What about better articles?

In all the discussion about the Detroit papers suspending home delivery except for the three most profitable days of the week (Thursday, Friday, Sunday) there seems to be little discussion about the c-word -- content.

This quote from Jim Schaefer of the Free Press is typical. (Click for full article.)

This is something that would be hard to reverse. This is not like a magazine or neighborhood news sections, those tricks we have tried for years and then reversed them. This is viewed as something you live or die with.

As I've long contended, this erosion has only been sped up by the Internet. At the core of the problem is a product people don't want to read. If perhaps they thought about something compelling to readers that they could only get in the print edition then perhaps they could resume home delivery the other five days of the week.

This is not new. I recall conversations 15 years ago with the circulation department of a magazine I worked at. We spent an hour reviewing premiums that readers would receive if they subscribed. I wondered aloud if we shouldn't just worry about writing better articles to see if that would attract more readers. I was told it was more complicated than that. Perhaps so.

Who's watching the watchdogs?

Recently, at work, a group of us had an interesting discussion about the Internet, the demise of newspapers and the future of democracy.

Sounds like a lot but the discussion focused on the future of newspapers. If they are to die, and we all agreed they are dying quickly, who will be the watchdogs?

One group argued that newspapers protect us against corruption, evil, etc. The other group (myself included) argued that it didn't matter. The world has changed, we argued, and it's easier for average citizens to broadcast and uncover corruption.

In the end we agreed to disagree. Afterwards I came across a column by Jon Fine of BusinessWeek. (Click here for full column.)

The column is mostly about the Newseum in Washington, D.C. However, Jon makes a good point, relevant to my work discussion:

Its placement on such an august stretch of D.C. real estate implicitly puts the news biz in league with the powers it's supposed to remain skeptical of, though anyone who has suffered through government-journalist group gropes such as the White House Correspondents' Dinner knows how uncomfortably close those teams are in real life.

Good point. Seems that the institutions we hold up to be the watchdogs aren't always as pure as we'd like them to be. It's always struck me that the most prominent journalists we supposedly look up to are also part of the group we're trying to keep an eye on.

Why newspapers are where they are today

Bob Lefsetz, a former music industry executive who rants on about his former industry and its inability to accept change, recently commented on the newspaper industry. (Click here for full post. Thanks to Mark Potts for the link.)

Bob is a fan of Sam Zell and Lee Abrams and many of his points have been repeated elsewhere. But the great line of his post in response to newspaper executives tired of the new regime:

If those running the newspapers were so damn smart, they wouldn’t be in this predicament.

Other newspapers are no longer the competition

Good post by Jeff Jarvis on the recent layoffs at the Tampa Tribune. (Click here for full post.)

Two interesting comments:

1. Janet Coats, editor, pointed out that the importance of the paper's Web site has changed. “People need to stop looking at TBO.com [the newspaper's affiliated web site] as an add on to The Tampa Tribune. The truth is that The Tampa Tribune is an add on to TBO.”
2. Coats also urged her staffers to stop copying the competition. "She told the staff to get over the idea that they should operate and judge themselves by doing the same stories as The St. Petersburg Times. Can’t afford that anymore."

When readers don't care

Jeff Jarvis recently had an interesting post about newspapers getting rid of sections and finding out readers don't care. (Click here for Jeff's post. Click here for the original post by Amy Webb.)

Both Jeff and Amy make great points:

• Newspapers should think about cutting more sections or figuring out what sections really resonate with readers.
• Newspapers need to think like businesses. Don't create products that people don't want just because management thinks they need it. (The eat your vegetables mentality.)
• No more commodity news. Only news readers can't get anywhere else.

One of the greatest lesson I learned when I was in newspapers was the day we put in the wrong crossword puzzle. The phone never stopped ringing. A close second was the day we cut a recipe in half and had countless people call upset that the recipe didn't work. I pointed out to the editor that I didn't notice anyone calling because we left out an international story or didn't have the Vancouver Canucks score.

Watch people like Sam Zell. They understand this.

The future of newspapers

Jon Fine, columnist for BusinessWeek, has a great post on how newspaper executives feel about the current state of affairs. (Click here for full article.)

LA Times Sunday magazine

A lot of energy is being exerted over the decision by the Los Angeles Times to have the Sunday magazine run by the business side, not the editorial. (Click here for one such example.)

There's no point in summarizing or rehashing any of this except to say -- I am willing to bet a ton of money that the readers won't even notice the difference. Not one iota. And when that happens the editorial department, which is ranting on endlessly about this, will have even less credibility.

Nothing new in the WSJ

Is it just me or is there less to read in the Wall Street Journal these days?

Every day, when I read the paper, about half of what's in there has either been online for a while or already appeared in the New York Times. I recognize that News Corp., is trying hard to compete with the New York Times but publishing articles about subjects the reader has already heard about does not seem to be the answer.

Examples from today's front page:

-- Lead article about inflation growing around the world. (I have seen that and similar pieces in countless places.)

-- Manhunt for convicted hedge fund manager. (Seen that all over the New York Times and the local Connecticut paper.)

-- Secretive associate of Putin emerges as oil czar. (Finally, something new. But it's below the fold.)

-- Robotic vacuum cleaner fights for territory from family dog. (There we go. Something new and interesting. Again, at the bottom of the page.)

I am certainly not suggesting a heavy emphasis on robotic vacuum cleaner articles but I am suggesting they either cover more business or find a unique twist on these stories, twists you can't get anywhere else. Right now, most of what I see on there is old news.

Never forget -- newspapers are a business, part 432

If ever you need to be reminded that newspapers are a business, read about Sam Zell's planned cuts at the LA Times, Chicago Tribune and others. In short, they plan to print fewer pages and reduce head count. What's interesting is how they are approaching this: by figuring out the number of column inches created by each journalist. Randy Michaels, COO of Tribune, has concluded they need fewer journalists because some are not producing as much as others.

From the New York Times:

Mr. Michaels said that, after measuring journalists’ output, “when you get into the individuals, you find out that you can eliminate a fair number of people while eliminating not very much content.” He added that he understood that some reporting jobs naturally produce less output than others.

Later on in the Times article is another interesting tidbit:

... Mr. Zell wrote that Tribune papers would be redesigned, beginning with The Orlando Sentinel, on June 22. Surveys show readers want “maps, graphics, lists, ranking and stats,” he wrote. “We’re in the business of satisfying customers, and we will respond to what they say they want.”

A few comments:

• You're going to see more of this approach, not less.
• This is how most businesses behave. However, newspapers and some magazines have not caught up with the times.
• Everyone is blaming the Internet for the demise of newspapers. That's only hastened their demise. At the core is an inability by many to understand that they need to produce useful content. If you don't give your readers what they want, you're out of business.

Some are sure to disagree. Jeffrey Weiss of the Dallas Morning News is one. (Click here.) But it ignores the basic problem facing newspapers -- fewer people are reading them because there's less content that interests them.

Journalism as a business -- quote of the day

"Journalists need to remember that before push can come to shove on high ethical issues, the newspaper has to survive as a business"

That's Howell Raines in his May profile of Brian Tierney. (Click here for full article.)

Use of SMS for local media

I stumbled across two stories this week that made me realize that newspapers, at least local ones, still have a great opportunity to utilize technology.

First, from Julie Starr in New Zealand, comes the observation that while larger papers have pretty much missed the boat on conversion to a strong online business plan, regionals and locals still have an opportunity. (Full post here.)

There's no question that ink on paper remains strong in rural and small-town New Zealand. But most of those newspaper readers either don't have internet connections or have dial-up or low-speed broadband. Eventually that will change, and people's reading habits will change along with it - with a clear impact on local papers. Unless, of course, those local papers start working towards developing useful websites. Not much sign of that yet.

So, they're behind the times but not by too much and still have a chance. Plus, I've always contended that local newspapers have the strongest chance of surviving simply because they cover something nobody else does -- local news.

After reading that piece I then stumbled across this piece from The New York Times about the recent protests of the Olympic flame in San Francisco and the rampant use of SMS (text messaging) to mobilize people. (Read full post here.)

The protesters had deployed people across San Francisco who were tracking the torch’s whereabouts — from the waterfront warehouse where it first appeared, to the diverted path it took away from the biggest protest gatherings. Every few minutes, the pro-Tibet sympathizers were sending updates on where they believed the torch and a busload of its bearers were being redirected. Most text-enabled demonstrators were apparently subscribed to a distribution list set up by Students for a Free Tibet, using the commercial service TextMarks.

After reading the two it struck me that local news organizations have a great opportunity to take the lead here. Granted, SMS is used primarily by younger people but isn't that the audience local newspapers desire to reach? In addition, nearly everyone now has a cellphone. Many older people don't have text plans but that will change over time.

What if local news organizations could broadcast events, alerts, traffice updates, weather alerts, scores, gas prices etc by SMS? Basically, anything local that the reader can't get anywhere else. (Hey -- go one step further and do it by Twitter too.)

I've written about this before. (See post here.) But that was basically about harnessing the power of users to share news regarding a train accident. Here the local media can finally take charge and be the reliable and up to date source of news it has wanted to be for so many years.

"All of you are overhead"

The above quote from Sam Zell to a bunch of journalists is sure to prompt a lot of negative comments from journalists.

But the smart ones will realize that he's right.

Zell, owner of the Tribune Company, said this and a few other choice things at a meeting with the Tribune's Washington bureau in February. (Click here for a link to a write up of the meeting and audio.)

The full quote from Zell:

"This is the first unit of Tribune that I've talked to that doesn't generate any revenue. So all of you are overhead."

Another gem:

"Three guys in a garage create YouTube, and we've got 800 people in Chicago who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground!"

You can go on all day explaining how Sam Zell doesn't know what he's talking about. But at the heart of the matter is the simple fact that newspapers (and magazines) are businesses designed to generate revenue, part of which pays the salaries of reporters. And under the current business model advertising pays the bills. Yes, content attracts readers but journalists are overhead, just as are truck drivers, deliverymen, painters, etc.

And to Zell's credit, he understands that and he's challenged journalists to think about creating content that readers will want to read. Radical idea but spot on. Until now most newspaper executives were afraid to say this for fear of being seen as turncoats. Zell doesn't care. And Zell is right:

The recording of the Washington meeting gives fresh insight into Zell's annoyance at what he sees as the self-importance of conventional journalists. He says they're peddling goods the public just doesn't want to read: too much insider politics and Iraq, not enough local news.

It's about time.

How a newspaper works online

Nick Carr, best known for his IT Doesn't Matter Article in HBR five years ago, recently wrote about how newspapers should behave in the digital age. (Click here for his full post on Britannica.com.)

In short, Nick argues that users behave differently when reading a paper online.

In print, the appeal is the whole package, the journey from front to back (or the other way around) and the surprises one finds along the way. Online, the reader has a clear mission -- she knows what she wants to read and clicks on that link, ignoring much of the other material.

When a newspaper moves online, the bundle falls apart. Readers don’t flip through a mix of stories, advertisements, and other bits of content. They go directly to a particular story that interests them, often ignoring everything else. In many cases, they bypass the newspaper’s “front page” altogether, using search engines, feed readers, or headline aggregators like Google News, Digg, and Daylife to leap directly to an individual story. They may not even be aware of which newspaper’s site they’ve arrived at. For the publisher, the newspaper as a whole becomes far less important. What matters are the parts. Each story becomes a separate product standing naked in the maketplace. It lives or dies on its own economic merits.

And because of that changed behavior newspapers need to think about content differently. And they need to think about which stories will draw the most ads, and by implication that means the most traffic. In short, each story needs to stand on its own. Expensive, investigative pieces will suffer online simply because they cost much more to produce than service pieces and they will probably not draw many ads.

Each piece of content has to compete separately, consuming costs and generating revenues in isolation. So if you’re a beleaguered publisher, losing readers and money and facing Wall Street’s wrath, what are you going do as you shift your content online? Hire more investigative journalists? Or publish more articles about consumer electronics? It seems clear that as newspapers adapt to the economics of the Web, they are far more likely to continue to fire reporters than hire new ones.

As I've said before, it was inevitable newspapers (and magazines) would face this challenge. For too long they didn't consider what the reader wanted to read instead relying on they thought was best for the reader. The online world has only hastened this transformation.

Another one bites the dust

For the second time this week I learned of a former ink-stained wretch abandoning a print sub to read online only.

From Jimmy Guterman:

But, after years of wavering, I'm done. The environmental argument alone should have been enough for me, but the simple fact is that I do more and more of my reading on a screen (the only holdouts: fiction and poetry). And plenty of that reading has been from the Times. What finally made me give in to the inevitable was realizing, one barely-dawn morning last week when I was reading the paper at our kitchen table, that I had already read much (most?) of it online. For all the pleasure of holding and print, the Times on paper is just too late. In 2008, today's paper is yesterday's news.

Read full post here.

Impending doom

From today's NY Times: The Journal Register has hired Lazard as an adviser as it weighs a restructuring.

If the company were to seek bankruptcy protection, as analysts said was possible, it would be a first in recent memory for a publicly traded newspaper company, John Morton, a longtime newspaper analyst, said.

Two tidbits I find most interesting:

• The company, according to the Times, is carrying $625 million in debt. Not good when the economy is slipping and newspapers are no longer the medium of choice for advertisers.
• Four years ago the company spent $415 million on several Michigan dailies. And we all know how the car industry is doing these days.

Talk about the perfect storm: a recession, heavy debt load, a bad acquisition and, oh by the way, a sector that is fast in decline.

Update (4/12): I just came across this interesting perspective from Louis Hau at Forbes.com. He points out that newspapers, if run properly, can be quite profitable. The problem is when they're saddled with debt or a recession hits. (Click here for full article.)

Making Web sites easier to read

Jack Shafer goes on a rant against the Washington Post's Web site. He has several points, two of which stand out: (Here's the link to his full article.)

First -- Web sites that don't send links to their competitors. His specific beef with with the Washington Post not linking to the NY Times and vice versa. Jack's right. If your goal is to be the one place people come for news/opinion why wouldn't you point to your competition? Doing so only increases your credibility and makes readers realize that by going to your site they will get as complete a view of the world as possible. At a dot com I worked at I was pulled aside and told to view the Web site like a TV channel. "You don't want anyone changing the channel." How wrong that was and is.

Second -- Link infestation. Jack has beefs about all the links in so many of the articles. I am not sure it's the volume of links but instead the lack of description of where they are taking you. For example, "Google" with a hyperlink. Is that going to the Google home page, to latest stock prices, company profile, article about Google? I think much of the junk we see today would be solved if the author of a posting explained clearly and concisely where the link is going to take people.

If you want good stuff, visit the blogs

Mark Potts recently weighed in something I've noticed for a while -- the interesting content on newspaper Web sites is on their blogs, not their news pages. (Click here for link to Mark's post.)

I've commented on this before (click here for link) but it raises another issue -- why do newspapers insist on placing blogs in a separate section? Why, if you're publishing a blog covering sports wouldn't you find it in the sports section of the Web site?

The New York Times Web site, which is one of the better ones out there, is a prime example. (See screen shot to the left.)

One of life's mysteries, I suppose.

Broccoli and french fries

I've always been a huge fan of Rob Curley's ever since I read a Fast Company feature on him about how he's helped enlighten newspapers in Kansas, Florida and now Washington about how to improve their products. (Read full article here.)

And while Rob is viewed as an Internet geek (which is good) his real value is that he points out some obvious truths that many people just don't want to hear. In other words, print what people want to read. This made me realize the main challenge facing newspapers and magazines today isn't technology but the fact that many just don't give the readers what they want. The only thing technology has done is speed up the process and point out the flaws.

I bring this up because Rob has a recent post using food as an analogy about how newspapers should think about news. (Read post here.)

He also agrees with my point of view -- that Sam Zell actually makes a lot of sense and people better start listening.

I know this is probably going to make me a little unpopular — or maybe that’s more unpopular — with some of the traditional journalism folks out there, but I actually agree with a lot of the things that Sam Zell has been saying lately.

We need to become more relevant to our audience. We have to make ourselves indispensable to our readers. We shouldn’t let a false sense of self-importance get in the way of trying to make news organizations matter to most folks again. Zell is absolutely correct on these points.

Why a byline strike?

Reporters at the Honolulu Advertiser recently conducted a byline strike to protest their lack of a contract. (Full report here.)

I've never understood the logic of doing this. It's commonly done and for the life of me can't figure out why this will convince management to pay reporters more. That's because I have a strong suspicion that readers don't care who the writer is. In some cases they might recognize the name of the reporter. In virtually none, I am willing to bet, does the byline add any value.

Instead, how about withholding something management or the readers find of value? How about the crossword puzzle, the comics or the school lunch schedule. Leave those out and I promise you will get the reader's attention.

Why journalists are in serious trouble

Mark Potts posted this a while back but I have to admit that I am one of those who thought the same thing he did when I saw this exchange between Sam Zell and a journalist at the Orlando Sentinel. (Read full post here.)

There's nothing I can really add to Mark's post other than agree with it and hope to bring it more attention.

If you watch the video of Zell muttering "fuck you" after responding to an Orlando Sentinel photog's insistent questions about journalistic quality and think, "Right on, Sam," you're a Recovering Journalist.

If you don't, you're still stuck in denial, a state of mind that has no idea that journalism is a business, doesn't get that it matters (far) more what readers think about stories than what journalists think of them, pines for the extremely bygone days when newspapers dominated the news universe—and is walking straight off a cliff clinging firmly to all of those romantic, noble but no longer realistic notions. Buh-bye. Nice working with you. You're toast.