Time, Slate and others have begun using Twitter to post rapid-fire updates from the campaign trail and at primaries and caucuses.
And if they can do it, why can’t you? You can.
Twitter is easy. Signing up takes seconds. All you have to know how to do is type 140 characters or less and hit submit.
It works with many smart phones, and it can help take coverage to a whole new level. Don’t believe me? Check out this NY Times article about how Twitter is changing political campaign coverage.
Here is the thing: what have you got to lose by trying microblogging or beat blogging? Nothing. In fact, you stand to gain a lot.
To Josh Tyrangiel, the managing editor of Time.com, “the business thinking is the same as almost all of my business thinking: Why not?” The more exposure to Time.com’s material, the better, and no one can afford to be choosy about the setting. So Ms. Cox also has a Flickr feed for her photographs from the campaign trail that Mr. Tyrangiel is happy to promote. Ultimately, he said, it is a hopeless fight.
“If you tell people how to consume their content, they will ignore you,” he said, a truism that experience had taught new-media executives. “Let people do what they want to do and try to be in their circle of choice.”
Let that last quote marinate for a bit. That’s how you succeed in the 21st century.
A lot of people disagree with me, but I’ll say it again: you can’t teach culture.
Sure, you can learn culture, but it cannot be taught. Learning culture is an affirmative step, it’s something an interested person does because he or she wants to. Being taught something is a passive step. Someone is teaching you something they have taken the time to immerse themselves in.
Sure you can be taught about culture. You know what it’s all about, but it’s not something you are apart of or really understand. When you learn culture, you immerse yourself in it — you become part of it.
I’m more than happy to provide multimedia and online training for fellow journalists, but there are a few things I must insist on. First, you have to Internet at your home. There is no excuse not to (not having it shows a fundamental lack of curiosity).
Second, you must use some Web applications. No, you don’t have to write a blog and use YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail (the most Web 2.0 e-mail out there), Facebook, Pownce, LinkedIn, etc, etc, etc. But it would be helpful if you have at least tried a few of them.
I get that not everyone will like social networks, but you should at least try a few before you write them on. Give it the old college try. I guarantee you’ll like at least a few of them (I don’t like all of them. MySpace, I’m looking at you).
It would be nice if you read blogs and understood their power. Blogs are rapidly changing our industry. You need to get them.
I want someone who is at least curious about the Web. No amount of me trying to hammer into you Web skills (audio slideshows, HTML, CSS, Flash, setting up a blog, etc) will really sink in if you aren’t curious about the Web.
Because once you act on that curiosity you’ll start to become part of the culture. You’ll want to learn new Web skills not because you want to save your job, but because you want to. You’ll just want to.
That’s what culture is all about. If the only reason you want to learn something is for your job, you’ll never really be apart of the culture or really understand. Can you imagine reporters only learning to write for their jobs?
Of course not. Reporters love to write. That’s why they wanted to be reporters.
I will be honest with you, until I started this blog, I barely understood the concept myself. I was shocked by how many people Mastering Multimedia has reached in such a short amount of time. But what really opened my eyes was how people are finding this blog. RSS feeds, tags, Goggle Reader, blog rolls, and links from other social networks. It’s about sharing. It’s about a conversation. It’s about Web 2.0.
I now understand. I have been a producer of web content for years on a creaky CMS that only partially takes advantage of the Web 2.0 tools available on any WordPress blog. I just didn’t see the big picture of why this is important for all of us in the newspaper industry to grasp. If I didn’t get it, then how will my non-blogging co-workers, who are already apprehensive about change, ever understand?
If you haven’t already, my advice is to get an education in Web 2.0. Start a blog. Feed it. Share it. Our very survival as an industry will be predicated on how well we interface with this expanding social networking universe.
Go out there and shock yourself. Sign up today for a blog. There are bunch of easy to use and free options, with WordPress and Blogger being two of the best.
I moved up my RSS icon to the top of my right-hand column two days ago, and it has made a big difference in my subscriptions.
On the first day after moving it up a few spots, I received nine new RSS readers. Obviously, I had been doing a poor job before of letting people know I have RSS feeds.
I rearranged a lot of my right-hand column because I felt like some of my important content (like RSS) wasn’t being displayed prominently enough, and I removed some content that I felt just detracted from the rest of my blog.
The point being is that it’s not enough to offer something because people won’t use it if it’s hard for to find.
At least one news outlet is trying to get it, even if it is a broadcast outlet.
Newspapers and other journalism organizations should pay attention to how ABC News has formed a partnership with Facebook to cover the 2008 presidential election. What makes this partnership work is Facebook’s social network. And why try to emulate their social network when you can harness the power of it?
If you don’t know what I’m talking about (and if you work for a newspaper you may not) ABC News and Facebook have teamed up to create a US Politics section of Facebook that also operates like a Facebook application. Users can vote on and discuss issues that affect America, and users can voice how they feel about the candidates and their positions. Users can also form their own debate groups and discuss whatever they want.
Facebook’s social network, however, helps make this feature popular and work. Every day my news field is filled with opinions of my friends. And I signed up for the application because I saw my friends voting and leaving their opinions.
I had to join the action. One of my favorite features of the application is the Soundboard, where users can leave what they are thinking about the campaigns right now. Facebook picks the five best comments at any given time and displays them on the US Politics home page.
This feature really shined this past Saturday during the New Hampshire primary debates. Facebook users were constantly updating their Soundboards, taking part in debates of their own and taking part in polls as ABC News and Facebook posted new polls during the debate.
It made the debate a lot more personal, and it was a conversation. It’s exactly what Web 2.0 is all about, and newspapers need to hop on the Web 2.0 bandwagon ASAP. ABC News, however, couldn’t escape some of their anachronisms.
One of the most annoying parts of a lot of debate coverage is the pundits, especially when they are just delivering spin. Some of ABC’s “esteemed” political journalists interviewed the candidates’ campaigns after the debates to see how the campaigns thought their men and woman did. Needless to say they all thought their candidates won.
Thanks ABC News. Facebook eliminates the need for that bloviating. I can see what voters think in real time. I can see who they think did well and if it will affect their opinions. I can see if the debates matter.
I thought CNN’s pundits on the night of the Iowa Caucuses were very helpful, but many pundits often aren’t (ahem, ABC). If you’re going to partner with a social network to essentially give you the world’s biggest and most-opinionated focus group, then don’t give us worthless pundits. It’s good to have political pundits who can help us navigate the process, but we don’t need “journalists” asking Barack Obama’s camp if they thought he did well.
That’s not journalism. I’d much rather see what the people have to say, and in many ways what happened on Facebook was much more interesting than what happened on ABC. The debates were boring and the coverage was bad, but Facebook was a fun, enlightening experience.
Many newspapers haven’t even allowed users to comment on their stories yet or put up blogs on their Web sites. They fear having conversations with their readers. They are held back by out-dated thought processes (and bad leaders).
They would never partner with a social network or even create one for their community. Because social networking is not “journalism.” But that’s exactly why so many papers will close down in the next 5-10 years.
They don’t get it. Instead of writing the same boring, old political story where a reporter interviews three people in town about how they feel about the election and calls it journalism, newspapers could allow every one of their readers to be a part of the process. They could take part in polls, discussions and form debate groups — just like Facebook.
Imagine the power that something like this could have over local elections and politics, which the majority of Americans don’t participate in. Every newspaper should do what ABC News did the next time a local election rolls around.
The quickest way to start a conversation right now is to start adding blogs to your Web site and allow users to comment on EVERY item on your site. Don’t fear the people. We do not know better than they do.
Then you can either form your own social network (this would probably only work at a forward thinking, technologically innovative company) or you could partner with an existing social network. Anyone can create groups on Facebook. Why not create a group for local elections right now for your town?
The point is, we can deliver better coverage and better content if we harness the power of social networks and the Web. Imagine combining quality traditional journalism with new media journalism with database journalism with social networking.
That would be news we could use.
And it should he happening right now, not tomorrow.
Whether you are a new media maven or an ink-stained wretch, you should make it your mission to learn something new this year.
For most journalists — young or old — it’s a good time to finally learn a skill that will translate to the new millennium. Solid reporting skills and a command of the English language are musts, but now you need more. But, some skills require a lot more monetary and time investments than others.
Everyone wants to learn Flash. Don’t learn it if you are new to new media or Web design/development. The program costs $699 and has a steep learning curve.
If you haven’t already taken the time to learn HTML and CSS well, why would you think learning Flash would be a good idea? It’s not, but there are several easier and cheaper things you can learn (and if you are doing this on your own, without help from your work, cheap is good). Flash is a great option for designers looking to learn a good Web skill, but it does have a steep learning curve to get good at the program — it can take years to master.
Below you’ll find my recommendations for print journalists with little or no new media skills. In a few days, I’ll have recommendations for new media journalists.
Make it your goal to learn at least one of these skills in 2008:
1. Photojournalism — Who doesn’t own a digital camera? I’ve had one for six years, and just about all of us have at least one. If you don’t have one, get one.
Most likely, however, you have a digital camera and just haven’t used it for much more than taking pictures at parties and of family — mostly semi-posed and posed shots. It’s time to start using your digital camera for photo journalism. Take non-posed shots of everyday life, of nature, of your town or city.
If your camera allows you to adjust white balance, ISO, aperture and shutter speed, you need to start playing around with those features. It’s time to learn what each of those adjustments means for photography and how they can help make your photos better.
2. Audio — Every reporter worth his or her salt should have a digital recorder. Start recording every interview you have that goes over a few minutes (make sure your subject knows he or she is being interviewed if you do it over the phone). If the interview is good, and it makes for some good audio, edit the clips with Audacity (it’s free) and put it with your written story.
Mindy McAdams has a suggested low-cost audio package that won’t run you much more than $100. If you can get your work to get you a Marantz recorder like I have, go for it. It’s worth every penny.
3. Audio slideshows – If you have taken the time to learn photojournalism and audio, you should learn to put that content together in Soundslides. Find a subject and a story to film and then record your interviews and put it together.
4. HTML — Learning HTML is free — completely and utterly free. It is easy, and you should know it. All you need is a text editor and W3C Schools.
Forget CSS for now, which is what us designers and developers use to make Web pages, and learn HTML inside and out. It can be done within a few weeks. You may never need to know how to make a full-fledged Web page, but you should at least know how to Webify content, work well within a CMS and make some modifications to a blog.
Conclusion: Learn something new this year. All of the skills I have listed here could be realistically learned in one year, but you should at least try to learn one of these skills and become good at it.
The No. 1 reason newspapers have trouble making money off the Web is because owners, publishers and business staff members fundamentally don’t understand the Web.
Everyone is trying to force print paradigms onto a new medium. Well, guess what? They won’t work.
If you want to make money off the Web, you should look at successful Web companies: Facebook, Amazon, Google, eBay and, yes, Craigslist. They have completely different business models and ways of generating revenue than newspapers. Honestly, why are people trying to force print business models onto the Web?
Of course they’ll fail, and papers will have to lay off countless staff members because of falling revenue. What do you expect? Publishers, stop being so lazy and clueless.
And if you can’t get a clue, do the whole industry a favor and resign. Instead of trying to figure out how we can take the same advertisers and similar ads from the print edition, why don’t we think of new, innovative ways to make money off the Web?
We need a multi-pronged strategy to attract national advertisers, local advertisers and a whole new market of people who never thought of advertising before. There are three core advertisers newspapers need to attract on the Web:
National advertisers – We’ll still need them, and they’ll provide a nice source of revenue. There is no reason to turn away from them, but it is foolish to focus efforts on a few, big advertisers when there are so many more opportunities elsewhere.
Local advertisers – Newspapers traditionally haven’t done that well with local advertisers because rates are too high. We shouldn’t just be trying to sell ad space to advertisers, but rather we should also be trying to sell them other services. How about micro pages on our sites where advertisers can showcase their products, services, menus, etc? If we think outside of the box, we can make a lot more money, and offer our clients better services. It’s win-win.
The never-been-advertisers advertisers – Anyone can be an advertiser on the Web – anyone. So, why wouldn’t we look to attract these people? With ads selling for as little as $5 per day, newspapers could make a killing in the long tail. Sure, $5 doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is in the aggregate if we make advertising attractive to everyone. Garage sales, youth groups, high school clubs, sports teams, social gatherings, etc. Why not?
Let’s look at what innovative companies are doing to make money off the Web and how that could apply to newspapers:
Facebook – There is a lot of innovative advertising going on at Facebook, and newspapers should pay a lot more attention to this company. Of course, many journalists and staff members at papers have never even been to facebook.com. But that has to change.
Every newspaper should take the idea that Facebook has of selling people flyers. Facebook sells ads for as low as $5 a day based on either views or clicks. If someone wants to reach more people in a given day they can pay more. If they want to advertise for multiple days, they can pay more.
But the genius of this is that it sets ad rates so low that college students can afford them (and facebook users have noticed ads from their fellow students for awhile now). I have seen a lot of campus groups advertising on Facebook, probably to the detriment of a lot of campus newspapers. Here’s the thing: advertising on Facebook probably makes more sense than advertising in the student newspaper.
Ads in a student newspaper can often run for more than $100 for an average-sized ad. There is no guarantee that a lot of students will even see it, but for $5 you can purchase thousands of page impressions for your school’s network on Facebook.
A group could get aggressive and purchase $15 of ads per day for three days. It’s still a lot less than a newspaper ad, and it will be seen by a lot more people at a place (Facebook) that is exponentially more popular than the student newspaper.
But that’s not all. Facebook has other services that are attractive to local advertisers. Facebook allows people to purchase polls and set up their own pages for their businesses and organizations. It’s just another way Facebook gives advertisers a more enticing product.
In addition, Facebook leverages its social network by allowing people to target their advertising by age, gender, location, interests and more. It’s just a much better — and more forward-thinking — way to advertise.
Craigslist – Craigslist has this great idea that newspapers should have stolen years ago – free classified advertising. Wait, what? Free?
Yes, it’s a killer idea. Think about it. While people are viewing free classifieds, you can display banner ads, contextual text ads and ads from local advertisers that might interest people looking for a similar product. And, like Craigslist, you can charge companies for certain kinds of ads, like job listings.
By making classifieds free, it encourages a lot more people to use them, which is great. That gives us a bigger opportunity to sell ad space. But there is another way to make even more money off of classified ads…
eBay – EBay has figured out a myriad of ways to charge people for services. All of those services are cheap in the abstract, but can add up to a nice chunk of change for eBay.
Craigslist has very plain classified ads. The user interface is ugly, it’s hard to make products stand out, and, frankly, it’s just not that enjoyable. But it’s free, so who cares?
Well, eBay likes to charge people to get “themes” that make their listings look better and stand out more. Newspapers could have free classifieds that look bland, but if people wants to have a theme they can pay $0.10 or whatever to get a theme that will turn their boring listing into a full-fledged micro site with an eye catching layout. If they want their listing to have a picture next to it, instead of just text (like eBay offers) we can charge them $1.
If people want their listings to be “featured” we could charge them $10-20 (eBay sells a lot of these). A featured listing is a listing that will automatically appear at the top of any search for a particular topic.
If people are looking for Nintendo Wiis on eBay, they will always be greeted with the featured listings first, which makes those listings stand out more. EBay provides a great example of ways to charge people to get extra features, because eBay has a myriad of ways they “help” people sell their products better. Combine this with a lot of what Craigslist does, and newspapers could have a dynamite classified advertising system that would easily outpace Craigslist.
I have news for journalists, Craigslist isn’t that great of a site. It’s ugly, it has too many listings for a lot of searches (featured listings would help alleviate this), it has a lot of disturbing people on it looking for or selling illegal services and there are a lot of scams. But it’s free, fast and highly searchable. It’s infinitely better than the expensive and hard-to-search listings that newspapers tried to pawn off on us.
If newspapers came along and offered classifieds that looked good, were easier to search and had a lot of the features that eBay has, they could turn the tide against Craigslist. But no one will listen to this advice. I’m not sure why I am even offering it.
Google – The biggest revolution Google brought to advertising is that it made ads contextual. It tries to match ads with content in order to get a much higher click through rate, and it works.
Newspapers need to match ads better with content. It doesn’t matter how prominent you place an ad if it doesn’t make sense for the content. Would a story about tween shopping habits really be served well by Budweiser ads?
Newspapers should also consider using Google ads to help make money on certain sections of their sites, like classifieds.
Amazon – Amazon has spent a lot of money and resources on making recommendations to people. Amazon doesn’t wait for people to figure out what they want to buy — it recommends items that it thinks a user might want based on their previous purchases and browsing experience.
Why don’t newspapers take this concept and apply it to their content? Why make everyone view the same content that a bunch of old, white males find appealing? Why not have a Web site that gives users news based on their previous browsing experiences?
Yes, we want to give people the same main, core content, but most content in newspapers and on their Web sites is pretty subjective in where it gets placed. Outside of the top stories, we should let users read what they want to read. Amazon is a great place to start to see how to do it well.
But this means hiring major-league programmers. Papers are woefully understaffed when it comes to technology people. Unfortunately, not enough publishers and top editors have bought into their importance, nor do they know how to even hire technical talent.
The Washington Post does have a feature at the bottom of stories that shows other stories that people read who read the same original story as you, and it’s a good start. But they should do a lot more. The Post and other papers need to dynamically generate sections of their home pages with content for individual users based on their previous browsing experience.
When journalists, however, complain that the Web is killing journalism, I just laugh. Journalists are killing journalism with their inability to understand the Web or their willful ignorance of technology.
Many journalists pride themselves on being technophobes. These are the last people on Earth who are going to get the Web or make compelling products for the Web. If your paper is overrun with these people it will never turn itself around unless you get rid of them.
There is a lot of money to be made on the Web. Instead of thinking inside the box — or the print edition — we should look at what top Web companies are doing to generate revenue on the Web. Compelling (Web centric) products and forward-thinking (Web) advertising will help save a lot of newspapers and make them stronger.
Anything less will doom a lot of papers. But don’t say there is nothing we can do, because there is plenty. We just haven’t been trying very hard.
Am I fired? Whispering that two-syllable bugaboo can get you in a lot of hot water at many newspapers today, because Craigslist is “killing newspapers” by drying up the former newspaper cash cow of classified advertising.
Cry me a river.
Newspapers, you refused to give users what they wanted. You put no effort into your product, and you gave users an inferior product. You begged and pleaded for someone to come along and create a service like Craigslist.
And so Craig Newmark did, and it made millions of people very happy — except newspaper publishers who were far too slow to react (this seems to be a recurring theme). Newspapers resisted putting classifieds on their Web sites for years. Once they did, they put up non-standard, non-searchable abbreviations for words, which made the listings virtually useless.
Looking for a two-bedroom apartment with a fireplace? Well, you might find a “charming 2br apt with fpl,” or a “cozie 2bed apartment with a fp.” The people who took down classified advertising for the print edition used non-standard abbreviations, because there only goal was get all the words to fit. That’s fine for print, but terrible for online.
There are no space limitations for a Web site. Abbreviations don’t make sense, but newspapers never took the time to convert those abbreviations to real words. This made all of these listings unsearchable, and if something isn’t searchable on the Web, it is completely useless.
Enter Craigslist. It’s a searchable, database driven classified advertising Web site. It does everything that newspapers should have done, and it was founded precisely because there was a huge void in the market. It was not created to make money, but rather because there was nothing like it out there and people wanted a service like that.
Craigslist doesn’t even charge money to list an advertisement, nor does it have ads on the site. The site’s soul source of money comes from paid job ads in select markets and paid broker apartment ads in New York. Craigslist deserved to win over newspapers because it is a better product.
It was the only product that had users in mind. If newspapers cared about their Web users, Craigslist would have never been launched in 1999, which was long after Internet usage exploded in this country.
Fast forward to Dec. 19, 2007, and newspapers are still blaming Craigslist for their own institutional failings. One reader contacted me to tell me how Craigslist was removed from the lede of his story, because he was told he is not allowed to even mention Craigslist in writing.
Because, you know, Craigslist is the devil. What makes this even more egregious is that Craigslist was integral to his story — that’s why he mentioned the site. And now this young reporter finds himself in hot water with his very upset editor for making such a big faux pas.
He told me this experience makes him feel like his paper is “soft” and “that’s its journalism mission is compromised.” But this isn’t unique to him or his paper, because I hear this all the time from readers about their small and mid-sized daily newspapers. Honestly, where is the journalism these days?
There isn’t much journalism left and many younger journalists are leaving because of the appalling state of affairs of the industry. This episode shows the overwhelming hubris that many papers have blinded themselves with: “It’s only true if we print it!” and “People won’t find out about it if we don’t mention it!”
Right…
“This is why I’m hesitant to work for a paper again,” said another young reader about the Craigslist episode. “They are so screwed up.”
But we all know what is ailing most newspapers these days. “The business side is driving our editorial content,” the reporter who mentioned Craigslist told me.
Army-Navy 2007 has passed, and I’m going to share with you a few lessons learned from covering the big game.
Before reading this post, it’s probably a good idea to check out our Army-Navy coverage, if you haven’t already. I’ll start off with discussing what Stripes did in years past.
Usually, Stripes would send a photographer to the game and grab some photos and make a photo gallery. Stripes does not have any domestic sports writers, so my paper usually did not cover the game from a written standpoint. FYI, Stripes is only published overseas for U.S. troops and DOD members.
Stripes.com, however, gets about 2/3rds of its readers from the U.S. Thus, we have a different audience to cater to, and we should begin covering stories that matter to people stateside. A few months ago I brought up the idea of Stripes doing a special feature for the Army-Navy Game because it would be a great way to expand our audience, especially stateside.
Plus, Army-Navy is the kind of event Stripes should be covering in depth in the first place. I then began making a list of stories and angles I wanted to cover the game and events surrounding it from. This was my first year at Stripes, which is why I didn’t cover the game last year.
Goals:
To cover Army-Navy and everything surrounding it from a myriad of angles in several different formats. I wanted to tell the story of what this game meant to people, and how it is different than other college football games.
This was not going to just be a feature that could have been done in print. In fact, it was a Web-first feature, where content was taken from the feature and put into print later on.
Some things were left on the cutting room floor:
We didn’t do video (our cameras will not arrive until January or so), we didn’t make it out to West Point or Annapolis to interview students before the game and we didn’t have a commenting feature on the site (although we accepted e-mail comments that we put up if they were good).
Here is what made it:
We had seven written pieces (leading up to the game, on game day and day after stories), two audio slideshows, a big photo gallery with about 100 photos from the day, numerous other photos (from last years game, this years game and the press conference before it), comments from fans and others and additional audio. All of this was packaged together in a stand-alone site made with (X)HTML, CSS and Ajax.
How did it go?
For the most part, it went pretty well. It was more time consuming than normal because our Web staff was under staffed, and we were training two new people a few days before the game. I was the only one the editorial staff had at the time to code the feature and to do the audio editing, which meant for some really long hours. Plus, I was the lead writer for the feature because our Washington Bureau does not have a sports writer.
But the feature came off smoothly because I reused a lot of the code from a previous special feature I did. It gave me the basis for the page, while I had to change the look of it. I did have to write a bunch of new IDs and classes because this feature was much bigger and incorporated a lot more content.
The feature accomplished what I hoped it would — it covered the game and the pageantry from a variety of angles. Army-Navy is a lot more than just a football game. In fact, that is only part of it.
The audio slideshows were the perfect way to convey what the pep rallies were like at the Pentagon. No written text could do them justice. You just have to hear and see it, and the pep rallies are probably too fast to capture well with a video camera (there is a bit of running needed to keep up with those young academy members as they go through the halls of the Pentagon).
Why the Web?
This is the kind of story that isn’t possible to tell properly in print. I Twittered live from the game with my thoughts and observations on how the game was going. We put up updates as the game went along and had photos from the game on our special feature during the game.
We had a story about the pre-game festivities up at half time, and our recap was up shortly after the game. Later that night I added audio clips and photos to our story about the pre-game festivities.
Honestly, printing a recap a day after a football game happens is so 1980s. People want it immediately and they want lots and lots of photos. And much, much more.
You can’t cover an event like Army-Navy with just text and photos like a newspaper does. You need the multimedia content. And the ability to put more than 100 photos up about one event is something that the print will never be able to do.
What to differently?
This feature created a lot of buy in from the print staff. It was the first feature that I have led at Stripes (from not just an online perspective, but from a story and content one as well). A lot of print staffers are finally seeing what is possible online, and how we can do features on our Web site that really extend our brand and serve our readers better.
Plus, what’s good for Stripes.com is good for the print edition too.
We’ll be doing video next year and hopefully making trips out to both campuses a week or two before the game to get some more color from the students. It would also be nice to attend the pep rallies at both schools.
Allowing people to comment on stories, and a better way for people to send us comments, photos or other content would also make this feature better. It could use some more interactivity.
But in the end, the purpose of this feature was to tell the story of Army-Navy as best we could, while informing people as deeply and quickly as possible.
This feature was for the fans.
P.S. Special thanks to the whole Stripes Washington Bureau for helping out the Web staff. You guys are incredibly busy covering the Pentagon and Capital Hill, but you still managed to get us photos of the pep rallies (Lisa Burgess and Jeff Schogol) and help give us great color coverage on game day (Leo Shane III). Bureau Chief Pat Dickson and his whole staff have been big supporters of the Web staff and stripes.com. You can’t create cool features without buy-in from print staffers.
It has been up for a few days now, but I finally have some time to discuss it a bit. We currently have four stories/features, an audio slide show, several photos and quotes from people at the academies and fans. Each day we’ll be adding more content, and Saturday will be a big day for content (multiple stories, multiple photo galleries, audio, maybe some audio slide shows, etc).
Tomorrow, for instance, we’ll be doing our second audio slide show. The first one was of the Navy cheerleaders and band running through the halls firing up their supporters, while they played music and chanted. Some important Navy people also briefly spoke after the Midshipmen came to their offices for special visits.
It’s one of those experiences that is very hard to describe. Imagine a pep ralley on steroids through the halls of the Pentagon. Imagine a pep rally where you got to taunt your emeny.
The Navy cheerleaders and band roamed several miles of Pentagon corridors, causing quite a ruckus. They made sure to let the Army people know that Navy has won the past five games.
The juxtaposition of such a serious building with the pageantry and color that is Army-Navy is almost comical, but it’s powerful nonetheless. It’s pretty amazing to see how into the game everyone is at the Pentagon. I thought about writing a story and putting some photos with that, but I realized that’s not the best way to tell this story.
Writing a story sure would have been easier, but you need to hear and see what happens this week in the Pentagon. I could tell you about it, but a lot of people wouldn’t believe me. Or they’d think it was minor.
It was really loud and peppy. It really reminded me of a high school pep rally. There was an innocence and fun to it that most college pep rallies can’t capture. And my ears still hurt from following Navy around for an hour.
Tomorrow, I get to it all over again, this time with Army.
This is one of those projects that pushes what I can do. I’ve written stories, taken photos, captured and edited audio, designed a site, created an audio slide show and coded (X)HTML, CSS and Ajax. That’s what online journalism is all about.
You got to do needs to be done. I don’t enjoy doing all those things equally, but it was the only way for this package to be done right. I really wished I could have done video, but that was out of my hands.
The special feature is important for my paper. We’re Star and Stripes. This is Army-Navy.
Newspapers and Web sites are two different mediums and should be treated as such.
Every newspapers has at least a few features, stories or other items that don’t translate well to the Web. If print products don’t make sense on the Web, don’t put them on the Web. We make Web products that clearly don’t make it into the print product, and the same logic applies the Web.
I know this sounds like blasphemy, but it’s not that difficult. The purpose of a Web site is not to make a digital version of the print product or to archive the print product. It’s purpose is to augment and expand print coverage. It’s purpose is to take your news brand and your talent and make a product that could stand on its own — a product that is centered around the medium it is on.
Most newspapers have at least a few features that serve one purpose: to take up space. I know people hate to admit this, but not every inch of editorial content is there to serve the reader. Some of it is to take up space and fit around ads.
The “man on the street” features are often prime offenders. You don’t need to put those features on the Web. There is no space to fill up.
In fact, the more you put on your Web site, the less the rest of your content stands out. The last thing any newspaper would want to do is drown out the quality stories and features with filler content. Most newspaper Web sites suffer from the Wall of News — something that is to be avoided at all costs.
The solution is simple: be judicious with what you put in your Web product, be willing to rework content to make it Web friendly and make Web exclusive content. Your two products don’t have to mirror each other in content. They should each do what they do best.
The best news organizations have a synergy between their products. In the coming years, the best newspapers will have in-depth analysis pieces in their print products, great feature stories and second-day pieces that look at news from a different angle, while the Web product will provide breaking news, databases, multimedia, two-way communication and other Web content that the Web excels at.
