Yearly Archives: 2013

02.15.13
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Print and digital: Managing the crocodile and the mammal separately

I used to be a big booster of print-digital editorial integration, but I’ve had a change of heart for a lot of reasons, reasons which I’ll outline more broadly at some point. When I first got into online journalism in the mid-90s, to be honest, I probably was suffering from a little of resource envy. The legacy business just had a lot more money, but it also made a lot more money. However, I’ve changed my mind. Simply put, I think that print and digital are two entirely different sets of products, and they often have different audiences.

I was just summarising a Pew report on successful revenue models for local newspapers for Knowledge Bridge, the site that I edit for the Media Development Investment Fund, and I found this eloquent and excellent metaphor for managing media disruption from former Harvard business professor Clark Gilbert who is now head of Deseret Management Corporation, owner of The Deseret News in Salt Lake City. He said:

In Gilbert’s theory of media evolution, the Deseret News print product is the crocodile, a prehistoric creature that survives today, albeit as a smaller animal. He believes the News, which has already shrunk significantly, is not doomed to extinction if properly managed. Deseret Digital Media is the mammal, the new life form designed to dominate the future. Armed with graphics, charts and a whiteboard that looks like it belongs in an advanced physics class, Gilbert speaks with the zeal of the cultural transition evangelist he has become. He argues that the path ahead does not involve merging the crocodile and mammal cultures, but maintaining them separately.

That makes a lot of sense. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it’s a sensible starting point. The next step, he admits, is the challenging part, which is to execute that strategy, which involves a lot of wrenching cultural change. However, he’s already got some success to show for his strategy. Digital revenue has grown on average 44 percent annually since 2010, and it now makes up 25 percent of the groups revenue. For those on the crocodile side of the equation, while print revenue dropped 5 percent in 2012, at least circulation numbers are headed in the right direction. Circulation is up 33 percent for the daily newspaper, and it’s up a stunning 90 percent for Sundays, due in large part to a new national edition.

It sounds like his excellent metaphor and smart strategy also is backed with some very good execution.

02.13.13
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Jonah Lehrer is a smug git who should never work in journalism again

Disgraced science writer Jonah Lehrer had a forum to explain himself and his serial violations of core ethical standards of journalism at a Knight Foundation event. He wants a second chance, but clearly, he hasn’t learned enough about himself to prevent him from plagiarising and fabricating again.

Jeff Bercovici of Forbes wrote that Lehrer blamed his downfall on arrogance and “carelessness matched with an ability to explain my carelessness away”. It’s clear that he’s still leaning on the crutch of self-perceived eloquence to shift the blame and make his case for professional forgiveness. Bercovici said:

Lehrer used several analogies to make his case. At one point, he likened himself to the FBI, which adopted new failsafes after a case involving fingerprint misidentification revealed systemic problems. He compared his new “standard operating procedures” — a phrase he must have used at least 10 times — to the “forcing functions” that software designers employ to guide users away from accidents.

Bercovici said that the difference between Lehrer and his analogies was one of intention. That’s too generous of a reading for what Lehrer is trying to do. The mea culpa was in fact just another indictment of Lehrer and another example his self-identified failing of trying to “explain (his) carelessness away”.

Let’s take the FBI analogy. In the case, FBI and Spanish authorities based on current criminal investigative standards thought they had matched a fingerprint. They hadn’t, and the standard for matching fingerprints had to be changed. If we take this analogy and apply it to Lehrer, then he is saying that the failing wasn’t his but rather a failing in the fact-checking process.   It’s a silver-tongued attempt to shift the blame from the failures he won’t own to the institutions he failed.

I don’t say this with any joy, but he needs some more sleepless nights bolt awake at 3 am before he accepts responsibility for what he’s done. He’s a long way from earning a second chance in journalism.

I just finished reading the rest of of Bercovici’s write-up of Lehrer’s talk. Apart from the headline above (I sadly have no copy editor to blame), I’ve been diplomatic up to this point, but now I’m just hopping mad. To put it bluntly, the smug, self-serving git deserves to never work in journalism again. During his talk, he considered why he had done it, and his answers show that arrogance is not a past failing but one very much still present. He blamed his ethical failings on his intelligence and his busyness. Please! This isn’t a direct quote from Lehrer in Bercovici’s piece, but he wrote that Lehrer went on to explain just how busy he was:

Another is just how in demand he was as a writer, speaker and all-around public intellectual. Why consider yesterday’s mistakes, he suggested, when you can contemplate tomorrow’s $20,000 speech?  ”For me, the busyness was a way to avoid the reckoning,” he said.

Considering that $20,000 was not a figure that he just pulled out of thin air but the honorarium that the Knight Foundation paid for his speech, to me, it shows he’s still trying to avoid the reckoning. He hasn’t learned his lesson, only that he thinks he can get away with what he’s done. Is any editor foolish or delusional enough to give this fantasist, self-publicist and narcissist a second chance? That the answer is yes worries me.

01.20.13
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Hacks-Hackers London: Coder-journalists or hybrid teams?

Finally, after months of being busy and missing Hacks/Hackers, I was thrilled to make it to last Wednesday’s instalment, which focused on Big Data in Financial Journalism. Congratulations to Jo Geary of The Guardian for organising another great event and Marianne Bouchart of Bloomberg for being such a great host. 

Emily Cadman, the head of interactive at the Financial Times, had a great presentation, along with her colleague and my friend, Martin Stabe. Emily also had one of the best provocations of the evening. She challenged the idea that journalists should become coders. Instead of journalists learning how to code, she suggested that news organisations should build hybrid teams of crack coders and journalists and editors who can work with and speak to coders. That being said, she said that if you do find a coder who values journalism and can think editorially, then do everything you can to hold onto them. For organisations the size of the Financial Times or even for small and medium-size papers part of a larger group, I couldn’t agree more.

It reminds me of my early days in digital journalism, back in the mid-90s. I was working at a regional news website on special projects. I spent about an hour editing an image. One of my graphic design colleagues said that while she appreciated my initiative that what took me an hour would have taken her minutes. I still have picked up a range of skills, but I have tried to focus on things where I can really add value and not areas where a specialist like a designer or a developer has spent as much time building their expertise in their work as I have in journalism. 

Cadman said that it took time and effort, and I’m sure a fair bit of astute application of political capital, to build her team. These types of hybrid teams don’t get created overnight. I am not familiar with the history of the team at the FT, but I know that Aron Pilhofer at the New York Times has spent years building up his team and figuring how the best composition and organisational positioning of his team. 

Data and visual journalism on a shoestring budget

The FT, the New York Times and the BBC have all developed hybrid teams like this, and I’m sure that for a lot of smaller news organisations having the resources for such a team seems simply unattainable especially for regional publishers in the UK or metro publishers in the US reeling under economic pressures. However, I would say two things, there is a lot that can be done at a group level, creating projects that can easily be replicated across markets and use local data. Good designers can create projects that can easily reflect the style of individual local sites. 

There is another way to develop great interactive data projects and that is to rely on the myriad of web services that exist. At journalism.co.uk’s last news:rewired conference Paul Rowland, deputy head of online content at Media Wales, had a great presentation on how Wales Online does data-driven visual journalism facing the same challenges that almost all regional publisher does in the UK. He outlined the challenges as:

• limited resources.
• a lack of cash.
• no dedicated developers.
• a hefty newspaper legacy.

He gave a rundown of his favourite services that should be in every digital editor’s toolkit no matter how small your organisation. As I always say when I work with news organisations and MDLF’s clients, interactive journalism is a lot like the iPhone. If there is a story-telling technique that you want to try, there’s a web app for that. 

I am more technical than most journalists but I’ve never learned how to code. Instead, I’ve always referred to myself as a “cut-and-paste” coder. I have always tried to keep on top of the kind of services that Rowland highlighted, and cutting-and-pasting an embed code from a third-party service is something that almost anyone who has embedded a YouTube video can do. 

Last Wednesday was really inspiring, and I think that Cadman showed that we’re not just breaking new ground in terms of using data in journalism, but we’re finally starting to get a handle on the best ways to organise the new news room that doesn’t look to everyone to be a jack-of-all trades but realises the role of specialisation and editors who have the digital and traditional experience to work with these kinds of digital teams.