jeffjarvis
It was nice little surprise to hear Jeff Jarvis on NPR during my morning commute.
Jeff was being asked about WSJ and commented how becoming more ‘news’ and less ‘financial’ would give it more reach and a broader advertiser base.
It made me realize that we are headed toward being a country with three news organizations. Maybe four.
NYtimes.com, WSJ.com, USAtoday.com and wherever the privately held Tribune company (LATimes.com etc.) might land.
Obviously I’m heavily favoring the newspaper companies. It will be a more complex rollup than that, but you get my picture.
Further, it makes one wonder whether each of these organizations aligns themselves with the online players, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and maybe Amazon or even eBay. Or is it Facebook and the social network arms of these players that find a partnerships.
We already see that path shaping up with Yahoo’s recent newspaper deals.
Of course, one has to wonder how WSJ and MySpace could ever marry each other since they seem world’s apart, but I’m betting that changes in both of those organizations will over time have them creeping toward a common ground.
What do you think?
Newspaper sites are creating a product for a market that doesn’t exist.
You see, it looks to us like their websites are just not so good, but they have thought about their sites a lot, and these are not dumb people.
Why then, is so much effort going into making such a low quality product?
One could argue that the management just doesn’t get it yet, if they ever will, or that they are out of touch with the younger web demographics. Well, that may be true, but there is more to it.
Newspaper sites are creating a product based upon what they perceive to be what their loyal customers want and in many cases they succeed at this.
Unfortunately for us, that means we have to put up with all the noise that a strategy like that causes for our sense of what a good website should be.
Thankfully we can route around that by just consuming RSS feeds. But wait, they are almost never full text, so these sites even fall short there.
A typical print newspaper reaches a small percentage of its market. The percentage of that customer base willing to use the online product is orders of magnitude less. In other words, there is no market there. Certainly not a large enough one to build a business upon.
In essence, by building a product aimed at an audience that hardly exists, they have alienated most of their possible future customers or readers.
Why are they doing this?
It all comes down to two things. One, that many of them love their own product, as do many of their current customers. They think that they can transfer that love to the web, but too few of their customers are willing to do that, including the very people creating the product.
The second is the wrongful assumption that because traditional advertising and journalism is good and satisfies a need of the community, that there is no other sufficient way to accomplish that need . It is this wrongful assumption that is at the heart of an entire industry finding it difficult to adapt.
The core opportunity that the web provides both service users and service creators is the ability to satisfy needs in a better or more efficient way. If it does not succeed at that, it will not succeed.
Instead of classifieds, we have ebay. Instead of traditional journalism, we have a host of other things e.g. . Instead of advertising, we have pay-per-click.
Here is a word to the wise.
If you don’t think your web strategy is going to be better for both your business or your customers, just get out.
If you are trying to retain some quality of your analog product because you think the digital version can’t accomplish it, just get out.
The biggest geeks around don’t sit down at a computer because it’s innately enjoyable.
they do it because it’s going to accomplish something better than could be accomplished without the tool.
If it ain’t better, it’s worthless. Just get out.
And thats the name of that iTune.
Just watched Jeff Jarvis on Newshour.
It was basically a reassertion that we have abandoned objectivity for transparency.
Couldn’t agree more there.
While I agree that not every reporter has an intentional “hidden agenda,” the fact remains that every decision made is one made with some sort of baggage. For example:
“We covered this yesterday.”
“We need to get this out now before we get scooped.”
“I don’t think the readers are interested in this.”
“We can’t verify that so don’t mention it at all.”
And so on. Perhaps they are all questions that a “good” journalist asks. Maybe. But as Jeff said in the conclusion of the piece, “It’s not whether you have an opinion, it’s whether you tell the truth.”
Update:That may not be an exact quote of Jeff. You see, a journalist wouldn’t have pointed that out. They misquote all the time and never point it out.
Content is a commodity.
Distribution is a commodity.
Jeff Jarvis says that companies that “enable” are where the value is.
Yes, but the real value is in the relationships, not these companies, themselves.
So, if these companies try to exercise control over the data that is created from their “enabling,” or service provision, they will eventually run into the same problems that current distribution and content silos are finding.
User data wants to be free.
You are right Jeff. No more wire hangers. No more boxes either.
Apr 18 2007 11:36 am |
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A recent Scripting News comment by someone named Matt (not me) brings up an interesting topic we’ve been discussing at our local newspaper website, http://stamfordadvocate.com.
Matt points out that Dave Winer shouldn’t fault the reporter for a misleading headline, because it is written by the editor and the reporter has no say.
He’s right. That’s usually true.
The problem is, that’s probably an area where newspapers need to adjust the way they work. As Scott Karp puts it, they need to decide what kind of publisher they are.
You see, what the newsroom folks call “editorial process,” means that many levels of filters and processes are applied to stories to ensure correctness, as well as fill the needed space.
Every editor must admit that they have cut parts of a story due to lack of space despite it having weakened the story. Sometimes cuts are made to strengthen an article too.
In general, these processes are not a terrible thing, whether they work all the time or not. But they aren’t necessary for something to be good journalism.
In an online world however, it could cause problems because of the immediate feedback loop, as in the case of Dave Winer and the NYTimes reporter.
No one ever said to themselves, “That New York Times editorial process got it wrong.”
They say, “That stupid reporter got it wrong.”
Now that we have come to want (and expect) the news writers and creators to answer our accusations of innacuracy, the MSM can’t hide behind the shield of “editorial process.”
As I see it, they have two choices. Either they don’t use reporters names, or loosen up on their editorial policy.
They won’t accept either. The first because of ego, and they second. . .well, for another type of ego.
You see, that would make them bloggers . . . and human.
It’s official. Tribune has sold The Advocate and Greenwich Time to Gannett for 73 million.
This is great news for the websites, for which I am Senior Web Producer.
It’s a chance to wipe the slate clean and do things right. Fingers crossed.
It’s a chance to do all the things we know newspaper websites should be doing. The timing is perfect, but we’ll see if we can execute.
I promise to do my part (if I’m here ; ) ).
Will post more later.
I watched the Frontline piece called Newswars, the other night.
While everyone agrees that a major reshaping needs to take place in the newspaper business, my intial reaction wasn’t as one-sided as Jeff Jarvis, perhaps because I am a Tribune employee, and knew some of these people firsthand.
Jeff is right; major cuts can be made on the print side of most newspapers without lowering the output of “real news.”
However, it’s also true that the economics of Wall Street might not be the best driving force when it comes to making newsroom decisions.
If that were the case, the whole country could just send one reporter to Iraq and we could all share her view.
Of course, views are plentiful in this day and age, but for a company the size of Tribune, I don’t think it’s ridiculous to have more than one newspaper covering a national war.
That said, I’m in total agreement that the organization as a whole is overlooking what real value it can provide for it’s readers and site users.
The real value does indeed rest in it’s local communities and journalism. I sometimes wonder if that’s always going to be enough.
In the Frontline story, I think it was the WAPO exec that said print revenue and circulation was declining, but he wasn’t sure how quickly Online would catch up.
It will never catch up.
There are too many competitors online for that to ever happen.
Washington Post reports the Tribune sale of two local newspapers, where I am the Senior Web Producer.
In fact, I was the first person within the company to ever work on these sites, back in the nineties, when I volunteered to get them listed in the Open Directory, Yahoo, and Search Engines.
Back then I was (thanks to Philip Greenspun) trumpeting around the company for an idea called “community.”
You know, what they now call UGC (User Generated Content).
Personally, I feel we should go back to calling User Generated Content “community” again. It’s more accurate, and less derogatory.
But most newspaper folks would not understand what I mean by saying that UGC is a derogatory term. Because it defines the user as lesser than the site “professional.” But most people in this business would say, “yeah, they aren’t on the same level.” Most smart bloggers realize that’s just not the case.
However, when I say this, I don’t mean to devalue the work done by many “professional” journalists. Some of it is great.
Unfortunately, media is a commodity. Even good media is a commodity.
Do these companies still have something of value? Absolutely, but we live in a “hit and run” web society. I read this story in the Washington today. Tommorrow, It’s BuzzMachine that get’s my attention. Next it’s my family’s group blog, pointing out late spring lift ticket deals. After that, it’s TechCrunch, Library Clips, and CNN. You get the idea.
Back to “community” on a news site. They all thought I was nuts. Now it’s one of Tribune’s main initiatives.
A little late to the party, and I’m still not sure they fully understand it. They think community is getting people to contribute to their sites. They should be asking, “what can we contribute to the community?”
In the nineties, message boards and other community features did, in fact reside on sites. Today these features are distributed across a million sites. (I know about myspace. If they don’t open to the rest of the distributed social network, they will go the way of the old AOL. It may take ten years, but they will)
If they asked me now, where I would focus. I think I’d say “syndication” (thanks to Dave Winer). Be cog in the distributed web of information flow.
However, these news companies cling to a page view model, and a home-page-centric view of themselves, even if they are aware of all the story-level traffic they are getting.
Ajax, RSS, widgets, downloads, OPML and the rest of the trends all indicate to me that the future winners are the people and businesses that provide value in the relationships and conversations happening out there, not the ones who try to corral their “users” into a one size fits all product, that so many news sites are.
Ask not what the users can do for us, but what can we do for the users.
I almost went to Media Summit.
After reading Jeff Jarvis’ summary of the Barry Diller keynote, I’m glad I didn’t. What a joke!
Let’s put all the people who don’t get it in a room and see if we can convince ourselves that the people who do get it are wrong.
Media Summit is a bunch of has beens grasping for life rafts around their sinking ships.
Media Summit is a joke.
Jarvis from Davos: “We are going to try to open up the conversation.”
All I can say is that if a deal happens soon with Tribune company, that our newspaper and a few others will open the conversation completely. This will be a major positive shift in the way newspapers conduct themselves, and I think plenty will follow our lead.
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