BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Tag: norg

  • Driving readers online: update

    3 comments on Driving readers online: update
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    An update and correction to the post below: I just heard from Ed Roussel, editorial director of the Telegraph group, who says it’s not true that his paper will delay stories until after publication in print. In fact, he said, they have already shifted people to earlier schedules to get news out sooner. They are not trying to put every story online before print (which is where the Guardian is apparently headed) but they are free to put up anything short of a big scoop they want to save (which will be the same for everyone).

    How did this meme start? He said at the World Association of Newspapers session in Moscow, there was discussion about content management systems and the ability to schedule publication to the web and it grew out of that. So they’re playing wack-a-mole on the tale now.

    While I had him, I asked Ed whether the Telegraph has plans to invade America, like the Guardian and the Times of London. He said no. “The reality is that we want to do the best possible job of writing for our readers and the core of our readership is British people,” which includes expats. He said they already had a third of their online readership is in the U.S. And he said that the track record of British companies making a go of it in America is limited.

    : LATER: More from Shane Richmond at the Telegraph about this.

  • Driving readers online

    9 comments on Driving readers online
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    The Guardian just announced that it will publish stories online before it publishes them in print. Now on the one hand, that may not seem like a big deal. Quality papers like The New York Times and the Washington Post have long had good continuous news desks that feed the online maw with the latest (and too many other papers do not bother). And some papers, like The Times and the Wall Street Journal, put up their complete papers soon after they close late at night. [See my full disclosures here.]

    But I think the Guardian’s move of releasing newspaper stories before they release the newspaper is a very big deal that it will end up transforming the business. A few reasons:

    First, this aggressively drives readers from print to online. It is one matter to put content online after it is in print, to allow people to find it there eventually, or to give them the bulletins everyone else has so you can remain competitive. It is quite another matter to give advantage to online, to let the public know that stories will appear there first. I believe this is a crucial strategic change for the news business. It says that we know the future is online and so we will serve readers there at least as well — and when possible better — than we serve them in print, no matter that the current margins and revenue of print still beat the hell out of those online. The future is online, and so it is vital that we get ahead of the audience and draw them there, to our own places and brands, before they decide to go elsewhere. Rusbridger has talked about the green blob newspapers are stuck in, between the old, declining, but still rich medium of print and the new, more popular, but still less profitable medium of online. This, I believe, is an aggressive effort to jump over the blob.

    Second, I think this will radically change the culture and operation of newsrooms — and even the very essence of the news story. I asked Rusbridger via email what the reaction of the newsroom was to his decision. He replied right after the big news of the killing of Zarkawi:

    It’s a recognition of reality. As we talked about it in the morning conference today: I asked the doubters “does anyone believe we shouldn’t publish anything about Zarkawi until tomorrow morning (the news had just broken) in order to suit the newspaper publishing schedule or for fear of cannabalising our own readers”. No one said yes. Of course, it’s also about competition — if we denied readers information on the grounds we were still fixated on newspaper deadlines they would turn elsewhere.

    Reaction in the newsroom is largely very positive. Ninety-five per cent of foreign correspondents are fully enthusiastic. Some staff worried by logistics and how you keep quality control. A few are asking (not unreasonably) about cannabilisation and revenue. In the end you have to ask: what’s the bigger risk: doing it, or not doing it.? Lots of reassurance a) we’re not going to get into the running news game and b) all copy will go through same editing process as before.

    On the Guardian’s media podcast this week, one of the paper’s journalists worried that this might turn them into broadcast (read: cable news) reporters. It’s a legitimate concern. But I think the Guardian, in particular, can avoid that because it has largely ceded the business of breaking news — that is, the commodified news anyone can give you — to others by concentrating on perspective, writing, and original reporting.

    Still, I think this can change what a news story is. Imagine a reporter putting an edited story online in the afternoon and then hearing more questions and facts from online readers. So the reporter updates for print; putting it online improves the story. And after it is in print, more information comes from readers, so the online version is improved again, perhaps even by trusted readers. This needn’t be the never-ending story, the bottomless edition. But neither does it need to be news on a stone tablet.

    Yet it changes more than just the story. Another smart editor I know said recently that newspapers have to involve readers in the news but not necessarily the news process. At an Aspen Institute thing a year ago, a former network news executive said that readers should judge us by our product, not our process. No, for many reasons, the process becomes the product. The public can now question our work and contribute to it and by opening that process, we improve the news. So throwing out the newsroom clock with one time on it — deadline time — is a very big change, indeed.

    And so this potentially changes the role of the reporter and editor as orchestrators of that process. See, once again, Gruner + Jahr chief Bernd Kundrun on the role of the journalist as moderator.

    Warning: Metaphoric madness ensues:

    Newspapers have long thought of themselves as bakeries: They gather the raw materials, measure them carefully, mix them up, let them rise, cut and shape them, bake them to a golden crisp, slather some cherry goo on top, and then put them on the shelf, waiting for someone to buy them. News was a product. No more.

    So what’s the better metaphor? Try a garden: Anyone can plant seeds in it (reporters’ ideas, editors’ curiosities, the public’s questions) and many can tend to them (insert fertilizer gag here). When the fruit is ripe, it’s plucked and published; the farmers live by the garden’s schedule. And if you keep tending the garden, it continues to bloom. News is a process.

    Metaphoric madness ends.

    The Guardian’s change is also a tactical business move. I asked Rusbridger what the commercial side thought of the change, since they’re the ones selling the more expensive ads in print. He replied, “So far commercial side utterly on board. They see this as next logical step and appreciate the balance of risks (see above).” Having spoken with many folks on both the editorial and commercial sides of The Guardian, I see that willingness to make the next step and take the risk; it’s in their culture.

    I also asked what impact their American expansion plans had ton this decision. He replied: “Certainly in our minds as we made this switch. Can you imagine east coast Americans logging onto Guardian Unlimited this morning and finding nothing on Zarkawi? Why would we want to drive them elsewhere?”

    That, after all, is the key to online. It lets you serve a much larger but still focused public (once newspapers themselves focus). Guardian Newspapers Limited chief Carolyn McCall recently said that the company’s ambition is global and its focus clear:

    “Our ambition is to be the leading global liberal voice…. There’s a real market for liberal journalism in America, given that there seems to be a large group of people that are very attracted by our coverage on the web, and part of that is because they cannot really get that kind of voice from their own media for a variety of reasons.

    The opportunity is for the Guardian to reflect what the world is saying about America but also to bring [blogging website] Comment is Free into America so that you can get an engaged discussion on things that interest America in an intellectual and intelligent way.”

    The UK’s quality national papers are approaching their strategies in very different ways. The Times of London is now publishing a print edition in New York (complete with ads for refrigerators in pounds; more on that later). The Telegraph, antimatter to the Guardian’s matter, announced that it will delay putting stories online to try to drive readers back to the dinosaur editions. [[UPDATE: See correction to this above.]]

    Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee writes about the Times’ and Guardian’s American ambitions, making vague reference to plans to publish new Guardian editions in the U.S. as well:

    But newsstand sales aren’t really the point here. The Times has three million or so American unique visitors (out of a global total of 8.8 million) to its website each month. Waving around a physical copy makes that presence more tangible – and arguably ad-friendly. It is a reinforcement of presence and intent.

    The Guardian, meanwhile, has 13 million unique visitors on tap, some 6.4 million of them American. That’s as solid a haul as most big city US papers, such as the Los Angeles Times, can claim. It puts the British Guardian (and Observer) Unlimited well up among the top 50 most-visited American news sites, with an advertising revenue stream already showing concomitant signs of surge. There’s commercial ambition in this mix, too.

    See, too, Peter Cole in The Independent on British colonial ambition stirred up in the media world. The British national papers, with their unique voices and perspectives, stand a strong chance at gathering audience and influence around the world.

    It all comes back to that apparently simple decision to put newspaper stories online before the paper is printed. It is a brave move and a big deal.

    : LATER: Here‘s the Guardian’s “readers’ editor” on the shift.

  • Parallel lives: media and telecom

    2 comments on Parallel lives: media and telecom
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    I was lucky to get the chance to spend a morning last week at Bell Labs with a few editors and reporters from the Star-Ledger, and I was struck by the many parallels between the telecom and newspaper businesses.

    The first and most obvious is the business turmoil each faces as an open, competitive, and distributed world overcomes their legacies as closed, monopolistic, and centralized businesses. In that sense, the telcos are farther along this trail of tears — not yet on the other side of the gorge, but perhaps able to see the bottom — and newspapers know this disruption and uncertainty lie ahead.

    But more interesting are the parallels in the future. Telcos saw themselves as technology and distribution companies and newspapers as content and distribution companies. But it turns out they are meant to be networks, connection companies that put people together with the right people and relevant information.

    Gee Rittenhouse, Bell Labs’ vp for technology integration, told us that newspapers have an advantage: locality. I agree. In fact, I say it is more than that: Locality is the essence of a newspaper. Sid Ahuja, a vp in charge of software and convergence, had a wonderful perspective about media and place. He talked about his childhood in a village in India that was not connected to the outside by technology. When broadcast radio came along, he said, it made people think outside their villages, as a nation. But now, technology brings us back together in villages, albeit often virtual ones. Newspapers, too, can bring us back to the villages once they don’t have to broadcast to everyone at once in print and can become more local online.

    Rittenhouse talked about how telcos now must concentrate not on the plumbing but on the “higher application level.” Translated to newspapers, they need to concentrate not on printing but on enabling people to act. Ahuja, too, talked about the need to look at application networking atop the infrastructure of the internet. Google is such an application, he said. So should newspapers be, as they use technology to help people make connections.

    They each talked about relevance and trust as ways to accomplish this for their networks. Ahuja spoke of the need for metrics and systems of trust to raise the value of the network (in, for example, an email network where 60 percent of the messages are spam, are untrusted). Well, won’t it be the job of newspapers to share trust, to find not only the facts and also the correspondents — professional or amateur — to rely on? And that doesn’t just mean editors deciding who and what are trustworthy; in lab speak, that won’t scale. They need to build rules engines and content handlers to make this happen, Ahuja said. And to do that, they must learn from the people, from the network. It means helping people to share trust among themselves. This is why both industries are trying to figure out how to work with social networks.

    Bell Labs, of course, has learned how to innovate in an open-source world. They invented Unix there and saw its value increase with the contributions of people. Similarly, newspapers must find open ways to work with citizen journalists. [See also yesterday’s discussion at the hyperlinked society conference on the competitive, complementary, or destructive — take your pick — relationship of amateurs to professionals.]

    Finally, from a business perspective, Bell Labs in particular has had to find new efficiencies as they downsized while, of course, continuing to innovate and invest. That is precisely what newspapers must do. When I last visited there many years ago, the pride in pure research was like that which I saw at the MIT Media Lab: almost a determination not to be practical. That has changed at both institutions, I hear. At Bell Labs, the scientists talked about how happy they are to both work in the long-term — in pure research without immediate business application or impact — and to work on current projects that bring their work to the market and give them feedback as a result. There is a new practicality and from what I could see, it’s energizing. In my last parallel, I’ll say that’s what news organizations must do as well: For too long, editorial staffs stood apart from the market and I say the market will give them the feedback they need. Bell Labs is doing this by reviewing the business potential of ideas and setting up incubators where mistakes and learning can happen apart from the risk-killers of big business. News organizations need to incubate new ideas, fail at it sometimes, and then bring the best to market.

    The rest of the day was spent on higher science and even this had analogues in the media world. One scientist has studied how spiders make webs to learn how to improve networks. To way oversimplify the work, one lesson learned is that spiders make local measurements to get global information. Isn’t that what happens when Google, Flickr, or Del.icio.us gets each of us to make local measurements, and that creates global information? Other scientists talked about quantum computing; see how I inserted this into Saul Hansel’s description of media as quantum mechanics yesterday.

    There is good news in all this. We all sensed an impressive new energy and enthusiasm at Bell Labs. We walked through the halls where so many brilliant people invented so much incredible technology and some of the laboratories were empty except for stacks of old cabinets and desks. It’s smaller now. So will news organizations be. But Bell Labs has found ways to innovate, invent, and adapt to a new world. So must newspapers.

  • Break my heart

    3 comments on Break my heart
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    David Carr’s column in today’s Times carries a conversation that does, indeed, occur often in the dusty halls of old journalism and this is precisely why they stay dusty and old:

    A year ago, I was talking on the phone to the editor of a major newspaper for a column I was working on. With business concluded, we had The Conversation, the one about the large boulder that seems to be tumbling through the newspaper business. “How old are you?” he asked. Forty-nine, I told him. “Me too. Do you think we outrun this thing?”

    If you have to say that, then you’ve already been overrun. How sad it is that people younger than me in this business act like such old fogeys, resistant not only to change but to opportunites. It’s as if they’re afraid of a ittle excitement in their careers; might be too much for the ol’ tickers.

    I also chuckled at this line, also indicative of the kinds of things you’ll hear in newsrooms still:

    Over time, the leadership at The Inquirer was pushed hard for cuts and greater profits by Anthony Ridder, chief executive of the papers — even though the paper had earned hundreds of millions of dollars after being purchased from Walter H. Annenberg in 1969.

    Even though they’d earned lots of profits. Arent’ those enough profits, boss? Can’t we quit with the profits already?

    It’s about growth, folks: growth in profits … and also growth in the news and what we can do with it … and even about growth in careers, which should be energized by all these dazzling new possibilities.