Howard Owens

Alan Jacobson offers nine tips for newspapers (he calls them rules). My favorites are tie editorial staff salaries/bonuses to circulation performance, and put news on the web and second-cycle stories in print. I think he's off the mark, however, when he says that 100 percent of a newspapers resources should be spent on solving the revenue puzzle. The revenue issue is a huge problem, but it's going to be hard to solve at current traffic volume (for most sites). The only way you're going to build sufficient traffic to generate sustainable revenue is to get the content equation right. On most newspaper.coms content sucks (newspaper-first stories, too long, poorly formatted, not Web-scannable, etc.), and there isn't nearly enough video just about everywhere, with little effort toward meeting the needs of users for generating their own content. I do love Jacobson's TBC redesign, though. (link via Romenesko)

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen seem pretty happy as they about striking it rich as they announce their deal to their community in a very YouTubish fashion.

YouTube is not automatically a copyright risk, according to John Palfrey, speaking to WSJ, because it's not Napster:

The thrust of the business is not to encourage anyone to violate copyright, but rather to create works that they then can distribute online. The business model that YouTube features is a far cry from any of the early music file-sharing businesses. That difference in business model should make a big difference in terms of the copyright risk calculus.

Makes sense to me.

Interesting idea from Robert Niles at OJR: The super-rich of LA interested in the LAT should take their $1 billion and invest it in local Web-only news ventures. It would be very interesting to see what such an initiative could unleash.

Interesting thought from Susan Mernit: What Google didn't buy.

What Google didn't buy is an established media company. There are any number of media companies that Google could have acquired for far less than $1.6 billion (though, granted, this was a pure stock deal). Google hasn't bought an old media company yet. And what they bought was a video/user-content/social networking site.

All of those newspaper site managers and newspaper editors who keep arguing against user-generated content -- this post is for you.

If YouTube had to be sold, Google is about the best choice. At least there is some hope that copyright cops won't immediately descend from corporate on-high and remove EVERYTHING not nailed down, that some of the long-tail professional content will remain. Some hope, but not forever hope. And Google has a lot of smart marketing minds, so if anybody can figure out how to make money from the site without destroying its DYI essence, Google can.

But this post from Lost Remote really caught my eye:

It’s hard to describe the magnitude of today’s YouTube deal, not in financial terms but as further evidence that traditional television still doesn’t get it. How it is that Apple and now Google have become the destinations and marketplaces for video on the web? They’re the new networks using the same currency — video — as TV has for years. It’s because they’ve not been constrained by old media thinking. The level of naysaying that continued up to the final hour of the Google-YouTube deal proves my point. First it was “who would ever watch stupid clips online?” Then “they’ll never make money” and finally “they’ll get sued out of business.” The networks wrote cease-and-desist letters, then weeks later started posting video on the site. In Apple’s case, it was “who wants to pay to watch TV shows on a PC or a tiny iPod?” Lots of people. It’s not about control, it’s about choice. It’s not about mass, it’s about niche. It’s not about publishing, but facilitating and connecting. It’s not about us, it’s about the user. “The thing that tipped us over was not the great business success of YouTube,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said today. “But in fact the vision of serving their end users.” While traditional media scrambles to protect and incrementally improve its bottom line, companies like YouTube, Google and Apple are pursuing new opportunities focused on the user. And that’s what sets them apart.

Contrast that with this quote from an editor on an industry mailing list this evening -- the editor is raising concerns about reader comments on stories:

I’m an insider...I know the difference between reader comment and news content. But when I’m reminded that many readers just lump it all together as The New Mexican, I feel sick. ...

Providing a sound-off forum is an easy choice, if gut-reaction, quick wit, sarcasm, cheap shots, sensation and glibness are our goals. If we want more – good sense and seriousness along with some fun – we have to look more deeply at the numbers so we may peel back the layers and learn what they really show.

My concern is that too many people in newsrooms are unable or unwilling to focus on the user. User content that fails to achieve pre-ordained journalistic standards is met with disdain, which only serves to drive readers further away.

UPDATE: Related, Steve Yelvington takes on some other old media think on the same list serve.

UPDATE: Related in subject only, the News-Record editor discussion what conversational journalism has meant to his news organization. Lessons learned.(Via Will Sullivan)

Vin Crosbie takes a look at new NAA claims about newspaper Web site growth and find some numbers don't add up.

This just in! According to the latest figures from the Newspaper Association of America Newspaper Audience Database project, more Americans visit newspaper websites than purchase printed editions. That is, more do sometime during a month. The NAA announced that more than 55.5 million Americans now visit newspaper websites at least once per month and this total grew by more than 31 percent during the past year. Sounds like a good PR bullet for newspapers.

But monthly is the big caveat there. Slightly more than 54 million Americans purchase a printed edition daily, but 55.5 million visit a newspaper website at least once per month. Conflating daily print and monthly online figures makes it appear that the American newspaper industry isn't so much losing daily print readers as gaining equally frequent new readers online. That isn't true.

I think it's hard to argue that newspaper.coms aren't capturing new users, and retaining some who might have dropped from the sphere of influence without the Web site, but I also think we should be very careful about how much we believe about news site growth.

My concern is many publishers and site managers will look at these numbers, look at their own stats and say, "Woohoo! We're doing great," when really, they aren't.

Newspaper news sites have many, many miles to travel yet before they can rest on their laurels.

Point of disclosure: I'm on the NAA New Media Federation board. These views are my own and completely my own.

When I was in high school, Tower Records was the coolest, best record store in the world. I practically lived in the Tower store in El Cajon, and a pilgrimage to the Hollywood Tower was a treat. If you had told me that 25 years later, Tower would be shutting down, I would not have believed you. Or if I believed you, I would have been horrified. "You mean, there will only be the Warehouse and Musicland?"

It would be unfair to say I haven't been in a Tower in a decade, because there was no Tower in Ventura (where I spent most of the past 10 years), but I don't buy many CDs now, either. I'm hardly going to miss Tower.

Still, Tower was once an institution. Many of us think newspapers are an institution. Tower is passing into history. It starts liquidating on Saturday. What will a newspaper "going out of business" sale look like?

NOTE: The best independent record store, also El Cajon, Blue Meanies, went out of business some time ago.

I just realized, the Online News Association awards is very skewed toward traditional news categories (Breaking news, commentary, service journalism, investigative journalism ... ). Where's the user participation categories? And what about something to recognize innovation? Nontheless, congratulations to all the winners. There is a place for recognizing their excellence; I just think the categories need expanding.

Point of disclosure: VenturaCountyStar.com won a general excellence award in 2004.

So I'm reading this piece in the Rocheser Ciy paper about labor turmoil at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and near the end hit this graph:

"There's more and more emphasis for all of us to take a new-media approach to what we do," says Orr. He and Guild Vice President Gary Craig joke that the best way to get attention and funding for a project is to pitch it with a strong multimedia component.

Why is that a joke? That's how it should be. Newsroom staff need to be taking online more seriously. One reason journalism is in a crisis stage is because too many reporters and editors haven't been willing to change with the times. Next graph:

But the Guild is worried that by changing the medium in which reporters are working, there's a danger of changing the way the news value of an event is judged. Once the D&C starts running a steady stream of videos, will car chases and fires become more important news events?

So a car chase the disrupts traffic, can potentially have a devastating effect on a community, or a fire that could alter the lives of fellow citizens, isn't a news event? The alternative view is, I suppose, that it's only a news event if a professional journalist says its a news event. Of course, that's part of the reason readership is declining.

On the other hand, I have a bit of experience in this area and some first-hand knowledge that putting video cameras in reporter's hands doesn't lead to more chase/fire coverage. Rather, it leads to better reporting.

One good thing I can say about The Bakersfield Californianis the guild is fully invested in helping the paper transition into the digital era.

I actually found the above link via Doc Searls, who has a lengthy post of advice for newspaper Web sites. He makes some good points, and while I agree with certain things (more links, more things to crawl, etc.), that's also pretty minor points in the overall scheme of things. Those are merely worthwhile tactics, not strategic changes. Also, Searls comes across with the usual cluetrain snootiness that rubs me the wrong way. Only the cluetrain crowd knows best. Those of us who haven't signed the manifesto are by default, clueless -- which is exactly why I don't where the uniform.

Yelvington is a bit skeptical about newsroom integration: Newspapers may not be ready for it yet. There hasn't been enough innovation yet. A point worth considering. But I like this line, and think its a powerful statement for newsroom leaders to contemplate: "Web news is not 'just another edition .... '"

Are you having trouble getting your news site to show up in Google News? Google News now offers some helpful advice (via Steve Rubel).

A point of persistent confusion among some site managers is the effect of site registration on the crawl (I once heard a VP of an Internet operation tell a group of print executives that Google ignored sites with registration, which is false). Here's the answer to that question.

Here's something related to music piracy online that I had never thought about before: Teens don't buy legal music because they can't. It's an interesting point: Most teens don't have plastic money. That doesn't answer the question of whether teens wold be less inclined to piracy if they had credit/debit cards, but it is an obvious barrier.

Note: This is a post I started writing a few days ago, but never got a chance to finish until now.

It's been a long time since I heard anybody argue that newspapers have faced predictions of destruction before, but survived. John Hughes holds forth with that position in the Christian Science Monitor:

But there have been peaks and valleys in the newspaper business before, as well as dire predictions about their longevity. With the advent of commercial radio, some pessimists declared that the demise of newspapers could not be far off. They proved to be wrong. With the arrival of television, first in black and white, and then in color, the naysayers again predicted the doom of newspapers. They again proved to be wrong.

Now we have the Internet, which is the first choice of provider for many in the new generation of information consumers.

What such arguments fail to consider is the fundamental difference between old media and new -- old media, newspapers, radio, TV, all were top-driven media. Editors/Producers made choices. Readers, listeners, viewers were passive, compliant and limited to few choices. Now the market is exploding, and the audience is in control. Today's editors and producers are no longer necessarily paid. Savvy media consumers are their own editors, and some are even their own producers. That power shift is significant. And while it doesn't automatically spell doom for newspapers, it means the old argument about surviving against past disruptors rather weak. The comparison just isn't the same.

Furthermore, digital delivery of content is just going to get better and better. Right now, newspapers still have some advantages in mobility, convenience and serendipitous discovery, but those advantages will inevitably disappear. The question the John Hugheses of the world need to ask themselves: Are they ready for the changes yet to come?

I'm reading a project management book, and in the first chapter is a nifty observation: Your current employer owns your job. You own you're career.

With that in mind, I thought I offer five things newspaper people could do to benefit their own their careers that, oh, by the way, is also good for their present employers.

1. Start a blog. This isn't an experiment any longer. This is an essential adjunct of 21st Century media. Don't blog about work. I would say, don't even blog about media. Also, don't blog too much about your personal life (lots of landmines there). Blog about something you are passionate about -- physical fitness, stamp collecting, beer, etc. Learn the difference between opinion and point of view/informed insight (practice the latter). Read Kevin Roderick or Doug Fisher to learn how two grizzled veterans of the news game learned to adapt their writing and reporting style to the Web, and then do what they do.
2. Buy a multimedia camera, such as a Sony Cybershot. You need a quality, but small and inexpensive, camera that does digital stills, audio and video. Buy a holster to clip to your belt or stick it in your purse, but never let it be more than inches from your hand. Citizen journalists do this. You should, too. Sign up for an account with a photo sharing site and post frequently. Link to it from your blog. Take newsworthy pictures on the job and offer them to your newspaper.com.
3. Learn to edit video. Buy good software if you like, but both Windows and Mac come with good enough free video editing software. Shoot and edit your own video and upload it to YouTube. If you come up with something newsworthy, offer it to your newspaper.com. But learn the tools of the trade, your trade.
4. Become more mobile and digital. This one may be the hardest to do on a reporter's salary, but if you can find some way to do it, it's a good investment. Buy a laptop. Make sure you own a mobile phone with all the bells and whistles. Be able to do e-mail and SMS. Be able to post anything from anywhere. I also recommend mobile video, such as SprintPCS offers, so you can learn this emerging delivery method. Buy a video iPod.
5. Try your hand at podcasting. I'm not convinced podcasting is the wave of the future, but it might be, though it may not be for you, but nonetheless, it will teach you some essential multimedia skills and expose you to another realm of digital delivery. You should at least try it.

If you do these things, you invest in yourself, you invest in your employer, and you invest in our industry. This is a good thing.

The Tribune has made a martyr of Jeff Johnson,the publisher who refused to cut newsroom staff. it was inevitable.

I don't see how you can sell your company and then turn around and sue the buyer for not giving you enough money. If the $560 million price tag wasn't too your liking, why did you take it? How can you blame the the buyer for undervaluing your company? Don't you know the value of your own company? If you don't, isn't it your own fault for getting ripped off, if indeed you were ripped off?

When MySpace sold, Greenspan made an obvious strategic decision to cash out before the value of his company's value declined to zero, which it easily could have done. Now that MySpace may (or may not) be worth more, Greenspan can't blame anybody but himself for not getting full value, it seems to me.

Meanwhile, rumor has it that Google is about to buy YouTube. Apparently, Google doesn't mind becoming the favorite pin cushion of copyright holder attorneys. In this case, $1.6 billion for YT.

First there was a proliferation of places to view classifieds, then there were the aggregators such as Oodle and Indeed, which made it convenient to find classifieds, but what if you wanted to place in an add in all these places? It's not easy if you're posting a job, for example, to hit all the sites you might want to target. It takes time, and there's no common way ads are collected. I recently faced this with posting my house for sale, where I hit craigslist, Google Base, PennySaver, Lycos, and Yahoo! Real Estate, which was time consuming. Now there are companies springing up to collect your ad once and distribute it across multiple sites. What an obvious idea. And just one more way newspapers get disintermediated. Of course, newspapers could partner with one of these sites and theoretically reach more people willing to place ads, but giving up a bite of the revenue, of course.

Newspaper companies need to be very concerned about the potential flight of insert business. I'm not convinced they are. If you're not convinced, sign up for the Home Depot e-mail newsletter program. Also, read this story.

Visuals drive clicks on traffic.

Will Sullivan has tips and tricks.

Lost Remote on YouTube:

The piling on YouTube continues. First, Mark Cuban. Now it’s Forrester Research, with two analysts predicting a lawsuit that will beat YouTube and force it to take down all copyrighted material. While I agree that’s possible, I disagree with the conclusion that such a suit would cripple YT. The videos that really take off from YT are the homemade ones: think lonelygirl15, diet coke & mentos, Japanese Backstreet Boys, Evolution of Dance. Don’t take my word for it - just visit the “Most Viewed Ever” page. The other power of YT is in the Long Tail - the millions of vids that get a few plays each. The copyrighted video argument is a red herring. The first reaction to any new media is to fear it.

I agree a copyright suit is inevitable. And YT will surely lose such a suit. I also believe the litigant will be making a huge strategic mistake. Only on old-line media mogul would sue YT. A media owner who "gets it," will partner with YT, either implicitly or explicitly, like Warner Music Group did. But the suit won't destroy YT -- as LR notes, the most popular vids are not copyrighted material, but user-generated content. The copyrighted stuff are the long tail of YT -- important and great, but not the bread of life -- not now. YT would be diminished, but not killed.

If you missed Trevor Hoffman's record breaking 479th career save on Sept. 24, YouTube has it covered. Note that all but two of the videos uploaded were shot by fans at the game -- citizen sports coverage. Citizen media keeps growing, with little regard for so-called professional standards.

From my POV, when, as a reporter, you have information the public should know, you report it. You don't wait until the print deadline out of some vain belief that only print can give your scoop the gravitas it deserves. You publish it where it will reach the public the quickest, which usually means digitally.

As this piece points out, Bob Woodword take publishing for the sake of ego (and financial gain) to a whole new level. The headline: A reporter who scoops his own paper.

It is a marriage of very modern convenience, an exchange of brands that has little to do with a traditional employer-employee relationship. At a time when newspapers are hurting for attention, a paper will take it where it can get it. “It is an accommodation that The Post has made, and they seem to be happy with the arrangement," said Edward Wasserman, a professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University. “The important thing is everybody is going in with their eyes open, but the fact still remains that under the arrangement, supremely newsworthy information assembled by one of its senior editors is not going into the paper."

When reporting scoops becomes a matter of financial gain or ego boost, how trustworthy is the information? And how is the public served? I'm just asking ...

About 8 months ago, in the context of a conversation about the state of the newspaper industry, a new media executive asked me if I’d ever seen Tron.

Until now, I’ve probably been about the only geek in America who hasn’t seen Tron.

I just watched it.

The analogy to the newspaper industry, especially to new media, is to be innovative, you need to get off the grid. You can't just mindlessly follow the Master Control Program.

And there is this bit of dialogue:

Ed Dillinger: I can’t sit here and worry about every little user request that comes in.
Dr. Walter Gibbs: User requests are what computers are for.
Dillinger: Doing our business is what computers are for.

So ask yourself, do you see technology as a way to serve your business or serve your readers? Are you on the grid or off?

According to Guy Kawasaki, Helio is the hot new phone among the youth. Just so you know. It looks pretty slick, with all the features a social-networking, media-addicted kid might want. It promotes myspace and boosts a "home theater in your pocket." Just so you know.

The Web 2.0 backlash is underway. Guy Kawasaki makes fun of it at the start of this video, and Chris Anderson posts a comic that makes fun of the flavor of the month in over actual content.

I think this is what happens when buzzwords and trends become more important than thinking about what people want. Buzzwords and trends is how bubbles get created. Unfortunately, when the bubble bursts, the real value of the technology for doing stuff people want gets thrown out with the bathwater. In the newspaper industry, when Bubble 1.0 burst, a lot of publishers lost interest in the Internet. They're paying the price now. When Bubble 2.0 bursts (the Web 2.0 revolution), a lot of business leaders will lose interest. But the underlining infrastructural need for people to connect with people will not go away, even after the buzzwords are forgotten.

These are extraordinary and challenging times for the newspaper industry.

Knight-Ridder fell, and no Tribune Co is rocked by shareholder decision. In Los Angeles, the publisher and editor are refusing Tribune's demand for more job cuts. The NYT has a pretty thorough article on the principle players.

In my own mind, I've been questioning whether paid content on mobile would work any better than on the Web.

ESPN's exit from the realm of mobile service provider isn't a spot-on repudiation the paid-content model on mobile, but it isn't a good sign. The biggest problem for ESPN was their fundamental misunderstanding of how hard it is to get people to switch service providers (family plans, contracts that are expensive to cancel, etc.). While the barriers were big, you have to wonder if content is truly king, especially sports content, why more people weren't willing to switch?

I recently started a new service with SprintPCS and a Treo700. This is my first experience with video on mobile, and I've got to say: It rocks. My other observation is that there is so much free video content on my phone that I'm not really tempted to try any of the paid services. What I get for free is quick hits of news, sports and entertainment, and that's all I really need on mobile. It's great for us information junkies who need to kill a few minutes here and there, in this or that line, etc. I can't see spending the time to watch movies or TV shows on it, though. It's not the small screen that's the problem. It's just that I can't see using it for a primary entertainment source. There are better options when you have time to make a commitment to a show.

Paid content on mobile may work yet, and maybe it's working better than I imagine (I have no data), but I'm skeptical.

But mark this: mobile video is here to stay. I'm sold on its viability for content delivery, if it's the right content.

Romenekso's summation:

The American Press Institute-sponsored Newspaper Next report says newspapers can turn themselves around if they quickly develop publications and affiliated websites packed with local information. It suggests that papers assemble databases about parks, medical facilities and restaurants, information about schools, consumer-supplied ratings for restaurants, mechanics and contractors, as well as chat groups for parents and shoppers.

Look, I've got to say this: I started down that path in 1995 with East County Online. Local, local local.

Then there is this old E&P story.

I'm no longer so anti-AP, but commodity news is not a differentiator. The one thing the average newspaper can do better than anybody else is local, and not just news, but everything. Everything.

I was pretty amazed to hear that Pervez Musharraf appeared on the Daily Show. Then when I started to watch, the cynical side comes out and I think, "He's just another guy promoting a book."

The interview proves once again how good Jon Stewart really is. He conducts a better interview than the big names on big networks.

For me, though, a guy who hasn't had any sugar in four or five weeks, I couldn't stop thinking about the Twinkies.