Models

One of the most striking parts about the current upheaval in the newspaper business is that business models are profoundly shifting. Sure, the business model of the small weekly is fairly sound when considered next to the major-market daily, but that still doesn’t provide an answer for the internet.

Like an elephant in the room, publishers still don’t really know what they’re doing. The Times and WaPo finally got around to creating a skunkworks-like departments that creates innovative web applications that manipulate data and take advantages of their companies expansive coverage of their regional areas. Still, these things wind up looking like add-ons. And it also doesn’t help explain how solvent but small cash flow weeklies are supposed to take advantage of these things.

When I first began working at a small rural weekly I was asked to do school board interviews. Okay, I thought, where’s the rubric to cover this? What format should the interview be in, and how should I structure my questions? Turns out it was just another narrative-driven story about the interview I had with each candidate. Sometimes it gets wedged into one story, for big positions each interview gets its own story. Yahoo. So what happens when people wonder what was said in the in between?

Journalism is often understood as a process of applying a lens to the topic of coverage, with the idea that a “professional” journalist is as unbiased as possible. But what to do with all that information that is unbiased and just as interesting as narrative to a great many people.

Enter the internet.

I envision a whole “Elections” application separate from the narrative content management system. Sure, you could include the stories that run in the paper, but you could also offer candidates a level platform for publishing their positions, publish every bit of info allowed by public disclosure laws, provide events where candidates are speaking, if they are incumbents it could include their voting record or major accomplishments, past campaign promises and the result at the conclusion of their term.

The point of this exercise is that there is a lot more to an election than a narrative story can provide. There’s data and there’s information. A newspaper, or community information service, needs a comprehensive, usable, and most importantly visible way of presenting all that stuff.

Hardtimes

A funny thing happens when people make less money, they cut down on what they deem unnecessary. Seems advertising is unnecessary to many people. Our papers are certainly suffering the current recession. There’s no telling how bad it will get a this point, but the current owner has been through the 80’s with two of the papers, so there’s reason to believe, strongly, that things will be alright. In the meantime, what it means for the people is another story altogether.

My boss still seems dedicated to developing a new website even with the economy the way it is. I thank my lucky stars for that, because if he were to try and mothball the project I’m not sure how long I’d stick around. I mean, I would continue to write for the paper, but creating a coherent and effective Internet business model is so important to small newspapers. 

We are the arbiters of information for our communities. We compete with the occasional story in the county seat publication and individual organizations’ newsletters. That’s not much. In the meantime we have to find an effective way to get information to people so they can participate in their government and their communities. Hold on one sec while I get up on my soap box … There we go. 

Surely we’re not the only ones who keep people informed. I come across many people who say they don’t read the paper. But for those who do and those who participate actively in the community, we are a touchstone. We have to find a way to do the same thing while taking advantage of the rich data storage ability of the Internet. That’s what I see.

Aggregation

Ah, a diatribe. That wonderful time when one gets to take the reporter hat off and just, well, go off. On the subject of aggregators I’m not actually that violently opposed to them, it just occurred to me how relatively worthless things like news.google.com or the amazing looking news visualizer are. 

You see, there was a time when Google News was one of the first sites I visited. Then I started waking up to NPR. It turns out that when you aggregate all the “top” stories, you actually get a bunch of really lame, really similar stories about something that may have little to nothing to do with your life. And while that’s all well and good, I’m not going to actively click on that link about an indicted senator. They’re always getting indicted. But when NPR has the story they run the news and offer some form of simple analysis. So without lifting a finger I have stories passively presented to me. I either tune in, or I don’t.

It’s almost like the Internet doesn’t know what makes it special. Its in it’s awkward teenage years and doesn’t realize that acting like your 22 year-old brother is going to make you cool. You have to discover your own talents.

Social networking, as overused as the term is, represents a future of the Internet, but I’m not even convinced that’s worth getting to worked up about. While it can put things in context, it can also get full of shit very quickly. More and more I’m convinced that the semantic web, or some similar solution is the future. If the Internet knows what stories or data visualizations are related, it can offer them up without just pushing the “top” stories. Aggregation only takes you so far. At some point you have to start deaggregating the content you actually want.

Transparency

Blogging policies and traditional journalism are a bit like trying to write a peace-treaty for Israel and Palestine to sign. While technically possible, the extent to which one will understand the other is dubious. While my writing here is based on the principal that I work for a newspaper, I consider this more an outlet for the meta aspects of my job. I don’t write about my community, my writing, or my opinions of what I am paid to write about. That would be inappropriate. What I do posit are opinions of the inner workings of a newspaper. 

While I don’t generally talk about the truly bad stuff, that’s less me trying to protect my employer and more a belief that negativity feeds negativity. With that in mind, I do feel that criticism of the M(ain)S(tream)M(edia) is often well placed, as we hold everyone accountable but ourselves. We expect a certain amount of transparency in the workings of public entities, communication from private entities and people to talk to us. But we don’t talk to people. That is not to say anyone is hiding anything, but releasing subscription numbers and discussing ad revenue with people when it comes up is a far cry from transparent. Blogging breaks down the fourth wall of journalism.

 

Not sure how the editor decided to run one story and not the other? Wonder why a reporter isn’t covering a certain topic anymore? How are beats chosen? What stories get scrapped before making it to the paper? Was it for lack of resources or interest that they were scrapped? These could all be published for nearly free by blogging. Of course, it takes time to write cogently about these things, and that takes time. But keeping the community informed as to editorial choices is the single greatest act of transparency. If an editor cannot survive that kind of scrutiny, perhaps they should be doing something else.

Of course, it’s a bit like the President of the U.S. Sometimes hard (read: unpopular) decisions have to be made that one believes are for the good of the people, or community in the case of a paper. There’s a reason we live in a representative democracy and not a true democracy. There’s also a reason businesses are still allowed to be totalitarian regimes. What’s good for the goose is not always good for the gander. I just think newspapers should not be allowed to be totalitarian regimes.

Time

Two and a half months, eh? That’s a long time with no writing. Better get back on the old horse and see what I can dredge up as writing-worthy experiences here at the ol’ weekly newspaper.

Seems to me, when I was in high school, then college, then immediately out of college I had a tremendous amount of time on my hands. Not suggesting that I lorded it over people, but I sort of sat smuggly back from time to time and thought about all the things that were for my own amusement.

Flash forward to now and I can’t seem to find enough time to do the things I’ve contractually signed myself up for, let alone for pure enjoyment. When I work a full day at the paper, go home, and have just enough time to eat before I have to attend a meeting at church or mow the lawn I begin to understand what it means to not have enough time.

On the other hand, I’m not the most efficient person in the world, as I have attested to before. I find plenty of time throughout the day to catch up on the Language Log or *wink, wink* write a blog post. But generally I find that there aren’t enough hours in the day for what I would like to get done or have done to me.

But now it’s back to work!

Sources

When you have a certain philosophy towards journalism it can hold you back. Quoting people heavily and letting them dig their own hole doesn’t work when you get a taciturn person as a source. I generally operate with this philosophy because it’s what my boss likes. Thus, I’m often in a situation where I don’t really know where to go next or who to talk to, because my source was not very loose.

One thing that’s always quite funny, though, is when you get a real loose cannon. Someone who just likes talking and will say the darndest things. Honestly, it is often what I would have expected someone to say, and it often comes from people whom I know better than others. So comfort must play a role. It doesn’t stop it from being enjoyable. A quote is worth a million words, and some people just like spreading the weatlh.

Theory

I’ve never been to school specifically for this thing called journalism. I thought about it, but I only tolerated my undergraduate education from a formality stand-point. At the time that the decision was made, writing and conducting interviews seemed like something better learned by experience, at least for me.

Despite my lack of a higher-higher degree and my general disinterest in the politics of university life, I am driven to learn. I read whatever I can get my hands on, and especially love trying to get at the heart of things. Education broken in Maine? Why? Tell me, show me, or get out of my way.

The same behavior applies to my job as a journalist. Why do we do things the way they are done? My editor has a philosophy about what is “news.” It has only just occurred to me that his philosophy, if thought about a little bit, could actually be applied as a theory. He subscribes to the “quote, fact, quote,” theory of journalism. Let people say what they will and surround them with just enough narrative glue that you know what they’re talking about.

I enjoy that method, but I don’t believe it is the most effective. Especially given the current shift from paper and tv to Internet, literal journalism will be replaced. Instead, the predominant theory will look something like, “do your best and wait to be corrected.” No one is an expert in everything. I may have been assigned to the school “beat” but that does not make me an expert. Encourage people to correct what you write, and then encourage them to read your corrections. Develop a relationship with the people who you can’t hope to inform with ivory tower journalism. Media is only your enemy if you ignore it until you need it.

Free

Just read a great article here at Howard Owen’s blog discussing the use of free technology and newspapers. His story focuses on using Yahoo’s Pipes service to scrape their own newspaper’s syndication feed for related content. It’s an ingenious idea and one I probably wouldn’t have come up with on my own.

I’ll explain how I found the post. I was searching Google for, “using free tools to improve newspaper website.” Talk about specific. The entry was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for, though perhaps a bit too specific. It’s great to see how people are enhancing their site, but I was wondering how much a local paper could get away with co-opting services that are already existent.

One such idea is instead of hosting your own blogs (though the ad revenue is lucrative) simply host a blog directory for the area. Provide tips on how to blog effectively, how to set one up and what privacy issues to be aware of. A similar idea could be done with image gallery sites like Flickr and Picasa.

The idea is to avoid two major problems:

1.  Re-inventing software that already works very well
2. Getting people to sign up for yet another login at yet another site (YALaYAS)

I wonder what others are doing with regards to this. Also, is it appropriate for a newspaper to, say, host video via YouTube? Most people would prefer to keep their sources close to home (i.e. on their own server), but at the smallest of papers could we really justify building our own video processing department? These are the questions that shape my days.

Competition

So far I’ve been “scooped” on a story I was supposed to write twice. Considering I work for a weekly and not a daily, that’s not too bad, but it’s also brought up a couple of observations.

• One: Daily newspapers seem to run on nearly the same schedule as weeklies. 

As far as features and researched, well written stories go, they are no different. I get scooped, but it’s a week after I first heard about the story, so it easily could have gotten into our weekly in the same time the story took to hit the daily. Strange.

• Two: Quality of information is relative. 

The two major issues I’ve read about in other papers before I had a chance to print anything were covered poorly. The lesson here, if there is one, is that I put something on the back burner for a reason.  It’s funny to be working in the “news” and to notice some else’s slipshod journalism. 

That’s not meant to be a slam at the other reporters, but just an observation that we all slip up sometimes, and especially when a story is categorized as “breaking.”What it all boils down to is that one can be both burned by competition and burn competition. Both happen on a regular basis in the newspaper business. 

Feedback

I’m going to an office meeting tomorrow (today) to see a presentation on some sort of web forum feedback software. It’s an interesting concept, but I haven’t heard anything about and so am wary. I try to stay abreast of web goings-on and the creators of this software can’t even keep their own website updated, let along create buzz.

Be that as it may, I also think there are some valid points made in the book which preciptated the software, The Leadership of Civilization Building. If you take it for what it’s worth and not for the title, it’s actually an interesting read. Effectively, the point is to create a new way for people in leadership positions to gather and make sense of feedback from a large group of followers.

On the internet, such a system would be a revolution indeed. The problem is, it’s too preachy and academic. The author fashions himself some sort of modern Thomas Jefferson, complete with period dress which isn’t at all anachronistic (I’m sure Jefferson walked around in John Barth’s clothing).

Despite this, I’m willing to hear these people out. I’m afraid some employees have already built a wall up against whatever they have to say, and they may be right. But they may also have some interesting ideas for things that we can do to generate quality public feedback and communication with a new website. We’ll see.