Howard Owens

Matt Welch, who recently wrote a book about presidential candidate John McCain,  spent Christmas in Phoenix, staying at the Clarendon  hotel. The hotel is significant in journalism history. In its parking lot, Don Bolles was murdered.

What's the McCain-Bolles connection?  It's tenuous at best, if not non-existent, but read Matt's post to find out.  It's fascinating, nonetheless.

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If fishing and hunting is your thing, you can find more GateHouse coverage at Prairie State Outdoors.

If there's one statement I've made about video that has drawn the most fire it is that reporter-shot video should take no more an hour to shoot and edit.

For most news videos, any more time than that is just a waste because you're not going to get enough views from any one video (there are exceptions, of course) to justify the time commitment, especially when you're talking about reporters who also have print responsibilities.

I think this line of thinking is especially important at small newspapers (the kind I deal with every day) where publishers will NEVER hire a full-time videographer (or at least not until video advertising becomes a major revenue stream).

Andy Dickinson points us to a newspaper web crew in Nebraska that is regularly doing quick-production video and starting to get some traction with the local audience.

Online producer Eric Eckert tells Andy,

This year alone, we (3 staff) have produced over 450 videos which have received over 120,000 views. Most of the videos are, as you stated, 2-3 minutes long. The numbers differ though when you look at how long it takes us to make the videos. We usually spend 10-15 minutes shooting the video and I usually spend 15-30 minutes editing the video. In breaking news situations, like car accidents, we are generally shooting photos as well. We probably average getting a 2-3 minute report and 100 photos onto our site in less than an hour.

And in a follow up, Eric says,

Melanie has been instrumental with helping to get more videos out fast. She takes flack from time-o-time because she might say “uh” here or there, but we generally get the shot done in one take and that’s what we want. Our number one concern is to get the information out there.

Sure, we could spend a day making a report, but when it comes down to it, it looks real, you can tell she’s not robotically reading off a prompter and once again, we can have it online faster.

There are many advantages to putting the emphasis on speed-of-production:

• You can simply produce more content, and more content feeds the long-tail.
• More, faster production, means you're going to learn faster. Learning is still the number one task for all newspaper video producers (remember what Ira Glass says about this?).
• More video means the audience is learning faster than your site is a go-to place for local video.
• Speed to publication is exceptionally important to online audience growth.

Eric's newspaper is the York News Times. There are two interesting things about that. First, the York paper is a GateHouse Media property now; second, while it's a GateHouse property, we've never had a direct discussion with anybody in York about our video strategy. York developed its approach while still owned by Morris. It's great to see York being successful with its own homegrown strategy.

UPDATE: Good follow-on post from Zac Echola.

Vivian Schiller, GM of NYT.com, who comes from a TV background, says that doing video for the web at the Times has been real learning experience. "I basically had to unlearn everything I knew about making television," she tells Beet.TV.

As I've said before, I believe newspaper web sites have a civic obligation to do their best to require contributors to post under their real identity.

Here's a guest post on Ypluse about the problems with anonymity online.

I think I'd easily trade what's left of my privacy for some major strides forward in eliminating abuse of anonymity. I say this as a person who truly resents the intrusion on my privacy. I just don't know what to do anymore.

I believe in free speech. I think we ought to be allowed to say whatever we want to whoever we want. But if we're not backing that up with our identity, it's not fair to anyone on the other side of the conversation. We can say whatever we want, and go much further than manners allow. ....

I say this as a person who has kept a blog for seven years hidden under a pseudonym.

...

But I don't know how much longer we can live in the wild west.

Anonymity is great in certain cases, but those cases probably should be rarer than we think. Anonymity is easy and it feels good, but maybe it's something we're growing out of. Bullying and abuse are not okay, and we're seeing more of it everyday.

UPDATE: I'll add this: Identity and profiles help add context. As this post points out, in absence of context, many people fill in the blanks with base assumptions, which leads to insults and invective.

To wit: When you "meet" someone in Halo online, you have only two indicators of who they are -- their gamer tag and their voice. You never see their face, you probably don't know where they're from (unless you look at their profile), and you don't know their age. Your competitors are probably from an entirely different city, state, or nation. Faced with this absence of context, people rely on the basest of psychological tropes, i.e., homophobia. How else to deny the sameness of the other than by inverting his/her sexuality.

UPDATE II: Tim D'Avis, in the comments, leaves a link to an interview with one of the founders of The Well, an early digital community.

Brand: Yes and no. I mean, one thing that we insisted on was no anonymity. And lots of the systems out there now like anonymity or encourage it, or individuals absolutely hold out for it. Personally, I would have preferred to see it go the other way. Not so much on the … I mean, The Well's compromise is pretty good, I think, which is that people can have whatever amusing handle they wanted, but it was linked and it was linked publicly to a real person. That gave the accountability I wanted, which is, I knew that flame wars would go over unless somebody’s nose was identifiable so that if necessary, you could go punch their nose. And they would know that, and you would know that, and that would slightly ameliorate the otherwise extreparous (sp?) behavior. What it did probably, in reality, was connect cyberspace with real space a little better because you always had the sense there were real people and real places behind whatever they were doing online.

The opportunity for local newspapers to build online communities that lead to real-world affiliations is another reason to have some connection to real identity. It's also another reason not to outsource your community building to Topix.

Bob Benz is giving the Kindle a fairly positive initial review.

At breakfast this morning in the Cincinnati airport, I cruised through the Wall Street Journal while I shoveled my Southwestern Omelette into my mouth. This was much easier than juggling a paper, even a tabloid. I'd already started reading the paper on the plane on the way up. (I looked in my mailbox at 5 a.m. to see if the local paper and my print version of the Journal were there yet. No way. I'm lucky when they arrive by 7:30 ... but the Kindle version of the Journal had downloaded automatically overnight.)

I've seen a lot of the digital hipsters pan the Kindle over flaws ranging from the way it manages digital rights to the look and feel of the thing. There's merit to some of these complaints, but overall, I really like it and think it's a big step forward. Wireless and ease of use make it a device that has me geeked.

Here's another example of the advantage of journalists always being armed with video-capable cameras.

There was a dramatic fire in Gloucester, Mass. Saturday morning. GateHouse Media photojournalist Kirk Williamson shot both stills and video (for the video, he used one of the Casio's we issue).

Story with photos.

Video:

[youtube pivyeArn3QA]

Editor Chris Biondi posted this interview with Kirk.

How did you juggle between still and video? What was your thought process? As with all spot news it's important to shoot the overall as you are going into the scene. This I did with my still cameras, shooting wide with one camera and long with the other. Once the paper and Web site are covered with stills (about 10 minutes in) I pulled out the Casio and started doing video overalls following the same routine. Wide overall, then tight action. In this situation it's important to follow a pattern and not get all flustered with what is going on. After I had some video I went back to shooting stills and alternated back and forth until I went, looking for different angles, etc.

I would contend that Kirk would have had a lot harder time doing both stills and video if, after taking his stills, he had a complete video camera kit to set up (bigger camera, tripod, lights, mics, etc.). And having all that, there would be a real temptation to turn this into a "visual journalism story," instead of simply showing what's going on. And the whole process, including editing, would have taken exponentially longer. For this event, just being able to whip out the Casio and get a few frames to show the fire live-action is all that is needed.

How do we teach, explore and learn to use online tools and techniques properly?

One thing I see happening a lot in online journalism is we do stuff just because we can. That is fine for experimentation, but at some point you need to get beyond the mere ability and delve deep into art of when and why.

I thought of this thanks for just a few words from Jeff Jarvis, "Newspaper online sites tend to use slideshows too much, just because the internet lets them."

We do a lot of stuff, just because we can.

There's a lot of blogging going on at newspapers -- the majority of it bad blogging -- because we can. We're doing a lot of video with uneven results because we can (and hey, I acknowledge my role in this, and contrary to anything I say here, I am not going to stop pushing that approach, because we still have a lot of learning to do).

The flip side is, and also a contradictory truth, is that not enough journalists are doing any of these things. There are still way too many journalists sitting on the side lines thinking, "This web stuff isn't important. Let me just cover my stories and meet my print deadlines."

Let's be clear, we should do a lot of blogging, and a lot of video, and a lot of slideshows/photo galleries, and multimedia packages, and so on.

But we also need to start doing a better job of learning how to do each of these things well and appropriately.

Print journalists need to start thinking like web journalists.

Web journalists, I believe, have an instinct for blogging, the tools and craft to explore informing the public through words, sound and moving pictures, and the deft skill of a pro to know what to use when.

For anybody who has ever tried to master a craft, such as writing, you know there is a process by which you begin with a very elemental understanding of how to put pieces together. What comes out at first is often clunky. In writing, maybe you've used too many short sentences when one long one would have worked better, or maybe that really gorgeous five-syllable word bogged down a sentence that wold have been improved with four-fewer beats.

Just as there is subtly of craft in writing, or computer programming, or cabinet making, there is a subtly of craft in being a web journalist.

I'm not sure there are many journalists out there trying to learn that craft the way a Hunter Thompson or a Tom Wolfe or a Gay Talese worked at theirs.

Those who are doing that very important thing now have a blog, they engage in conversation with sources and readers online, they carry with them 24/7 a video-capable camera (of any sort), they can dabble in Flash or mash ups and long ago stopped trying to filter how they approach news through a prism of what they learned in J-school. They are working at their craft, not just doing it because some boss told them to, or they're worried about becoming irrelevant, or even because it's fun -- they're doing it to help create a new vocabulary for 21st Century journalism.

[youtube qlWgealgyH8]

The choice should probably have been the naked quad run, but that's gotten plenty of attention already.

The GateHouse Media paper in Somerville made Romenesko today.

Jim Romenekso's blog post deals with a story and video about an annual tradition at Tufts University -- hundreds of students made naked laps around the quad early in the night (video at the bottom of this post).

Romenesko's primary link to a blog post by a Jay Fizgerald, a blogger for a a rival newspaper site, BostonHerald.com. I mention that because I find it terribly interesting that Fitzgerald seems comfortable snarking at our web policies while lacking enough savvy to link to the story on the WickedLocal.com site.

Dan Kennedy, a generally reasonable, savvy and experienced media commentator and journalism professor in Boston is more pointed in his criticism (seemingly calling me out along the way to weigh in myself, which is fine by me).

Still, posting pictures of drunken* students running around in their birthday suits is not the sort of thing a community newspaper ought to be doing. Just because you can doesn't mean that you should.

*(Are they drunk at this stage of the evening? How do we know? The run is pre-D.J.-hosted party.)

As for me, I think one of the reasons quality journalism is in retreat these days is because we haven't spent enough time and effort truly covering our communities. We spend way too much time on he-said, she-said local political scandals and deadly dull town council meetings and not enough time really showing what people in our communities are doing.

We certainly don't cover enough events attended by young people, unless those young people happen to be singing in the choir or collecting dimes to earn a Rotary trip to Ethiopia.

All of that, of course, is good important community news, but that isn't all there is, and our failure to cover the rest is a big part of why we're losing readership, especially among younger audiences, who are getting more and more accustomed to the uncensored web.

(The underlying point here, in case it isn't obvious, is that audience=revenue, and newspapers are declining on both counts, and it takes revenue, and lots of it, to pay for the kind of journalism us ink-stained types love.)

This is no time for community journalism to be squeamish -- and keep in mind, we're talking about a video that shows, essentially, nothing. What it does capture is the spirit of the moment. What it does record for posterity is a real event, in a real community, that is seemingly important to a lot of people in that community.

Isn't that an essential part of journalism's role, even if offends some people's sensibilities, even some of the participants (read the comments on the story)?

Should journalists really be in the role of hiding the truth of what really goes on in a community? I feel like that is what Dan Kennedy is suggesting.

To me, this story and this video (and it really isn't much of a story without the video) are fundamentally good journalism because they capture some societal reality. In fact, the reactions to the video support that assertion -- just read the 100+ comments on the story, or the comments on YouTube or on Dan Kennedy's blog -- the video is forcing some real debate about the state of our society, including journalism's role in society. I think that debate is both healthy for the community and healthy for journalism. And it doesn't happen, sometimes, unless reporters and editors are willing to take some chances and do some things that people in the community would rather they not do.

What ever happened to no fear, no favor in journalism?

There's also a Facebook protest group now, which is highly amusing. Think about it -- group of students throw privacy concerns to the wind by running around naked in public (even posting pictures to Flickr), and then get upset when that event is covered by a media outlet. How ironic.

And think of all the media coverage there has been recently about how open many students are on MySpace and Facebook about their private lives (example).

Obviously, these people are operating at a level that embraces some sort of double standard -- as in, we can post our own drunken, irreverent pictures for all the world to see on the Web, but don't let "the media" post anything about our shenanigans. Is that a double standard journalists should accept, meaning ignore, or cover it as part of a journalistic obligation to correctly reflect what's going on in society?

One thing about GateHouse Media is that it is blessed with many great editors. One of them is Greg Reibman, the editor-in-chief ultimately responsible for coverage in Somerville. He left this comment on Kennedy's post:

Ever since Community Newspaper Company was formed, the rub has been that a giant corporation was going to take unique papers and turn them into cookie cutter clones. Instead, we have scores of unique community publications and a management which recognizes that different communities have different standards.

None of this is meant to suggest that I think this story is bold journalism or making a strong social statement.

We covered it because it was fun -- and funny -- which I believe is the same reason why all those Tufts kids have been taking off all their clothes and running around in public for the past five years.

Yes, it is a fun story, but it also accurately reflects an element of what is going on in that community, and that deserves, to me, serious consideration by a news organization -- and serious consideration means accurately covering the event. I would argue that video gives us a unique power to provide that accuracy that mere text doesn't capture.

These are turbulent and fast-moving times -- times that are comparable to the introduction of moveable type, when first-ever communication among a more more greatly dispersed strata of society forced rapid societal changes, even toppling church hierarchies and governments. It is in that context I say again, this is no time for journalism to become squeamish.

We must cover our communities as we really find them. We must use all available tools to reflect those communities back to our friends and neighbors in those communities. And then we must host the discussions that those reports encourage.

Good journalism, as always, and to again repeat myself, requires no fear and no favor.

UPDATE: Jay snarks back very nicely.

... it seems Howard Owens is upset with me for actually getting the Somerville Journal's side in a very small controversy over its written and video coverage of the Tufts Naked Quad Run ... I also know how to link to stories and posts on the Internet. I can even do Google searches. See my combined talents here and here and here. ... Now that is snark. ...

P.S. - I didn't mind the Journal's coverage. I also like what WickedLocal is doing on the web in general, though I could do without the hair-trigger self-righteousness at the slightest whiff of controversy. ...

Here's the controversial video:

[youtube cW3sZUHZM9o]

Here's a good piece on the success of SignOnSanDiego.com's break news team:

Team members confer with their editors frequently, but they often edit postings for each other, and they don't wait for assignments or debate whether to head out for a promising story.

Karen Kucher, one of the original members of the team and an assistant editor, said, “Our default is supposed to be to go.”

And for those who think web-first publishing is somehow an affront to journalistic propriety:

Through its speedy postings, the team competes directly with TV, Baker said. “But we get it right, we don't run stuff that's not confirmed yet, and we don't sensationalize it.”

...

Greg Gross, who's been in this business more than 30 years, said of the team's work, “There were all sorts of uncertainties on the mechanics and maybe the wisdom of it. That has all faded away with amazing speed.”

And some might be surprised to learn that not only does this approach help grow audience, it is also journalisticly satisfying.

Mallory said, “I've never experienced more gratitude from readers for anything we've done in journalism than for the simple postings on the news blog, three or four paragraphs at a time, of reliable, confirmed information, sortable by area.”

With this kind of breaking news, readers care more about the information than the prose. As Gross said, “I don't feel as if I'm writing or reporting for the ages . . . and much to my surprise, I'm fine with that.”

Somebody should send this piece to the cranky copy editors, or whatever other forum is out there where newspaper people spit bile at web publishing.

It looks like I'm not the only one concerned about newspapers outsourcing core-responsibility community building to Topix.

Rich Gordon shares his concern:

Still, I would argue that for news organizations, building online community should be more than an outsourced service. I'd go so far as to say that cultivating community is the most important step for news media to take in order to build online engagement. By partnering with Topix, news organizations are essentially making a statement that online discussions are not important enough to build technology and staffing capabilities around.

While Topix is owned by three newspaper companies, I'm not aware of any Gannett, Tribune (see second update below -- there's at least one each for Gannett and Tribune) or McClatchy newspapers (or any companywide deals) outsourcing its community building to Topix. That's telling. And my prediction, none of them will any time soon.

If you look at Topix leadership, you see these are not newspaper people, but Silicon Valley pros. This is just another bubble play for them. Their strategy isn't aimed at helping newspapers, but how to harvest audience and revenue from newspapers.

UPDATE: 2007 NAA Online Innovator winner Steve Yelvington weighs in:

I'm in Howard's camp on this one. This is not the same as outsourcing obituary guestbooks to Legacy.com (which I think actually makes sense). This is core.

...

This is a great opportunity to listen to the community that's being thrown away. You can't grow to understand what people care about, what's on their minds, behaving like an absentee landlord.

...

We don't listen enough. Voicemail systems and security guards separate our newsrooms from the real world. Beat reporters talk to beat sources, who have an agenda, and rarely to civilians. Normal life rarely shows up in the news report.

The Internet gives us a powerful opportunity to reconnect with communities of real people. Handing that opportunity to Topix, regardless of how well Topix might perform, squanders a treasure.

Yelvington points out that online news pioneer Steve Outing takes a more nuanced approach to the topic, but Outing does say:

If any news companies are looking at the Topix offering and thinking, “Great. We can outsource our audience interaction and get back to the news business as usual,” well, that’s nuts. User comments are just one small element of interacting and engaging with your audience.

But the problem is, for any news organization that doesn't have the fortitude to handle community conversation itself, that is exactly what is going to happen, especially if it's a companywide mandate, such as Media News is doing. It's inevitable.

I realize my rhetoric has been a little heated on this topic, but it's a major issue of survivability for newspapers on the web.

UPDATE II: Here's a post about Topix planning to partner with local newspapers on hyperlocal news pages. Of interest, contrary to what I write above, it notes a Gannett and a Tribune paper that are using Topix to manage forums.

[youtube uUwiTrHTKFE]

This, I believe, is our first viral "hit." So far, 177,000 views, 184 ratings, 214 favorites, 165 comments.

Only Nixon could have gone to China, and only Mindy McAdams could write a post entitled "Flash is not the answer."

Flash is not a magic elixir. Flash will not make your Web site better if it’s generally bad, and it won’t make your stories better if you’re not already telling stories well with sound and pictures.

...

Second, let’s look around your Web site. Has anyone been producing any audio slideshows or videos that have … um (trying to be tactful) … substance? Value to the audience? Or are people just throwing random spaghetti at the wall? Because if that’s what your newsroom is doing, maybe you’re not ready to produce packages yet. Maybe you don’t have a strategy for your Web site — and if you don’t, then what are you going to use Flash for?

One ongoing theme of my blogging is "journalists need to learn to think strategically."

In the olden days, when newspapers were essentially monopolies, competition was scarce and the profits were rolling in unabated, publishers could afford to employ journalists who pontificated in smokey, after-work barrooms about the puriety of their craft. No strategic business discussions allowed.

Those days are buried under a pile of rusting manual typewriters.

Nowadays, especially when you're working online, you must think about more than the journalistic value of the story, but also ask questions like -- where does this fit into our overall online strategy (do we even have a strategy)?, and how will this help grow and retain audience?

Mindy also hits on an important theme: Quality. If you're going to do Flash, you better make sure it's good. A lot of people don't like my approach to video, but video is a much more forgiving medium than Flash multimedia projects. If it isn't well done, and it isn't meaningful, it's a complete waste of time, both for the people who produce it and the audience asked to endure it.

One last thought for journalists: Don't get too hung up on the idea that you need to learn Flash. There are lots of other things you can learn that will help you and your newsroom. If you're not a visually oriented person to begin with, then learning Flash may not be your best bet. You and your newsroom might advance much faster if you learn PHP/MySQL, or even how to shoot and edit quick, down-and-dirty video, or how to do a Google map mashup, or hell, just how to blog proficiently, which for many print reporters, isn't as easy as it looks.

It's about friggin' time that the L.A. Times hired my friend Tony Pierce to do blog stuff.

It should have happened years ago.

Congrats, Tony.

Meredith Artley, whom I met at ONA this year, is doing a great job of moving the Times in a healthier direction.

I have this fear that many in the newspaper journalism world cling to aomw notion that if we can just get past this rough spot of Web2.0 disruption, some technology that will come along and save newspapers as we've always known them.

I've been looking for somebody to actually come out and say it, and we've gotten close a few times recently between various pieces on newspapers needing an iPod moment (never mind that the iPod has done a pretty hearty job of desconstructing the music industry as we once knew it) and the recent release of the Kindle.

Here's an article that comes as close as I've seen as saying, "there is technology that will save us."

I'm going to deal with some of specifics in the article, but before I do, let me dispel two myths:

• First, we don't need technology to save us. There's no reason we can't succeed on the web; in fact, we're doing far better on the web than many "the sky is falling" types in newsrooms give us credit for.
• Second, technology won't save us. If we can't succeed on the web, we certainly won't be able to succeed with the Kindle or e-ink, because each of those new technologies will bring their own challenges to the traditional way of doing things. Consumers will decide how to best use these devices, not publishers, or they won't use them. That's the rock-hard truth of digital technology -- users are in charge, not publishers.

As for the article itself, which posits a rather cherry picture of how newspapers might be able to forgo messy print in favor of cheaper digital publishing.

Some problems:

• Not all print readers will switch to digital, even if print goes away. Smaller audiences mean less from advertisers;
• You'll still need a web site (in a Kindle/e-paper world), you can't count on net-savvy readers making the switch, so you're still fragmented and disrupted by your own free content.
• Much of online revenue now is leveraged against print buys, so when print goes away you lose that leverage and probably have to lower your prices for the single digital buy.
• You can't completely cut your circulation department, because you'll still need staff to deal with e-paper subscribers and their issues and problems. In fact, your costs may go up as you need a more tech savvy call center.
• The ad sales model proposed in the article is deceivingly complex. If current ad sales staff struggle now to sell very simple CPM-based banner ads -- a far less complex sale than many print ads -- how quickly can they adapt to highly targeted ads on devices clients aren't really even likely to own in early stages?
• The article is optimistic about half of the newspaper advertisers making the jump from print to digital, but mistakenly makes that assumption on current ad rates. But with smaller, more fragmented audiences, even with targeting, ad rates are likely to be much lower -- classified rates, which probably will not be targetted and make the bulk of newspaper revenue, will be much, much lower, if not free.

Newspaper people need to stop chasing the rainbow of "technology is going to save us" and get busy trying to help us succeed online, because that is the more immediate challenge and opportunity before us.

We need to operate as if either we succeed online, or we die and not live in technological fantasy worlds.

Just as last year, I'm making my own subjective picks for various categories of my own choosing for web site awards. This is just for newspaper-affiliated sites, of course. And as last year, Bakersfield.com and VenturaCountyStar.com (because of my previous management of those sites) are ineligible to win, as well as any GateHouse Media site. Also, admittedly, my awards are entirely US centric, since that's what I know best.

Best News Site: Knoxnews.com. Just as in years past, Jack Lail and his team continue to do an amazing job. You want participation? They've got it. You want an aggressive, wide-ranging and creative video strategy? You'll find it on knoxnews.com. There is lots of blogging and loads of extra content. Knoxnews.com continues to do what all sites need to do -- move further and further away from being just a newspaper online. This site is also one of the best designed and conceived in the business. This year, btw, I gave demerits to WashingtonPost.com for its highly restrictive registration system.

Rookie of the Year: New this year, this award goes to a newspaper site that probably none of us ever paid much attention, but sometime within the past year got its act together. The first-ever winner of this award: VictoriaAdvocate.com. This small-paper's site is one of the most active I've seen in the use of participation and blogs, to the point of loading up the home page with these web-centric features. Here is a small paper site that isn't afraid to break away from being merely a newspaper.com.

Come Back of the Year: Another new category. This award goes to a site that should have been much better than it was in recent years (if not forever), but made great strides in the past 12 months. It was tempting to give the award to LATimes.com, but sister site ChicagoTribune.com takes the honors. ChiTri is doing a great job of integrating blogging and video. I love their video chats, such as this one.

Best Site Design: NaplesNews.com. I don't think there is a site in the industry, from a purely design perspective, that has done more to completely bury the news-print connection. There is no attempt on NaplesNews.com to be the newspaper online. Even the main nav communicates -- we're a web news site, not a newspaper site. Plus, the site, right down the play button on the video player, is just gorgeous.

Best Entertainment Site: AmpifySD. Is there another newspaper site with both live-streaming programming and a local music wiki? This site is caulk full of useful information to San Diego's nightlife mavens (I was once part of that crowd), and plenty of ways to interact and contribute. And it's a great design.

Best Multimedia Story: Rocky Mountain News, The Crossing. This package is the most thorough, well-conceived and executed multimedia effort I've ever seen. I don't think it has a flaw, from the quality of its journalism, to its video, to its subject matter to its design and Flash implementation. I found the subject matter absolutely engrossing and it is so full of real life, real people drama.

Best Participation: DenverPost.com's Neighbors. I've never been entirely comfortable -- but didn't mind the experiment -- with the citizen-journalism-as-content efforts of NorthWest Voice, Backfence.com or YourHub. The Post, right in YourHub's back yard, has taken a different approach -- to create a conversation site, a place where local residents can discuss local issues, without any pretension that it is news. To bad the recent deal Media News made with Topix is likely to kill this effort. That said, the next time your publisher suggests you start a Northwest Voice/YourHub type of site, point him to Neighbors (if it's still around).

Best User-Generated Content Site: TBO.com's local artist database. This is a great idea -- take a subject that people can be absolutely passionate about, where subjects care deeply about what they do and are eager to express it, and the ability to use web technology to create a very interesting vertical, and you have a winner.

Best Newspaper Video Effort: NYTimes.com. The Times has the resources to both go after long-tail video content (a basic idea beyond my own video strategy) and use better equipment and take more time editing to do it. The times produces some truly interesting video and video blogs, but never tries to be like TV. Also, the video gallery page is well executed.

Best Revenue Effort: LJWorld.com's Marketplace. You can just look at Marketplace and see that it is smartly conceived and executed, not to mention the fact that many, many local advertisers have obviously bought packages in Marketplace. The clincher for me though is my own personal experience: Several weeks ago, when I visited Lawrence and dropped in on a local furniture shop, I was impressed by the implied endorsement the shop owner gave me -- he told me to visit his LJWorld.com page rather than his own web site.

Best Database Journalism: You could pick any number of Gannett sites since the birth of the Info Center and praise its database efforts -- maybe the best thing Gannett has done with the Info Center -- but IndyStar.com sure has a hell of a lot to offer. Database journalism ranks right with participation, web-first publishing and video for growing online audience. We could all lift a page or two from IndyStar on how this is done.

The post I just did gave me a thought -- now that we're getting wider distribution and participation from our news sites in our video strategy, I should highlight some of the better, more interesting videos our reporters shoot.

My intention is to do a video of the week, but given how busy I can get some times, I doubt I'll be that deligent some times, or that posting will be evenly spaced.

I'll start, though, this week with two I just found on YouTube (where most of our papers post their video).

[youtube t3_oLc9AA0o]

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Here's a nice, complimentary post about the GateHouse Media video strategy from a local political blogger.

Cool. I don't know the guy. He's not part of the professional media crowd, as far as I know (he posts anonymously). He's what some might call a "citizen journalist." And he gets it.

He recognizes the difference between our FasterMore strategy vs. Gannett's BiggerBetter strategy (see Ryan).

The Messenger-Post took an entirely different tack. They give their print reporters cheap cameras and had them add video to their stories. The M-P treats video as a complement to the print story. One good example is yesterday's coverage of an accident at a local ice warehouse. Here's a better one: a feature on a local sword swallower. You don't have to watch the video to understand the story, but if you're interested in the story, watching the video adds more detail. It's not always done perfectly, but the sword swallower piece is as near a perfect fusion as I've seen.

That sword swallower video certainly is something to see ... and I, for one, really don't need to see that shot with a Canon XH-A1 (or even the Sony camcorders Gannett issues) and then have it over edited.

And I've got to say, MP is doing a great job with our video approach. They get some good pieces that fit well with their stories and are conscientious about shooting lots of video.

If you want to see more GHS video from all over the country -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- click here.

This blog was hacked again ... the same sort of injection hack as before. I found the primary offending file and removed it, but that isn't a long-term fix. I'll have to check this evening on whether there is yet another WordPress security fix and go through another upgrade process.

At least this time, I seem to have found the offending hidden text spam before Google did. I think.

The GateHouse Media sales and marketing team put together this promotional video.

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Local news is a vertical.

To succeed going forward, local newspapers need to treat local news as a vertical product.

Newspapers, traditionally, are horizontal, serving many interests and needs with a single product.

Web sites need to be more singularly focused.

Look at the way Glam.com now owns the fashion vertical, or how American Idol has create a vertical for own product that now covers multiplatforms (TV, the Web, CDs, books, concert tours, mobile phones, etc.).

Local newspapers should aim for the same ownership of local news and information across multiplatforms, and especially dive deep on the Web -- breaking news, video, community participation, databases, classifieds, IYP, and every thing else a publisher, editor or content producer can think of to ensure complete ownership of local. That's what hyperlocal really means.

The last thing you should do is outsource community participation. You need to own your relationships with your best customers -- your readers and your contributors, the people in the local community that make it what it is -- a community. Letting another company own that relationship is a strategic mistake of monumental proportions.

That's why Media News signing a deal to turn over commenting functions to Topix is just dumb beyond belief.

Ironically, Media News owns the Denver Post, which of late has been doing a fantastic job of trying to become the hub of community conversation, both through its main news site and its innovative Neighbors site. Those efforts are completely incompatible, as I see it, with the Topix business model, which Chris Tolles is quite blunt about: "We’re aiming to be the number one local news site on the web ..."

There can be only one number one, and if it's Topix, it ain't your newspaper.com.

I've written about Topix before. Topix is not your friend. If your newspaper.com serves small, defined geographic communities, and you are not actively prohibiting Topix from crawling your content, you are giving away your crown jewels for pretty much nothing in return. The last thing you want to do is turn over your commenting system to a vendor with an express intent of beating you in your own market.

UPDATE: Upon further reflection, my strong use of the word "own" could be misconstrued. I don't mean "own" in the command-and-control sense of traditional business models, but rather being in such a strong position that you're a the center of the community conversation. That's more than a business model, to me; that's a core mission of a healthy local journalistic enterprise.

And a point I forgot to make is that comments are just one spoke in the wheel of creating online community - - if done right, they lead to things like profiles and social networking and stronger bonds with the community and more contributions from community members. That's why comments are so vital to a web site's success and shouldn't be outsourced.

And as the first commenter on this post has already pointed out -- partnerships are great and necessary and should be pursued, but only where they make sense, and partnering core functionality to Topix makes no sense.

UPDATE: Editor's Weblog linked to this post, which is where Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix, chose to respond. And I responded back. And he responded. And I responded. And there may be more. Of course, I can't share our much more entertaining behind the scenes private e-mail exchange.

If you want an example of how to cover a major breaking story in a blog, Jason La Canfora did a great job of covering the apparent murder of Sean Taylor.

This isn't straight news reporting. This is both personal and professional. This is reporting what you know when you know. Some times items need updated. Some times there are new developments worthy of new posts. Some times you need to answer reader comments and e-mails with points of clarification. This is serving first and foremost the public responsibility to provide important and relevant information.

Full archive here.

If you ever want to point a finger at the person to blame for my getting into blogging, it would not be incorrect to point it at Ken Layne.

Layne was one of the first and best journalist-bloggers, starting in something like 1999. (I've known Ken since the early 1990s when he was a reporter at another small daily in San Diego County and played in a band with my high school chum and roommate.)

Click that link above and you'll find a blog. But not his old blog. Either by accident or design, all of his old posts have disappeared from the blogosphere. In other words, you can't read his brilliant posts about crows and religious politics. Now, Layne posts something ocassionally, and occassionally I read it.

He's one of the best damn writers I know, and he should blog more.

At least AOL was smart enough to give him a column.

Thanks to Ken, I met Matt Welch, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, now returning to Reason Magazine, and already getting promo from the Washington Post. Matt also has a book out. Rumor has it Matt has some new music coming out, too. If you can't wait, there's always Ken Layne and the Corvids.

TechCrunch provides a guest post from Dan Ackerman Greenberg on "how to make your video viral."

Without a touch of irony or remorse, Mr. Greenberg then goes through a long list of techniques that includes creating fake identities, gaming tag systems, paying bloggers to embed videos and spamming e-mail lists.

The post is a good reminder of why it's important for sites that plan to host social media need to be vigilant about identity and conscientious about creating systems that are difficult (making it impossible is impossible) to game.

Obviously, YouTube isn't doing enough in this regard.

It isn't that marketers would create video with the intention of making it viral that bugs me; it's that marketers would engage in unethical practices to try and artificially inflate a video's popularity.

There are more than 300 comments on the post, most of them blasting Mr. Ackerman for his unethical behavior, which Mr. Ackerman clearly doesn't get:

What we do is grease the viral wheels. If that means commenting back and forth between fake users, who cares? It’s all about entertainment - we’re just making the whole experience entertaining, not just the video itself.

Of course, journalists take ethics very seriously, but they might be surprised at how important ethics are to the wider tech world. Google, for example, works hard to ensure search results are delivered in a non-biased way; many in the tech world take seriously the ethics of "radical transparency," and the whole open source movement has given rise to a culture of collaboration that depends on giving due credit.

So it's not surprising that so many of the TechCrunch commenters would have a problem with Mr. Greenberg's business model.

It's situations like this that encourage me to further believe that those of us who are working to build systems that depend on identity and transparency will benefit long-term. Increasingly, I believe the public will gravitate toward systems and sites they trust, as they become more educated about the ways in which less ethical operators try to manipulate and falsify.

I fully expect, btw, for YouTube to go to school on this post and figure out ways to tighten it's own systems to make these practices harder to pursue, just as Google is constantly revising its search algorithms to make it harder on search spammers to succeed.

TechCrunch did a fine public service in posting this piece. It's very educational, but not in the ways Mr. Greenberg intended, I'm sure.

Comment trolls -- the nasty, often race baiting, empty-headed-bashing people who often pollute online dialogue -- are the bane of news sites that allow comments on stories.

One of the most effective, and proven methods, for bringing such behavior under control is for a newspaper staff members to closely monitor comments and have the power to delete and ban. It's kind of like fighting graffiti -- the quicker you paint over the marred wall, the less likely it is to be hit again.

Some good technology, such as profanity filters, comment rating and reputation, help, too. That only gets you so far.

I've long believed that the most effective, and so far least employed, tool is tying comments to identity.

When we brought participation to Bakersfield.com, we tied participation to "persona," by that we meant allowing a person to create whatever identity he or she wanted, weather real or pseudonymous. The theory being that if people have an identity to protect, they will behave better.

My desire to do that grew out of my experience with comments in Ventura.

Here's some psychological research to suggest that this is the right track (via techcrunch):

Social psychologists have known for decades that, if we reduce our sense of our own identity – a process called deindividuation – we are less likely to stick to social norms. For example, in the 1960s Leon Mann studied a nasty phenomenon called "suicide baiting" – when someone threatening to jump from a high building is encouraged to do so by bystanders. Mann found that people were more likely to do this if they were part of a large crowd, if the jumper was above the 7th floor, and if it was dark. These are all factors that allowed the observers to lose their own individuality.

Social psychologist Nicholas Epley argues that much the same thing happens with online communication such as email. Psychologically, we are "distant" from the person we're talking to and less focused on our own identity. As a result we're more prone to aggressive behaviour, he says.

So, the more we can engineer participation so that we close the gap between loss of individuality and sense of identity, the better chance we have at maintaining civil dialogue.

After leaving Bakersfield, I came to the conclusion that "persona" wasn't enough. This is no reflection on anything that has happened in Bakersfield. I just have come to believe that news sites should require real identity. No more explicit acceptance of pseudonymous participation.

Journalisticly, I think this is the responsible thing to do. Many of the conversations news sites host are important to the civic life of our communities, and people who read these comments have a right to know who their friends, neighbors and leaders (no sock puppets) are who drive the conversations.

In a news story, we wouldn't allow an anonymous comment without a good reason (and there are far fewer anonymous sources in local news columns than major news outlets), so why allow them, unvetted, in comments on stories?

Comments on stories are supposed to serve a primary purpose of advancing the story, not just providing a forum for rants and raves (though, by default, they do that, too). Anonymity, pseudonymous or otherwise, runs counter to the spirit of robust, honest, civic conversation.

That's part of the journalistic case for requiring real identity.

But returning to the psychological case above, it seems to me that if we make our forums a place where people expect to be dealing with each other on a real identity basis, especially in smaller communities, won't they more often naturally be more civil?

While the psychological research makes it apparent that even persona is better than anonymity, real identity should work even better. I think.

As for enforcing real identity:

• Facebook is kind of showing us the way, and lessening the barrier for full disclosure (especially for younger readers, who are less hung up on privacy than older readers).
• In my own experience with user registration systems, local users of a local newspaper sites are surprisingly honest about their real names and addresses when they register to read news. I think we'll see only a slight drop off when registration is tied to participation.
• When you require real identity in terms and conditions, you know have another tool to justify banning trolls. Trolls almost always try to game the system, and they're easy to spot.
• Generally, it's easy to spot people who are trying to participate anonymously. You can spot check your registration database and delete obviously bogus accounts. It's quick and easy to do in a well designed system.

I think over time, we are going to see fewer and fewer online communities that allow completely anonymous participation. Most are going to follow the persona model or the real identity model. Users will increasingly accept these requirements, either because they are common, or because they recognize the value of identity in maintaining a vibrant community.

Most people don't like seeing their communities trashed. They are more than willing to help us keep things neat and tiddy, but they also look to us to provide the manpower and technological solutions that makes running healthy communities possible.

BTW: You'll note that nowhere in this post did I use the term "virtual community." In healthy communities, there is nothing virtual about them. They are very real, and very important. The old term "virtual community" demeans online communities, which are just as important to the participants and members as any off-line community.

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves beautifully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. - Eric Hoffer

There's been a bit of chatter the past couple of weeks about a speech that Rob Curley gave recently. Curley talks about the difference between mindset and skill set. He also notes how frequently some of us run across recent j-school grads who are close minded about online.

Rather than pick on any one person's response to these comments, I would rather fashion a general clarification.

To me, mindset is one of the most critical issues facing journalism today.

In his speech, Curley makes it clear what he means by skill set, but I think some people are still conflating mindset and skill set. Just because you know Flash, or can operate a video camera or hack a little PHP doesn't mean, per se, that you have the right mind set.

A while back, Guy Kawasaki pointed me to this great article about mindset.

Essentially, there are two kinds of mindsets. There is the fixed mindset and the growth mindset.

The fixed mindset might say something like, "I got into this business to be a writer, not a videographer." The growth mindset might say, "Video? Cool! Let me give it a try."

Or, the fixed mindset doesn't believe newspapers are under an existential threat -- rather it's corporate greed, or getting away from "core values" that is causing industry woes, or some other force that can only be resisted by "keep doing what we're doing." The fixed mindset isn't even willing to entertain the idea that maybe we must make some radical alterations to how we define journalism.

The fixed mindset says, "there aren't enough hours in the day for me to put out this print paper and update online." The growth mindset says, "what can I do differently to work more efficiently so I can focus on the web?"

The fixed mindset hates conversational media, especially blogs, and wonders why we're wasting time on video.

A growth mindset is always willing to try new things and admit that maybe the way people interact with media now is fundamentally different.

But there is a deeper level of mindset that is related, but different.

Often, those of us who talk about people who "get it," think we "get it" and expect people to understand what we mean by "get it."

Sure, having a growth mindset is a prerequisite to getting it, but that only takes you so far.

Getting it means that not only do you understand that the way people interact with media is now fundamentally different; it also means you understand how people use media now.

If you get it, you see the trends.

• You understand that blogging is the most successful online publishing tool because blogs are immediate, conversational and egalitarian.
• You understand that online video is successful because it is immediate, conversational and egalitarian.
• You understand that for younger people, being able to make connections with friends and family is essential to how they view the world.
• You understand that technology is changing fast, and all the growth patterns point toward a media world that is even more distributed and conversational than what we have today.

Furthermore,

• You have used conversational media and have come to see it as a better way to report and share news, because it is more meaningful to the people who participate (to the fixed mindset, this will seem preposterous).
• You participate yourself -- you probably have a blog, but you certainly read several blogs; you've shot and uploaded some personal video; you're on MySpace or Facebook (or at least LinkedIn);
• You have several online-only friends (you've never met in person);
• You've experienced watching a news story grow through the participation (submissions) of readers.
• You're not chained to pre-Web notions of definitive-voice journalism ("we know better than you what the news is -- there's no point in discussing it"); you understand you're no longer in control of the news agenda.
• You don't make "quality" a religion and refuse to try new forms of reporting because it doesn't immediately meet your quality standards. You are willing to try and fail, and keep trying until you get it right, and you don't resent others doing the same.

There are many skills that the modern journalist needs -- from being able to write a good story, to where to point the camera, to how to set up a blog, but I've interviewed people before who have web skills, but they still didn't have a growth mindset.

We very much need more experienced journalists to expand their skill sets, but if they don't also work on developing the growth mindset that goes keeping pace in a turbulent media world, then we're still going to have a hard time succeeding.

Will ebooks be a hit?

Jeff Bezos thinks so.

The Kindle is equipped with a Wi-Fi connection that taps into an Amazon e-book store, which users can access to purchase new electronic books--and Amazon has reportedly signed onto a deal with Sprint for EVDO access. Additionally, the device comes with a headphone jack for audiobooks, as well as an e-mail address.

There a have been other attempts to launch ereaders, but they've pretty much fizzled in the marketplace.

Can such a release from Amazon work any better? I think so. Maybe. There are some nice synergies for Amazon: Strong customer base of avid readers who are tech savvy and an ample supply of inventory.

I like books and have a hard time imagining doing that much reading electronically, but there was a time I couldn't imagine watching video on a tiny iPod screen. Now that I have one, I watch more online video than ever.

There may also be good news for newspapers:

The company is also said to have forged agreements with somewhere between 50 and 100 newspaper publishers, in addition to the daily New York Times and Wall Street Journal features. Kindle owners are expected to be able to select from a long list of publications for automatic download.

Our industry has a long history over scheming for inkless paper delivery, but I'm not sure consumers are as eager to experience a newspaper on a device such as this as some hope.

Think about the different formats of books and newspapers -- a book is generally just text. It's really just one long scroll. But newspapers are broken up into discreet chunks presented in a way to feed into a broadsheet or tabloid. And ads are so important. Can that layout be preserved in one of these devices in a way that users will find comfortable and efficient?

I'll believe it when I see it.

It's important to remember, I think, that technology won't necessarily be our savior. Each new advance brings its own challenges, and consumers will ultimately decide the most attractive use for each new device. Publishers have very little control over how digital devices will be used, or how their products will be perceived.

Generally, I don't worry about TV posing much competition to newspapers when it comes to online video (meaning, newspapers that are aggressive about online video), but if more TV stations hire guys like Nick Belardes to run their online operations, that balance could shift.

Nick is shooting some pretty nice not-like-tv video for TurnTo23.com in Bakersfield.

• Superheroes
• Batman movie
• Day of the dead

Too bad he's stuck using the crappy web site IBS supplies.

I've never heard of Aaron Barnhart, but he sure is smart.

It is tired. Why do you think blogs vs. print issue has such legs? Navel gazing on the part of reporters/bloggers?

That's partly to blame, I'm sure—but I think there are deeper reasons. With bloggers, I think it's simple. They like to see themselves as part of something big, grand and revolutionary. Many, I think, genuinely believe they are transforming the media by challenging the mainstream media (MSM), although I'm not sure there is much hard proof of that. Beyond that, that anti-MSM stance is the fire that keeps their blogs going. It informs a lot of what they write.

Many print journos, on the other hand, don't understand blogging and see bloggers as irritants, people who criticize their work but also wouldn't have material for their blogs if not for the MSM. Meanwhile, every newsroom in America now has top management beating the drum for their staff to "do blogs," even though it's clear that many journalists in print and TV haven't the foggiest idea how or why they should "do" one. (Witness the trail of busted blogs across news organizations.)

I just spoke on blogs to a features editors' convention so I know that interest remains high. Editors are not dumb, they know their staff should be doing them, but that many don't want to and many staff blogs go untended.

But journalists are torn on this. They know money is flowing out the door. They know a lot of it is going to online (though not necessarily enriching the people who criticize their work so passionately). They know they need to get with the program. But many aren't sure how to proceed, or if ultimately their expenditure of effort online will be worth the effort.

Via Romenesko