Update from Paradise

Being part of a start-up there’s a hunger to get it up and running as quickly as possible. But that desire runs head on into the reality that there’s so much to do and the only way to get it done is to be deliberate, to take one step and then the next. Sometimes, it feels like I’m taking one step forward and two steps back. But more often it feels like a deeper picture is emerging every day of the journalistic landscape here and the possibilities for our news service. I’m finding people in Hawaii’s journalism community generous with their time and with their thoughts.

It’s difficult when talking about Peer News because there’s much we’re not prepared to share about our plans just yet. But I thought it might be helpful for people trying to understand Peer News to see a few of the things we’re talking about and sharing on our internal blog.

One column we found thought-provoking and relevant came from John Tierney of The New York Times.

Much of our focus at Peer News is on community and Tierney’s column explores a study on motives for sharing stories. While one of our group correctly points out that it’s an unusual sample because it’s New York Times readers, something in it strikes me as true and revelatory about the impact of quality journalism.

“Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is quite a strong emotion,” one of the University of Pennsylvania researchers, Dr. Jonah Berger, told Tierney. “If I’ve just read this story that changes the way I understand the world and myself, I want to talk to others about what it means. I want to proselytize and share the feeling of awe. If you read the article and feel the same emotion, it will bring us closer together.”

The key words for me are “changes the way I understand the world and myself.” By doing that, journalism makes people want to talk to others. That seems to get at what we hope to do with our journalism.

Another interesting article came from the Harvard Business Review.

This article by Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto (my alma mater), gets at the value and importance of community.

He writes: “At our core, we are all social creatures. Community matters to us. This is why even when humans engage in profoundly anti-social activities; we do it in tightly knit social groups whether they happen to be called Crips, Yakuza or Al Qaeda. This is because as social creatures, much of our happiness is derived from our relationship with community — however that community is defined. We long to be: a) a valued member of a community; b) that we value; and c) is valued by people outside the community in question.”

Another article we’ve discussed recently is a strong piece by Glenn Greenwald of Salon about a New York Times article on Wall Street’s alleged feeling of buyer’s remorse over its support of President Obama in the 2008 election. One part of the column addresses the use of anonymous sources by the writer. That article highlights the potential pitfalls anonymous sources can pose in political coverage. Standards for the use of anonymous sources will be one of the things we talk about with our staff before we launch. There’s more we’re talking about internally, obviously, but perhaps this gives a sense of the kinds of things we’re thinking about on Waialae Ave. in our office with a view of the Pacific.

Chicago News Cooperative an encouraging development, but raises questions

I'm excited to see the flurry of initiatives on the local news front, especially the latest news from Chicago.

Who knows how the Chicago News Cooperative will turn out, but it's great to see this kind of experimentation.

On the other hand, such efforts raise some questions for me:

• Why don't existing newspapers go into partnership with The New York Times the way these start-ups are doing? Sure, they might worry about losing circulation to the Times, but couldn't the future look like some form of amalgam news product, in print and online?
  
• Do we really want non-profits benefiting one for profit newspaper, in this case The Times, instead of making its material available for all comers? (Disclosure: I'm on the advisory board of the Texas Tribune, which will do the latter.) Sure, the Times is going to pay for the content it receives, but will it continue the relationship if the print material isn't exclusive. Essentially, the Times is being subsidized because the cooperative will be able to operate at a lower cost because of its non profit status.
  
• I'm delighted to see the multi platform approach of the Chicago effort, but doesn't it seem like visuals - photo in particular - are being given short shrift in these efforts? Photo is such a central part of reflecting a community and involving a community.
  
• Why aren't we seeing the same kind of creativity on the business side? Have people given up on the prospect of making local news/information efforts profitable? I hope not. I believe it would be better if the experimentation extended to how to make money, something beyond charitable contributions, etc.
  

I'm sure there are other questions, but these are some of mine. I'd be interested in hearing what others think.

Random thoughts on recent journalism stories, columns and speeches

I hope you saw The New York Times story today about former Rocky Mountain News Washington reporter M.E. Sprengelmeyer. Good story about a guy deserving of coverage. I shared M.E.'s story first here, when he wrote about his new adventure running the paper in Santa Rosa, N.M. His story, based on the reaction it received on my blog, inspired many other journalists.

Good column by L. Gordon Crovitz in The Wall Street Journal today. The headline is "Media Moguls and Creative Destruction," spinning off a new book entitled "The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies." The column's conclusion about what any media organization should do: "Focus on what makes each brand different and more valuable than the ever-increasing number of alternatives that technology makes inevitable." Good advice, I think. But probably not enough, even if I'm not sure there's anything more that news organizations can do. The reason I say it may not be enough is that in most cases, achieving scale seems so critical. Easier said than done. At the same time, scale may not be enough. Look at the big newspapers and how they tout the fact that their total audience is growing at the same time as their print circulation is declining. While that's true, in the digital world, total audience isn't the key, or at least it doesn't seem to be to me. What's key is knowing who the audience is and where they are. What good does it do an advertiser in Denver if most of the readers on a local Web site are from distant cities or have no interest in their product because they're the wrong demographic for the advertiser.

Chicago Tribune Editor Gerald Kern gave a stirring speech at the Medill School of Journalism last week. I thought it especially interesting how he defined the mission/brand of his news organization.

• We stand up for our community and citizens.
• We capture the Chicago experience.
• We move people emotionally and intellectually.
• We help people navigate their daily lives.
• We fuel conversation - the Tribune is a social medium
• We break news - we don't just report it.

I wish Medill or Kern would post the speech on the Web. I think it would be interesting to know whether these brand qualities are how the paper's readers and the rest of the community would describe the company. While the troubles of the Tribune company are legendary, it is clear that the Chicago Tribune itself is trying all kinds of things to remain relevant in this era, from RedEye to its hyper-local initiative, TribLocal, and that without the burdensome debt of the parent company the Tribune alone would be a viable business, as would The Los Angeles Times. The question is for how much longer. Nobody knows the answer. Kern's ending, "One thing is clear - We're here to stay," is the weakest part of the speech. Clearly they want to be there to stay. And I hope that's possible. But we've seen enough wreckage in media and other industries to know that there's no guarantee that the Tribune or any other paper is here to stay. Nobody knows what's going to happen. Predicting the future isn't a strength of journalists. Better to stick with what we do know. That the company is doing a lot of good things and is committed to trying to figure out how to be there to stay. And that its efforts are worth following.

A different way of seeing regional editions by The New York Times and Wall Street Journal - I see it as a possible way to strengthen local journalism

Instead of seeing the possibility of regional editions by The New York Times and Wall Street Journal dealing the final "death blow" to metro dailies, as Rick Edmonds suggests, I think it's possible to see in the strategy a new way to strengthen local journalism.

I'm not saying that the version of metro dailies described in the Richard Perez-Pena story in The Times today makes sense or will have the effect Edmonds fears. Perez-Pena says the Journal is thinking of adding "a parge or two of general-interest news from California, probably once a week, produced by the large staff it already has in the Bay Area." I can't see how that's enough to make a difference to anybody.

But I do think there are possibilities worth exploring in national newspapers working with a regional operation in an online and print partnership. What would happen if visitors to the Journal's Web site from California or the Bay area saw a portion of the site produced by a news team, say affiliated with The San Francisco Chronicle? And, of course, SFGate, would have a window to the Journal as a key source of news on business and the markets. Then the smaller Chronicle team could produce a weekly or couple of days a week newspaper, perhaps distributed with the Journal, with local advertising and inserts. Its principal focus would be digital, delivering news and information to computers and cell phones. The new Chronicle wouldn't need to try to replicate Journal coverage of the nation or the world, or of business. But it would focus on all things California and all things local. I could see an interesting partnership developing, with benefits online and in print. No, the local newspaper wouldn't look like the metro newsroom of old, but it would be focused and it would have a window to the world through its partnership with the Journal's Web site. It could start becoming something new for a new era, starting with being a digital first publication. Of course the same thing could happen in a partnership with The Times. In some ways this might be considered a "franchise" model for the future of local news. Another way to look at it is that the papers would be creating a new, deeper network, or a "networked" model. I see potential worth exploring in partnerships between major national titles and local titles. In some ways, USA Today is best positioned for this approach. First, it's already part of a major newspaper company with papers across the country. Second, it's perceived as the most fair and neutral of the national titles.

Newspapers should emulate Comcast, not put up pay walls

With all the talk from newspaper moguls about making the public pay for online news, it might do the industry titans well to check out their cable bills. And the latest earnings report for Comcast versus their own.

There's a lesson in the tangled collection of charges Comcast hits its customers with. I called one night recently about my $195.58 monthly Comcast bill. That's for service to two TVs and so-called "high-speed" Internet. So I'm paying the cable company roughly $2,400 a year, when I pay roughly $770 for seven-day delivery of The New York Times.

The gap seems way out of line. But it also helped make sense out of last week's earnings reports. "Profit at Comcast increases 53%, largely on higher prices," reported an Associated Press story on The Times' Web site. I'm sure the newspaper moguls wish they could report similar good news. Instead, the Times is selling off assets to survive.

One of the main solutions of Murdoch and other newspaper big shots for industry woes is to make users pay for online content they're already getting for free. Maybe they should take a look at their cable bill and try a different approach.

Comcast dings me first for standard cable (think the daily newspaper). That costs $55.99 in Denver. Can you imagine if the newspaper could get half that for a seven-day subscription? Raising the street price of the daily paper to 75 cents from 50 cents is too timid. A decent newspaper should easily cost a buck. The Times is right to be at $2.

When I called to cancel my local paper (The Denver Post) recently, the representative put up little fuss. Had I thought of Sunday only? he asked. Wouldn't I miss the coupons? I could get the e-edition the other six days. Wow! Exciting. Not a word about the value the paper can add through special services. Not a mention of what it could deliver to my cell phone or the cell phones of the four others in my household on my Verizon family plan. (OK, they don't all live with me, but they all have a connection to Denver.) Not a word about text messages. Or e-mails. Or special packages of news. Or any benefit other than the print newspaper.

You can be assured that Comcast isn't satisfied with a "Standard Cable" order. And I guarantee you its agent, unlike the newspaper person, started scrambling to fix my package when he learned I was unhappy with what I was paying. He wasn't about to lose me and even told me where to call on a weekday to get my price lowered. (Of course my immediate thought was that the company had been happy to charge me to the hilt until I raised an objection.)

Comcast also gets me for the "Preferred Package." That's $16.95.

Then I get Dvr/hdtv. That's $15.95.

I like HBO. That costs me $19.99.

I get STARZ, too. That's another $19.99.

Then I get the Digital Additional package, for $6.95.

So my total, before taxes, for cable television is $135.82. Ouch!

Then comes high-speed internet. That takes a bite of $45.95. The reason I put quotes around "high-speed" is that the agent was immediately willing to double the speed of my service without charging me a penny. (How come I didn't get the real high-speed without asking?)

Then comes $13.81 in taxes. (We would have been happy to get that much for a newspaper subscription most years at the Rocky Mountain News.)

That brings me to the total: $195.58. And the question for the newspaper industry: Is there really nothing more you can bundle into your bill? Can you not offer deeper services than a basic subscription that will make my life better? If you could - and I believe you can - wouldn't that help alter your economic equation? Couldn't many newspapers make money from new revenue streams, if they would only create content or services people would be willing to pay extra for and then charge them for what they want.

This is why I think the membership model is so much better than the subscription model. Not just the museum-style membership package the Times is apparently considering. Not that that might not help, somewhat. But there's so much more it could do.

Would you pay extra for a membership if it would save you money? I do. My family belongs to Costco. If customers see benefits, they're willing to pay. Which is why just focusing on getting people to pay for news online is so narrow-minded. And why the incremental pricing model of Comcast is such a smart approach.

Editors would do well to explain themselves

When I became editor of the Rocky Mountain News in the late '90s, my philosophy was that I would let our work speak for itself. I didn't see the value in explaining our decisions.

That changed quickly. And I think for the better.

The debate over the decision by Bill Keller, editor of The New York Times, not to report the kidnapping in Afghanistan of his own reporter, David Rohde, is an example of the kind of case where it would be helpful for an editor to explain himself. It's not like Keller hasn't done so in other cases in the past.

The Times published an excellent column by Clark Hoyt, its ombudsman, sympathetic to Keller's thinking. But as good as the column was, it was written by a third party, not the person who had to make the excruciating decision to suppress information he would normally publish, going against the grain of the ethos of any good news organization, including his own. Keller has been interviewed by others, too. He certainly hasn't hidden from the topic. But there's nothing like hearing the unfiltered voice of the person in charge.

Look, unlike Kelly McBride, an ethicist at the Poynter Institute, I think Keller did the right thing in the Rohde case. She wrote in a blog post taking on Keller that she encourages leaders who take actions contrary to the larger principles of an organization simply to say, "We set aside our core values in the face of imminent consequences."

As if it were that simple. How can maintaining our own humanity be considered a lesser core value? But even if she's correct that that's what Keller did, if you're never prepared to set aside your "core values," why do you need a human being as an editor? An automaton could do the job just as well. Just follow the rules. No, sometimes the rules need to be broken. Saving a life is one of those cases.

An editor owes it to his staff to do anything in his power to save their life when they're in danger on an assignment for the newspaper. They have to know he has their back. (One of the reasons I was reluctant as editor of the Rocky to put reporters in harm's way half way around the world was that I knew I wouldn't be able to help them if they got in trouble.) To me, Keller's decision showed the humanity and commitment of the organization.

But there may be larger lessons in what the paper did. And it would be valuable for the paper's staff and readers to hear how this experience will affect its policies and thinking in the future, if at all. When members of the public or other organizations approach the paper now and ask it not to report something based on similar serious concerns or to remove information from its archive or web site that could be harmful to someone, will the paper approach listening to the request differently? We don't know.

Keller did what he thought best to save the life of a staff member. But he has left unanswered whether the Times will be open to others who ask it for the same consideration. That's why I think Keller should write about how what he did to help Rohde will affect the paper going forward.

Lessons from The Washington Post's fiasco over off-the-record corporate dinners

The Washington Post may have done a service by shooting itself in the foot so badly with its proposed off-the-record dinners for corporate execs and lawmakers at the publisher's house.

By pushing the concept of charging people to hear journalists' and decision-makers' views to such an extreme, the Post may have helped clarify where the line should be drawn. It seems like it should have been obvious, but maybe it's not so simple in times like these when journalists are celebrities and news organizations are scrambling to find new sources of revenue.

Basically, the Post in a flier it quickly renounced when Politico made it public, offered lobbyists and others off-the-record access to its publisher, editor and key journalists along with powerful government officials - for a price.

Clearly, the Post was way over the line. Yet what it was trying to do builds on what other esteemed news organizations already are doing. You can't read a copy of The New York Times without finding out about an event where the famous and the paper's journalists can be seen and heard together, for a fee. And The Wall Street Journal hosts an "All Things Digital" conference every year where influential people covered by the paper show up and participate.

As the Post's own Howard Kurtz points out in his story on the controversy, "A number of media companies charge substantial fees for conferences with big-name executives and government officials, but in many cases the sessions are open for news coverage."

So what are the issues, and where should the line be drawn?

Every day journalists interview the "powerful" and share what they learn with their readers. That's their job. There may be lots of acceptable ways to do it.

So the first key seems to be that any such session must be "on-the-record." Journalists always call for transparency on the part of the people they cover; they should hold themselves to the same standard. It's one thing for journalists to agree to an off-the-record interview to gain understanding of an issue; it's another for them to offer the benefits of that access to one group who pays an exorbitant fee but not to another who doesn't. And the same holds true for the politicians who grant that access. Do they really want to be pegged as people who speak only to those with the money to buy access to them? I don't think so, despite how it sometimes seems.

Insisting that such events be on-the-record helps when you come to the second question: Should corporations be able to sponsor events put on by newspapers? Look, they already pay for the advertising that makes it possible for newspapers to publish. The issue isn't whether corporations pay to sponsor events; it's whether they have an influence over what's said at the event, over the agenda - or if there's even the appearance that they have an influence. If the answer is yes, then there's a real problem. But I don't see a problem with businesses partnering with newspapers to bring more information to a community. That last word is key: community. Not to a select few. But to anyone who wants to attend in person, or today, preferably also over the Internet, even if after the fact. Again, transparency matters.

To ensure that there's no appearance of impropriety, the third requirement is that such events cannot be at the publisher's house or at any other private location. (It's one thing for the publisher to invite anybody she wants to dinner at her house on her own dime; it's another to get companies to pay to have dinner with her and powerful politicians she drags in for the purpose.) Such paid events must be in public locales where anybody can purchase a ticket, where no publisher, corporation or government official can exercise a veto over who can attend.

That brings me to the money. How much should be charged? I think that's up to the news organization. Make the cost prohibitive and what it says is that the outlet wants to be exclusive. Make it reasonable, and it sends a different message. Find different ways to make the content accessible to people and it looks like the organization is actually tuned into serving its community. Politicians and others can make their decision on whether to participate in part based on the fact that the event will be public and public knowledge. Again, transparency matters.

Now, comes the truly thorny issue: Should newspapers pay sources - government officials, business leaders, movie stars - to appear on panels or at meetings where the newspaper is going to make money?

Politicians talk to newspapers every day either because they feel it's their responsibility or because they want to get their message out, or some of both. If the panels are all on-the-record, then there's not much difference in politicians appearing at public events put on by the paper as long as they don't receive a fee. Remember, newspapers differentiate themselves from other news organizations by claiming they never pay for access. They don't pay people to talk to them. But what about if they do pay the powerful to appear and help further their business interests? They can't have it both ways.

The best solution to resolve this dilemma seems to be a public (transparent) honorarium that covers the expenses of the speaker to attend the event, but that's it. Anything beyond that and there's a problem.

So here's hoping the Post finds ways to inform more people and earn more money through means other than the daily newspaper. Events and conferences could well be among them. But if they are, the paper still has to uphold its principles. Now the Post owes its readers - and staff - a full explanation of what those principles are.

Good thinking on how to capitalize when Yahoo! drives millions of page views to a newspaper's Web site

In writing about steps newspapers should take to survive and thrive, my third recommendation was, "Realign the internal operations of local newspaper companies to make marketing, advertising and editorial partners every step of the way."

Reader and friend John Leach, managing Partner at Digital Strategies LLC, pointed out how the recent experience of The New York Times, when it received more than 9 million page views on one story in a few hours from a Yahoo! link, was a good example of how what I was proposing could help newspapers. If news organizations were restructured in the way I described, they'd be better able to capitalize on this kind of opportunity because the whole team would react instantly, together. Instead, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab story, the Times sold remnant ads on the page getting the fire hose of traffic.

John wrote me: "You talked in No. 3 about putting together news, advertising and marketing staffs along the lines of what you described for CNN at the Democratic convention when you talked with the (CU Journalism School) advisory board. It's a great idea, and it's long overdue.
An online advertising staff has to be as nimble as the online news staff in order to take advantage of opportunities like the one the Times had -- and the same thing goes for the online marketing staff. As I pointed out in a brief comment to that post, the online advertising staff should have sold a client like Bing on being able to pick up 1 million or 2 million page views from a big event like that one, which is an ideal place for Bing to promote its new search engine. It could have done something similar with other big advertisers.

"What an opportunity that presents to deliver extraordinary value to a key advertiser, even if it's for a price halfway between the usual rate and the dismal remnant rate.
Instead, newspapers are functioning online like they do in print -- selling ad space, building the ad and putting it into that space on a set schedule. It's the equivalent of posting the day's paper and stopping there. Why can't we have breaking news ads to go with our breaking news?
The Times also could have targeted a marketing campaign for itself onto those pages -- getting far more value than it did from remnant ads. After all, the Times undoubtedly was getting visitors who hadn't been to the Times very often before, and visitors who hadn't been there at all, and that's a prime group to tell about what the Times offers in breaking news, in-depth coverage and multimedia. It's also a group that might well buy Times photos or other products."

I think John makes great points. Are newspapers nimble enough and are they structured to seize opportunities that present themselves quickly? Instead of complaining about the link economy, they should capitalize on it. By the way, I'm not saying the Times was complaining. But John is right that in my previous post on Yahoo! driving traffic to the Times I undervalued the opportunity that kind of traffic represented by not reiterating the importance of advertising, editorial and marketing working side by side.

Fascinating post about Web traffic

The Nieman Journalism Lab has a fascinating post about a Yahoo! link driving record Web traffic to the web site of The New York Times.

The Times got more than 9 million page views in a couple of hours as a result of the link, but couldn't make much money from the traffic.

This story relates to my previous post about how newspapers should think about building their business on the Web. Perhaps raw traffic isn't the best measure of success, or what newspaper people should be looking for. Just as fighting for tighter copyright laws isn't the right path. It's attracting the right traffic that counts - and providing services to users and advertisers that benefit them financially.

Heartening talk from NY Times president

It's great to see the president of the most important paper in the country say that readers will determine the format of future delivery of news by The New York Times.

Sometimes it's worth standing back and recognizing what a long way we've come.

Here's an excerpt of what Scott Heekin-Canedy, president and general manager of The New York Times, said in a Q&A on the paper's Web site.

"My colleagues and I see The Times not as a newsPAPER but instead as a news provider. Our goal is to offer our consumers news, information and entertainment wherever and whenever they want it and even in some ways they may not have envisioned — in print or online, wired or mobile, in text, graphics, audio, video or even live events...

"What might be the future format? I think the answer is that it will be your choice."

Talk like that is one reason I think megabrands like The Times will still be around and playing a perhaps even bigger role when a lot of other papers have fallen. And maybe it offers one possible solution for local newspapers: Link up with The Times (or CNN or ?) using the same platform to augment the papers' national and international report with strong local coverage.

The front page dilemma: Why newspapers blow it when they act like they’re the first to report a major breaking news story

Based on my reading of four newspapers every morning, I’m concerned editors still think they need to present big stories as if their readers had never heard them before. This approach sends a message - and it’s not a good one. The message is this: We have nothing new to add to what you’ve already heard.

I’ve been stewing over this issue since the morning after the rescue of the American ship captain from Somali pirates, one of the most compelling stories of recent months.

The story appeared in Monday, April 13, papers. But it broke on Sunday, early enough that the good news was included in the Easter sermon at the captain’s Vermont church. Yet you wouldn’t have known that from the papers I read.

Here were the headlines:

Navy Rescues Captain, Killing 3 Pirate Captors – The New York Times

Snipers Kill Pirates, Save Captain – The Wall Street Journal

An ‘Easter surprise’ at sea – USA Today

Navy snipers’ fire frees U.S. Captain – The Denver Post, over a story from the Los Angeles Times

The stories each had essentially the same lede. This from USA Today: “Navy sharpshooters rescued an American ship captain held at gunpoint Sunday in a daring operation that left three pirates dead and ended a five-day standoff about 20 miles off the coast of Somalia.”

The problem: Everybody (OK, almost everybody) already knew what the papers were reporting. The news had rolled through the Web all day Sunday and into the night. It had dominated cable and network news shows. Yet, little in the four papers was new.

Why would a young person who hadn’t yet developed the newspaper habit see value in those headlines? They wouldn’t. The headlines reinforce the impression that newspapers are out of touch, that editors still think they operate in a vacuum where they define what’s news. So, someone might ask, why should I pay attention to newspapers.

I’m struck that we’re still wrestling with a problem that Barney Kilgore seemed to have answered almost 70 years ago when he was managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. On the same day the headlines above were published, a columnist in that paper, Gordon Crovitz, wrote about a new biography of Kilgore and how his thinking could act as a road map for today’s editors.

On the morning after Pearl Harbor, Crovitz pointed out, other newspapers “recounted the facts already known to all the day before through radio." Sound familiar? Not the Journal. It reported: “War with Japan means industrial revolution in the United States.”

We pay lip service, today, to the idea that newspapers need to explain the implications of the news, but when you read our front pages, you have to ask whether we’re living up to our claims. Kilgore’s own former paper didn’t even address the business dimensions of the rescue. The Times handled it best, with a good sidebar on the debate over arming ships’ crews, but, again, a casual reader wouldn’t had a clue that that content was in the paper, based on the front page.

At least 15 highly skilled reporters contributed to these four stories. And that doesn’t take into account the many top-notch editors who must have touched them. Yet there was little difference among them. Where’s the value in that approach? Or that use of resources?

If we don’t take risks and apply imaginative approaches to such a dramatic story, what does that tell us about our future? I’m worried that the answer isn’t one we’d like to hear.