McClatchy earnings shows limits of automated stories

There's been a lot of ballyhoo about AP's use of computer algorithms to generate hundreds of earnings stories.

Among AP's reasons was that it could provide much wider coverage. Reporters would still handle the major stuff, the wire service said.

At some point, however, the question of quality vs. quantity was going to raise its head. And here's an example of where the automated system fall short. Here's the AP's auto-generated story on McClatchy's recent earnings.

Pretty bare bones stuff. But this isn't a plain-vanilla situation. In fact, there's some serious insight here. This is one of the old-line pure-play media companies and in many ways is a barometer of how midmarket newspapers are likely to fare. And there are, after all, about 62 million shares outstanding, with Yahoo Finance saying that as of the end of March, 119 institutions held shares. That means more than a few people have these shares in their retirement and other accounts (and may not realize it).

Here's another version that, I think, is more reporter generated:

Those second, third and fourth grafs contain some important context. It's not just that the company eked out a profit. It's that the stock's price has plunged about 60 percent since February as it became apparent those earnings -- any earnings -- were generated largely through throwing the ballast overboard on a very leaky ship. So if you read the AP story, you come away with "they made money -- a small bit, but still a profit." Read the other one from American City Business Journals and you'd come away with more understanding and, perhaps, many more questions.

There are, I think, going to be a lot of these kinds of stories in the midrange of companies not really big or sexy enough to draw the AP's resources, yet large or important enough in their own way that they deserve more contextual treatment. So, even more so, investor beware and understand the limitations of what AP is doing

Caveat emptor: Comptek/Universal Media Syndicate, Aereo and morally challeged newspapers

We've all seen them, the full-page ads for Amish heaters (where it doesn't exactly say but where, apparently, primarily only the frames are made by the Amish), "rare" coins and bills, etc. While the debate about "native advertising" in digital rages in various forums (punctuated by John Oliver's hilarious takedown of it), the old-fashioned "advertorial" has become more and more a staple (from my observations) for cash-strapped newspapers.

But even newspapers have some moral, if not legal, obligation, it seems to me to at least give these things a vetting for being misleading -- and, frankly, from a business sense, too, since this kind of stuff doesn't do much to help your already steadily eroding credibility.

This ad was in The State newspaper today (The State is happy hunting ground for all these ads) on page A13. It's not masquerading -- it is clearly labeled as "Special Advertising Feature":

But what the ad is trying to do is trade off what may be for many people some dim recollection of this thing called the Aereo case that got headlines a few months ago when the Supreme Court ruled against the company. The ad artfully misstates what Aereo really was, however:

• Yes, it did use "mini" antennas.
• But they were in a bank of antennas in a huge warehouse in Brooklyn, for instance.
• And they were not so much designed to plug into your TV as to enable you to watch your over-the-air free TV stations on your computer anywhere you wanted to.
• And, finally, consumers have been able to get "free TV" as long as TV has been on the air

There's no evidence I see that this "slick little $88 device" that "pulls in crystal-clear digital TV channels for free with no monthly bills" does any more than a $15 or $25 antenna from Wal-Mart (or other retailers) that you can plug right into the back of your digitally enabled flat screen. And if you happen to have an old analog TV, you can add a digital converter box for about $35, bringing the total cost to maybe $60 instead of almost $100 with shipping and handling. Heck, one of those boxes will even record shows if you plug in a large-enough digital drive.

The ad promoting the "Clear-Cast" and using as a source "Comptek, 8000 Freedom Ave., Canton, Ohio, 44720," is artfully worded to avoid legal issues, things like "consumers who have a slick little micro antenna device will receive all of the major network Hollywood movies broadcast over the air for free." Yep, and you can receive those same movies with one of those cheaper antennas or, if you have an enabled flat screen, artfully shaped aluminum foil shoved into the antenna input, it would seem. Always have been able to. (Any implication that wording might make in the minds of the slightly informed and hugely gullible that they might get things like HBO or even TNT is, of course, an unintended consequence, I'm sure.)

No surprise here. Universal Media Syndicate, the operation behind these questionable ads, has been the subject of numerous complaints.

The only "slick little device" in this ad is the wording.

But at what point does a paper like The State have to make some moral decisions and say enough is enough? You no longer can separate the newsroom from the business, as if you ever really could. And that makes it even more important that news organizations -- newsroom, ad, business and corporate -- examine their morals and ethics when it comes to things like this.

(And I haven't exactly seen press associations rushing to rethink this, either.)

Oh, indeed, the almighty dollar is tempting -- and sorely needed -- at times like this. But if news organizations don't do it with an enlightened sense of what they are about, they will ultimately be almighty dead. Because, you see, even the dullest consumers have flashes of brilliance, and when they do these days, all they have to do is hit a button ...

Google taking flak

There was the ouburst of unhappiness last week when it was announced Google Reader was being phased out, and now there are broadsides against the search giant for problems with Google Alerts (which I have to agree has been sucking lately).

Here's the deal, folks. This decade is going to be pay to play. Many of these free services were launched with the idea they could be ad supported. We know where that's gone with the media, so why does anyone think it would be different with anything else?

Sure, some will stay free (there's always the motive to get people in the door or there will be other objectives, such as Google's and Facebooks' massive data-gathering efforts -- if you'e buying FB stock, you're not buying a social media company but a huge database you hope can be monetized). And with churn there will be new free ones popping up.

But if you make them part of your workflow, get ready to pony up. It's going to be a cost of business.

Kodak - a lesson and a reminder

Eastman Kodak serves as a good case study and reminder for those of us in journalism:

1. You can't sit on your laurels
2. The innovation that could save your bacon might be right in your own shop - if you don't discount it
3. "We needed to understand that we were not a family; we were a team."

All three can be found in a look by Reuters today at Kodak and its spinoff, Eastman Chemical. The venerable film and camera maker is struggling, now seventh in digital cameras and struggling against HP and other established players in the printer market. Spinoff Eastman Chemical, on the other hand, is thriving.

As to point one above, Kodak clearly stayed at the dance with film too long. Think about the difficulties, some tradition and some financial (large debt and capital investments to be paid down; sucking at the teat of the cash cow, etc.), that traditional news organizations have gone through.

Point two follows from point one - as the article notes, Kodak invented the digital camera. But there was no urgency to develop it - after all, why cannibalize the cash cow that was film (and chemicals).

Point three is from a former CEO of Eastman Chemical, Brian Ferguson, who talks about the difficulties Eastman had in adjusting to faster, more flexible times (and the need to lay people off) because of the "paternalism" of Kodak. You can scoff at it if you want; you can decry how the orientation of capital and labor has changed - or regressed, depending on your view. But I throw it in because it captures nicely the orientation I hope graduating students have and understand. Too many in my generation wanted to work for a "family," and the PR spin in many corporations still emphasizes that. But when push comes to shove, it's best to remember Ferguson's words because in the cold light of business, they ring more true.

I've used Kodak before as a parable of our times. Kodak's story is worth reviewing periodically for any journalist.

As we approach another new year, I want to share with you that 6-year-old speech that's also linked to above. I think it still has some good points.

---

Keynote Address
Florida Press Club Annual Meeting
Oct. 15, 2005, Orlando, Fla.
Doug Fisher, author Common Sense Journalism
and instructor University of South Carolina

    It's been a tough year. Journalism has been economically battered ... then legally battered in the Valerie Plame case ... and finally – literally – physically battered by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
    Yet you have persevered, practiced and honed your craft, true to the idea that people deserve to know what works – and what doesn't – in this world. It is not easy. It is not a job everyone can, or will, do, despite what some people would tell us.
    But you did it. And you are being honored tonight for excellence in that work, and you should all give yourselves a round of applause.
  
    I'm a nomad. I started in radio some 30 years ago when all-news was becoming hot and got a break working for one of the all-news pioneers – Westinghouse Broadcasting. I moved to a TV assignment and anchor desk for a while, and then got hired at the paper because an editor was willing to take a chance on me. It didn't hurt that we kept beating them down at City Hall.
    I ended up spending 18 years at the Associated Press, the kind of journalism that is exhausting, maddening – and thoroughly exhilarating: From covering presidents and what were then the super-secret stealth fighters, to writing about the guy in western Ohio who had a Titanic museum in his basement and watching thousands of elderly people jam the Rhode Island Statehouse because their money was frozen in decrepit credit unions.
    So I figured when you all invited me to speak, the press club decided, given the times, it might be good to see that it's possible to be a nomad journalist and still maintain a 300-pound, churlish figure.
    When I was leaving the AP bureau in Columbus, Ohio, to start my days as a correspondent, my boss put his arm around me and gave me my – as he put it – "AP management training."
    "Do good, don't do bad. And don't miss the big one." That was it – short and sweet. So we'll try to stick to a few short observations tonight about our current state of affairs in journalism and what we might do about it.

    My first piece of advice: Next time, instead of New Orleans, send the hurricane entries to Boise.
    [Eds note: The press club lost about half of its entries, those that had been sent to the Press Club of New Orleans for judging, as a result of Katrina.]

A "media" company threatened
    Let's start with the tale of a media company, one that's been an integral part of our business.
    In recent years, this company saw technology change. High-tech competitors from industries it hadn't had to think about before invaded its turf.
    The company is trying to reinvent itself – to pull away from the medium to which it is so closely tied. Its stock price is down almost a third in the past year, and large layoffs threaten to cut to the core of its business.
    I'm not going to tell you quite yet which media company I'm talking about, but all of us could probably find something in there that sounds a lot like where we work.

What is journalism worth?
    The one thing this company does know is what its product is worth, even if that worth is diminishing.
    Sadly, I'd suggest that's not the case with journalists. We know what our newspapers are worth, and our radio or TV stations. You can put a value on those presses and transmitters, on those cameras and subscription lists.
    But what is the journalism itself worth?
    If we look at it with the cold, hard eye we bring to our stories, we might have to admit our journalism is worth nothing, at least when it comes to money, which is the way business keeps score.
    Our journalism has gotten its value from being lumped together into a package that attracts eyeballs and thus attracts advertisers. We're like some giant 800-number dating service, only with a purpose we keep telling ourselves is nobler.
    For a journalist, advertisers exist for one reason – to turn time into money.
Our readers and viewers pay us in time. But if we want to be in business, we have to keep score with money. But if our only value comes from aggregation, that's a problem at a time when corporate behemoths like Viacom are splitting and when we see a rise in free papers and we continue to struggle with whether we can charge for news on the Web.
    After all, if the "package" your journalism comes in is free, what does that say about the value of the actual content?
    Without knowing what our journalism is worth, we end up valuing the package, not the content. And that makes us dependent on any change that suddenly makes that package less relevant.
    In short, it cheapens our journalism.
    Yet I rarely hear journalists ask this basic question. And there's hardly been a peep from the major journalism organizations. (True, they've been a little tied up lately trying to keep journalists out of jail and to preserve some semblance of freedom of information after September 11.)
    Some researchers – Stephen Lacy and Phillip Meyer are the most prominent – have been trying to figure out this question – can quality sell? So far, the answer is a tentative yes.
    But too much of today's journalism is just a commodity, one nugget not much different from the next. And as we learned in beginning economics, in a commodity business, you get large and you get cheap.
If you think about it, that sounds a lot like modern media.
    If we're going to argue that somehow quality journalism is too important to die – and if we expect anyone to pay attention to that argument – we need a crash program that gets to that core question: What is journalism worth?
    I challenge you tonight to leave here and start asking what your journalism really is worth.
    Because if we don't do that, if we let others do it for us, then we might as well admit journalism is nothing more than a social good to be supported by foundations, donations and government funding. In short (and with apologies to anyone from public radio or TV in the audience), the way we pay for most social goods in this country – by begging.

Rapid Relevance
    Part of modern business is understanding that your customers likely will be gone tomorrow if you don't meet their needs. There are simply too many alternatives.
    Who is that customer? As Pogo said: "We have met the enemy and it is us."
    That media company I talked about? The medium is film, the company is Kodak, and we, journalists, were among its largest customers. At every sporting event, newspaper and magazine photographers went through yards and yards of film.
And then things changed. The digital camera became relatively affordable. We didn't want to wait. We wanted those images now. And we could do away with all those messy chemicals and cost.
    One day, in the late 1990s, the AP decreed that if you were a newspaper and you wanted photos, you'd better get a digital receiver. That was enough to move even recalcitrant publishers. Some of Kodak's largest customers were history.
    OK, so you're Kodak. You still have that massive base of retail customers who not only have film cameras but have to get that film developed, something that also was a big part of Kodak's business.
    Only now Kodak had to deal with cameras that had names like Sony. Or Hewlett-Packard: A computer company? Selling cameras? (Does that sound familiar – Yahoo hiring war correspondents?) And that developing went to one-hour labs. (How many of us still send film for two-day processing – assuming we still own film camera?)
    So now one of Kodak's biggest competitors isn't another camera company but a retailer – the world's largest – Wal-Mart. And Wal-Mart often is using another company's equipment – Fuji's.
    But we – as journalists or as amateur photographers – didn't care about some venerable name, did we? We wanted rapid relevance  – when we wanted it, where we wanted it and how we wanted it.
    We're not the first. People are fond of saying the railroads suffered because they didn't realize they were in the transportation business. But the smartest people in transportation realized their business also was actually rapid relevance – getting it to the customer exactly when, where and how the customer wanted it.
    So if Kodak dies – and I really don't think it will because it is reinventing itself, but it's going to be gut-wrenching for many people – but if it does, we helped kill it. And if we don't care about a little $13 billion company, why should our readers care any more about a $3 billion Knight Ridder or New York Times or a $1 billion McClatchy – or any other media company, if we don't give them what they want?
    Consider a few things about those customers we covet, the 18- to 34-year-olds:

• Jupiter Research recently reported a third of them increasingly rely on their portable media players for TV and instant news and information – and that was before the video iPod.
• M-metrics says full-time students with jobs are significantly more likely to use mobile e-mail than anyone else.
• Another recent survey found that 85 percent of college students surveyed had cell phones – and most of those could send and receive text messages or play games.
  

    Consider the widely reported Washington Post focus groups where people said they wanted the news – they just didn't want the newspaper. It was dirty, messy, a pain to deal with – in other words, just like all those photo chemicals we were so happy to banish from our newsrooms.
    And – even though Yahoo sponsored this study – consider a report from this week that should scare the heck out of you as a journalist: 81 percent of college students said search engines were the "best" source of information. Friends and family came next at 64 percent and then traditional media at 34 percent. (The numbers are more than 100 because the study took the top two choices as "best.)
    In other words, if we continue to value our journalism by the package it comes in, we have no idea what the core product – the thing our customers say they want – is worth, and we risk becoming obsolete.

"Dead Money" and "Bad Competitors"
    If we just cut profits and put the money back into the newsroom, all would be well. Right?
    It's become such a chorus that I'm reminded of something Gen. George Patton once said: "If everyone is thinking alike, then someone isn't thinking."
    Recently, some folks have pointed out it isn't that simple, not when most media companies now are creatures of the public stock markets.
When you get stockholders used to a certain profit margin, you can't just wake up one morning and say, I think we'll cut the profits so we can do better journalism – even if you wanted to.
    You'd be fired – the directors by law have to protect shareholders' interests. And you'd probably be sued.
    So if you don't innovate and find new products – or new ways of doing things – you basically must cut and cut to make margin. Finally, the market decides you've cut too much and you're no longer worth the price. It's called: "dead money."
    Eventually, your stock value falls enough that you can afford to buy back the shares and go private, or you become cheap enough that a takeover company dismembers you.
    That does allow some new players – some who might care deeply about the journalism – into the game. But it's gut wrenching, and there's no guarantee you won't be bought up by a financial blood-sucker. This is business survival of the fittest. Be ready for it.
    We also face what business-strategy expert Michael Porter calls the "bad competitor," one that doesn't play by "our" rules. It doesn't have to. Electronic news sites have much lower costs of entry. Even a new newspaper these days can buy press time or even new presses more cheaply than those of the established media.
    "Citizen journalism" sites – one of which I'm in the middle of trying to set up – are even doing it without "big-j" Journalists.

Bet on the jockey, not on the horse
    It sounds like a bleak picture. It doesn't need to be.
    Yes, there are going to be rough times.
    But if we, as journalists, are to have a hope of reclaiming the journalism we set out to do, we can't ignore – or worse yet, simply wring our hands and whine about – what's happening around us. We have to bet on the jockey, not the horse.
    Let me explain.
    I enjoy putting a few bucks down on the ponies. But you won't find me in most cases at thoroughbred tracks like Belmont or Churchill Downs. I'm more likely to be watching the harness races at Yonkers or the old Louisville Downs – or maybe Pompano Park.
    I've learned that I'm lousy at betting on horses. They are like technology – big, sleek, powerful – and more likely to come in out of the money. So while the payoff can be great, I'm not willing to tie my paycheck to Big Elmer.
    But I have learned I can bet the jockey.
    The jockey straddling half a ton of horseflesh is pretty much along for the ride. But a harness jockey has more control over that "technology," and you can find jockeys who tend to be more consistent winners. So I'm betting on the skill, the craft, not the technology.
    And that's what I'm hoping you'll do as journalists.
    You need to worry less about the technology and bet more on your craft. The medium does not matter as much as the journalism.
If you're a good storyteller – and that you're here tonight shows you are, whether in words, pictures or graphics – you already are honing the skills necessary in this multimedia, always-on world.
    A good storyteller already tries to create a multimedia event in the reader's mind. Sight, sound, smell – you're trying to transmit all of them.
And the smart writer has always worked with photographers. That writer knew a so-so story could make 1-A with a great photo -- and the photographer was another advocate for the story. And a good photographer always got a sense of the writer's story, knowing that if the pictures matched, they were likely to get the best play.
    That's what this multimedia world is all about – being aware of all the ways to tell a story and knowing enough to use those other resources when needed – and when appropriate.
    If you're a writer who wants the reader to "hear" a story, why wouldn't you want to help those readers who come to the story on the Web with a few short audio clips? If you want them to "see," why not video or a slide show?
    Fortunately, we rather quickly shrank from this vision of the new-age multimedia reporter as "Edward Scissorhands" – outfitted with multiple tools, a veritable Swiss Army knife of a journalist. Of course, as in the movie, things tended to turn out badly when it was tried, or even when we just thought about it much. We now seem to realize this "one-person band" idea isn't the best and this isn't going to be journalism on the cheap.
    But even if you're in a small newsroom without big resources, you can still expand your storytelling. There are so many simple, cheap tools out there that even if all you do is occasionally add sound to your print story shoveled onto the Web, you're giving people a reason to come to that Web site for your journalism.
    This isn't going to be painless. We're in the "Jell-O era" – the time when managers are tempted throw anything they can against the wall to see what sticks. That's natural. It also produces silly mandates, such as you have to get sound on every story or every story has to have some other multimedia element.
    Of course, not every story lends itself to sound, and you certainly don't want to spook an interview by whipping out a microphone at the wrong time. Just the same, I've seen too many "print" journalists and journalism students fall back on that excuse when it clearly wasn't likely. Do what we used to do in TV when we had to shoot film – do the interview in pencil and paper first, and then pull out the microphone and record. You'll probably get better, more thoughtful answers as a result.

Watch the people, not the rats
    Two final points: First, listen to the rat poison expert.
    On NPR the other day there was a fascinating interview with an author who recounted dinner with the rat poison specialist of Europe. Asked about his success, the poison specialist said: "I watch the people, not the rats."
    Rats eat the food people leave. So in France, he mixes in a little butterfat with the poison. In Germany, it's some pork fat. In Venice, I guess it's olive oil. As journalists, we also need to watch the people – not the rats.
    Part of the reason we're in this mess is because we haven't paid attention to changing desires, lifestyles and needs.
    We wrote too much for those we were covering – the rats. We expected people to read it the way we wanted them to. We heard, but we didn't really pay attention, when someone questioned whether we were really in "mass media" anymore.
    And too often we forgot that it doesn't hurt to mix a little butter – or some occasional sugar – into our stories.

In the 21st century, large is not in charge
    My final point comes from, Sumner Redstone, the power behind Viacom. When Redstone said this year that he was splitting the $23 billion colossus so that it could more nimbly respond to changes in the media world, he said this: "In the 21st century, large is no longer in charge."
    Those should be sweet words to journalists because, at its essence, journalism is small. We too often confuse journalism with the practice of putting out a newspaper or putting on a newscast. Those are team efforts.
    But the process of gathering news, of discovering and uncovering, of going places where the average person can't go – that, my friends, remains a one-on-one relationship between source and journalist. And that's not likely to change anytime soon.
    Small means opportunity. Yes, it was sad when the Baltimore Sun said it was closing its London and Beijing bureaus. But perhaps now jobs open for two, three or more freelancers.
    If we don't like the way things are going and think we can do it better ourselves, there's no better time. The costs to entry are low – you can put up a community news Web site for a few hundred dollars and a few hours' work. Remember, unlike at Kodak, we are the raw material.
    Will such "citizen journalism" make money? I don't know. That's what we're trying to find out in a South Carolina project.
    But don't make the same kind of arrogant mistakes we've made before in dismissing things out of hand, like this kind of thinking from a former SPJ president:
    "There is a difference between 'citizen journalism' and 'professional journalism,'" he wrote. "A professional journalist's No. 1 obligation is to be accurate. A citizen journalist's No. 1 obligation is to be interesting."
    He missed the point. The challenge for both these days is to be accurate and interesting.
    If we can do both – and be quick ... if we can figure out what we do is worth ... if we can bet on the jockey and not the horse ... and watch the people not the rats ... and if we remember that large is not in charge ...  I believe we as journalists can reclaim journalism's soul, no matter what the medium.
    There is no better time than now. There is no one else but us!
    And if you don't believe me on that, well at least trust me on this: Next year the hurricane entries go to Boise.

A different way to look at new community newspapers study

A new study from the Reynolds Institute and the National Newspaper Association is being framed as "readers in areas served by community newspapers continue to prefer the community newspaper as their sources of local news and advertising."


From the release:

The survey, in its sixth year, shows consistent trends.  

Readers prefer the printed copy to the online version, with 48 percent saying they never read the local news online. 

They prefer to receive advertising through the newspaper (51%) instead of on the Internet (11%). And only about a quarter of respondents said they had found local news through a mobile device in the past 30 days. Slightly more (38%) said they had received local shopping information by mobile device.  

They also have a strong preference for government accountability through newspaper public notice, with 80 percent saying the government should be required to publish notices in the newspaper.

Let me suggest a slightly different interpretation. If a quarter of your market said it was using a device to access your product -- in this case mobile -- would that be an "only" to you or a cause for management to start thinking strategically in that area?

If more than a third said they received local shopping information on a platform -- mobile -- and the suggestion was that perhaps not all of them are going to your site, would that be a cause for concern? Or are you willing to write off more than a third of your audience - a segment likely to grow? (Unfortunately, the release talks about a "trend," but provides no trend data or a link to the time series raw data files. You should also read the footnote to the study carefully because the methodology has changed a bit.)


Yes, it's clear community papers continue to have an important place in the media mix of consumers, but I don't think it's all unicorns and rainbows as the release might suggest with this quote:

"The survey shows a majority of respondents believe that the newspaper does a better job of providing background and depth on stories essential to citizens,” Anfinson said. “Further, the newspaper is more useful to them personally than any other news source. It not only highlights the strong bond between local communities and their newspapers, but demonstrates that people do value good journalism."

If I'm running a business, I'm not willing to give up a quarter or a third of my market, yet I've sat in many a meeting in recent years where community publishers defiantly act as though digital is the enemy or, if they have digital assets, seem largely clueless about them. Bad move.


(Also published on the Community Journalism Interest Group blog.)

Turmoil at 'The State'?

Two things you won't necessarily read in The State today (or tomorrow):

• Buyouts are being offered to two more copy editors, pretty much decimating the desk. That leaves what, two or three? Makes me believe even more the preparations are to move the work to Charlotte's new hub.
• One of the biggest advertisers, Jewelry Warehouse, has pulled its ads after "boycott" messages from fans upset over columnist Ron Morris flooded various Gamecock message boards. Mediation hasn't worked so far, and if this post at 9 a.m. on the Cocky Talk board is to believed as coming from JW President Scott Satterfield, it's not getting much better:

To all Gamecock fans,

You will see a half page ad for baseball posters that we sell which were produced by the state. WE DID NOT RUN THAT AD - The State did.

I am in the process of seeing when they scheduled this and if I find it was after my conversation with them about ad suspention, then we'll have a whole different conversation today.

I am very tired of the controversy and am hoping this was not a concious effort by them, because it messes with the appearance of my word I gave Gamecock fans.

We have worked on many projects together and the state has control of when they run - we just were an outlet

Please, let's get on with the football games - Scott Satterfield

We need your help to study Digital Creative Industries

We've all probably heard someone or read something bemoaning the state of journalism education or, for that matter, educating students in general to navigate this rapidly evolving digital media world.

Not so well known is that the European Union and the United States are funding a university consortium to examine the challenges in what have become known as the "digital creative industries."

Why is this important and why should you care? Because the resulting recommendations are designed to go to policymakers in government and education on both sides of the Atlantic at a time when digital creative industries increasingly are seen as important components of reviving both national and regional economies. In short, we have their attention.

Universities in Sweden and Britain and in the U.S. in South Carolina (where I am) and Iowa are part of what is known as the Atlantis project. And this is where we need your help.

We're beginning the process of sifting through what's out there already and, not surprisingly, are finding wide variance, even down to how we define digital creative industries. It's a broad area that generally encompasses what we think of as traditional media jobs (journalism, public relations, publishing, film and TV, etc.) plus aspects of the arts (music, performing arts, visual arts, etc.), all of which have been affected by the shift to digital.

One of our key jobs is to identify needs for training in the digital creative industries. We have a dual focus:

• Professional skills, including technology and creativity.
• Business and entrepreneurship skills.

To do that, as part of the two-year study, we also will be creating industry panels in the U.S. and Europe to advise us and policymakers on needs, problem areas, ways to improve education and – especially – ways to improve communication. These panels will be online affairs, with a minimal time requirement from those involved (we recognize folks in this area are very busy as it is).

Here's how you can help us a lot with minimal effort on your part:

1) Help us identify people to approach for the industry panels. Yes, we could probably sit and brainstorm a bunch of names we already know, and you might come up with some of the same. But we have no monopoly on knowledge in this area, and we're betting you'll have some insights we've never thought of. Feel free to nominate yourself. But for whoever you think is a good candidate, please give us a smidge more than a name – contact info, if you know it, and a sentence or two on why they'd be great for this.

2) Help us define digital creative industries. What should be included and why? Is it wise to include the arts? If so, where do you draw the line and how do you reconcile more "tech" and profit-oriented enterprises with the more creative and nonprofit aspects of the arts? And what about gaming and software (Australians include the former but not the latter)?

3) Tell us what's working and what isn't working and why. We need good examples of both. Good policymaking does not happen in a vacuum; it works best when we can point policymakers to examples of how it should be done – and how it shouldn't.

4) Give us your thoughts on how much digital creative industries should be central to economic development (and by extension, education's role in that). Europe and Australia are about a decade ahead of the U.S. in this area. The have made nurturing of creative industries central to their development strategies, often nationally. In the U.S., we have talked with national and state commerce leaders, for instance, and find very little coordination. Much of the decision making seems to have been left to the local level where we often find leaders following the sometimes controversial work of Richard Florida. So what should our policies be?

5) Tell us what education's role should be in all this. As noted at the beginning, we've all heard the specific gripes, but let's try to move forward from that. Again, there are some serious differences across the Atlantic. In Europe, there is no bashfulness about using the term "vocational education" and talking about how educational institutions can better align training with industry needs. We suspect that, at least put that way, it would be anathema on many U.S. campuses. So how do we better prepare students, taking into account the market into which we will launch them? How do we, to use that buzz phrase, do the "technology transfer"? And what role does entrepreneurship play in all this (and can we really even teach that)?

Even in journalism education, the obstacles are many, not the least of which are restrictive accreditation standards. But remember, we're not framing this just as journalism and communications. Digitization is erasing artificial demarcations. What do we or don't we know about other facets of digital creative industries and education?

How can you give us your ideas?

Feel free to email me at dfisher@sc.edu. Please put "Atlantis" somewhere in the subject line if you click on that link, it will be done automatically.

We also have a Digital Creative Industries page on Facebook, and we'd love to have you contribute there. http://on.fb.me/DCIpage

If you would like to be included in periodic updates, let us know and we will enroll you in a special Facebook group.

Don’t feel that once you've said something you can't reload and come back. This needs to be a conversation. And please, also spread this message along your networks. We need to be able to see over our own horizon.

We may not come up with solutions, but just clarifying the issues and recommendations going forward would be very influential.

Good business plan advice

Colleague David Weintraub is teaching an entrepreneurship course in the j-school this year.

David's run his own photo freelance business for some time, and he has some good advice on formulating a business plan.

In this "every man for himself" era, probably not a bad idea to read and bookmark.

CNN goes a la carte

CNN, which began selling its content akin to a wire service earlier this year, has now broached the wall to a la carte service, a term that wire services have struggled with for years.

(See, the dirty little secret is that there are a lot of cross-subsidies inside the wires, just as there were with the old phone company; it's why papers in the smallest states, for instance, have been able to get a state report nominally on par with that of some of the largest. Start selling things individually, however, and a lot of things that make for a well-rounded wire report likely get ditched.)

Editor and Publisher reports CNN is selling single copies at $199 each through the CNN Wire Store. So it's not exactly whip out the credit card and buy a few. Still, I can see more than a few publishers doing the calculus - and puiting more pressure on AP.

So what is your value proposition?

Two articles out this past week should be read carefully and together. And then, if you are in the "we've got to charge readers online" camp, step back and brutally ask yourself, "Are we really producing anything they'd want to buy?"

To me, that is the biggest point to take away from Mark Shapiro's "Open for Business," a lengthy and useful reprise of the free vs. paid debate in this month's Columbia Journalism Review. In another fascinating case of online turning things around 180 degrees, Shapiro posits at the end that, perhaps, all that "process" news that newsrooms have been running away from might actually be the stuff you can charge for.

What seems clear is that mere geography simply isn't enough. I've spent the summer in the newsroom of a small community daily, and I think if a hard look was taken at the daily content, little of it would entice a wooden nickel from most of its readers. As might be expected, much of the daily news agenda is driven by news releases, police reports, news conferences and similar events. The paper is worried about TV stations in a nearby city stealing its thunder, yet these are precisely the things on which it is easy to do so.

Follow Shapiro's with a piece at Paid Content from Bill Grueskin, former Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor and ME at WSJ.com. Gureskin argues that all this jabbering over aggregatgors like Google obscures the real problem. What is it? Well, here's his punch line:

News sites are in a heap of trouble these days, and it’s tempting to see aggregators, bloggers and other third-party sites as the villains. It’s also possible to see them as the saviors, for the users they can send to a site.

In fact, until publishers and editors figure out how to identify and engage their readers and make money off of that traffic, aggregators are more a distraction from the real crisis than the cause of it.

In other words, dear newsrooms, little of what you are doing has a value proposition for your readers. Yeah, those are tough words to hear - and I've said them enough, too. And, as Shapiro kind of glances by in his piece, they raise tough philosophical questions, such as if my newsroom can't do it all, what does it stop doing? Put another way -- Whom do we leave out, which some scholars would rephrase as whom do you marginalize? (Famously expressed by Tuchman in one aspect as the "symbolic annihilation of women.")

Mark Potts also takes up the idea:

Think newspapers are full of unique content? Well, sit down some day with a copy of just about any paper and circle what's truly unique and unavailable anywhere else. The result isn't pretty. Do the same thing with the paper's Web site, and you quickly realize that the problem is compounded by presentation that just isn't very compelling, to put it charitably.

AP Style Update - CEO in all uses

AP has updated its stylebook so that CEO may now be used in all cases for chief executive officer. This includes on first reference as a title before a name.

The rest of the guidance is the same:
Use chief financial officer and chief operating officer on first reference, and CFO and COO thereafter. Always spell out lesser-known "C-level" positions like chief administrative officer or chief risk officer.

A little business insight

As usual, David Sullivan has one of his good posts looking at department stores, advertising and the business of newspapers. He looks at ads in the paper in 1966 and today. It's revealing.

But of just as much interest is the comment on the piece by "Scoats," who it would appear owns or has an interest in a local Philly bar (the kind that make me miss working in that city).

A big difference between 1966 and now is that nearly everyone read the Bulletin. Nearly nobody I know reads the hard copy of the Inky. As a small business owner and potential advertiser, that's a problem for me. I see advertising in the paper as high cost/low impact per eyeball

For almost 20 years, I have noticed how few homes get home delivery here in Philadelphia. ...

Go read the rest of it. It's important to understand how small-business people, the ones that some commentators see as necessary to help newspapers transition, see our business. As we often have said about the collective wisdom of our readers - it usually is greater than our own.

Business Reporting 101 - prepositions are important

It's always important to get the numbers right, but I can't think of areas where it's more important than in science and business reporting. People make decisions based on what you report in those areas -- decisions that can affect their health or their wealth.

Thus comes today's lesson that not only the numbers -- but the prepositions -- are critical. The story is the recapitalization plan by troubled banking company South Financial Group. (Yahoo finance link).

From The State newspaper this morning (that link will expire in about seven days because of McClatchy's ill-advised archive policy -- someday someone's going to get that even if you put it behind the wall, leaving a link to find it on the general Web is smart; you might even sell a few more archive hits):

South Financial is raising $250 million from a preferred stock offering, up to an additional $100 million from other borrowings and cutting the common share dividend by four cents a year — a move bank officials estimate will save about $52 million in 2008.

From the company's news release (which you will also find picked up at Reuters and several other places):

TSFG's common stock cash dividend will be reduced to $0.04 per share on an annualized basis. This will enable TSFG to preserve approximately $52 million annually in retained capital.

You might notice a small difference -- with a big effect: The State uses "by," while TSFG uses "to." It's a 68-cent difference per share, as a matter of fact, and that adds up pretty quickly. The State would lead people to believe the drop in the dividend is 5 percent (based on the current dividend of 76 cents per share), when the actual drop is 94 percent.

The State's graphic just reinforces the error.

The Greenville News, TSFG's hometown paper, got it right and threw in a few other useful details, but everyone missed the bigger story here, and that is how a recapitalization plan is going to drastically change the common stock picture of this bank. Instead of throwing around arcane terms, it would have been nice to see business stories cut to the point: TSFG's shareholders will see serious dilution of their investment along with the slash in the dividend. And it appears some insiders may be getting a sweet deal in the process.

The explanation:

• The 250,000 shares of preferred stock ($1,000 each) at a 10 percent dividend are mandatory convertible shares. In other words, the bank has no choice. Three years from now those shares must be converted into common stock.
• When they are converted, at 153.846 shares of common to one share of preferred, the resulting addition of almost 38.5 million shares will increase the outstanding shares by more than 50 percent. That seriously dilutes current equity.
• The conversion is at $6.50 per share, a highly favorable price (shares closed at $6.86 Friday), unless the bank's executives are, essentially, saying they think the bank will actually tank in the next three years.
• The preferred holders get voting rights as though they held all those common shares. If current shareholders don't approve granting those rights, the yield on the preferred shares increases substantially.
• The company press release just talks about unidentified "institutional" investors, but the 8-K and Tampa Bay Business Journal say some current directors also are buying the shares. Their identities are not disclosed, and apparently neither Columbia nor Greenville thought to ask about what would seem to be highly relevant information (though Greenville did a follow-up interview with CEO Mack Whittle).
  

As you might guess, I was a business reporter at one time in my life. And the current state of business reporting at too many papers is distressing. Nothing I've laid out here was hard to find or particularly arcane if you are supposed to be covering business. It's all in the company's release and its 8-K filed with the SEC. Those and other links are available at several places on the Web, most commonly Yahoo finance. A moment of thinking would have brought it all together.

It took me about 10 minutes to read them and lay out the numbers. Should we expect anything less from our newspapers whose writings may be affecting people's lives?

I don't have a problem with newspapers cutting back. It's a business reality. But if you are going to do less, do it right.

AP Updates Company Names

But beware of a small trap.

The AP is more explicit in its updated "company names" entry, with specific examples:

Generally, follow the spelling and capitalization preferred by the company: eBay. But capitalize the first letter if it begins a sentence.

Do not use all capital letter names unless the letters are individually pronounced: BMW. Others should be uppercase and lowercase. Ikea not IKEA; USA Today, not USA TODAY.

Do not use symbols such as exclamation points, plus signs or asterisks that form contrived spellings that might distract or confuse a reader. Use Yahoo, not Yahoo!; Toys R Us, not Toys "R" Us; E-Trade, not E*Trade.

The potential clunker in there, if you are not careful, is Toys "R" Us. The AP has a separate entry for that company mandating the quote marks. I checked the online stylebook a few minute ago, and it's still there, though I pointed this out to stylebook editor Norm Goldstein about a week ago. So make sure to go in and pencil in both changes. I haven't checked for any others.

(With a work as massive as the stylebook, such glitches are bound to happen. For instance, two years ago AP went to abbreviations for all titles such as Gov., Sen., etc. before names, even in quotes. However, under "titles" is this slightly misleading wording still there: "The following formal titles are capitalized and abbreviated as shown when used before a name outside quotations. (Italics mine.) That's led some folks to mistakenly conclude those should still be spelled out inside a quotation. Much as I favor that approach, it's not how AP does things these days. Goldstein had to clean out several cross-references when this changed; I'm sure he'll get this one clarified before the next edition.)

Some other changes to AP's entry on companies:

• The formal name need not be used on first reference -- for example, Wal-Mart is acceptable for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- but it should be contained in the body of any story in which the subject matter could affect a company's business. For example, include the corporate name in a story on an earnings report, or in a story on a plane crash that could affect the airline's stock price. However, the corporate name might be irrelevant in a story about a political candidate's appearance at a local retail outlet.
• When the full corporate name is NOT in the story, it should be included in a self-contained paragraph separated from the bottom of the story by a dash: American Airlines is a unit of AMR Corp., or Disney's full corporate name is The Walt Disney Co. If more than one company is listed, each should be in a self-contained paragraph below the dash.

(I doubt we'll see too many papers adding those last grafs. The wire service does it to make sure editors who want it have it.)

The AP has also changed its reference for proper company names. Instead of Standard & Poor's Register of Corporations, it now refers users to the major stock exchange sites (AP also has an internal site, but it's not accessible to outsiders. Wouldn't that be a great addition to the electronic stylebook, however? Share the jewels with those paying the money. The AP tantalizingly makes the link clickable in the online stylebook, only to have it to go a 404 error.)

For a company's formal name, consult the national stock exchanges: the New York Stock Exchange, www.nyse.com; Nasdaq, www.nasdaq.com; or the American Stock Exchange, www.amex.com. (AP staffers may also reference an alphabetical list of all company names, with stock ticker abbreviations, at http://biz.ap.org.)

First Dow Jones, now Reuters?

AP reports that Reuters now has a takeover bid and that the likely suitor is Thomson.

With Dow Jones already in play and Tribune wrapping up its deal, the proverb about living in interesting times coud not be truer.

(BTW: I love how the AP story lists the "pence" price for the takeover bid. It just sounds so much more civilized, yes?)

Business journalism resources

Have you been tossed a business story by your editor and need some help understanding all those numbers? Or maybe you're covering the business beat but want to know more and brush up on some of those financial analysis skills.

The Chartered Financial Analysts Institute Web site (http://www.cfainstitute.org/aboutus/press/index.html) has some great resources, including several webcasts aimed specifically at journalists on how to take apart those financial statements.

The latest is an audio presentation, "How to read earnings releases like an investment professional."

There also is a set of three webcasts by Jay Taparia on basic financial analysis. The CFA's webcasts normally cost, but these are free -- a heck of a deal!

And a link to archives of the Financial Journalists Newsletter that, sadly, published its last issue in November.

If business scares you, then this site is a big help, as is businessjournalism.org, the Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. The center also has several free upcoming Web seminars on writing and reporting buiness for which you can register.

Now, go get 'em!