Google News now allows users to search by author. With the exception of columnists, I think this is a relatively new desire. Not too long ago, readers cared about the newspaper – the brand – not the reporter. If the reporter was good enough to publish in, for example, the New York Times, that was good enough for most people. And since journalism is unbiased, fact based reporting (you know, journalism as a science) one good reporter was as good as another good reporter. Well, that’s all changed now.

We all recognize that unbiased reporting is impossible, as long as it’s done by humans, and with journalists blogging, guesting on TV and radio programs, and running their own web sites, we now get to see who they really are. The better we know a reporter, the better we can appreciate his reporting and the more we want to read his stories because they’re his. This is the rise of the journalist as celebrity. It began with TV (The McLaughlin Group was one of the early ones), where reporters blabbed to each other about current events and those with personalities became stars. But you really had to know someone to get those TV gigs. Now you can build your own following just like any other blogger (think about celebrity reporters Michael Arrington and Nick Denton).

Many newspapers are worried about giving their reporters too much play, afraid that the competition will go after them if they get popular in their own right. In the US there are probably only two destination papers – the New York Times and the Washington Post (and maybe the LA Times), so every other paper could have this worry if they wanted it. But it’s self-defeating. Think of good reporters like Moneyball suggested Billy Bean thinks of closers – not as irreplaceable as the industry thinks, with new ones coming up all the time. Why not have a strategy of creating celebrities out of your reporters, accepting a certain increased level of turnover, and backfilling with new potential stars when they leave? You’d get a great reputation among journalists as a star builder, voluntary turnover would lower overall salaries, and some of those stars would certainly stay anyway, building your reputation among readers. Give your reporters blogs, let them inject their own voice into stories, and make people want to read them. Will you dilute the company’s brand? I don’t think so – how can a better product dilute the brand?

Share this post:

• “‘All content consumed will be digital…’”
• “…within 10 years all traditional content will be digital.”
• “‘There are problems with digital advertising.’”
• “The old approach of simply trying to replicate a print newspaper online is doomed to fail.”
• “For media businesses to successfully evolve they must provide the right combination of context and relevance to make a compelling online proposition for consumers.”

All those quotes come from a Guardian article about Steve Ballmer, who was named the Media Person of the Year at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. How many times have we heard this stuff? One thing is pretty clear – the tech guys don’t have any answers. Oh right, I guess Ballmer is a media guy. But he doesn’t have any answers either. If the news industry maybe spent some more time thinking about the business model instead of how not to “replicate a print newspaper online” it might be better off today. All the gurus talked about the conversation and citizen journalists, but traditional news companies still get huge traffic. Compelling content doesn’t seem to be the problem right now, it’s how to make money.

Let’s take this idea of not replicating a print newspaper. True, that’s a bad thing, but didn’t Google just get all kinds of plaudits for trying to do just that with Flipper? Flipper, you know, like flipping through pages. Oh, I’m sorry, it’s not like print, it’s a visual representation.

The fact is, no one has any idea how media companies can make money online, although some people have ideas and experimentation has begun.  But the sooner we stop giving press to tech executives and pundits who simply burp out these bromides, the sooner we can all move on.

Share this post:

In a recent Folio article, Dan Blank makes a list of concepts he’s gleaned from attending three recent “Future of…” panels. The list looks like this:

• Broadcast media is dead.
• Print revenue is supporting online strategies.
• Media companies need to rethink their roles and make hard choices.
• There is a huge opportunity for journalists.
• The advertising model is not dead, but it is fragmented.

Some of these continue to beat a dead horse, but I’d like to think for a moment about the “opportunity for journalists.” Blank goes on to say, “The opportunity might not have as much financial value as it once did—but in terms of pure reporting—of serving the public and reaching niche audiences—the tools and reach are now available to all.”

On the heels of this article comes a post today on D/All Things Digital by Peter Kafka suggesting that the “online-only newspaper of tomorrow, for a decent-sized city, will have a staff of 20 people. That’s 20 people, period. Perhaps six of them will be ‘news gatherers.’” (This estimate comes from Mark Josephson, CEO of Outside.in.) Ignoring the issues raised by the pro-forma P&L in the post, let’s focus on the idea posited there that much of what the news organization will do is aggregate “a river of extra content created by local bloggers, Twitterers and lots of people who don’t even think of themselves as content creators, like people who post real estate listings.”

The third part of this little trilogy is an article in The Guardian today by Charles Arthur stating that “The long tail of blogging is dying.” Arthur sees fewer and fewer blog posts linking back to Guardian articles because, he believes, “blogging isn’t easy. More precisely, other things are easier – and it’s to easier things that people are turning.”

Now, if I put all of these things together, I discover that there is a great, low paying opportunity for journalists in the news organization of the future which in large part consists of aggregating local blogs that are quickly dying out. Gee, I’ll bet media companies are salivating over that prospect. Seriously, who’s going to write all of this citizen journalism for free? How long will professional journalists stay with jobs that are low paying?

I’m not arguing that no one can report the news but “journalists,” or that media companies will ever be able to support big newsrooms again. I’m saying that we haven’t found the answer yet. Producing valuable writing every day is hard work and something that few amateurs (meaning they’re not getting paid for it) have the time or determination to do for long. Sure, people will always produce news bursts dealing with specific events, but that is far different than investing a great deal of time investigating a city council or a police department. It’s not whether someone is “qualified” to do it, it’s whether they have the time. And if they consistently have the time, don’t you find yourself wondering why? People will only do so much for free, and then they have to move on and get a job.

Share this post:

Yesterday, Microsoft program manager Dare Obasanjo posted this image to Twitter. The image is pretty self-explanatory, but it really sums up what’s been happening to nearly all newspaper and content sites as they’ve worshipped the high priests of the “new journalism.” The old, longer article is replaced with a top-ten list because we’re told to write something shorter, punchier, and in bullet points, all of which make the story work for today’s distracted audience. We ask the reader to send or recommend the article all over creation because we’re told content is social. The comments (and how true is the description!) are critical, we’re told, because it’s a conversation. And finally, information wants to be free, we’re told, so it must want to be surrounded by ads, hence the ad ghetto on the right side of the page. The only thing we’re missing is that the story should be written by a “citizen journalist” who isn’t paid for the work but will no doubt continue writing interesting, accurate stuff for free.

What makes the “Today” image so sad, is that each element has some validity to it, but taken as a whole it paints a picture of desperation. While the audience complains about boring, biased, or irrelevant content, sites throw spaghetti at the wall praying that something will stick. Maybe it’s time to worry less about the latest pronouncement from the altar and more about writing stories that people want to read.  And showing the audience how to find them.

Share this post:

Thinking about the Iranian election coverage, and the MSM’s difficulty with it, brings to mind an obvious rule: if an event makes you want to interview an eyewitness, forget it, you’re toast. Now eyewitnesses are also known as “the first reporters on the scene.” Your hope is to go in search of their reports and bring them to your audience, hopefully in a way that provides some context and coherence. That last point – providing context and coherence – remains an opportunity for legacy media. People usually don’t have the time, the inclination, or the ability to sort through thousands of reports coming through many distribution channels to understand what is true and false and exactly what is happening. If this context isn’t provided by someone, I’m afraid most people will just tune out.

Share this post:

The post-election protests in Iran are big news worldwide, but the US media seems strangely slow to take up the story. The information flow, however, highlights both the risks and opportunities for traditional media.

Most information on the protests is coming from social media sites. Twitter, as usual, is gushing with information and rumors (#iranelection). Flickr and Facebook are brimming with photos. YouTube is a center for videos, but has also been the target of some scorn for removing videos of police beating protesters. People are wondering if the site has been complying with Iranian government requests to remove material. This action, though, simply forced people to go to alternate sites. Some of the best reporting is found on local blogs such as Revolutionary Road. That blog also has some amazing photos.

Rumors abound as well as facts. At one point Mousavi (or someone managing his account) Tweeted that he’d been placed under house arrest, an assertion his wife later denied. Other sites and Tweets repeated reports of tanks in the streets and takeovers of military bases, suggesting the protesters could be arming themselves. With the governement ordering the foreign media to cease reporting, the only news will come from citizens. Internet and cell phone connections have also been disrupted by the government leading to Tweets of functioning Iran proxies.

With so much information, one has the feeling of being on the scene, looking out a window at what is unfolding on the street. You’re subject to the same images and the same rumors as those people actually in the country. And that provides the opportunity for the media.

It’s silly in circumstances such as these to not report on the existence of rumors, waiting to find out if they’re true. Everyone interested in the situation has heard them, so ignoring them doesn’t mean they go away. The opportunity is to distinguish the wheat from the chaff for the audience. Mention the rumors and say you’re tracking them down. Show the photos and videos. Tell your readers how to follow the story (Mashable has done a nice job of that).

Huffington Post is doing a good job of sorting things out for its audience. Reporting the Hezbollah rumors, true or false, tell us about the state of mind of Iranians and what they’re worried about. Sitting here in the US I wouldn’t have been wondering if the police are actually Lebanese Hezbollah, but after reading the rumor in comments and reports, it gives me a better understanding of what Iranians might be thinking. The New York Times is doing something vaguely similar, but in a much more sedate fashion.

Now is the time to be a curator for your audience. Tons of information is coming in from the scene, but none of it is yours. So what? Sort it and report it. How’s that for utility?

Share this post:

Mice in the front door and elephants out the back.  This is the picture painted by media executives when discussing the advertising revenue problems they face. An ever increasing inventory of display advertising has driven down CPMs making the possibility that online ad revenue could ever come close to matching offline revenue seem remote. While content companies earn pennies from online ads, they lose dollars as offline advertising shrinks.

While this growing online ad inventory reflects the endless supply of new online content sites, it also results from improved advertising tools and processes that now allow any site to easily sell targeted display advertising.  Ad networks aggregate sites, large and small, and sell demographically and behaviorally targeted audiences, making the quality of content found on those sites, they argue, irrelevant except for how well it attracts the target audience.  An advertiser that wants to reach a specific demographic no longer feels the need to pay a premium on a branded content site when it can buy an ad network and reach the same demographic on hundreds of small sites of sometimes uneven quality that happen to reach that demographic. (A recent Business Week article noted the trend.) We’ve gone from a world in which content is king to one in which content is irrelevant.

Or have we? If we look at extremes, it’s obvious that we’re not there. The Wall Street Journal still commands premium CPMs and mainstream advertisers still don’t advertise on pornography sites, despite the fact that porn consumers buy goods and services just like everyone else. So we’re talking about degrees here, but that still isn’t particularly comforting for branded content producers.  There must be more, and there is. The January Online Publishers Association study, Improving Ad Performance Online, showed that ad effectiveness is consistently higher on branded content sites than on other sites, including portals and ad networks. (Ad networks fared especially poorly in the study.) An April 2009 BrightRoll Video Advertising Report surveyed advertising executives and found that the most important factor in online video CPM pricing is “quality surrounding content,” suggesting that these executives also believe that video ads fair better on branded content sites.

Of course, when we talk about the performance of online display advertising, the bar has been set far too low.  The audience has trained itself (or publishers have trained them) to largely ignore banner ads which are often positioned in “ad ghettos.” Another way branded content sites need to distinguish themselves is by offering advertisers new ways to get their message across. A recent article in AdWeek discusses the efforts of sites such as The Daily Beast, Digg, and Meebo to move beyond the banner.

Ultimately, as Josh Chasin says in Metrics Insider, the question comes down to, “If I reach the same person with the same ad in two different vehicles, does the ad perform differently depending on the vehicle?” We have evidence to suggest it does, but with the popularity of ad networks in the current recession, it would appear that advertisers aren’t interested in that message. If branded content sites want to maintain and regain their premium pricing, they must do a better job of explaining why an advertiser should pay a premium above ad networks.

Share this post: