Posts about newspapers

The Reuters speech

March 8, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis
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A version of the speech by Reuters head Tom Glocer that I lauded is now online at the FT.

While media companies are catching up with this demand for “personalisation”, our audiences have moved on dramatically. Now they are consuming, creating, sharing and publishing their own content online.

There were indications last year that a significant shift in the balance of power between professional content companies and home-based creators lay ahead….

But it is not just bloggers – it is citizen journalists armed with their 1.3 megapixel camera phones, people “mashing” together music and images to create new music videos, kids making their own movies and posting them on sites such as Stupidvideos.com or MySpace.com….

It is important to understand what has changed. Bloggers, after all, have always been a part of history – read Daniel Defoe, Samuel Pepys or James Boswell. The same is true for citizen journalists: just check out first-hand accounts of any big historical event. The difference now is the scale of distribution and the ability to search….

In the news industry, professional and “amateur” content combined creates a better product. It tells the story at a deeper level….

We are now at our crossroads. Old media – and I now would include the first wave of online publishing – have a choice: integrate the new world or risk becoming less relevant. Our industry must not fall into the old protectionist strategies that defined the first phase of the internet. The internet was not invented just to show a replica of yesterday’s newspaper with a few banner advertisements. We cannot be the choke-hold, blocking the new creators in a bid to protect our legacy businesses…

[via Lance Knobel]

Does the ‘P’ in ‘PR’ stand for ‘press’ or ‘public’?

March 7, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis
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The New York Times this morning reports on Walmart’s PR strategy with blogs, executed via the Edelman PR firm.

First, I suggest you read the story and substitute the name of your local newspaper for any reference to bloggers. Remember that PR companies have been reaching out to reporters since they were born; that is why their industry exists. Today we have search-engine optimization companies; back then, we had press optimization companies.

Remember that reporters do not tell you every story idea that came from a flack — and so stories do start with PR pitches that I’ve often said if I ran a paper, I’d have flack-free days: Every story in today’s paper came from actual reporting! (It’d probably be a thin Saturday.)

Reporters may be smart enough to rewrite the verbiage in press releases (unlike the hapless blogger in the Times story caught quoting Walmart’s flackery without attribution — a practice Edelman, smartly, warned them against). But they don’t tell you all the and facts and viewpoints they use from flacks.

Reporters do not tell you about the meetings, lunches, drinks, and help given them by flacks.

There is no scandal in the Times story. And in fairness, the Times doesn’t directly present it as a scandal. It points out how Edelman is transparent about its activities and even advises bloggers to be open. No, The Times is merely reporting how PR works. Only the object of this PR is the public, not the press. And some of these people, these bloggers, aren’t as slick as reporters in knowing how to deal with this.

So my first reponse is to help bloggers with advice:

If you write a post inspired by what you get from a company or its PR agent, say so. If you use facts or quotes from a company, politician, PR agent, or press release, say so (better yet, link to it). If you get anything from a PR agent — things, business meetings, social events — say so. Your public has a right to know where your information comes from so they can judge it accordingly.

And then you know what? You will be way ahead of the press.

I think some newspaper ombudsmen should do PR audits of their papers. How many stories come from flacks without disclosure? How much of the substance of stories comes from flacks without disclosure? How many benefits accrue from flacks and companies without disclosure?

Yes, take this New York Times article about Walmart and its flacks and turn it on any newspaper and any PR client and then you have a real story.

(Full disclosures: I consult for The New York Times Company at About.com. I had breakfast with Edelman execs — I had one mediocre pastry and one cup of coffee — but have not been hired by them. And I hate shopping at Walmart but don’t think they’re evil.)

A week in London

March 3, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis

It was a great week in London. I was dragging myself here, what with my syncopated, scatting heart — and getting around wasn’t easy as a result. But I’m quite glad I came. I found news people here eager and ready for change, even if they can’t yet define what that change will be. There’s a different buzz here.

I spent two delightful days at The Guardian. It was a consulting gig, and so anything I say should be taken with a block of salt. But I shamelessly sucked up to them. I said in one session that when I came to London early in my career, I wished I could someday write or work for a paper such as this; now I have. I am quite impressed with the culture of this place. From the top down — editor Alan Rusbridger, chief exec Carolyn McCall, online editor Emily Bell, and online business head Simon Waldman — they display the courage to brainstorm the future. I also got to see Comment is Free, Guardian Unlimited’s oddly titled new opinion aggregator, which will launch very shortly. It has been compared with the HuffingtonPost but it appears it won’t be a competitor; Arianna’s going to blog a bit for them.

I spent some time with Associated New Media, the online arm of the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard: very different business circumstances, challenges, and goals and all the more fascinating for the contrast.

And this morning, I snuck away from OPA to meet folks at BBCNews.com, where they have been working hard to turn news into an API and I can’t wait to visit again.

In the middle, there were lots of fascinating hallway talks with media folks from Europe and elsewhere at the Online Publishers Association confab. I’ve become friends with some folks at Burda — Jochen Wegner, the editor of Focus.de, and Marcel Reichert, a strategy exec at the corporation — and got to talk with people from Der Spiegel, Le Monde, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the editor of OhMyNews.com International, and many more. Again, as Rafat says, more buzz.

I’m letting some of the things I learned from these folks ferment like fine beer and you’ll see it bubbling up later.

Bottom line: It’s good to break out of the borders.

To die with trees

March 3, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis

Media Guardian has more pathetic quotes from the small anti-Google crowd at the World Association of Newspapers panel at OPA.

Phillipe Janet, an online executive with French newspaper Les Echos, said internet aggregators should be prevented from “stealing” content and revenues from newspapers.

“If you want to support newspapers, you should visit them directly,” he said.

“Google News is a very bad product. It has no business model, no cost and no quality.

“I don’t say that Google News has to die, but we prefer to have a contract with services like Lexis Nexis to give us money and audience. Google News just gives us audience.”

Well isn’t that decent of him sparing the life of Google News. I doubt his readers will spare the life of his paper.

The impact of the internet

March 2, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis
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Jeff Cole of USC Annenberg just gave a compelling presentation at OPA of his five-year study of the impact of the internet on media and more. Rather than random bits, I’ll get a copy and share some of the fascinating findings later. The lead to the story: Newspaper doom (except, oddly, Sunday papers).

Not getting it

March 2, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis
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Ali Rahnema, managing director of the World Association of Newspapers, is pitching the OPA on WAN’s initiative to go after Google News and the aggregators. He acknowledges that some comments he has gotten are positive and some are angry that they are just a dead-tree industry trying to protect themselves. I vote with the latter. They don’t get it. Rahnema asks, could Google News exist if this content were not created by those papers?

That is so much the wrong question. The real question is: Will news organizations in the future exist if they are not found on Google and company?

If you want to boycott search and links, then you will die on paper.

: Rich Karlgaard of Forbes asks the OPA audience whether they agree with Rahnema about Google. Very few raise their hands. He asks who disagrees A vast majority of hands go up. Thank goodness for good sense.

: Obnoxious blogger that I am, I get up to challenge the protectionist panel and said that with their attitude, I fear for the future of the industry and of journalism because the distribution of today is about being found in search and links and aggregation and if you are not there you are not found.

Zach Leonard of Timesonline.com said that aggregators are like newsstands and they are a place to be found.

Paper envy

February 28, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis

I’m suffering from serious paper envy. I’m in London reading The Guardian (full disclosure: I’m consulting there this week, and write for them), The Times, the Evening Standard, The Observer, The Independent, The Mail, not to mention the Metro, the Daily Express, and, for the fun of it, The Mirror and The Sun. And I’m loving it. They have energy and imagination and lots to read. Their businesses are changing, like papers elsewhere. And they have the advantage of being national. But I hear a lot more whining and gnashing of teeth in America from monopoly papers. Competition is good.

Five days a week

February 27, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis

In the U.S., Saturday papers have sucked for years and lately I’ve come to the conclusion that Monday papers suck, too. It’s probably a result of cutbacks: less weekend staff and all that. But I come to London and pick up the Monday Guardian and there’s the beefy Media section (full disclosure: I’m in it) and the equally beefy G2 section, both of which were cooked up the week before: tons to read, even on a Monday. Why can’t American papers do that?