was the only way to survive.

    Newspaper companies have to become so much more than newspaper companies. This means completely reinventing corporate culture, mission, products, etc. Yes, this means making products that don’t have anything to do with the paper part of newspapers.

    Most newspaper products on the Web were an awful lot like newspaper products in print (classifieds anyone?). That’s the problem. If newspapers want to reinvent, it means a lot more than just finding new ways to disseminate old content.  Reinvention means thinking of completely new products that tap into separate markets.

    That’s why a computer maker gets into the portable music space. That’s why a computer maker starts selling movies. That’s how a computer maker becomes a dominant player in the cell phone space.

    If Apple executives insisted on only being a computer company, Apple would have gone bankrupt. Instead, when the chips were down, they decided to start taking major risks and those risk paid off. Newspaper companies have to start taking real risks, and they have to be captained by those willing to take risks.

    Gazette Communications has decided to take real risksonline casino. They are separating content from products. That’s crazy right?

    Sometimes crazy is what the doctor ordered. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer went online only. What’s an online-only newspaper anyway? It’s a newspaper that is reinventing itself. It’s a newspaper that wants to at least have a chance of being around in 10 years.

    Defeatism must stop. The newspaper industry’s obituary has not be written. We can change the course of the future if we cast aside defeatism and complacency.

    Even small steps — in the grand scheme of things — can make a big difference. Newspapers don’t have to concede the classified space. They can carve out their own niche and bring in revenue.

    It just won’t be easy. To get classifieds back, we have to be non-complacent. We have to work hard — harder than Craigslist for sure. We have to build a system that is categorically superior to Craigslist.

    Within a decade or two, I would be shocked if Craigslist was still the dominant online classified site. At this rate, I would also be shocked if a newspaper company overtook Craigslist. Rather, I’m sure, some non-complacent, nimble Web start-up will come along and reinvent classifieds, just as Craigslist had done decades before. Again, however, the future has not yet been written.

    We cannot change the complacency of the past, but we can change the course of the future. We must make a pact never to be complacent again. New technologies will be rapidly forming and changing lives in the coming years.

    If the remnants of the newspaper industry want to survive and ultimately thrive, we have embrace new technology and get out of front of trends, not behind them. We have to embrace change. And, yes, that means we have to employ people in all ranks who are not married to the past and are willing to be a part of a revolution.

    And so, the newspaper industry eventually won’t have that much to do with paper. Like Apple with computers, newspapers will still have print products (and they should, after all there is a market for them), but newspapers will be so much more than papers. They’ll produce products that are wildly different from newspapers.

    That’s the only path forward.