newspapers
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.
Who would think I’d have trouble picking a platform.
Roll my own, Drupal, Wordpress, OpenACS, Joomla, People Aggregator?
The list goes on. Granted, I’m leaning toward PHP systems. I know it best.
I like Postgresql but I’ll take MySQL. Don’t think I’m interested in a commercial DB.
It’s definitely Unix or Linux. I tend to like FreeBSD.
Aside from OpenACS, all run on Apache.
Drupal looks great, but it’s always a struggle learning new ways to do things that are simply achieved with PHP.
Cobbling together systems is also always a pain. I like clean data. Yet, who can argue that Wordpress is a great solution for the blogs that will be on the site.
There is just too much good stuff out there.
I’m leaning towards simpler rather than a monster like Plone. Master the basics and build on.
Jun 01 2007 04:20 pm |
newspapers and
wordpress and
php |
2 Comments »
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be rebuilding some newspaper sites.
If you are weak in the knees, don’t click through, because it’s pretty bad.
http://www.thehour.com
http://www.thestamfordtimes.com
http://www.wiltonvillager.com
Tomorrow, we have our first meeting and I’ve decided to take the rest of you along.
It should be fun.
Subscriber vs. Free. . .
full text feeds vs. partial. . .
traditional journalism vs. community and blogging. . .
display ads vs. collecting detailed attention and gesture data with which to empower users to control their vendor relations. . .
(well, you know)
stay tuned
Newspapers need to take a lesson from baseball.
It’s mid to late innings and your team is losing but you have a man on first.
You give a decent hitter a “sacrifice bunt” sign. No one likes to get this but it’s part of team play.
The hitter bunts and the infield comes charging. The runner is going and safe at second and the hitter is thrown out.
Now you have a man in scoring position. There is no gurantee that the next batter will get a hit. In fact, the chances are pretty slim.
Still, it’s a popular managerial strategy.
Newspapers have a man on first (classifieds and local ad dollars), but they are losing the big game (search and Attention). If they don’t make a sacrifice (open up), they’ll need two hits to score, and that’s a long shot to say the least.
Sometimes you need to take one for the team.
I have officially accepted a position of Web Development Director with The Hour newspapers in Norwalk, Connecticut.
The company is locally owned by a trust, a much different scenario than the Tribune owned The Advocate, where I previously held the postion of Senior Web Producer.
The current sites are in great need, and the company is hoping I can bring them up to modern standards.
Hopefully the scenario will offer me the opportunity to make the sites a model for other newspapers of all sizes.
I expect to use many of the ideas you folks have given me to formulate a modern strategy that includes consideration of VRM, Attention, Gestures and syndication.
OPML will be an integral tool building these newspaper sites and services, as will the concept of River of News.
I also plan to use open APIs from other services like Twitter and Flickr and Grazr, to integrate these services into other communities.
Similarly, I’ll try my best to expose whatever services we can offer through the use of APIs.
There are great opportunities out there for media companies that are willing to do things right, and I’m hoping this will be a chance to do just that.
Frank Gruber used to work at Tribune, where I still do (for the moment, pending a Gannett buyout, any day now).
Frank points to a post about Sam Zell, who is buying Tribune, who suggests that newspapers close themselves off to Google News.
Frank mentions the attention economy and basically suggests that closing a site off to the world in this environment would be Suicide 2.0.
And he should know.
Frank works as a product manager for AOL, a company that recently realized they needed to open up their walled gardens in order to compete and regain their losing market share of attention.
So far, it seems to be working well for AOL.
Frank also was a stalwart at Tribune for opening things up, getting them to open up their content to RSS feeds, despite the fact that they refuse to publish full text. I’ve been a member of Tribune’s Product Development Committee for years now, and have never gotten a decent answer on why we are not allowed to publish full text feeds.
Frank is right when he says it would be ashame if Tribune falls backwards and goes the route that is being suggested. It’s tough enough for traditional media to make it without setbacks like that.
We shall see. Old Media Doomsday, anyone? I believe it may click soon!
Dave Winer points to Ian Betteridge, who says of journalists:
They have to understand the beat that they’re covering, preferably better than anyone in the industry under the level of vice president.
Well, I don’t agree with the premise that Vice Presidents are automatically more knowledgable than other workers.
But even in this case, wouldn’t you rather read the VP’s blog than the journalist’s story?
Mar 26 2007 09:34 am |
newspapers and
davewiner |
9 Comments »
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.
Update:I re-read Scott’s post and think I may have mis-interpreted it. I think he is saying the flaw is in the way the ads are sold, not online advertising itself, to which I agree. (Could be the Black and Tans. I’m Italian, but my mom says we are all Irish on St. Patrick’s, so I have a Guiness and some Corned Beef to celebrate too.)
–
I’m usually on the same page as Scott Karp, but not today.
Maybe it’s because I’m snowed in and it’s St.Patrick’s (Black and Tans), but what he calls a flaw of online adverting, I call a fix to a flaw of traditional advertising.
First of all, it’s not only Yahoo and the big boys getting premium rates for page views. As the producer of a couple local newspaper websites, I can say that our page-views are worth much more than $1 per a thousand.
It’s true that national advertiser can sometimes get that CPM, but it more like $4 to $18 per CPM and that doesn’t include the text ads we have on the page. Nor does it take into account that each page-view serves 2- 4 display ad impressions. And some pages are sponsored also.
All in all, I’d estimate that our cost per reach is lower than our in-print advertiser cost per reach, but not that much lower.
The fact is, I don’t think either rate is as valuable as the cost, so we are in agreement that pay-per-click is bringing down the the total value of a page view.
But that’s exactly what we want, as an industry. Wha?
Like Scott says, it’s about knowing who your users are. The value of an ad is in what value it delivers to the advertiser, not in what perceived value any salesperson can convince the advertiser that a particular buy has.
And, like I’m sure Scott knows, the internet is best at bringing the margin between cost and value together, to zero in some cases.
It’s not a flaw, it’s a virtue.
I guess that means that high traffic does not equal a business model. Popularity is not enough, though huge popularity is still enough for the time being.
I think that’s just because we are in the huge transition. We now value things by the old model, “perceived and estimated value.” We soon will value them by the new model, “true value.”
That’s where Doc’s VRM will play a large role, as well as gestures and intention.
I see VC’s as the ones placing faith in page-views, moreso than web 2.0 companies. Most Alot of them are aiming right, I think.
Who can’t resist the allure of high traffic, though.
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.
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