media

News media: Be like GM, except ... different

Jay Small — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:40:12 +0000

Perhaps local news media organizations should take a cue from General Motors' most radical attempts to change for the future.

Scott Karp delivers his characteristic high-grade analysis of that prospect, drawing from an article in The Atlantic that describes GM's Volt electric car project.

Karp focuses on newspapers, but I would broaden his argument, crystallized here, to include all locally focused media organizations whose primary consumer service is news:

"All the talk about 'saving newspapers' is focused on finding new business models to keep doing what they’ve always done -- which is like GM looking for a new business model to sell the kinds of cars it made in the '50s and '60s. What the newspaper industry, if it is to survive as such, must find is a radical new value proposition for news — something so audacious, so self-evidently valuable that, if it can find a way to deliver it, would lead to the rebirth of newspaper journalism."

My biggest concern with locally focused journalism -- which I will define broadly to include both so-called "professional" practices in newspaper and broadcast newsrooms, and "citizen" practices via blogs, various interactive forums and social media -- remains demand, specifically intensity of demand.

GM knows, at least, that even radical experiments to improve fuel efficiency in cars still get at a persistent and growing consumer need in most modern economies: fast, flexible, reasonably priced, motorized transportation. People struggle to get by and get ahead without it.

On the other hand, no matter how radically we rethink and redo the gathering, preparation or delivery of local news -- a new value proposition, as Karp says -- we in the news business cannot fall back on any presumption that people need our services that intensely.

News is an episodic want for some people sometimes, not a persistent need for all people all the time. Supply greatly exceeds demand, as I and others discussed years ago. Only our own vain notions of the Fourth Estate as independent defender of freedom and democracy would leave us insisting otherwise.

Further, even if you argue that people need news more than I believe they do, can you argue that they necessarily need the specific news gathered, prepared and delivered by those of us in so-called professional media?

Karp correctly pushes news pros to be more ambitious trying to reinvent their services, much the way GM places a risky bet on the Volt project. I'd add that news media companies must take on even riskier bets, as a proportion, with smaller jackpots. The consumer demand that backs our bets is far more fragile than what GM sees in its darkest hours.

History of Internet biggies, in 1 paragraph

Jay Small — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:33:24 +0000

Longtime Scripps compatriot David Johnson, writing at Lost Remote, uses exactly one modest paragraph to describe the entire history of the Internet's largest players:

"Once upon a time in bubbleland, there was this giant called AOL that had huge audience and all these community features. Microsoft launched MSN to battle, and the little old handmade directory called Yahoo grew into a mega aggregator and rounded out the big three online. Then this site called Google fragmented the branded portals with super search that made millions of teeny tiny sites easier to find. Once they were easy to find, Google built a new business selling cheap tiny turnkey ads on them. Now the big three are all trying to get together somehow."

Yep, that about sums it up!

Innovation: A game the whole family can (and should) play

Jay Small — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:02:21 +0000

Juan Antonio Giner, friend from SND days, says the newspaper industry spends too much time "doing the same and expecting miracles."

True. His advice:

"The publisher of a $5 billion European newspaper group called me yesterday asking me about innovative U.S. newspapers to visit.

'Sorry, but no one does things different or better that you,' I said.

'Go to Google.

Go to Pixar.

Go to Facebook.

Go to Apple.

Go to Microsoft.

Go to Bloomberg.

Go to Starbucks.

Go to Amazon.'"

Again, true.

Still saying Yahoo!

Jay Small — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:38:52 +0000

Yahoo! followers, please read this from Ken Doctor, then read this from Bob Benz.

I'm on the inside of the Newspaper Consortium deal, so I will say no more than this: I agree with the latter more than the former.

Individuate me!

Jay Small — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:41:04 +0000

My friend Steve Outing wrote about attending the Global Individuated Newspaper Conference in Denver yesterday.

In sum, the conference title muddles the theme: personal news. (Really, isn't "Global Individuated" somewhat like "Jumbo Shrimp"? Hat tip to the late George Carlin.)

Steve saw the event as full of messages and rally cries for the news business; in effect, "get off our cans and start offering personalized news services on our sites."

Now, I may be off my rocker instead of off my can, but I have consistently held an alternative view about investing to personalize news on the level of an individual news site.

Unless you're CNN, it isn't worth it.

Every shred of user research I have conducted, observed or studied tells me consumers do want a personal Web experience -- but not just for news, not just for one news Web site at a time, and not always based on the same selection criteria.

So I could buy or write the code required to give every user "choose-yer-news" tools, either tied to Web cookies or formal user accounts, both with their known logistical pitfalls for users and site administrators.

Or, instead, I could make my Internet content as portable and transparent as possible -- meaning search engines can extract its full semantic value, RSS readers can aggregate it, and mobile devices can have their own paths to it.

Then, consumers may combine information from as many Internet resources as they choose. They may use My Yahoo!, Bloglines, iGoogle, Firefox live bookmarks or any of dozens of other established services to build personal Web indexes from those resources.

More likely, they will simply do what has become the de facto standard "start" behavior on the Web: open Google or the search tool of their choice, and personalize the Web in the form of a search that represents what they want right that moment.

If that happens to be an article from your news site, great! If your site is like most local news sites I work with, it already gets more than 60 percent of the traffic to its articles direct from external searches, bypassing your efforts to index content on home and section pages.

Those indexing efforts now pay off more for search spiders than for human beings. Thus, trying to make content indexes personal at the site level will do little for your site's traffic while doing a lot to increase your cost -- especially if you Web engineers out there consider the difficulty trying to cache personal home pages.

Do we really think PodunkPrattler.com should invest in personalization tools and lean in the wind against all that? What am I missing?

Props for RootClip

Jay Small — Sun, 18 May 2008 17:17:21 +0000

NewTeeVee and Tilzy both give shouts to a project running in our Entrepreneur Fund at Scripps that, in my view, best fits the description of "I'd never expect this from a newspaper company."

RootClip works a lot like playing "whispers" with video. It's the brainchild of two members of our corporate team, Erik Luchauer and Kevin Antoine.

None of us knows if the site will succeed, but it gets style points from me, and Scripps is a better company for trying it.

Technical excellence via hand work

Jay Small — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:14:26 +0000

A Slashdot post points to an online discussion with Khoi Vinh, design guru at NYTimes.com, in which Vinh is asked how the team there maintains visual consistency. His answer, in part:

"It's our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or
TextMate, to 'hand code' everything, rather than to use a WYSIWYG (what
you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like
Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results."

Like I keep saying, people ... like I keep saying.

Another good use for mute button

Jay Small — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 13:43:33 +0000

If video killed the radio star, I may soon have to claim responsibility for killing Internet radio.

At 2 p.m. Monday, Mel Taylor, webcasting from the Newspaper Association of America Marketing Conference and Connections in Orlando, will interview me about the conference, the world of newspaper-based interactive media and who-knows-what-else.

I'm just one of a dozen or so people Taylor will interview over two days on BlogTalkRadio.com. Any one of the rest will likely provide more astute commentary than I.

If, however, someone throws me a guitar from off-set, Elvis-movie-style, I might just break into a tune. Ahhhwwwww, mama! (karate move)

Hiring at Scripps Interactive Newspapers

Jay Small — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:08:10 +0000

Recession? What recession?

OK, let me snap out of my Pollyanna moment there. Times are extraordinarily tough in the newspaper industry, but we at Scripps still believe we have much to gain from growing investment in Internet services and products. As such, we're hiring in the Interactive Newspapers Group.

Please follow the instructions for applying to any of the following jobs, which is another way of saying please don't contact me directly. I'll just slow things down for you and the hiring managers.

Product Manager, automotive and classified specialties.
Project Manager, emphasis on rapid development.
Project Manager, emphasis on innovation projects.
System Administrator, emphasis on LAMP/open source/Python/Django.
Database Administrator, emphasis on PostgreSQL/MySQL in LAMP environments.
Business Intelligence Analyst, emphasis on Omniture, ComScore, HitWise.

(I realize these jobs all say Scripps Networks, but to be clear, they are in Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group. For now, we work with Networks' Human Resources department so our jobs sometimes get filed with theirs.)

Web scribes: Enter National Journalism Awards

Jay Small — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:56:09 +0000

The Scripps Howard Foundation, affiliated with the company that gives me my day job, once again seeks entries for its National Journalism Awards. The program includes a Web Reporting category. Enter before Jan. 31 and maybe you'll get to bask in the glory. Details from the announcement:

Since 1953 the Scripps Howard Foundation has honored the best work in journalism through its National Journalism Awards program. The awards honor excellence in 17 categories, including one that you will find of interest. The Web Reporting Award carries a cash prize of $10,000. The postmark deadline is Jan. 31; winners will be announced March 7 and honored at an awards presentation April 18 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Here are details:

The Web Reporting Award honors the news organization that demonstrates the best use of new media technologies and innovative techniques to report on a news story or news event while maintaining the highest journalistic standards.

Open to any news organization whose primary function is the gathering and disseminating of news information to the general public. The news story or event must have been originally published online in 2007. Also open to organizations that combine their traditional field with new media efforts or organizations that focus solely on online formats. No college news organization work is eligible.

Entries must provide a URL or URLs for judges to view the news story or event. Entry must include a written narrative describing the organization’s efforts, a description of the news story or event and its components, original date published online, as well as justification of why the entry should be presented an award. $50 entry fee. Prize is $10,000 and a trophy.

Entry form. Questions: Sue Porter at 513-977-3030.

Good luck, entrants!