Zombie Journalism

Dispatches from the living amongst journalism's walking dead

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Business models, social media and cool interweb tips

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On August 28, 2009

In Industry News & Notes, Online Revenue Models, Recommended Links, Twitter

Best Things I’ve Read This Week

The always awesome Paid Content has an excellent analysis by Nic Brisbourne on his version of the future of news. At it’s core – it isn’t anything you haven’t heard before: Better quality writing, investigative journalism and in-depth analysis are a commodity we in the professional news world have going for us, even as news itself is an abundance.

He suggests we should leverage this to reinforce our place in the market – and do so with less cost and without charging for access to the news. He notes the examples of TechCrunch, Pitchfork and Huffington Post leveraging their trusted brands into things they can charge for – and doing so with a low enough overhead to make it with decent online ad rates. It isn’t earth-shattering – but it is at least the most plausible plan I’ve ever heard.

On the flip side – there’s the privately-funded investigative model of journalism that’s still wearing it’s fledgling feathers – but it’s really rocking out. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out  “Strained by Katrina, a Hospital Faced Deadly Choices” in the NY Times Magazine. The long-form investigative narrative is the sort of journalism we all wish we were doing – and it wasn’t done by the New York Times, for once. The work on this piece was funded by a grant through ProPublica – who worked with the NY Times to get it into print. Could agreements like this be a part of the future for in-depth reporting? If work like this is what comes out of it, I’m sold.

News on News

  • Ok, I get it, so maybe you want a more technology-oriented solution? How’s about an iPhone App that Automatically Picks the News You’ll Like ?An RSS reader that builds a custom news network for you based on your reading habits? That sounds like something we should be working with. Even if the reader doesn’t “pick us” to be in an individual’s mix, something like this makes news accessible to those who don’t have the time to find new news sources. Maybe that new source can be you?
  • Every online news source has either considered or tried free classifieds, with varying levels of success (mostly bad). Boing Boing asserts that Newspapers can’t make themselves as simple as craigslist – a well-deserved slam on the classified pages of most newspaper sites. There’s a reason why Craigslist works and we may have missed the point in trying (pathetically) to duplicate their effort.
  • Did you know The Guardian is the most bookmarked newspaper on delicious? I don’t really know what that says about them, but they must have a lot of news their readers find to be useful – or else they wouldn’t be bookmarking it. Check it out.
  • First it was the bloggers, now it’s the tweeters getting into the press boxes. One twittering fan has gotten courtside press credentials at St. John’s – the first of his kind (and probably not the last).

Social Media News

  • Breaking News: Social Media Is for Narcissists! To some people (i.e. my parents), it may seem like a no-brainer that my generation (Y, Why?) is full of narcissists in regards to social media. What is interesting is the surveyed groups of (much younger) Gen-Yers understanding that that might not be such a bad thing to really sell yourself in such a competitive world – not only in business, but in life.
  • In related news, all that news about teens not being into Twitter may not be right. It isn’t so much that the proportion of teens on Twitter are low, but that the majority of social media users are older simply because the social web is growing up. Twitter – unlike many of the others – actually started with an older group and they’ve had a longer time to adopt it.
  • Pat Thornton writes on Poynter about different newspapers’ approach to Twitter use – and how there doesn’t seem to be one right answer for getting a good ROI out of it. Automated accounts sometimes work, personal accounts sometimes don’t – so perhaps variety is the answer? (At Cincinnati.Com, we have both)
  • As you know, not everyone is sold on social media’s value – not even all of those marketers and brands out there. As much as some old-school companies might be fighting, the stats say Social Media Resistance Is Fading Fast and adoption rates are soaring.

Cool Tips!!

  • If you’re the sort of journo is is doing (or desperately trying) multimedia and online work in several software suites, you might find this collection of software cheat sheets from 10,000 Words helpful. It outlines helpful hints for all sorts of video, audio and web programs.
  • And while most of these little hints apply to marketing and advertising types,it might be good to know these Eight Twitter Habits That May Get You Unfollowed or Semi-Followed so you don’t look like a tool on the Internets.

Do we miss the point of “hyperlocal”?

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On August 21, 2009

In Industry News & Notes

I think every medium and metro-sized newspaper has had this conversation in the past few years:

Editor #1: People aren’t going to our website to read state and national stories. It’s all the fault of that darn CNN and such.

Editor #2: Well, maybe so, but we’ve still got Community X.  They don’t do news there.

Editor #1: Maybe we’ll build a whole website just based on news from Community X! It’ll be awesome! Yeah, we’ll get, what do they call it?

Editor #2: Hyperlocal.

Editor #1: Right.

And so the hyperlocal news sites were born across the country. Some featured original reporting by staff, others were built on the work of citizen journalists. Some have already failed as others have taken on a life of their own.

When the Washington Post – the giant of the newspaper web world – decided to create a “hyperlocal” site based on Loudon County, Va., it was a big deal. Of course, their idea of hyperlocal was a group of loosely-connected communities instead of the communities themselves – but they’re the WaPo, if they want to call it hyperlocal, they can. Two years later, the  WaPo announces its closure of LoudounExtra. Sure, the post says, they’ll still COVER the area, but it won’t have its own website anymore.

About a year ago, the Wall Street Journal saw this coming, charging that the WaPo didn’t understand what it meant to be hyperlocal in the first place. I’m inclined to agree. What I see from a lot of big news outlets is a page collecting their stories on the area and little more – that isn’t hyperlocal coverage – it’s a hyperlocal aggregate feed.

What makes a good hyperlocal site isn’t just collecting a bunch of stuff about that area and throwing it up on a web page – it’s about understanding the community on a ground level. It helps to live there, but merely getting out there and getting to know people is a start. From what the WSJ post said, the staff at LoudonExtra wasn’t very invested in the area:

To penetrate those communities requires a more dedicated effort than the LoudounExtra.com team was putting forth. [The manager of the project] acknowledged he spent too much time talking to other newspaper publishers about the hyperlocal strategy and too little time introducing his team and the site to Loudoun County.

Whether that is ultimately why the site didn’t get enough traction to remain independent is a leap I won’t take – but it certainly would make sense. The WaPo, while it does serve a local audience in addition to its wide national base, may not be the experts at knowing what’s going on in Middleburg, Va. Who does? People on the ground in Middleburg, that’s who.

The best local-local writers are invested at a micro level. For instance, Mission Local, a neighborhood news site created through a hyperlocal news project out of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Their site has news important to those living in the area – stories of all sorts, a police blotter, maps. If you check out their About page, you see that the publication is based in the Mission District and many of the writers are residents there.

Another great example, the West Seattle Blog, is a husband-and-wife team focused on a very specific part of a larger city in which they live. I had the opportunity to meet them and hear about their operation when I was a fellow at the Knight Digital Media Center in March. They both have backgrounds in journalism and took that expertise to cover their own neighborhood. As a result – they regularly publish what’s going on before their local metro.

Their crime page keeps a running tally from scanners and crime reports from residents. They have community-level announcements that come in from submissions. In addition to their own writing and reporting, they also have a selection of news and opinion from other bloggers in their area. All in all, they have a lot of content – all local (or hyperlocal!).

Even if there isn’t a person physically on the ground in the neighborhood, it takes knowing what people want to see from their area and how specific they may want it to be. “Drilled down” news can be done at a larger level – and it has value, if this week’s purchase of  “microlocal” network EveryBlock by MSNBC is any indication.

As Paid Content  said about the sale, EveryBlock had more value than LoudonExtra simply because of its focus on microcosms of communities – not just clumping a whole county together and calling it a community. The Dupont Circle page in EveryBlock is a great example. It has crime report maps, police calls, blog posts and more from a very specific area – pretty useful stuff if you live there – and most of it available from public information.

So the moral of the story is – don’t judge the future of “hyperlocal” news from the WaPo’s failed experiment. There’s gold in them there hills – but we have to actually work at making it accessible and useful.

* Eds Note: For the sake of disclosure, my current paper has a couple incarnations of these products. Cincinnati.Com has more than 100 community-level aggregate sites, including a few with their own discussion forums (and all featuring some pretty nifty maps if you ever want to check them out).

Recommended reading this week

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On August 14, 2009

In Industry News & Notes, Recommended Links, Social Media, Twitter

The Big Must-Reads
  • You have to read Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing from Bill Wyman at Splice Today. It’s an excellent analysis of How We Got Here from someone with perspective both inside and outside the news business. A lot of it we newspaper types know already – but a lot of it we don’t want to acknowledge is part of the problem.
  • Part Two: On how the monopolistic mindset, terrible web design and a rejection of new technology contributed to the fall.
  • Newspaper war raises a question: Who keeps the tweeps? – Once a reporter builds a base in social media – who owns that base? If a newspaper gets claim to/responsibility for a reporters’ tweets (which seems to be the case), do they also own those followers? In this case, at least, I say yes. but not always. Likely not the last we’ll see from this debate.

How-Tos and Ideas:

More Social Media News

AP ignores Fair Use, treads into copyright debate

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On August 1, 2009

In Recommended Links

OK, so I know I’ve been all over the Marburger thing and completely ignored the whole AP thing. In short, the AP announced a new tool they think is going to protect their stories from copyright infringement and piracy:

The microformat will essentially encapsulate AP and member content in an informational “wrapper” that includes a digital permissions framework that lets publishers specify how their content is to be used online and which also supplies the critical information needed to track and monitor its usage.

The registry also will enable content owners and publishers to more effectively manage and control digital use of their content, by providing detailed metrics on content consumption, payment services and enforcement support. It will support a variety of payment models, including pay walls.

It’d be really cool if their system actually made it any more difficult to illegally use content. They didn’t seem to have a very good idea of what this system was really about.  Not to cater to the word crowd, they also included this ridiculous graphic of the system that has been mocked everywhere.

I honestly don’t understand the AP’s DRM thing all that well (that graphic alone boggled my mind), but I do know it isn’t a solution to what might not even really be a problem and it makes them look pretty dumb for touting it so much. I’ll let the experts tell you about it instead:

What’s more disconcerting about the AP and it’s quest to protect its content is the motive behind it – which does interest me a great deal.

In a New York Times article about their copyright quest, AP President Tom Curley seemed to be even crazier about use of their content than what the Marburger plan suggests:

Tom Curley, The A.P.’s president and chief executive, said the company’s position was that even minimal use of a news article online required a licensing agreement with the news organization that produced it. In an interview, he specifically cited references that include a headline and a link to an article, a standard practice of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, news aggregators and blogs.

Yes, the AP wants you to have a license even to link to their content, let alone quote it or use it in any way. If you aren’t familiar with the Fair Use Doctrine – you probably wouldn’t know how much this violates the spirit behind it. Pat Thornton had a few thoughts on this – more importantly, if the AP even acknowledges the existence of Fair Use when it comes to their content. It is a new age, but so far, headlines and links have been considered Fair Use.

But what is Fair Use in the digital age? Should the law be re-examined for the culture of the Internet? I think so – at least to lay out those word-of-mouth rules that vary from site to site about content use.

C.W. Anderson has a few great ideas outlined for the revamp of Fair Use for the web that the likes of the Marburgers and the AP should take seriously. You should read it, but here’s a recap:

  1. Where you link to the original story and how you link to it matters. Link early and often – and give credit where it is due.
  2. Consider if the site appropriating the content is adding a comment function when the originator of the content did not.This is an added value on their site that only leads to more discussion and reading of the original story.
  3. What is the balance between the value added by the appropriating site and the amount of original content used?
  4. What is the purpose of the site using the content?

Are these issues sticky? Of course – but at least he’s asking the right questions. A lot of copyright law, particularly Fair Use, is about evaluating use of content to make sure we’re sharing without giving away the farm.  It’s about the open marketplace of ideas (again) – and online, that ideal is more important than ever.

Recommended reading: Innovation in the newspaper world

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On July 31, 2009

In Industry News & Notes, Recommended Links, Social Media

Speaking of the need for innovation, here’s a few innovative ideas I’ve read about this week:

‘Flash is overrated’ – and other links

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On July 29, 2009

In Recommended Links

Recommended reading: Content, traffic and pay walls

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On July 22, 2009

In Industry News & Notes, Online Revenue Models

It’s time to cut off support for Digg

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On July 21, 2009

In Industry News & Notes, Social Media

Digg.com has been into more shenanigans – prompting this content provider to ask: Have they gone too far? And if so – why do we in online media continue to support them?

On Monday, Mashable confirmed that Digg surreptitiously changed the behavior of its short URLs in a fashion that diverts web traffic intended for content publishers’ sites to Digg.com.

The move has the social web in an uproar – and should have media websites shaking in their boots. It seems that social media site many of us in online news have taken to caring and feeding with the content that makes it so popular has turned on us in a big way.

Digg URLs are/were very popular with users of Twitter and other microblog services wishing to share links. Then, without alerting its users, Digg has made it so those shortened external links no longer go to that great blog entry or article you wanted to share – but rather it links to directly to Digg.com. Do not pass go, do not collect your page views. In short, the Digg URLs are not shortned URLs at all, but rather a Digg-exclusive traffic driver.

Only tonight has Digg at least somewhat rolled back this change to restore previously used Digg URLs to their original destinations. Even so – they intend to go forward with the traffic diversion plan despite the outcry from users.

I suppose we in online news should have seen this coming. It wasn’t the first sign of aggression from Digg.  I’d say Digg has more than proven that it is a direct threat to content publishers – so why are we still supporting it? Oh, you didn’t know you were supporting Digg? Better take a look at your site.

Check out the articles, blogs, photos and any other content you create. Chances are, there is some method for sharing that content online with the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Delicious and, yes, Digg. Sometimes that is a button that says Digg, other times it may be a service like the ShareThis button you see on this blog.

See, at one time, Digg was a real boon for online publishers. If your story was popular on Digg, the influx of page views coming from its army of users could be staggering. We wanted everything to be on Digg. In fact, we made it as easy as possible to get our content listed on their site by making these links as prominent as possible.

But it turns out in doing all that reaching out – we contributed to the creation of the very bully who’s stealing publishers’ lunch money. Even though it might not make much of a difference,  we in the online news biz need to take back our tiny corners of the web and at least remove Digg from our pages.

Aside: I know I seem like a hypocrite calling for this, being that I haven’t figured out what to do with my own blog yet, but bear with me.

I’ll fight with online naysayers ’til the cows come home about aggregators and Google – but Digg is a credible threat. It’s time to let them go. Besides, if your site is like that of my employer – they are a drop in the bucket compared to Twitter and Facebook these days anyway. Good riddance.

Quick links and an update

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On July 16, 2009

In Industry News & Notes, Recommended Links, Twitter

It’s been a busy time professionally for me, so I apologize for not updating with any regularity. If you haven’t been reading about it, my company Gannett, has laid off more than 1,000 employees, including 101 at my paper. I am one of the lucky ones, thankfully.

While I still pull my head together, I have gathered a few links of interest. Check ’em out.

Recommended reading for June 10th-12th

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On June 15, 2009

In Recommended Links, Twitter

These are my recommended links for June 10th through June 12th:

  • 5 Twitter Tools to Help You Manage Unfollowers | WebProNews – I can’t recommend Qwitter to anyone – it simply doesn’t work. Try these other services to keep an eye on who is unfollowing you – and possibly why.
  • Paid Twitter Streams Are Here: Super Chirp – Is this the end of the world as we know it? Maybe. I’m not ruling out that a good Twitter stream is worth paying for – I just haven’t seen it yet.
  • A new Colonel Tribune? – Daniel Honigman, the voice and creator of Colonel Tribune, is no longer with the Tribune. While I give him big congrats for getting out of the business on his talents in social media, I don’t think Colonel Tribune can really be the same with a new voice. We see this on a smaller scale when we change voices behind @cincienquirer – anyone can see the difference.
  • The ‘branding’ of the journalist – Editors Weblog – I’m always bugging the reporters at my paper to market themselves as brands – particularly in the current job climate.
  • Facebook | Recession Survivors – You’ll need to log into Facebook to see it, but this project is an excellent example of how news outlets can use the crowdsourcing tools built into Facebook to involve the community in a story. Click on the videos tab to see the fan videos that Facebook users have contributed to this project.
  • To Tweet? To Twitter? The Final Word On Proper Twitter Lingo – The AP Stylebook has officially added Twitter and it’s words for usage (“to tweet” “to Twitter”). Who says we’re behind?
  • Lead, Follow or Block: When to Use Twitter’s Block Function – A reporter today asked me about Twitter’s block function – when it should be used and what exactly it does. I found this post to be helpful in explaining the issue (the comments also add some insight).
  • Twitter Dividends | Knight Digital Media Center Weblog – This was an interesting discussion amongst alums of the Knight Digital Media Center’s fellowship workshops about what sort of gains news organizations can or should expect from Twitter. Yours truly is part of this discussion – and I suggest the answer doesn’t lie in analytics.

Recommended reading for June 8th

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On June 9, 2009

In Recommended Links

These are my recommended links for June 8th:

Recommended reading for May 28th-June 2nd

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On June 4, 2009

In Recommended Links

These are my recommended links for May 28th through June 2nd:

  • 10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy – As always, Mashable pulls together the tips that can help us all – individuals or businesses and news orgs – better develop our social media strategies.
  • Keyword Streamgraphs on Twitter – This site creates a visualization of the last 1000 tweets on a certain keyword. It doesn’t really make anything useful data-wise, but it is a great little thing you can link to out of your coverage of an issue or to track your buzz on an ongoing story. Mine is made for mapping who mentions “Reds” – but you can change the link to be any keyword.
  • How to Mine Twitter for Information – Great tips on getting data from Twitter to track buzzwords and trends over time.
  • Collaborative Reporting Tools | Publish2 – This new offering from Publish2 – which is a great tool if you haven’t used it – can be used in a lot of ways. It can be used to gather news tips, crowdsource stories and allow multiple people to contribute to reporting.
  • JournoTwit – The twitter client that’s not just for journalists… – This tool is still in development, but it has great potential. It is similar too, though not as good as, Tweetdeck – only online-based. If you could make the columns customizable, I’d be switching today.
  • Journalism.co.uk : BBC double-checks journalists’ ‘professional’ tweets – I guarantee there are reporters and editor that read this and think, “What a great idea!” No, it isn’t. Twitter is “right now” – not “ten minutes from now.” If you need an editor to make sure your tweets don’t have libel, spelling or factual error, you shouldn’t be tweeting. Period.
  • Commentary: Why Twitter won’t save journalism or kill it | McClatchy – A fairly honest overview of Twitter from someone who isn’t “in the tank” like me. While I think it is short-sighted to say Twitter won’t revolutionize journalism (maybe not Twitter – but something like it can and will), it’s at least giving the service a shot.

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