All Things Cahill

The Worm Turns for Big Media

There have been two big events in the media world in the past couple days, and to some extent, I think both have gone largely unnoticed.  The first is that the 2008 Olympics have become a real social media event, such to the extent that it’s been written about almost as much as Misty May’s tattoo or Michael Phelp’s speedo.  From the NY Times (pointer via Churbuck.com) article by David Carr:

“On Friday, NBC spent the day trying to plug online leaks of the splashy opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in order to protect its taped prime-time broadcast 12 hours later. There was a profound change in roles here: a network trying to delay broadcasting a live event, more or less TiVo-ing its own content.”

(Read Churbuck’s commentary on this here…)

It’s true.  I’m running YouTube videos from Beijing on Cycling.com and reading all manner of blogs, tweets, etc. about the festities.  If you want a good look at what Web 2.0 can do for you, look at what Lenovo’s accomplished.  Their SummerGames.Lenovo.com site has 100 athlete bloggers taking us right inside the story.  How cool is it to see video and pics of the opening ceremony *from the inside looking out* or to hear someone like Robert Gesink from Denmark discuss the strategy he employed in the Men’s Road Race (cycling).

Lenovo didn’t stop there, they have a twitter account (Lenovo2008) which has kind of taken the next step from “getting the converstation started” to “keeping the dialogue going” (beware, they do tweet results - and they tend to come 6-10 hours before NBC shows the events).  Then you’ve got their Interactive Podium - which has become my first go to site for Olympics info

So yes, the way that we’re getting our info is changing dramatically - and I’d urge anyone that’s not reading David Churbuck’s blog to do so right now - he’s posting from Beijing and covering the proceedings in a way that is truly unique and utterly motivating.

And meanwhile, back in mainstream media..via Valleywag

That which the newspapermen had been warning us about has finally happened.  Last Friday when the Russia went into Georgia (actually South Ossetia, a mountainous region with around 128,00 70,000 inhabitants - note that Worcester, MA has more than twice as many residents at 175,000) , we were treated to a Google page on the war, with a pin in the map over Georgia.  Savannah, Georgia, in fact.

We’ve been told by mainstream news that if we allow Google to be our newsource, our news is only going to be as good as their algorithm, and in this case, it put Georgia on the opposite side of the world.

The point is that as we push away from the main stream, this is exactly what we lose.  When the story is machine made, rather than vetted by a surly old copy editor, it’s going to get gamed, and it will sometimes be wrong.  In this case, it’s *REALLY* wrong.

On another note, I suggest we all take a look at some foreign news sources today to find out what they think about the Russia/Georgia war - I think we will find their take wholly contrary to that which we are getting from AP which has almost been a single source for US news reporting on the issue.  (Here’s a good bit from Reuters…)

Tags: 2008 olympics, business media, couple days, Google News Error, lenovo, michael phelp, misty may, nytimes, olympics, Ossetia, speedo, Valleywag

Duncan Riley: At the end of the war, Newspapers commit ritual suicide

Duncan Riley writes at Inquisitr that the Philadelphia Inquirer has set a new policy requiring that all “signature investigative reporting” appear in print before it hits the web site.

Romenesko has a copy of the memo sent to Inquirer staff. The important parts:

Beginning today, we are adopting an Inquirer first policy for our signature investigative reporting, enterprise, trend stories, news features, and reviews of all sorts. What that means is that we won’t post those stories online until they’re in print.

Riley goes on:

The decision rests on two major presumptions that fail miserably. The first is that there is a scarcity of competition therefore people who want the news will have no choice but to buy the paper. Secondly, that anything they write of substance is worthy of buying the print edition to read it first when it will either end up on their website, or will be reported on other websites. Neither hold true.

There may be only one major competitor in Philadelphia (Philadelphia Daily News) but both papers exist in a market that offers national newspapers and a world of online choice. That choice also isn’t restricted to traditional media, with bloggers covering local news as well.

The funny bit to me is that this is exactly the tact that almost every single large metropolitan daily tried in the late 90’s up until about 2004 or so, and frankly, is discussed in every single meeting they have about online editorial policy.  The Atlanta Journal Constitution, as I recall, put the lie to  this as a viable strategy in the early part of this decade, and its been discounted just about everywhere since.

I’ll give the Inquirer credit - at least they are trying to identify what it is that makes them so special, and their investigative reporting is at the top of the list.  I’d suggest they’d be better served to concentrate on how they can wring the most drachmas out of that product, rather than trying to restrict their delivery channels.

The newspapers need to start thinking in exactly those terms:  where is it we have unique and compelling product that has value over everything else that is available.  Then they need to look at how to monetize those products to the highest levels.  The problem is often the old cliche, a carpenter tends to see the solution for every problem to be a hammer.  Newspaper men see the solution to their problems be a printed product.  In truth, the thing that makes newspapers different is their content - which is compelling, well sourced, well written and produces a reliable and repeatable level of quality.

Delivery channels are delivery channels, be they print, web, email, sms or whatever.  If the print media could see that they’re pushing the most costly of the available channels, and think about ways to decrease costs by using the deep content capabilities of the web to their fullest, they just might have a chance.

(Thanks to Jay Cody for pointing this out via the “Newspapers: A Slow March To Exinction” slingcast at slingpage.com - and keep your eye open, I’ll be setting up my own next week for a beta test!)

Tags: atlanta journal constitution, delivery channels, editorial policy, investigative reporting, national newspapers, philadelphia daily news, philadelphia inquirer, romenesko, slingcast, slingpage.com, viable strategy

PEJ Report - The Changing Newspaper Newsroom

The Project for Excellence in Journalism (funded by the PEW Charitable Trust) has an excellent report out on the Changing Newspaper Newsroom - with some very interesting statistics that seem to imply the newspapers still haven’t got the message about their value proposition.

It has fewer pages than three years ago, the paper stock is thinner, and the stories are shorter. There is less foreign and national news, less space devoted to science, the arts, features and a range of specialized subjects. Business coverage is either packaged in an increasingly thin stand-alone section or collapsed into another part of the paper. The crossword puzzle has shrunk, the TV listings and stock tables may have disappeared, but coverage of some local issues has strengthened and investigative reporting remains highly valued.

Well, that sounds good, but in looking at the graphics we see that the biggest area of cuts is what many point to as one of the two biggest differentiators with online journalism, the Copy Editor (the other is local coverage, which we’ll get to in a minute.

The thing in my mind is that you can’t hold the lack of editing up as the big problem with blogs, citizen journalism, or whatever you want to call it, then club your own copy editors like so many seals.  They’re either important or they’re not.

As an experienced writer and blogger I can tell you that I am much better when I’ve got a competent copy editor to work with.  Not only do they catch the typos, they’re the folks that ask “What are you, writing in esperanto?  Say what you mean.” or “This section needs to be rewritten, it doesn’t say what you think it does.”  It’s the reason I so often post here and am corrected in the comments section by my astute readers.  The truth is, on a blog, you’re my copy editors.

As far as local reporting, the papers report devoting much more space to it, but in actuality, they are using less bodies to do it.  While 62 papers reported devoting more space to local, only 8 said they used less space.  However, half of the papers reported they had less “resources” assigned to local reporting.  Again, it flies in the face of the protestations.

The real answer is that they’re devoting *proportionally* more space to local news, and have contracted both the overall number of “resources” they have available (magic decoder ring: resources were formerly known as “people” or “journalists” prior to the ascent of the accountants) as well as decreased the number of pages they’re publishing overall.  There’s no mystery here, and the big news will be how this all works for them.  Personally, I think the newspapers missed their opportunity in 2000, and they probably won’t be getting another one.

Robb Montgomery posted on the same issue:

If reporters are laid off and the paper doesn’t report their actions - did it really happen?
It is, perhaps, an unforgivable journalism sin that this story is not being told fully by some closely-watched U.S. newspapers. Reports from The New York Times and Editor And Publisher indicate that editors-in-chief of Tribune newspapers in Florida are neither announcing nor publishing the newsroom layoffs they are making at this very moment.

From the E&P item: “Of concern to several staffers, however, has been the Sun-Sentinel’s lack of reporting on the cutbacks, with no stories appearing in the newspaper or on its Web site about the cuts. In most cases, newspapers have reported on their own cutbacks prior to the final reductions.”

Right on Robb - newspaper, cover thyself…to paraphrase the old saw about physicians.  The wholesale carnage in the industry, while getting mention in blogs such as this, is generally going under or even un-reported.  As I noted before, we’re talking about people, even if we cloak the humanity in terms like “resources”.  And these actions while they may impact newspaper readers a little, are both “life and career altering events” for the people experiencing them.  I know, I’ve been there, and over a year later, even though I’m well employed, I am still dealing with the vast ramifications, both personally and financially of that layoff.

Tags: journalism, newspaper death watch, newspapers, print media

Tribune Company - Leave the Gun, Take the Cannolis

Big moves today over at Tribune Publishing - the owners of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. The moves apparently started last month when Publisher Scott C. Smith retired, and was replaced on an interim basis by Bob Gremillion, publishing group executive vice president.

Ann Marie Lipinski, the newspaper’s senior vice president and editor is leaving and will be replaced by Gerould W. Kern who’s been their VP Editorial for the last 5 years.

Later in the day, it was announce that LA Times Publisher David Hiller has resigned after 21 months. He’d had a tumultuous reign, and even though he cited differences with Sam Zell the owner, we’d do well to remember he had been brought in as a guy who could get along with Tribune corporate.

This all comes after the Tribune announced steep cuts last week, including 80 newsroom slots. The Times had announced it was cutting 250 positions and 150 in the newsroom.

Sources:

Tribune Newsroom Layoffs

Times Layoffs

Smith Retirement

Hiller Resignation

Lipinski Resignation

As Steve Yelvington alluded via Twitter - they’re apparently settling all the family business - Godfather-style.

Tags: Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Newspaper Layoffs

Media Deathwatch: Tampa Tribune

Jessica DaSilva posted last week right after the Tampa Tribune Editor in Chief Janet Coats announced a major round of layoffs, and their embarkation for a trip in an entirely new direction:

Then she dropped the reality bomb:

“People need to stop looking at TBO.com as an add on to The Tampa Tribune,” she said. “The truth is that The Tampa Tribune is an add on to TBO.”

(Bold added for effect)

The questions from much of the newsroom apparently were the same old saws: “how will this affect profits” and “How will we compete with the other local paper” (quotes not verbatim, I wasn’t there, but are true to what Jessica posts).

I’m glad to hear they got it. Stop chasing a model that obviously isn’t working anymore. Instead of trying to support print as the end all and be all, with it’s incredibly costly delivery mechanism, start thinking about yourselves as content development. Find *all the delivery streams* that can make you money and optimize them. Forget about the ones that don’t make you money.

More from DaSilva’s post:

Janet believes in the news industry. She believes in holding government, media and the public accountable. And she knows there is not another job that makes such a huge difference and weilds such power. News organizations offer society so much, and that is why she cannot take another job - because journalism is her calling, and she knows there is nothing else she could ever imagine herself doing.

“It’s worth fighting for,” Janet said.

Out of all her quoteable moments, those were the words that stuck with me. It was that powerful statement that conveyed the hope, faith and prayers of all journalists worldwide. That maybe this industry can’t be demolished because of its importance and that maybe our love and passion for it could be enough to keep it running.

It’s going to be tough, and no, passion is not enough to keep things running in a broken model. If you combine passion with a willingness to change, to innovate and revolutionize (is that even a word?), you’ve got a much better chance.

To keep on doing what they were doing would be insane. To quote the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo:

They came on in the same old way, and we sent them back in the same old way

My best wishes to the Tampa Tribune staff, DaSilva and Coats that they can weather the storm.

Tags: content development, dasilva, delivery mechanism, journalism, layoffs, new direction, newsroom, tampa tribune

Yet Another Newspaper Outsourcing Post

Sean Pollay pointed out that the Boston Herald will be outsourcing printing and laying off up to 160 employees.  This from E&P:

The Boston Herald will layoff between 130 and 160 workers under a plan to outsource its printing operations to other locations within the state, the paper reported Tuesday.

The publisher attributes the action to the fact that some of their newspapers have presses that are more than 50 years old, which one would expect are a maintenance nightmare.  This one directly affects the unions:

“Some grim-faced union leaders declined comment as they emerged from a meeting with Purcell in his office late this morning,” the Herald added. “Purcell described the meeting as ’somber,’ even as he praised union leaders for all they’ve done over the years to keep the Herald in operation.”

Some 10 unions would be affected by the printing move, which is expected to start in late September or early October, the paper reported. Workers include pressmen, mailers, engravers and paper handlers.

In the long run, we’re going to see more papers doing this.  Arthur Sulzberger Jr. suggested last year that he could see The New York Times not printing it’s own papers within 10 years.  Think of print as just one delivery means for a newspapers product, and at that, an extremely costly one, and you’ll have a good idea of where this may lead.

 

Tags: boston herald, newspaper outsourcing

More on Newspaper Outsourcing

CNBC posted on the newspaper outsourcing issue yesterday, and noted that not only is copy editing going overseas for a trial, one of the OC Register’s parent companies papers is now sending pages to New Delhi for layout.

Mindworks Global Media will copy edit some of the papers stories for a one-month trial starting next week. And a community newspaper owned by the O.C. Register’s parent company–it didn’t name which one–will outsource page layout to Mindworks, which is based outside New Delhi.

This isn’t enabling any layoffs–not yet. The company insists it’s just a test, and it won’t affect reporting or decision making and that O.C.-based editors will continue to oversee the month. Orange County Register Communications has been suffering through a rough patch. As its circulation tumbled, dropping the company from being California’s third largest paper to its fifth largest, the company has done three rounds of layoffs in the past year.

That’s big news - since paginators are typically members of The Newspaper Guild (I am fairly certain that Freedom Communications has a contract with them). And even bigger news is that this story has only been picked up in a handful of spots around the web. Either the stories in stealth mode, or perhaps there just isn’t anyone who cares anymore.

Tags: cnbc, copy editing, global media, layoffs, new delhi, oc register, orange county register, rough patch

Newspaper Deathwatch: OC Register Tests Outsourcing Editing to India

When Reuters did this 6 years ago, we all laughed at them. “Want curry with that?” Now respected American daily The Orange County Register has begun a test using a New Delhi firm for editing tasks. From BusinessWeek:

Orange County Register Communications Inc. will begin a one-month trial with Mindworks Global Media at the end of June, said John Fabris, a deputy editor at the Register.

Mindworks’ Web site says the company is based outside New Delhi and provides “high-quality editorial and design services to global media firms … using top-end journalistic and design talent in India.”

So what’s it mean? In the short term, nothing. In the long term its just one more bit of evidence that the print publishing model for newspapers isn’t going to work forever. In fact just minutes ago The Washington Post posted this:

…We wonder and worry, too. Anxiety has intensified this year with an accelerating decline in newspaper advertising, and it has hit home for us in a particularly painful way this spring, first with the early retirements of scores of colleagues and then, this week, with Len Downie’s announcement that he’ll step down Sept. 8 after 17 years as executive editor.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg last week noted that The New York Times has seen it’s biggest Ad Revenue drop of the year during May.

Ad sales at the News Media Group, including the New York Times and Boston Globe, fell to $130 million, the company said in a statement today. Total sales declined 6.6 percent to $227.5 million as increased circulation revenue couldn’t offset drops in national, retail and classified ads.

The deterioration in May advertising mirrors drops at other U.S. newspaper publishers. Gannett Co., the owner of USA Today, reported yesterday that newspaper ad sales fell 14 percent in May. Those declines follow the industry’s worst quarter on record in the three months through March, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

“Expectations were that 2008 would be similar to 2007, but clearly things have gotten worse,” John Morton, an independent newspaper industry analyst in Silver Spring, Maryland, said in an interview. “Classified is in a tailspin, and there’s no hope for newspaper advertising until they win back some of that revenue.”

Meanwhile, in the This Week In Media Podcast this week, Alec Lindsey suggested that 2010 was the year that the model would break for the broadcast television market, stating that it would probably be the first year in which a revenue decline would be seen in the Upfronts. So, Mr. Television, your time is coming…

The real message here is that the traditional media model is utterly broken, and while it may be too late for print, television might still have time. My money is on the new online media providers and the networks slowly cutting their affiliates and the cable outlets out of the loop.

Tags: businessweek, decline, downie, executive editor, global media, new delhi, newspaper advertising, orange county register, print publishing, quality editorial, retirements, reuters, washington post

The Newspaper Decline - The Side We Don’t See

We’re generally quite happy to say it’s the online revolution that’s killing print media. Sure, it’s had it’s effect, but the truth is that there’s (as there generally is with all things) more to the story.

You see the downturn for print also came at a time when big print publishers (aka “newspapers”) were starting to get a whole lot more information to deal with. They had invested in systems that allowed them to get into some very extensive data modeling which allowed them for probably the first time to get a real picture of their subscriber base (readers) and that understanding caused them to do what any prudent business owner would do, prune out the non-profitable distribution means and concentrate on the most profitable areas.

What happened was that the papers realized that the increased cost of distribution for outlying areas wasn’t worth it, due to the fact that these areas tended to have a much higher cost of reader acquisition (the cost the paper incurs getting you to sign up) and a much higher Churn Rate (the rate at which customers drop subscriptions).

There’s been a lot of mastication on this issue around Blogykistan, but I can tell you this as a point of fact: newspaper system vendors put a lot of time and money into developing newspaper circulation business intelligence systems, and they did play a roll, no matter what anyone says to the contrary. I was a witness while I worked at Atex. It was the grand plan to “high grade” the readership and “treat your best customers best.”

Deep inside this is the real motivator: as time goes on, it becomes harder and harder for newspapers to make a profit delivering papers. Fuel costs rise, unions push for more money and slowly, it becomes economically unfeasible to to deliver to more and more areas. Meanwhile, they have pressure from the web where there aren’t the same costs. If gas costs go up, they have a more subtle effect, via energy costs (and believe me, data centers use energy) as well as the pressure for employee cost of living raises.

As Ken Doctor notes in his blog, the newspapers he dealt with:

offered the “cutback to quality circ” argument and said they’d cycle through that within a year or so. In Year Four, it seems like less compelling a reason. Just how much how low-quality circ is out there, anyway, or is the definition of it a rolling phenomenon?

Welcome to the brave new world, the newspapers are going to be riding that horse into the ground. You see, once you start making decisions based upon certain metrics, it becomes incredibly hard to stop.

So really, it isn’t just online that’s managed to hurt newspapers, its a confluence of many factors. Think of it as a “Perfect Sh*t Storm.”

One place it looks like they’ve actually made the transition is at IDG, where their trade magazines have made the transition from print to online. From the NY Times:

Across the company, the remaining print publications still typically play a vital role, but a lesser one — physically smaller and financially diminished. In 2002, 86 percent of the revenue from I.D.G.’s publications came from print and 14 percent online. These days, 52 percent of the revenue is from online ads, while 48 percent is from the print side.

Last year, print and online publications accounted for 70 percent of I.D.G.’s $3 billion in revenue, with the rest coming from its conference business and its technology research firm, I.D.C.

Of course, numbers can be made to lie, and the statements they don’t make leave an awfully big whole in the story.

1. Has overall media revenue increased, decreased, remained the same?
2. What’s the comparision of Ebita for the past few years?
3. What’s the net affect on employment - more or less jobs (I’m guessing less…)?
4. In short, is I.D.G. really doing better now than they were in say 2002?

I don’t mean to sound snarky - I am really and truly hoping this is working as well as the NYT would have us believe. Yet, it doesn’t offer a complete roadmap for newspapers, as I.D.G. is really in the tech news sector, and let’s face it, none of us are willing to wait over 30 days for a full print cycle to get our tech news. We want to get it now, and that’s why they’ve got to deliver online.

David Churbuck has a good take on what’s going on at I.D.G. on his blog.

What I saw was a company in the throes of a difficult transition from decades of print excellence to the more ephemeral but pressing world of online news. Print and online dichotomies were tough, but in the end it was the red ink that pushed the print legacy to one side (InfoWorld went online only) and broke down the old artificial barriers between print and online editorial staffs.

(Disclosure: I was webmaster for Atex, a leading system supplier for the print industry for 7 years where I worked with top minds in circulation and data modeling like Nettie Angotti, Betsy Hofflin and Arnie Korshin, and did contract work for I.D.G. subsidiary CXO Media)

Tags: business intelligence systems, data modeling, newspaper circulation, print publishers, subscriber base, system vendors

Media Bias is Us

Read the following statement:

The media is utterly biased.  Obviously biased sources like (choose one: Fox News | The New York Times) spout a constant stream of propaganda from (choose one: the dastardly Republicans | the evil Democrats | our Alien Overlords) which is meant to deceive us from the truth.

The problem we face today is that the way in which we get our news is fundementally changing.   Instead of getting a cross section of the news that someone really smart (read news editor) thought we’d need to know, we’re as likely getting our news from heavily biased secondary sources, also known as blogs, forums, etc.  We forget that a blog like this one is roughly analagous to the content you’d get from a columnist in a newspaper.  That means it’s opinion.  Opinion is, by its very definition, biased. 

So as we decry the problem of media bias in the primary sources of media, we’re gravitating to sources that are in fact much more biased.  We move from Fox News to Drudge Report or Instapundit, from The New York Times to the Huffington Post.  And in the process we’re losing out on the local, we miss the voice telling us that something should be on our radar, not merely showing us that which is already on our radar in a way that reinforces the way we already percieve it.

The problem is that when we have start to move from a primary source to a secondary news source, we’ve got to fill in for all the other stuff.  Like the weather (okay, we add a widget for weather to our desktop) or traffic (we get an sms update to our cell phone), but there is so much else.  Do we really want to have an obituary widget so we can watch for notices on people we know?. 

We’re moving to a model where we’re only as good as our information, and our access to information is limited by our ability to find, process and filter that information.

Tags: columnist, fox news, huffington post, instapundit, media bias, new york times, news editor, news source, overlords, primary source, primary sources, propaganda, republicans, secondary sources, sources of media