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?
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.
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.
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.
Great quote form Stowe Boyd on the dying press release:
The argument that the press release is the right mechanism to transmit important information to the world because it works so well for newspapers, is something like saying that oats are what we should put into the gas tanks of cars because it works so well for horses.
It’s funny how quotes can deceive.
Dave Winer quoted Mike Arrington about Daylife and I thought the quote was a positive one.
I though it meant that Daylife left out all the garbage you find at typical newspaper sites.
Turns out Mike meant leaving out RSS feeds. That’s not good.
RSS (and OPML) is more important to me than HTML. I think that trend will grow. Will that become a truth for the mainstream soon? I don’t know, but IE7 will certainly push it in that direction. No?
Just for that, the Old Media Doomsday Clock may be making a shift back a minute or two in favor of Old Media. Wow!
Stay tuned.
I love Seth Godin. Well, I love to read his blog and books, anyway.
I learn something every time I read a paragraph.
In his latest post, he explains why ignorance of accepted standards or user experience will result in death of a relationship.
Here, , I equate his frustration with the forced registration on Newspaper sites. “Nope,” is the answer that a large percentage of users will give.
Seth is speaking about channel conflict. The problem with newspapers is they still have a channel conflict. It’s between their own two channels, print and web.
I have an analogy.
Could you sell a car that required you to get out and crank the engine, once the battery had been introduced for equal or lesser price.
Of course not.
But, since newspapers (in print) are a very special thing since they are the only people in town that have a press, they figure they have some special status on the web.
They try to justify it by saying that the journalism is the value of their business, but nothing can shake the fact that advertising fuels journalism, and on the web advertising doesn’t care about journalism, only relationships. It was always the distribution channel that held the value.
And pepsi and mentos videos can fuel that fire as well.
Sorry, the world is changed.
As always, I’m not saying that good journalism has no value, but the user is now in control. Period.
Please them and they will reward you. Try to control them and they will ignore you.