Surviving newspapers: don’t get caught in the undertow

Are we sinking or sunk?  Alfred Hermida writes that, at least in Canada, new research shows that nobody buys the paper for local news:

The main reason for choosing newspapers was out of habit. People were either daily readers or subscribers.

But only 8% said they choose newspapers because they were a source of local news. And even less said it was because they like holding a physical paper.

101_2510 by Br3nda
101_2510 by Br3nda

How to keep your head above water

Amy Gahran, Swimming Lessons for Journalists:

So where will today’s journos find tomorrow’s jobs? Here’s my take: Not in news organizations. At least, not in news orgs as we’ve grown accustomed to them over the last century. That ship is quite obviously sinking.

Mindy McAdams, The survival of journalism, 10 simple facts:

Newspapers were a nice business. Publishers could make the product insanely cheap (remember the penny press), and the advertising would cover the expenses, plus generate fantastic profits. However, this is clearly over. It’s done. It worked for a long time, but now, like trans-Atlantic leisure travel in big passenger ships, it will never work again.

Woot, ProPublica! LA Times, fail. A win for not-for-profit news.

From Journalism.co.uk:

Yesterday afternoon it emerged that two more journalists would likely be leaving the LA Times, but not as a direct result of the editorial cuts.

According to LA Observed, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporters Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber will be leaving the paper later in the summer to join the not-for-profit investigative start up ProPublica.

Increasing shareholder value is orthogonal to the mission of journalism.  We’re here to enable democracy, not to make a buck.  This may be bad news for the LA Times, but it’s good news for the future of journalism.

Fair use: best practices for online video

John McCain greenscreen

The Center for Social Media at American University has published a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video:

This is a guide to current acceptable practices, drawing on the actual activities of creators, as discussed among other places in the study Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video and backed by the judgment of a national panel of experts. It also draws, by way of analogy, upon the professional judgment and experience of documentary filmmakers, whose own code of best practices has been recognized throughout the film and television businesses.

JD Lasica’s sez:

I wish we had a roadmap like this when we launched Ourmedia.org, the first video hosting site, back in March 2005…. All video producers and content creators should absorb this common-sense set of principles.

Useful!

Who runs newspapers? Who should run news web sites?

Joel Spolsky from Inc. Magazine (via SVN):

Watching nonprogrammers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn’t know how to surf trying to surf. Even if he has great advisers standing on the shore telling him what to do, he still falls off the board again and again. The cult of the M.B.A. likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don’t understand. But often, you can’t.

Readers, I need a hand.  Can you answer two questions for a newbie?

  1. I don’t know who runs newspapers.  Are publishers usually former journalists?  Or are they more frequently experts in publishing topics like ads, printing and distribution?
  2. Who should run news web sites?

I’m constantly amazed at how bad news web sites are.

For example: Search the Chicago Tribune for my dean’s name, “Lavine.”  It returns no results.  There were at least a half dozen articles about Dean Lavine printed in the last six months, I promise.  What gives?

My suspicion is that the folks running the news sites just don’t understand the web.  If the web is the future of news, should technologists be the publishers?  I’m thinking no, instead it should probably be tech-saavy journalists.

The only strong feeling I have is that it should *not* be ink and paper newspaper publishers.

Pimp my newspaper! Printcast my ride!

Dan Pacheco outed me on Idea Lab: I think printcasting is a kooky idea. But, what the hell – it might just be kooky enough to work. Forgive me as I indulge in a car metaphor…

For the non-Detroiters in the audience, this is an El Camino: a half pickup, half coupe sold by Chevrolet for almost 30 years. By committing to neither role, it’s mediocre at both.

el camino_MG_0852 by John Leverett
el camino_MG_0852 by John Leverett

Something for everyone

The newspaper is the El Camino of the media world.

A newspaper is part national news, part local news, part sports, part coupons/comics/love advice/cooking tips/celebrity smut, topped off with a stack of ads, classifieds, and home listings. It’s got something for everybody, but no part is as good as it could be if it were the sole pursuit of the paper.

Cable and the web are focused: they’re highways for specialized media vehicles. Craigslist is way better at classifieds than the paper. And how can the food section compete with the Food Network, Yelp, and LTH Forum? Ditto for sports and the rest – the generalist newspaper has been outpaced by expert media.

El Camino, by Linda Rae
El Camino, by Linda Rae

Printcast my ride

But the thing is, El Caminos have a passionate group of fans, especially in the custom-car niche. They love that kooky-looking ride. What if newspapers used printcasting to harness a similar passion?

Instead of making a paper for a city, make a paper for a neighborhood. Print a local, focused paper, with ads and the rest directed at a very tight group. You’d still be printing an El Camino, but for a niche.

El Camino 1960, by John Lloyd
El Camino 1960, by John Lloyd

Always crashing in the same car

A metropolitan daily kindles as much passion as a beige Toyota Camry, a car designed to appeal to the widest possible audience. It’s no wonder that the metro-area audience is dispassionate and dwindling. Who wants a gray bundle when it delivers so little satisfaction?

Instead, print out a mess of papers, one for each audience: rearview dice and retirement advice in one, hydraulics and nightclub pics in another. Pimp it out, and maybe you’ll get some folks to pick up the paper again.