Category Archives: Journalism

07.20.08
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What has prevented newspapers from being successful in the digital age?

In the daily flood of links that stream by me via RSS or Twitter, I noticed a post by Mark Schaver, the computer-assisted reporting director of the Louisville Kentucky Courier-Journal, in which he challenged the view of newspaper executives as short-sighted and out-of-touch. He pointed to a couple of projects in the US, Videotex and Knight-Ridder’s early investment in Netscape (then Mosaic). Mark said that calling news execs short-sighted and lacking in vision is overly simplistic.

What I am saying is that powerful economic forces, forces that are vastly more complicated than the simplistic drivel about newspaper curmudgeons and their resistance to change, are behind the news industry’s malaise today.

I agree with him. It is overly simplistic.

However, Videotex is a fine example of a disastrous technical project driven by the newspaper industry. The system was too slow, cost too much and didn’t provide anything that couldn’t be found easier in some other form. As often happens in the US, the FCC failed (or refused) to set a standard, hoping that the market would sort it out, and NTSC – the North American television standard – on which some of these projects were run provided too low of resolution to read text on televisions unlike the Ceefax system on the higher resolution PAL video standard in the UK. Maybe it was ahead of its time, and it’s definitely before my time. But I’ve never heard anyone in the industry hold up Videotex as an example of how to do a technical project.

Knight-Ridder was forward looking. They grasped a lot of the innovations early, partially because of their presence in San Jose. They even moved their headquarters from Miami to San Jose to plug into the new media revolution. In 1990, Robert Ingle, executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News wrote a memo that sounds eerily similar to the strategy that most newspapers are following now:

Give information to readers however they wanted it, integrate the print and online operations, and dream up new forms of advertising.

Knight-Ridder were part of the New Century Network, which was supposed to position the newspaper industry for the 21st Century. But there is a but. As BussinessWeek reported of the Network on its closure in 1998:

In a ballroom at the Newspaper Association of America convention in Chicago, a thousand bottles of champagne emblazoned with ”New Century Network: The Collective Intelligence of America’s Newspapers” awaited the hordes expected to come to toast the watershed new-media joint venture. When fewer than 100 people showed up, Chief Executive Lee de Boer made an abbreviated speech before retreating. ”They built a business and nobody came,” says David Morgan, president of the online ad agency Real Media Inc.

The reception was the first public humiliation for New Century Network, but only one in a series of blunders that culminated in the company’s abrupt shutdown on Mar. 10 (1998). Created in 1995 to unite newspapers against Microsoft Corp. and other competitors girding to woo electronically advertisers and readers, New Century Network came to embody everything that could go wrong when old-line newspapers converge with new media.

Knight-Ridder should have been leaders in how to do it right. As Matt Marshall wrote in 2006 as Knight-Ridder was on the eve of ceasing to exist:

The real irony of this situation is that for 15 years KRI was, by far, the most innovative newspaper company in the country, including its early experiments in teletext and having the first online newspaper (the Mercury News on AOL in the mid 90s).

But as Matt says in the title of his post, sometimes innovation is not enough. Newspapers continued to be newspapers, just online, as he and most of us have said over the last decade. It is proving for some newspapers a fatal mistake, although one that many of us saw years ago. And I’d agree with Matt that it’s easier to imagine a new entrant making the changes necessary to survive in this new world rather than an established newspaper.

As my friend and former colleague Alf Hermida points out from Readership Institute data, people do not have the same connection with their local newspaper websites that they do (or possibly did) with their local newspapers.

Obviously, something isn’t quite working when it comes to newspapers, ‘new’ media’ and innovation. As Mark Schaver is correct to point out, this is probably not for lack of trying at some newspapers. I know that a lot of journalists are exhausted and frustrated by reorganisations, restructurings and new strategies. I ask the following question not pretending that I have all of the answers but because I’d really like to hear people’s experience: What has prevented newspapers from being successful in the digital age?

Two years ago, Steve Yelvington wrote a post after hearing someone refer to “NCN nostalgia”, NCN being New Century Network. He said a few things that might speak to my question:

  • “But there was something else at work: technology was evolving faster than anyone’s business vision.”
  • “The notion that a we-tell-you news cartel would be relevant in a conversational universe may already be obsolete.”

The newspaper industry hasn’t adapted to the pace of news online or the pace of technological change. More than that, I think Steve is right that business vision hasn’t kept pace with technology. In the wake of the newspapers ‘are worth fighting for‘ discussion kicked off by Jessica DaSilva, Pulitzer winner John McQuaid said:

Meanwhile, the default attitude of newspaper management is still caution and probity. And if you point a gun to the head of caution and probity and say “innovate or die,” don’t expect wonderful things to happen. Instead, expect buzzwords.

Newspapers have only recently woken up that the real competitive threat isn’t from other newspapers or print media, not even from TV but from new digital businesses that might not have even existed a few years ago. Even though Robert Ingle and others saw the competitive threat 18 years ago, there has not been a sense of urgency until the last 18 to 24 months.

However, unlike John McQuaid, I would argue the over-cautious nature of journalism change is not just about boardroom conservatism. Print newsrooms are some of the most conservative places you’ll find. Journalists are paid sceptics (some might say cynics), and they approach their own business with that mix of scepticism and cynicism.

Some things have changed since Robert Ingle wrote his prescient memo on his Apple ][ in 1990. In the 1990s, tech was expensive, and I heard a lot of journalists argue that the internet was a money sink not a money maker. There was some truth to that, but very few disruptive technologies have a clear business model at the beginning. Did Google have a magical money-spinning idea with search? No, not until AdSense. But now, smart technology buys and clever use of open-source technologies can bring the cost of failure down to almost the petty cash level. Just look under the hood of Google’s massive data centres and you’ll find lots of commodity hardware lashed together with a lot of open-source technologies.

The newspaper industry also still seems to be thinking in industrial terms. Too many of the strategies I see are huge, heavy, expensive strategies instead of light-weight, nimble and low cost digital strategies. By the time the strategies are in place, the state of the art and, more importantly, audiences have already moved on. More importantly, you can attack the business model problem from two fronts. You can find new ways to make money, but you can also find new ways to make high-quality, compelling content with less money and not just with less staff.

Things are changing. A few newspaper companies are making the investments in flexible, scalable technology to prepare them for the future. They are getting serious about developing new income streams. They are freeing their content and taking it to where the audience is instead of forcing the audience to come to destination sites. But for some newspapers, it’s too late.

What would you do and what are you doing to ramp up the pace of change at your company?

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07.17.08
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Journalism That Matters: A Passion for Place video

Bill Densmore of the Media Giraffe Project dropped me a note about this.

What motivates people to launch a local online news community — a “placeblog” and what are their challenges, their successes, the opportunities, vision and passion which accompany this work?

With all of the talk about community, it’s worthwhile to hear from practitioners. It’s on the Internet Archive if you’d like to download it. The video is licenced under Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States by the “The Media Giraffe Project’s
Journalism That Matters initiative”. More of the work from the Giraffe Project can be found at Journalism that Matters.

07.14.08
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Imagining the future of newspapers, but only every other week

jeffnaablog

The Newspaper Association of America’s Imagining the Future of Newspapers blog is indicative of too many mainstream media blogs, and sadly, I’m with Jeff that it’s hardly surprising. When I first started off in online journalism, one of the hardest habits to break was the idea that I had only one deadline a day. It was dictated by the press run. The internet, in general, and blogs in particular also have only one deadline: Now.

There is a vibrant, global, living conversation about the future of newspapers online with a lot of voices, but this blog not only neglects most of those voices (They do have a link to a Newsbytes piece by Shawn Smith from my former employer Mlive.com.), but unfortunately, if you read this blog, you’d get the feeling that the conversation only happens a couple of times a month.

Unwittingly, they highlight one of the biggest problems with many mainstream media blogs: Frequency. Blogs and internet media in general operate at a speed that outpaces traditional media. Most in traditional media still seem stuck in a quaint yesteryear when life progressed at a much more sedate pace, publishing only occasionally. They sneer at broadcasters, bloggers and wire reporters as slaves to sensationalism and the rolling deadline.

Certainly, speed is a cruel task master, but speed does not automatically mean sensationalism. Pace can be an editorial tool, with rapid fire posts during times of fast, key developments punctuated by longer, more thoughtful posts. Indeed, why not have a blog with two writers, a speed demon keeping on top of rolling developments and another blogging journalist freed to consider and present a broader view and context?

I guess at the pace of Imagining the Future blog that they will finally reach the future of newspapers sometime in April 2040.

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07.07.08
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Transitions Online: Grzegorz Piechota, Gazeta Wyborcza

Gazeta Wyborcza is a national daily newspaper in Poland. First issue published in 1989, had 8 pages and was printed in black and white. Started by the Solidarity movement that discussed with the Communists how to transition to a democracy. The Communists had lots of newspapers, but the Solidarity movement had nothing, so they started Gazeta Wyborcza to provide information for the first elections. Decided to keep the newspaper going even after the elections. First office was in a kindergarten, so had editorial meetings in a playground sandpit.
Now has 6 million readers, selling 450k copies, per week. Has internet portal, 50 websites, 6m unique users. No longer just a newspaper – magazines, 24 radio stations, outdoor business (billboards).

Poland has changed in last 20 years, so going to tell some stories about the transitions. In 20 years, so many things happened, in media market, went through development of media that took the West 200 years. Same thing happening in Ukraine, but doing it in five years.

Polish media market by Grzegorz Piechota

GDP has grown 68% in 20 years, from 1990 to present. A lot of former Soviet countries had a strong slowdown after initial growth, but Poland kept growing, has about a third the wealth of Spain, so catching up. Ukraine as much more work to do.

In 1981, coal miners went on strike and the tanks came in and shot people. Now, protests involves voting. Press freedom in the 80s – censorship meant that stories about strikes were cut out. In more recent elections, they kept a percentage of the newspapers blank to illustrate the percentage of people who didn’t vote, trying to encourage voting. Published four versions of the paper with four headline slogans to encourage voting, as submitted by readers.

Shops have changed. In early 80s, shops were empty. Now there is a boom in shopping, and with it, massive amounts of billboard ads. Is some concern about how the massive billboards are hiding the bits of Warsaw that tourists might want to see, so published a guide to ‘what’s behind the hoardings’.

Need to look at the whole picture to see what are the chances and problems of digital media in your own country.

Post 1989, circulation is going down, not because of internet or TV, but because of a massive change in the situation. No one trusted newspapers in Communist times, so no one bought them after Communism collapsed. In magazines, massive growth. State used to control magazines, so when that opened up, suddenly there could be more variation in the magazine market. Newspaper market was overdeveloped, magazine market was underdeveloped.

Three points where something momentus happened: 1989, 1993, 2000.

Re-evaluation of media, 89-93. Trybuna Ludu, was official Communist paper, and it collapsed after the change, Gazeta became best-sellig daily, but real demand much lower than the artificial demand forced by adherence to Communism. Only a few state newspapers remained, and are not very popular now – mainly local dailies, and one business paper.

Lots of foreign publishing companies came to Poland to start newspapers, but they didn’t survive because they weren’t serving needs of the Polish. Market leaders were born just after the transition.

Was a crisis of readership after collapse of Communism. Got very high unemployment after transition, because companies closed that were hiring people under Communism but weren’t actually producing anything. Also psychological problems, a move from a non-compete environment, people were cheating the state if they could, and no one would complain about apathetic colleagues. After Communism, people did care, there was competition, so people didn’t buy newspapers so much because they had other things to worry about.

1994, first licenses for TV & Radio. Was three state-owned channels, and first open licences granted in ’94, and that really changed the market. Circulation of newspapers and magazines dropped dramatically.

1998, second waive of licences for TV & Radio, so there was more competition and that also affected the newspaper and magazine market negatively too.

Then in 2003, another change. In 94, a lot of new magazines launched and they stole readers from newspapers, but in 2003, new dailies stole readers from magazines.

Free dailies entered the market in 2004, and so circulation grew for newspapers and magazines. Could not have been launched earlier, because depend on advertising. Free newspapers are for rich countries.

Polish internet revolutions by Grzegorz Piechota

Then there were two internet revolutions. The bubble, 2000 – 2001, very bad because economy slowed down, and the internet slowed down, but it took off several years later in 2005.

98-93: Re-evalution of media
94-97: Invasion of mass media
97-02: Deathmatch
03-08: Newspaper innovations, silent digital revolution & marketing challenge

In 1994, Polish readers and media discovered mass media. Magazines and newspapers were very serious before then, even magazines for women were about how to find a better job. In 1994, invasion of foreign publishers with very down-market publication, nothing serious or difficult, they were telling a different stories: beautiful is better than ugly, funny better than serious, colour better than B&W, scandal is better than politics… a lot of readers stopped reading newspapers, especially women. Magazines grabbed those readers and newspapers didn’t recover for many years. But this type of content is now grabbed by digital media.

Another thing that happened was the first licences for commercial TV. They also discovered mass taste – was all about entertainment. Wasn’t about education or public mission, as state TV had been.

Advertising market developed. Newspapers had 17% of total ad market. When commercial TV arrives in a country, that’s the last moment to grow the market share of the newspapers and develop the ad market.

In 2006, newspapers had 13%, although net worth of total market is larger, so are getting more money, but share is not growing any more and it will not grow. When you look at Spain or Germany, newspapers have much larger share of advertising because they were developed before commercial TV changed the way that people spent time. If you can do something about it in your country, fight with commercial TV and do something so that it will be launched later!

In 1998, the competition strengthened. Second wave of national TV licences. More entertainment – Big Brother, people having sex in the bath, and it grabbed the attention from all the other media.

Growing competition for ads killed the market – was an ad price war between TV and the dailies. TV lowered their prices, and newspapers had to do something similar, so was losing share and losing revenue. TV broadcasts 24 hours, so the cheaper the ads are, the more they can run, which means they spend less on programming. More ads is cheap for TV. For newspapers, more ads means more pages, more paper, etc. So too much advertising is not good for newspapers.

So prices went down, competition stronger, so companies started to merge. Concentration of ownership became an issue. Four groups control 80% of market – Axel Springer (Germany), Mecom (UK), Verlagsgruppe Passau (Germany), Agora (only Polish group). After collapse of Communism, there was no money – no Polish companies had the money to buy the publishing companies. State gave companies to the journalists, but they had no money so they sold them to foreign companies. They then start merging titles. Got a very concentrated market, with a minor influence of Polish owned companies.

Polish media market by Grzegorz Piechota

But this isn’t necessarily bad – no evidence that German-owned newspapers force German-centrive views on Polish papers. Some evidence of German car reviews re-published from German sister titles, but no evidence of ideological views being forced on Polish press.

In 2003, newspapers still in an emergent market, and Polish papers responded with innovation. In Poland, no newspaper delivery, so you have to buy from a shop or stand. This is a valuable thing because 60k points of sale, which means can deliver any product to any place in Poland. So started to publish books, DVDs, games, maps, language courses. It’s a lot of money you can make on that. At one point 15% of revenue came from that.

At news stand you can decide if you want just a newspaper, or newspaper with a move, book, etc. It’s a cultural offer – you guide people to watch certain movies on TV, so can also guide them to buy a movie because you think it’s a good movie.

Other innovations, last five years have seen seven new national daily newspapers launched. When you read in US that newspaper industry is dying, well, it depends on the market, on how innovative is the industry. In Poland, very innovative. Lots of types of paper, from tabloid to quality to free dailies. So can still expand market and make money on it.

Because of competition, some newspapers co-operate with foriegn brands, so can buy translations of Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Times, and you can buy the NYT in English as an educational supplement to a Polish paper.

The silent digital revolution – not only internet. Digital TV. 20 years ago there were 3 channels, 10 years ago there were 7 channels, now you can connect to cable or satellite, and there is 150 Polish channels. Changes the way you spend time with TV. Means you cannot devote same amount of time to one channel. Say 10 years ago, 30% of people were watching one soap opera, now it’s not possible to have such a large percentage of the audience because there are so many soap operas. So TV cannot gather the audience to sell the ads; they promise the advertiser that they will show the ad to 2m people, so if they don’t get that on first showing they have to repeat the ad for free. Cannot broadcast more than 12 minutes of ads per hour, and they are full now so the money is going to newspapers.

Internet ad market share is 7%.

News TV is important – it is much more dangerous than internet to newspapers, because it gives more coverage to news than saw on TV before. Not watched by young people, but 40 – 80 yo, so newspaper readers. See connection between rise of newspapers and decline of readership. People wake up, turn on news channel automatically. People wait for every last bit of news, especially breaking news. TV gives a sense of urgency. People get excited.

Broadband is getting popular. 44% of Poles have access to the net, and 24% of total population have access to broadband. It’s very cheap, and it changes a lot, e.g. makes video possible.

When websites were launched in Poland, in 1995-ish, everyone thought the web was about information and the news. Between 2000 and now we discovered that it’s not about information and news, it could be about finding old schoolmates – 11m users from 38m national population a schoolmates website.

Community sites, worldwide and in Poland

This isn’t an area that newspapers have really been interested in, but now it’s a gold mine. The four students that launched the website, it was sold first for $4m, then for $100m.

In Poland, huge growth in community sites. Mobile services are emerging. Can surf with computer, connected via phone, with speed comparable to broadband. Mobile services becoming more sophisticated. Gazeta has a sport mobile portal, including news, movies, fantasy football, etc.

New mobile services educate customers, e.g. GPS service for cars, educates people in how to use technology. GPS navigation systems are getting ads, e.g. some petrol stations are paying to be shown on the map and for the GPS to not show the other petrol stations. So this services are competing with papers for ad revenue. No other real touch screen devices as iPod Touch and iPhone not really widely available.

Google estimate that 1 billion people have access to the net at least once a month. What do they do?

They look for information – 1 billion Google searches per day. Important factor.

They communicate – 80 billion emails and instant messages sent daily.

They buy/sell – EU e-commerce is worth 130 billion euros, not just shops but also online banking.

They join communities – 250m of users are on a social network of some sort.

They are looking for entertainment – 500 million YouTube playbacks per day.

How many hours people spent online, in any category, forecast by Google. Expect that community will grow from 1.5 hours today to 7 hours in 2012. Expect entertainment will grow from 2 hours to 6.5 hours per month.

See that happening in Poland. Entertainment is top, then news, both quite stable, but lifestyle information and communities are growing quickly. If, as a news company, all you do is provide news you will not be successful online. Other audiences beyond news are important because that’s here the growth is and they will quickly outstrip news.

50% of Polish internet users are younger than 25, so that affects the type of information that they will look for. Older readers are not so fast in adopting he internet.

It’s possible that in 20 years the current crop of under 25s will get interested in politics, but at the moment it doesn’t work. So the whole content of the newspaper is not good enough to be successful on he net because it only appeals to a niche audience.

So launched a lot of new websites with content that’s not at all suitable for the newspaper. Most of there content is for people under 25. Focused on soap operas designed for the net, or music listening. Have a joint venture with Bebo, so can blog, have profile, share, etc. Have a site like YouTube for funny movies. Have a site aimed at girls between 10 and 12. Site about fashion for 15 year olds. One for sports for boys at school, and separate one for sports aimed at girls. There are a lot of girls on the net and there haven’t been many websites for them.

If you compare Gazeta’s position on the net with other newspapers online, doesn’t compare at all. Gazeta trounces all the others. Has a specialised online news gathering team unrelated to the newspaper.

All the journalists had to work for the net, so total integration. It wasn’t growing as much as was needed. Noticed there are so many differences between newspaper or internet, we decided to break it apart. Integration didn’t work. Mistake – people think the internet is like newspaper but endless, but in fact internet behaves more like broadcast. 80% of your traffic comes to 20% of content. Have to produce very rich media content, with video, audio, photos. That’s what makes you successful. Because you need to make this content very rich, you have to put a lot of resources to do it in the right way.

Imagine you have a press conference. Years ago, they thought one good journalist could do everything, so can file braking news with a. laptop, then can write something longer, and later can investigate, so the story will develop. Then will also have camera so can do photography, and then maybe video too and can shoot the conference. That was the thinking at the time, but they found that whilst it could be done, the result was that the photos were not that good, the articles for the newspaper was poor because it was the same as the online article, so what’s the reason to publish it the next day? Don’t need breaking news during the event, but need them to think about what is behind it? Need more in depth thinking. Need journalist to stay around to ask questions. Expect him to think about the story, what’s really going on? What’s the angle?

Couldn’t find a way to effectively combine it. Better to send three journalists from website to press conference – one person shooting video, one person photos, one person write. They write more like broadcast, because also have a product to manage the team, have to have another person at HQ to look for background, t make infographics. etc.

So much better to have a team of journalists that can work in that way and will focus on a certain amount of news and will make it really rich. Those stories will ive us better traffic than poor stories written by journalists trying to do multimedia.

Have two newsrooms – one for the newspaper, and one for the portal which co-operates more with the radio journalists who work in a way that’s more useful to the online journalists, because their work is more about breaking news, and they are trained to do something in an hour. We could change the whole culture, but it was not effective. We are integrating the newsrooms for all the radio stations with the portal newsroom, and are creating a video newsroom, producing 300 news videos per week, each no longer than 2 minutes. Are also buying video from other sources. Probably 150 of these are about entertainment.

About 650 people in editorial at the newspaper, and online newsroom is no more than 30 people. Publish a national daily with 21 local sections, so those 650 are not just working on national paper but also the local inserts and for local websites.

Marketing team (readership, not ad sales) is about 20 people and half of those are journalists, because you can’t market the paper without thinking about editorial. Messages are created in a different way an the promotional thing are chosen in a different way than we would expect from a marketing manager from a product company. Tried to hire specialist from Coca Cola and they were trying to sell the paper like Coke, but it’s not Coke.

Polish economy still growing, but cannot achieve same growth in newspapers as can with internet. If we invest money now then will earn more later. Also focusing on outdoor and TV, in readiness for terrestrial digital to come to Poland, when they’ll be able to have their own TV station.

Some things online they do charge for, but not a huge revenue, so most of money comes from advertising. Why should advertisers still need newspapers as intermediaries. Advertisers can communicate directly and for free online. Reach is the key thing – getting in front of more people. Issue is justifying price.

Newspaper 24/7: breaks news and updates, adds background info, video audio content, interaction, invites users to become journalists.

But they were looking for a different idea, a different way of working and a different view of convergence. After they tried integration, and it failed, they tried to think about it differently. Didn’t think about integration, thought about the topic, about solving problems, then talking with internet people about how they could achieve results.

E.g.: Poland €70 billion to spend. Question – how should this money be spent. Asked the question in the newspaper. 21 regions, and used the local newspapers and journalists to write a front page commentary “Seven sins of my city”, and to list the worst things about their cities. Was quite a shaking experience, because most local editors believe they have to write nicely and kindly about their city. Launched an internal blog only editors in chief could see it, and did an online workshop on how to discuss their sins of their cities, and talking about their article. Then published articles after 3/4 weeks.

Organised local debate, but promoted it nationally. Result was amazing – 70k letters, emails and calls on this topic. Asked readers for feedback, and got it! People like to discuss it with the newspapers. Also had a focused blog just on this campaign, so people could discuss online too. Local TV and radio stations organised news shows about it, despite not being related to Gazeta.

Did a research study, 6332 people polled, asked about their needs, e.g. what would you pay more taxes for? Roads? More police? Playgrounds? Church? etc. People were deciding what they thought was most important.

Asked readers to make a snapshot of one day, from 12am to 12pm, and got 1000 photos, and published best photos, and got the stories behind it. Editorial project done together with readers.

Worked with PwC for professional strategy for seven largest cities. PwC did it pro bono.

Discovered that you have to find something around which people can rally, a period from history. The 1944 uprising was the one thing that people were proud of in Warsaw, despite the fact that failed and resulted in the the flattening of the city, but that wasn’t the sort of thing that people could celebrate. Need an intriguing target for the city to catch people’s imagination. Roads and bridges are boring, but saying “Let’s put our city forward for the Euro football tournament” captured people’s imagination. People need an understandable goal.

People need a common place, somewhere that people can go and gather and feel proud. Problem with that – after Communism, people gather in shopping centres. Need a forum for debate. After this campaign, newspapers started to organise local meetings to discuss future of their cities, and people are happy to attend. Anyone who can influence the city was involved – e.g. large employers.

07.05.08
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Talking social media with Peter Shankman

Find more videos like this on PROpenMic

Michael O’Connor Clarke, a long-time friend of Suw who I only recently had the pleasure of meeting, provided a virtual introduction to Peter Shankman. Peter was on a whirlwind trip to London and wanted to meet some people to talk about social media. Peter wants to help PR and journalists have a better working relationship in the age of blogging, vlogging, Twittering and social networks.

We walked down the road from The Guardian to St Paul’s Cathedral, and Peter pulled out his Flip video camera. He asked me about where to get some lunch, the differences between social media in the US and Europe (and lots of differences between European countries) and cats. Well, the conversation veered off onto cats largely because of Suw’s (I have only written one post) side project, Kits and Mortar. I think Suw and I should start keeping a blog list of most irrelevant PR pitches we get by way of Kits and Mortar.

And as I mention in the chat with Peter, ‘social media press releases’ need to be more than a normal press release done with an old school mail merge from a list of bloggers. Social media is personal media, and if you spend just a few seconds finding a post that somehow relates to your product, you’re going to be more successful. Peter also caught up with video blogging David Brain, CEO of Edelman Europe so he got both the journalist’s view and a PR view during his visit to London.

I had a fun time chatting with Peter. But hey man, you said I wascorn fed? Just checked on that definition: “large and often muscular, but lacking in intelligence, refinement or sophistication”. Am I really that muscular?

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07.01.08
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Newsknitter: Knitting together the daily news agenda

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Ebru Kurbak / Mahir M. Yavuz: Newsknitter

It’s another day where I’m looking for ways to visualise huge bits of information for a project that I’m working on, and I stumbled upon the Newsknitter project.

News Knitter is a data visualization project which focuses on knitted garments as an alternative medium to visualize large scale data. ….

News Knitter converts information gathered from the daily political news into clothing. Live news feed from the Internet that is broadcasted within 24 hours or a particular period is analyzed, filtered and converted into a unique visual pattern for a knitted sweater.

It’s the brainchild of Turkish artists Ebru Kurbak and Mahir Yavuz. From the Generator.x website and conference:

The Newsknitter web site does not indicate whether custom garments will eventually be for sale, even though it would seem an obvious extension of the project. Too bad the daily news typically makes for a grim way to commemorate one’s birthday or other significant date.

It reminds me of CNN headline T-shirts, but this is much, much cooler. With such products easier to make, it’s odd that news organisations aren’t thinking more about interesting products based on their information. Oh well, back to looking for data visualisations.

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07.01.08
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First Fruitful Seminar a success; three more in the pipeline

I’m delighted to say that the first Fruitful Seminar on the adoption of social media in enterprise, Making Social Tools Ubiquitous, last Friday was a bit of a hit! I had a fabulous time, and I got some great feedback on the day, so I’m looking forward to running it again. Quite a few people said that they were interested in coming but couldn’t make it that particular day, so I am going to repeat the same seminar, probably on 10th September. Put the date in your diary and keep an eye out for the registration page to go live!

I am also going to run two other seminars in September. One will be on The Email Problem: Email used to be a fantastically useful communications tool, but in recent years it has become more of a burden, with people struggling to read and respond to all of the email they receive. Some companies have tried “No Email Days”, but these put off the problem, they don’t solve it. If, however, you start to examine email as a psychological problem instead of a technological one, different solutions become apparent. This seminar, The Email Problem And How To Solve It will take an innovative look at email and the different ways that social media can reduce its use.

This leaves me with a slot free, and I’d like to put my seminar ideas to a popular vote. These are the options:

1. Social Media in Internal Communications: How can internal comms and HR departments use social media to help them effectively communicate with their constituency? How can you ensure that people have the information they need, when they need it? And how do you engage with your constituency and collect meaningful feedback?

2. Giving It Away – Open IP in Business: You’ve got some intellectual property, but how do you maximise its value to your business? Can giving it away actually earn you money? What is ‘Creative Commons’ and how do you choose a licence?

3. Using Social Tools in Journalism: Forget old-school arguments about bloggers vs. journalism – reality is much more interesting than that! How can you use social tools to organise your own information and help yourself work more efficiently? How can you engage with your audience using social tools? And how do you run a networked journalism project? (Maybe, just maybe, I might be able to persuade a famous journo-blogger to help me present this one!)

So…

And don’t forget, Lloyd Davis’ seminar, Mastering Social Media, is on 16 July and still has some places left, so sign up soon!

06.12.08
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Information is only scarce if you live in a bubble

Just back from a week with Suw and our families at my home in the US, and I’ve had some space and time to think about things in a more considered way that I usually have time to in London. Via FriendFeed and a room there on Digital Journalism set up by Adam Tinworth, I stumbled upon an interesting post by Kristine Lowe asking whether you would rather marry a blogger or a journalist. The post has kicked off a fascinating discussion raising a number of issues in journalism. Craig McGinty had this pithy observation:

There are still many journalists who live in the land of scarcity, where information is something to be controlled, unaware that 99% of the time it’s like water and many others are drinking from the same trough.

Journalists are under the misguided belief that information is scarce because they often live in informational silos of their own making. They only read “serious” journalism from other publications and seem to have completely missed the information explosion of the last 20 years with multi-channel television and the internet. It’s only down to their narrow professional focus that they miss the fundamental fact that most people are trying to cope with a dizzying choice for information.

Journalists have only belatedly woken up to this reality as their jobs are threatened, and the institutional response seems to have got bogged down in arguments about quality, fact versus opinion and a fundamentalist construction of what is news. For too many journalists, anything outside of a narrow, overly institutional definition of news is banal and unworthy of coverage. And just as Clyde Bentley of the University of Missouri says that most journalists are poor judges of banality, I’m increasingly of the view that they are also poor judges of fact versus opinion. For many journalists, “opinion” is pejorative shorthand for “something not written by a journalist”.

Once one realises that information scarcity isn’t the issue but attention is the new scarce resource, then the role of journalist as gatekeeper is irrelevant. The question then shifts to: What is the value that journalists add to this sea of information? The answer cannot simply be to add more information. The answer also can’t be that the journalist is simply a better or cleverer writer. Look at information choices, and quality and cleverness often don’t cut through the noise. What is the value that a journalist adds? Answer that question and maybe we can move beyond the rut that discussions about journalism are stuck in and develop a business model to support journalism and journalists.

(Want to see value added journalism? See the Des Moines Register excellent package on a tornado that devastated the town of Parkersburg on 25 May, 2008.)

05.23.08
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The New New Journalism

Last night, Kevin and I went to the POLIS/LSE Media Group event, The New New Journalism, a panel discussion with Charlie Beckett, Founding Director of POLIS; Tessa Mayes, campaigning investigative journalist; Bill Thompson, journalist, commentator and technology critic; and Julia Whitney, Head of Designs & User Experience at the BBC. Nico Macdonald chaired.

I’m always wary of anything around the subject of how journalism is changing, particularly if it’s called “The New New Journalism”, but Nico assured us that that was irony. Unfortunately, it did rather set the tone for an evening of hashing over old ground and getting distracted from the real problems that journalists face. Whilst an introduction to each panellist’s thoughts is up on the website, one could probably summarise it like this:

  • Charlie Beckett: Optimistic and positive, although not quite sure how we get from where we are to where we could be.
  • Tessa Mayes: Over-enamoured of investigative journalism and distracted by concepts of The Truth and Objectivity.
  • Bill Thompson: Interestingly pragmatic, believing that the market will always want journalists and will find a way to pay for them whilst also acknowledging that journalism isn’t a necessary part of society.
  • Julia Whitney: We need to pay more attention to user experience and design, it’s all one big ecosystem.

Charlie was by far the most hopeful, saying that new technologies brought with them great opportunities, particularly for creating a partnership between journalists and the public. He said we need more networked journalism. He also pointed at some local blogs, such as Kings Cross Local Environment. But although he painted a fairly rosy picture, he also said that he wasn’t sure how things would pan out, or how we’d get to his vision of a networked future.

I found Bill’s comments interesting. He’s not just an entertaining speaker, but he’s also very thought-provoking, especially when he talked about how, when you get right down to it, society doesn’t need journalism to survive. It’s something that bugs Kevin and me – this sense of entitlement that many journalists have, the attitude that they are owed respect and a living because they are journalists. It’s an attitude that is massively out of proportion to reality.

Indicative of that view was a comment from one of the journalists in the audience that even if people didn’t trust reporters, they still need them. That comment alone speaks volumes about what is wrong with journalism. Arguing that standards set journalists apart from mere citizen journalists and bloggers, but then arguing that a measure of those standards – namely, the trust of our readers and viewers – is immaterial, is itself a measure of the double standards rife within the industry.

It would be an overly simplistic reading of Tessa’s argument to say that she represents the attitude that journalists are owed a living, but she was attempting to elevate journalism to a lofty cultural standing as if it was like opera, classical music or the works of Shakespeare. She argued that the pursuit of The Truth was a noble and necessary goal for professional journalists, as if the hundreds of words written on tight deadline were somehow in the same vein, or even had the same goal, as Plato’s Republic.

These arguments go beyond rationalisations for the profession and actually strive to become justification for state or civic support of journalism to shore up its broken business model. It raises journalism to such a position that state support becomes necessary because it is “too important” to be left to the tastes of the public and the pressures of the market. However, whether or not this was Tessa’s intention, the cultural argument takes journalism down a post-modern rabbit hole that doesn’t address the issues that face journalism and journalists: Dwindling audience, dwindling trust and dwindling revenues.

Julia’s comments I thought were interesting, but in many ways were a little lost in journalistic navel gazing that went on. One point she made that was interesting was a quote from a study of teen attitudes towards sex ed information. (She thought it was a Harvard University study but wasn’t sure about the sourcing.) The teens assessed the validity of the information based on the quality of its presentation.

But overall, I don’t think that the arguments we heard last night have moved us on very far from a discussion that I participated in at the LSE in February 2005, called The Fall and Fall of Jouranalism (notes from Mick Fealty).

The straw men put forth last night, some from the panellists, but many from the audience, included:

  • The one about quality, wherein journalists apparently are the only people capable of producing quality content. Obviously this is a selective definition of ‘journalist’ which doesn’t include any of the tabloid hacks.
  • The one about the truth, wherein everyone gets sucked into a pointless philosophical discussion about whether or not the truth is exists, and if so/not, what should we do about it.
  • The one about technology being subservient to information, which is really code for “geeks and designers should be subservient to journalists”

But there are a lot of monsters under the bed that didn’t get discussed at all:

  • Integration. In an ideal world, integration would mean cross-discipline teams learning about each other’s medium and finding ways in which they can work together to best tell a story and engage their audience. In reality, this is too often about senior management in the legacy business fighting to retain their primacy and pushing digital staff and managers aside. Online journalists often have their digital experience deemed irrelevant because it’s not seen as “journalism”, but production, which legacy managers believe can be taught to anyone.
  • Dysfunctional management. I made this point at the very end of the evening, that much of the problem in news organisations is down to broken management structures and dysfunctional management techniques. Bad decisions are being made by people unwilling to listen to those with the knowledge, but who are several paygrades down the food chain. Good journalists do not always make good managers and, ironically, are not always the best communicators.
  • Owning change. There’s way too much squabbling over who owns the change in news organisations. There’s not enough emphasis on what that change is, and too much focus on turf wars.

Unless we start honestly addressing these issues, journalism isn’t going to go anywhere. We’re not going to solve these problems overnight, because they are self-perpetuating. Bad managers don’t just suddenly learn how to manage well. Bad decisions and policies don’t just suddenly come good. What’s needed is a radical shake up, but who in the industry has both the nous and the political weight to do it? Who’s got the brains and the balls to turn round to senior management and tell them they are doing things wrong, and can get them to listen? There are some very talented and smart people chipping away at the problem, but I don’t know if they can make a significant difference before it’s too late.

05.23.08
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Great Journalism: Nina’s to blame for the global credit crisis

I meant to post this yesterday after listening to This American Life’s episode dissecting the global credit crisis: The Giant Pool of Money, and now with Jeff Jarvis’ praise, I know I’m not the only one who thinks that this was a stellar example of good journalism.

Last week in Princeton, we talked about what makes good journalism, what is the difference between information and journalism. Listen to this episode, and I think it’s clear. They tracked major events over the last seven years that brought us to this point and made sense of global capital markets in a way that I just haven’t seen or heard done. They also brought human voices to the story that showed a great deal of nuance and some of the choices that were made by bankers, mortgage brokers and home owners. They also told the story in an engaging, compelling way that held my attention for the entire hour. If you want to know how we got to where we are now, listen to this. It’s an hour well spent.

Oh, who’s Nina? No income, no asset mortgages or what one of the interviewees called ‘a liar’s loan’. The programme explains how Nina was born, the messages from the market that encouraged these loans. It’s a complex story but told so lucidly that you might just understand global finance after it’s done.

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