Some SP readers are happy to simply damn newspapers all to hell, but like other bloggers, we get a lot of material from them here. They need to get more from us, and many other bloggers. Veteran newspaper journalist, magazine editor and uber-blogger Jeff Jarvis focuses on the interplay between old media and new, and has some eye-opening advice for newspapers struggling to stay alive in the online era. One big step, he says, is to get rid of everything but local news. The something-for-everybody model is ill-fated, according to Jarvis.
(Mac Safari users click on time stamp to continue).
His comments about excising stock tables, fine-print sports standings and stats, national and international news, TV listings, comics and syndicated features are right on target. Not sure I quite agree with his recommendation that local opinion columnists should get the axe too. More newspapers need to align better with the blogosphere, understanding there's a symbiosis in play, not a zero-sum contest. Even with a new, clearer focus on local news, newspapers will have to work hard to get it right, says Jarvis:
...not all local news is worth the effort.....Writing overlong, show-off series that are aimed at winning Pulitzers and lesser awards is often done for institutional ego over actual service....If, instead, you took those resources to get rid of a crooked mayor or reform property taxes, you’d be performing a far greater journalistic service....And I’d look hard at your local columnists and ask whether they are as informative and entertaining as local bloggers. They used to provide some humanity and voice in otherwise gray, dull papers. Maybe your readers can help do that now....the essence of a newspaper is local news with some other services and distractions. It is important for newspapers to boil themselves down to their essence and figure out how to do better at providing that unique and valuable service.
Online polls are lame. A home base for bloggers at a newspaper site is a pretty cool idea, but lacking their own URLs, the citizen participants are lured into live burial on The Internet (this is the reprehensible "citizen blogging" paradigm currently in place at The Columbian). The Spokesman-Review's blog suite is considered impressive by many in the industry, and gets maybe a "B-" in my book.
The linked community blogs and staff blogs at the S-R blogging hub, taken all together, have fairly dull teeth, there's little content that really bites back at the local powers that be. Still, the S-R blog Huckleberries shows they DO get blogging 101, in this round-up post. Newspaper blogs have to dare to send their readers OFF the site; then maybe they'll come back. The P-I actually has a couple of good staff-written blogs, on venture capital, and Microsoft, for instance. But staff-written blogs aren't really where newspapers should be going. Community-generated local news content is the destination. Meaning?
The comment strings appended to P-I stories, columns and editorials are a start. The WaPo's model of linking to Technorati-indexed bloggers from the online columns and articles they link to, hints at where things need to go. Guest bloggers from the local blogosphere in newspaper online editions would be good, with pay-per-click-through sharing of ad revenues. Newspaper home bases and easy-use platforms for local bloggers too: with stand-alone URLs; prominent on-site links; and shared-revenue models.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at January 20, 2006 12:59 PM | Email ThisLink doesn't work for me.
Thanks
Really, Seattle Times, you CAN handle the truth that bubbles up when John Q. Public gets to say his piece.
Posted by: rolf on January 20, 2006 02:08 PMAs for Jarvis' suggestions, I've been advocating those changes for six years. There are many problems with the state of modern newspaper reporting. One of them (emphasis on one) is the lack of local coverage in daily metro papers.
Open up the PI or Times and you'll probably find on average about a half a dozen staff written news stories (not counting sports). Most of the stories that are written are your typical press release and car accident pieces which take about two hours to write and are formulaic.
Community newspapers, (weeklies and small dailies) when taken as a whole, are actually gaining market share, ad revenue and readership because they are swooping in on the corpse of the large dailies and doing a better job at covering the local stories which these larger papers used to do in the past.
This is the future for newspapers, not blogs.
Web news consumers jump all over the place. One way to make a daily newspaper site stickier is to aggregate the best daily regional bloggage. As opposed to the lame staff-driven blog suite approach so prevalent now (wine blog, sports blog, politics blog, tech blog, soldier in Iraq blog, editor gazes at navel blog) with perhap some links to a few local blogs on the side.
Newspapers need to begin aggregating the local blogosphere, purposefully, every day, and forming partnerships with bloggers, at the same time that they pare back their staff-generated print and online content to local/regional/state news and commentary.
Posted by: Matt R. on January 20, 2006 06:26 PMI don't think we're too far apart here on our disagreement. I think it's just a matter of definition and priorities.
Blogs are great, blogs are fun and they're a neat tool. But just by themselves they are not going to turn a paper around. There are fundamental issues that need to be resolved with newspapers that transcend this conversation.
Newspapers are a business. This is the first thing that should be taught to every doe-eyed J-school student entering college. We're here to sell ads and to a lesser extent a few subscriptions. We do so (in theory!!!) by describing and relating relevent events which are occuring in an objective manner to people who aren't able to witness the events themselves. (A bit of a simplification).
So far, I'm not aware of any strategy which will enable revenue to be generated in sufficient quantities from blogs. Matt, you and Stefan are probably more expert in this field so set me straight the next time we meet if there is a way.
With my comparitively short tenure in this job field, I've already noticed a string of little fads in the industry that have been tried to get people to begin paying attention to the morning paper again and to increase circulatons.
First it was going to be websites. Well, giving away your content for free before the papers even come out has not been a smart marketing ploy in my opinion.
There have been hair-brained schemes to get younger readers to pick up the paper by being more "hip" and "cutting-edge". I'm sure everyone has been out flocking around the news stand waiting for the latest teen-oriented insert to come out.
One of the biggest pushes going on in the industry right now is a strategy to get reporters of color into the paper. The belief being that if your staff is composed of the right racial demographic, more people in the asian, latino, black, etc. communities will plunk down their four-bits for the paper each day.
I could go on...
Ultimately the only concept that hasn't been tried on a large scale is making the paper more palatable to the largest percentage of readers possible. In short, printing news people are interested enough in paying to read. In fact you've been seeing the exact opposite happen such as what is happening with my friends at the Seattle PI who have alienated everyone in the state and are entrenching between Roxbury and Northgate Way in order to keep what they have left.
Should papers cooperate with bloggers? With some sure, with others no. Personally I'd love to see different faces in the news room.
Ultimately what's needed though is just a different breed of journalist to be sitting in the editor chair, copy editing papers and hitting the streets with a note pad.
Bias, advocacy, & partisanship are human nature, but when they overtake common sense, pragmatism, and reasonability, people respond by walking away.
This is the state of Newsprint in America today. A quick look at subscribership and ad sales tells everyone everything they need to know: Newsprint is going the way of the Dodo. Technology and competition in the marketplace account for some of the straits Newsprint finds itself in, but unrestrained bias is the typhoid fever that is killing the industry.
Simply expressed: "Why should I pay good money to an institution that continually insults me?"
Guess what? I can find everything I need outside of Newsprint. They have become irrelevant to me (and I daresay more & more people every day). Sure blogs (in and of themselves) are no direct replacement for the dead & dying Newsprint industry (for the moment), but you must see that folks are able to find what they need, irrespective of the old media.
The Newsprint industry could buy itself some time by associating itself with, and raising the standards of the various web communities, but your opinions are indicative of the attitudes that spell the death of the old media. Ultimately what's needed though is the failure of more Old Media. Nothing short of it seems to cut through the entrenched invincible ignorance that is Newsprint. Find viability or die. Or do what the Old Gray Lady is doing and send in more troops the rearrange the deckchairs.
The old saying is still true: "Lead, follow, of get out of the way". Stand idly in the middle of the road, and you will get run over!
Posted by: alphabet soup on January 20, 2006 08:23 PM