Community newspapers and online

Some new research by Mike Jenner at the University of Missouri presented at the industry "Mega-conference" this past week finds that publishers of weeklies see a long future for print, but they are moving -- slowly -- into the digital realm as well.

From the write-up in the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association bulletin:

The absence of ubiquitous broadband Internet access across weekly markets and the competition for readers and advertisers are behind some of the decisions to implement paid content and mobile platforms and products.

Thirty-six percent of weekly publishers say their market is not saturated with broadband Internet coverage. Another 33 percent say their markets are saturated; while 31 percent are neutral.

Publishers see greater competition in their markets for ad dollars than for news coverage. Only 24 percent say they’re in a competitive news market. But the perception of competition for advertising is a different story: 47 percent of publishers say they’re in competitive advertising markets. One quarter say their markets are not competitive for advertising; another 28 percent are neutral.

Ninety-five percent of weeklies with more than 5,000 circulation have websites, compared to 77 percent of those with less than 5,000 circulation.

Are those news sites or ad sites? It gets ugly.

Over at the Monday Note (petty much required reading here at CSJ World every Sunday night) Frédéric Filloux has performed an interesting experiment in looking at news site Web design - mask all the ads and see how much of the site really is left devoted to news.

It's pretty eye-opening. For instance, here is the French site 20 Minutes as Filloux found it the other day.

 He blocked out the ads with red.

Fascinating. There is some squishiness in this, because when I went to the site today, the big splash page and background he found were gone and there was a more subdued feel. Still, it shows how excesses have been known to pop up.

At the Swedish paper Aftonbladet, however, the ads still reign, just as he found them. Look at the mask:

U.S. sites seem a bit more restrained, but hardly without problems. Go to his post to look at the masked screenshots and judge for yourself. Consider this gauge he put together of where the typical page for various sites actually begins with news content:

So what does that say about concern for the reader given all that we have seen in eyetrack and similar studies about readers' reluctance to scroll more than about a screen and a half before they start losing interest?

Now, the scrolling dynamic is a bit different on mobile screens, where it tends to be built more into the psyche of the screens (plus it's easier to do with the flick of a finger). But as Filloux writes:

The weird thing is this: On the one hand, web designers seem to work on increasingly large monitors; on the other, the displays used by readers tend to shrink as more people browse the web on notebooks, tablets or smartphones.

The result is a appalling when you try to isolate content directly related to the news. (His emphasis.)

There are many forces pulling at online sites, not the least of which is the need to make money. But I find it fascinating how much of the real estate has been given over to ads. It seems to be the print mindset brought to the Web (you could often find, in the "good old days," inside pages with one or two short stories and a huge ad stack). But the online audience, as we know, is not "captive," and my experience anecdotally observing people's digital use is that they are not willing to be subject to the same kinds of thinking.

Mobile could change all this significantly, if it really does generate new design principles - and Filloux discusses some of the better iPad apps that have eschewed the "print" layout and "start from a blank slate in which a basic set of rules (typefaces, general structure of a page, color codes) are adapted to the digital format."

But we also know from experience that large swaths of the news industry will take the path of least resistance, which right now seems to be simply "scaling down" the cluttered website designed for the desktop and squeezing it into a smaller screen (perhaps not even with all the elements, but still with many of them including the ads).

I think his illustrations show why that won't work.

Will print be dead by 2020?

Russell Viers contends much of print will be dead by 2020 - and he's making the argument aimed at community papers, not the big metros. Interesting debate at his blog with Kevin Slimp and others. Worth considering the graphs.

Worth reading - CSM's Yemma on what works

Worth taking your time to read is this thoughtful and enlightening piece on Paid Content from John Yemma, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, "Memo to News Sites: There is No Future in Digital Razzle Dazzle."

Yemma's take on much of multimedia:

Yes, people want multimedia. They want games, maps, 30 Rock on Hulu, bootlegged first-run movies from Pirate Bay, and whacked-out amateur videos on YouTube and a dozen other sites. But there’s no evidence that they want, for instance, a thoughtful interactive map/video/database mashup on Afghanistan or global warming on which they can comment. There’s no evidence that users love these things so much that they flock to them, stay around, and convert to a news site’s brand because of cool multimedia.

Yemma argues that paywalls won't work - he likens them to piling sandbags against a flood, but the digital waters never recede.

The answer he proposes is "relevant" content, but he goes on to acknowledge that's a lot harder than Google trends. It's content, he says, aimed at "influencers" who "live in narrow channels and respond to articles that make it clear why things matter and how problems are being solved."

The CSM, of course, has always been aimed at influencers, even when it was primarily print, and is quite a different organization from the South Succotash Gazette. Still, the everyman editors of the "Gazette" might consider relevance in terms of their local audience, too. The question is, can anything but a national or international publication truly make a business out of catering to that narrow wedge of "influencers"?

Yemma also has a good take on the challenges of all this:

What we’re learning is that the key to building and keeping traffic is far more prosaic than multimedia and sharing buttons. It rests on overcoming a huge cultural barrier: evolving a serious, experienced, thoughtful newsroom into an audience-first organization. I use the term “evolving” because this is all about the present tense. Trying to understand our current and future audience is a work in progress that will continue for as long as we publish on the web.

'Unpublishing' - the growing challenge for editors/publishers

I just came across some work by Kathy English, reader's representative for the Toronto Star, in which she looks at the growing number of requests for news organizations to "unpublish" information in their digital archives and on their Web sites.

English did her paper, "The longtail of news,"(PDF) for the AP Managing Editors. It should be required reading for every journalist, but especially every editor. (Here also is an earlier article from English on "Why the Star does not 'unpublish.' ")

It follows up on work that I, Larry Timbs and Will Atkinson did in 2007 in what we think was the first academic study of newspapers' "digital attics." It was presented at the annual Huck Boyd conference, and you can find our paper in the winter 2007 edition of Grassroots Editor.(PDF)

English finds much the same thing we did - there is widespread opposition against unpublishing. But requests seem to be growing. At the time we did our research, more than a quarter of those at community papers and more than half of those at larger papers said they had had requests to remove material from the archives. (Our research was based on responses from 63 editors at Southern Newspaper Association member papers. The response rate was disappointing, but given English's conclusion that this is a growing problem -- enough so that the APME commissioned her study -- I would hope future studies would see greater response.)

English's nine-question survey does not appear to ask directly how often the respondents (110 editors responded nationwide) have had to deal with such requests or the frequency. However, she cites one Gatehouse executive who says that while five years ago such requests were rare, now he deals with them almost daily. (On the other end, a Chicago Sun-Times editor says he rarely deals with such requests.)

She finds more than three-quarters of those who responded would consider unpublishing in some circumstances. That indicates a bit of a softening from the 95 percent who supported the statement in our study that changes should not be made unless there is clear error. But both studies still find strong opposition to unpublishing overall.

It is still disappointing to find in English's study that barely half of the news organizations she surveyed had some kind of policy for dealing with such requests. Our study found policies at about a third -- but this issue is too important, and growing, for any organization not to have considered what to do. Our paper, more than English's, goes into some detail on the legal horizon (and a principle, quickly disappearing, called "practical obscurity" - more in a 2008 NY Times article), and it is not at all certain that the legal system won't weigh in on such things. (A higher court later overturned the order to remove the stories from the Kansas City Star Web site, but we are likely to see more such cases.)

What our study does that English's doesn't is pose four scenarios to the editors and measure their reactions. I think you would find the results interesting.

The problem, of course, is not confined to the U.S. See this U.K. editor's ruminations from earlier this year and readers' responses  [2011: This link is now dead]. And in 2007, the same year as our study, one professor told the New York Times that archives perhaps should be programmed to eventually "forget" some information, much as people do. Brad Dennison, the Gatehouse executive interviewed by English, haswas, according to her paper, decided that instituting a pilot project at some papers in which most police blotter items would disappear from Gatehouse archives six months after their first publication (though he knows they may well live on in other cached parts of the Web).

English points out that police blotter reports posted online pose the potential for increasing problems. I can tell you from personal experience as founder of Hartsville Today, a community news site affiliated with the local twice-weekly paper, that such discussions have been a hot-button issue. (Unfortunately, a system crash late last year wiped out all the previous threads, but I think I may post something on the site asking for updated thoughts.) The thing that seems to infuriate people is that news organizations are willing to publish blotter items but then seldom follow up on the outcome to produce a complete record. (And, even if they do, they seldom use the ability to digitally link the stories.)

I think English has some good recommendations in her best practices section. That includes having a clear policy and making it known to the public. I especially like her recommendation that unpublish decisions should be made by consensus. As she notes, this provides a way for editors and publishers to deflect requests from powerful people and institutions. I can think of nothing worse than, if a news organization does unpublish, it gets a reputation of toadying to the powerful and ignoring the powerless.

About 50 non-journalists also answered English's survey, and she says most supported the resistance to "unpublish." I think it may be time to do some more extensive research in this area -- and then repeat it periodically. I have a feeling this is not going to be a static subject.

Also worth looking at:
This Jan. 5 article on Walletpop from Jason Cochran about newspaper archives in general being in jeopardy -- and with it major chunks of community history -- as the industry contracts.

Convergnce Conference: Michigan as ground zero

Dennis Jeffers, Carol McGinnis, Lori Brost, Sean Baker, Central Michigan

Wide variations, but one commonality – online, radio sites are a dead zone.

Why Michigan? Diverse media. Among worst economies in the nation, so media having to take more drastic steps.

Urban Dailies – canaries I the coal mine? Jeffers thinks so to some extent.
Gannett went to the Thursday/Friday/Sunday home delivery; seven-day e-edition; 24/7 Web site model.
Both (Newhouse) Made Ann Arbor Web only, is following the Gannett model in places like Flint and Saginaw, and is restructuring others.
• The focus has shifted to product, not delivery
• Trying to change people's behavior.
• There is some evidenced of cultural shift in newsrooms, living rooms, ad agency board rooms. In Detroit News newsroom definite evidence, matter of necessity.
But he sees this more as a stopgap model. E-edition is shunned by younger readers. So it keeps your older readers but does not attract new ones.

Uses/gratifications theory may be among the more useful of the theoretical models.

McGinnis looked at community papers. Generally have been defined by geography but more are being defined by community of interest.

Wide range of sites, from some that do almost nothing to full-featured sites. Only one Michigan county does not have a community paper. Ad revenue down 28.8 percent for larger papers and 18.7 percent for community papers. Michigan Press Association found recently that 54 percent questions read weekly papers and 58 percent read daily papers.

This leads in to Brose, who looked at online only sites. Many are new and there is no definitive list.
Lots of sites springing up in Michigan.

Ann Arbor is drawing the most interest
• Loved or hated
• A "river of news"
• Trying to be responsive to reader suggestions and complaints

• Used to have active discussions for past month or two, but users said they just wanted past couple of weeks. Changed.
• New, usable online calendar
  
• Working on hierarchy of stories
• Bloggers fill in the cracks, especially with things like parenting tips, etc.
  

Contrast with Ann Arbor Chronicle
Started by former Ann Arbor news writer about a year ago. More traditional news site. Little citizen journalism. Now reportedly self-supporting.

She is pretty sure we can say sites like this are the future of local journalism in Michigan.

(UPDATE: Adds broadcast sites)

Baker looked at 75 broadcast online sites across the state, limited to first news page. Used agenda setting and framing.

(Doug note: I think this research was important because it comes when, with newspaper cutbacks and now with talk of paywalls, TV and other news sites may be where the public increasingly turns for news.) Baker found wide variations, even in the same market.

Detroit: One station has a site that is well-constructed and indexed. Lots of RSS, text-based newsletters and interactives. Content has more local focus. Some new video. But two stations much less.

Grand Rapids: All stations very interactive. Lots of invitations to become part of the community. One has "publish yourself" tools, with blogging, photo galleries, etc.
Flint area- abysmal.

Radio: Sites have little local at all. Link to national news sources common. Seem to be more promotional vehicles than news sites.

Convergence Conference: News orgs still don't get it

I'm at the "Convergence and Society" conference in Reno the next couple of days and will be trying to do regular updates (as long as the battery holds out).

The first session today is "The changing media landscape," but what we are finding is that not all that much is changing. I'm just going to post my notes here; no great attempt to make them into a narrative.

Tim Bajkiewicz and Marcus Messner: Engaging the future

Interviews with managers of nine news orgs. 30 minutes each. Use "convergence continuum" to return to integration of theory. Grounded theory: our findings are about their perceptions.

Major themes:
• Convergence not really right word. Just about engaging audience among platforms
• Business not ink on paper but bringing information to the community. But print is still the major driver.
• Not only depending on print, but everything it brings to the table.
• Cool Tools: They were aware of new, cool tools, but a disconnect. Managers seem to know what is going on, but it has not made its way into the business plan.
• Mobile is going to be the thing, but no one sure how to monetize
• Social media communities – trying to engage, but not necessarily the driving force

Conclusions
• No real new media strategies
• Disconnect with ground-level journalists
• Know what need to do but not doing it
• Cost hurdle, bunker mentality
• Conundrum: while trying to assimilate tech, more native-to-the-Web operations may eat their lunch.
• New media is still an experiment

Temple's inside look at what went wrong

If you have not read John Temple's recounting of what went wrong at the Rocky Mountain News, you should.

(His thesis: Management, including him, kept thinking it was a newspaper company and failed to realize the competition was everything out there. Combined with old-line attitudes, such as thinking they could dictate what people wanted, managers/executives let their one-time cmpetitive advantage slip away.

Temple covers the waterfront, from the early ventures online (note one error, it was 1996, not 2006 as in his text), to the exile of online staffs because of union concerns, to the flip-flopping over what, exactly, the Web site was supposed to be.

Excellent for management classes, but there are things in here that about any upper-level reporting or ethics class could have a good time chewing over. And, as he says, much of this can apply to othe media, too.

(It's worth pairing this with Alan Mutter's dissection of what went wrong with the two news sites that journalists opened to compete with the Dener Post.)

Papers and Twitter: When all you have is a hammer ...

Everything is a nail, is how the old saying goes. That pretty much sums up a lot of what I still see in newsrooms.

The hammer here is the hard-to-shed orientation that news is still something to be "produced" and "delivered" as mostly a one-way affair, instead of being a conversation. That's probably understandable; organizations really aren't all that good at conversations. They're not set up for it. Conversations are a granular things, and organizations are all about homogenization.

Which is why watching what many news organizations have done with Twitter has annoyed but not surprised me. They've created another dumping ground for shovelware.

Having not learned from earlier escapades online (and still doing the shovelware thing on their Web sites in way too many cases), too many news organizations have turned their Twitter feeds also into a shovelware wasteland. The feeds stick out like a sore, one-way thumb on a two-way medium.

And now someone has called them on it. At the Future of Journalism conference in Britain, researchers said they found that "although 91% had Twitter accounts, only two thirds of those studied actually tweeted and that 98.5% of the hyperlinks tweeted, simply pointed to existing website content."

One of the researchers, Marcus Messner, said: "We found that more attention needs to be paid to community building. It needs to go beyond shovelware. "

Having said that -- and having bashed The (Columbia, S.C.) State around recently for not getting it in one area online -- let me now say that this is one thing that newsroom does right. The State's Twitter feed is clearly produced by human, not machine. It's readable, it reacts and it's generally got the idea.

More newsrooms could follow that lead.

Why are newspapers so dumb about selling reprints?

I have long urged journalists to start getting into a retail mentality. It's not a wholesale biz anymore.*

And one of the things you know, if you've worked in retail, is the power of the impulse purchase and the value of it because people tend to spend more for something they've decided they just have to have. So why, then, do so many newspapers make it tough to instantly buy reprints on their sites, especially photos?

When it comes to stories, some get it right, like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, which have reprint permission links next to most stories. But many others, including such biggies as the L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune, are AWOL on this.

And when it comes to photos - the ultimate impulse purchase - too many newspapers make it too hard, if they have a "buy this" button at all.

Stories
Even when they get it "right," too many media companies still get it wrong. For instance, say you saw a nice story in the Times or Journal about cousin Bobby and wanted a plaque of it. Click on the reprint link next to the story and you get this screen that suggests you need a logon and a lawyer.



OK, take a chance and hit that "make a selection" drop down box. There's an entry for a plaque. (At least I can get that at the Times. The Journal, which uses the same rights service, doesn't even give me that option. Guess a few pennies from the hoi polloi just aren't worth it, huh?)

Bring up the NYT plaque link, and this is what you get - a flaming application! So much for impulse purchase.


All I wanted was to spend maybe $15, $20 on a nice plaque. Instead, I have to fill out an application (don't even know what the price might be) that gets forwarded to someplace else and ... no, I don't think so.

At McClatchy papers I get this screen showing me all these products I can buy with this reprint -- plaques, e-prints, counter cards, posters. And I get to the bottom and there's another flaming "quote" form. OK, I can see this if I wanted to buy several hundred reprints or wanted to license the content for a book or something. That involves lots of complicated rights and legal language. But to buy a simple plaque or get a simple single-copy reprint, you can't quote me a price and let me make an order? I have to, in effect, apply?

Photos
Photos are the ultimate impulse purchase. So how easy is it to do? Not very.

For instance, while the Times, the Journal and McClatchy papers have all those nice reprint links for stories, you'd be hard-pressed to find a photo link under the photo. Oh sure, lots of execs will tell you they'd love to sell you a photo - if you click here and here and here and here. When was the last time a store sold you anything you had to walk to the back and root around to get unless you were bound and determined to have it? Simple fact of retail: If you want to sell red dresses, you put the dresses in the window and near the door. You make it easy for people.

There are some weird permutations on this out there, too. For instance, at the Greenville News, a Gannett paper, you won't find a "buy this" link under the photo next to the story.

But if you're smart enough to go to the photo galleries (which aren't really galleries at all) and click on one, you'll find a "reprint" button after every photo. Of course, there were five or six back-to-school "galleries," and each "gallery" was actually a slide show, requiring me to click individually through picture after picture after picture (72 in the first gallery). After about 35 clicks, some of which were barely incremental shots of the same kids getting off a bus, you can imagine I gave up. Never did find the cute kid up there. Had he been mine, I would have been annoyed at best, which of course is what you want to do to your impulse purchasers.

(Note: Photo gallery does not equal photo trash bucket; three shots of the same thing from the same angle, etc., unless you're talking a sports play or an emergency, isn't photography. It's holding down the shutter button and then dumping whatever comes up onto online. And putting them all sequentially, instead of a true gallery where I as a reader can weave my own path, says lots about understanding the customer.)

At the Seattle Times, it's similar - no "buy this" in the caption, but click to enlarge the photo and voila - a reprint link. Only when I went to buy this:
I was redirected to this:

I never could find that photo, though there were several other nice images. But I didn't want them. I had that impulse, you see ...

Kudos to Greenville for one thing, however. When I did click through to buy a photo, it automatically transferred that photo's information over to the form and instantly showed me prices.

Thus, I was excited when I saw Greenville's rival, the Herald Journal of Spartanburg, had a "buy photo" link under its photos.

Alas, when I click through, none of the info follows and I find myself again presented with a set of galleries to root through.

So some suggestions:

7 things every news site should do to sell reprints

1. Make sure there is a clear "buy photo" link under every caption for a staff photo and a "buy reprint" (not just "reprint"-make clear money changes hands) with every local story.
2. Figure out how to work into your workflow a process where a watermark goes on every one of those photos, so the right-clickers are further encouraged to hit the "buy" link. (You can scoff and say 72 dpi, or even less in some cases, is fuzzy and can't be enlarged, etc. But in these days of ever-smaller screens, it might be "good enough" without some further marking. Besides, you keep saying you want some idea where your content is going, right?)
   
3. When your customer - yes, customer - clicks on the buy button, make sure he or she is not assaulted by legal-looking forms and language. You are simply not that important, whether you are the New York Times or the Daily Tattler.
   
4. Instead, figure out what your most popular product is and provide that and a price right up front.
5. Of course, provide other options and try to upsell. But the best way to do that is pile impulse on impluse, and that means getting details out there so I can buy it now.
   
6. Make it easy to buy and easy to pay.
7. Look for other things you can handle the same way.
   

One final thought: Why not hook up with a trophy shop or two in town to do those plaques. And if you're using a vendor, why not encourage such an arrangement in larger areas outside yours? Think of the flowers by wire model. If I can go pick up the plaque within a day or two at my local shop, instead of having to wait for it by package, I think better of you. In the process, maybe you solidify a business relationship with that shop.

Just a thought, and I can see lots of complications with that idea, but that one thing is a small thing. More important, I'll believe news managers are actually getting it when I see them make it much easier to buy stuff off their sites.

*Well, some may scoff. This isn't a store and journalism isn't retail and this just hits the slippery slope and ....
Oh come on. Get off it. None of this impinges the journalism, but it does maybe let you make an extra few bucks off it. That won't save the republic, but these days, every bit helps. It also might just get us thinking more about that person we purport to care about and serve - the reader, user, viewser -- in short, the customer. Why, let this get out of hand and we might even start writing stories more with those folks in mind. But let's not get wild and crazy.

The SEC's new media (and new-media) rules

I had not heard or read much about the SEC's new media rules (Update: see revised rules and comment at the end of this) until I saw a little squib on the newspaper video group pointing to this short story from Birmingham via AP via Biloxi (ain't the Web great?).

Ah, leave it to college and professional sports (there's a difference?) to put the hammer down and nicely spotlight some really persnickety issues and realities that are staring a lot of TV and newspaper sports departments in the face.

According to the AP, "It only allows TV stations to show highlights for 72 hours after a game ends. The policy also prohibits the media from posting video from practices and news conferences online." And reporters have to sign the contract - or no look-see.

So let's see, at a time when newsrooms seemingly everywhere are rushing to create destination sites for various teams' fans, and when video is a major part of those efforts - the SEC just said, in essence, "screw you."

The SEC is open in what it wants -- to drive traffic to SEC and affiliate sites. And it has every right to be as draconian as it can get away with.*

Spare the anguished freedom of the press cries. So far, at least, the law seems to generally side with the idea that when teams or other groups form private associations, they get wide latitude to control the goods, even if the games, concerts, etc., are on public property or use other public facilities -- and even when government is spending questionable amounts of money providing traffic control and security.

So if we are to believe the memes that the Web is becoming more and more telegenic, and the SEC intends to strangle the video baby for all but its own and affiliated sites, what does that tell us?

• Well, first, of course, it opens the debate on priorities. Is pro (and that includes most major college) sports really worth covering in a time of shrinking resources? Or should we put the resources into those sports (or other) areas that,for many reporters are not especially glamorous but are truly woven into the community's fabric (high school, rec leagues, club leagues, non-traditional sports). Yes, yes. I know lots of places do lots of good things with high schools, for instance (though take a look around -- that generally applies only to the "major" sports), but this is still a baseline question that needs discussion. Oh, you'll never answer it to everyone's satisfaction, but it gives an excuse to quaff a few beers to get lubricated for some of the tougher stuff ahead.
• Should we launch an all-out assault on the legality of private or quasi-private associations being able to use public facilities but restrict access? OK, if they can, should we seek to require that they effectively "rent" the facility and pay the cost of all government-funded support services?
• So if you can't use video, can you use stills and audio? (You'll probably be busted on that, too, if the sponsoring organization decides you're sucking traffic from its site.)
• Which leaves us with what? The intrepid scribe (a general term for all reporters, please)? But where does that leave the scribes. All due respect, but much of sports reporting, like the staged events it leads up to, is staged itself. The obligatory and lightly revealing after-game or midweek news conferences, the after-practice sessions, the precleared meetings with players.
  
• Look, I did it from time to time for AP. No, I don't claim to be a veteran sports reporter, but I did it enough and supervised others who had to do it that I know the trenches. Yes, there is good stuff being done out there, but even more so on sports (and lord knows, it can get bad on the "government" side too) we tend to suck the teat of the hand that feeds us (no letters, please; I meant to write it that way).

So the intrepid sports editor facing that nest of fanlings he or she desperately wants to attract away from the more established fan sites (ones that tend to have gotten the idea of online social communities early) is left with what? Reporting? OMG.

Because now, no matter how good your reporter is, in fact the better she is, the more she's likely to piss off someone in the home office. Go find a DVD of "The Paper," for instance, and watch how Penn State's sports department ostracizes a reporter who takes it on her own initiative to actually go get a story instead of waiting to have it handed to her or have it "cleared." ("We don't do things that way" (not an exact quote, but close) is the pompous pronouncement she says she got from the SID's sports information director's office.)

So, at a time when staffs have been cut sharply -- even in sports -- and now that you don't have the eye candy, do you leave your staffing as is and hope he, she or they come up with the occasional nugget and can outwrite the hell out of the competition? (The Don Quixote approach.)

Do you assign another staffer as the sacrificial lamb, throwing caution (and deference to the SID) to the wind and use that person to go track the stories and those players and coaches down outside their protective cocoons? The reporter doing this is likely to have limited shelf life before he or she is effectively cut off, so you'll probably have to rotate people through -- and of course, there's always the chance the offended parties could cut your whole organization off.

In short, in an era when there is all this talk about pay for content, we have here a budding petri dish in which to examine this idea of value. How do you react and what really is your value proposition when your main source politely tells you to get lost and take your tinsel with you? Oh, and when what's left is being done in decent measure by many of your competitors?

Sports, and the legal ability to take control of the event-related news, just highlights these challenges in an online world. Don't get too smug, Mr. or Ms. City Hall or Statehouse reporter. Yeah, the pols can't throw you out or keep you from recording. But they can ignore you, and they increasingly are with blogs, Facebook, digital governance initiatives, etc. But we're the only ones who can go beyond that surface feed of the City Council meeting and make it make sense, put it in some context, you say? OK, do it, but just like on the sports beat, too often we remain tightly tied to the hands that feed us. (Go tally up sometime the amount coming from press releases, government reports, police blotters, etc.)

"But no one loves us anymore, and they should, because we do this vital public service," goes the cry. Reality check -- most of them, and that includes the public, never loved us. They tolerated us because we were the only or one of the few games in town. But now, in the digital age, when everyone is a publisher and getting that eye candy and finding that other "unique" content is more important than ever, your suppliers are cutting you off. How will you respond?

Leave it to sports - and the SEC, it's greed on full display - to nicely frame things.

---
*The AP reports that SEC spokesman Charles Bloom "said changes could be made to the 72-hour window, the ban of online video and the definition of an event that currently includes practices and news conferences. He said the league had received complaints from 35-40 news outlets."

UPDATE: The Greenville News' take on all this. Legislators are dismayed. Discussion at the GamecockCentral site.

Further: Came across this wonderful speech by the editor-in-chief at Reuters basically telling the Olympic folks in June that it's a new-media world for them and their rights deals, too. The SEC might want to pass this around HQ.

The Tampa Trib also weighs in with thoughts that fans with their multimedia cell phones might be the biggest threat. Prediction on my part: Before long we will see "leave your cell phone at the door" policies attempted. That should be fun.

The Tuscaloosa News had one of the first stories and has a PDF (6 Mb) of the draft policy.

Here is the SEC's revised policy (PDF). One of its main points appears to be allowing media outlets to have a video player fed from the SEC.
Some other points:

• The new policy defines an "event" only as a game, instead of including practices and news conferences, as the original did.
• No longer restricts access to full-time employees (recognizing that many operations use stringers, freelancers, etc.)
• Media must use the broadcast feed for video, if one is provided. Clips from that feed, limited to three minutes can be used up to seven days, instead of the previous 72 hours. There is no time restriction on video the media outlet shoots itself. The video also can be used for one online simulcast.
  
• However, here's the kicker: None of the simulcasts may be archived. And the video can be used only for "television" newscasts. Everyone else - papers, fan sites, etc., has to make a separate agreement with the SEC for Internet use, using that player mentioned above. That goes for any digital device. The feed is free, but let's just say I'm uneasy when any one entity controls everything. What about that disputed call for which the broadcast feed might have been out of position, but the TV station's (or these days, newspaper's) videographer had the perfect view? I suppose the outlet could sell the video to the SEC, but it still loses control.
• Here's the odd wording of the day: "Still photographs of the Event (including Bearer Generated Photographs) may be posted on the internet only in connection with and as part of regular print news coverage, including internet print news coverage." Ineternet print news coverage? What the heck is that?
• There's also wording that makes clear local news shops can distribute photos to "accredited media agencies" - a big plus for the AP and other services.

The revised policy does not include the ticket wording that may cause heartburn for many cell phone-equipped fans. I assume that's proceeding as it was in the original. On the Buzz Manager blog, Associate Commissioner for Media Relations Charles Bloom says that when it comes to social media, video is the primary thing the conference will crack down on -- that it doesn't intend to hinder Twitter, Facebook entries or photos. (Thanks Bryan Murley for the outpoint.)

For the "no-link" crowd, something to consider

Simon Owens found one of his posts promoted to the front page of Huffington Post this week, and suddenly the unique visitors to his Bloggasm blog were coming in by the boatload.

It's a good, if not empirically rigorous, example of the idea that the Web is, well, a web, and part of the way things work is that you get to link to me and me to you -- and we both benefit.

This, of course, is not the way Judge Richard Posner and some media folks see it -- they would rather bottle things up, at least initially, so that news organizations retain the "exclusive." The logical problem is that people are less likely to link to you (as they are with the Wall Street Journal, which puts its paywall up to direct links, but does allow a Google workaround). And then they are less likely to find you while others find a way to paraphrase or write around your material.

So you are left with the "long tail" Chris Anderson has written about. The problem there is that the long tail is about pennies. The dollars are in the here and now, and they are very fleeting.

Unleash the copyright beast against the 'Beast'?

Yesterday, I pointed to the misguided comments by Judge Richard Posner, who suggested we ban linking -- and -- paraphrasing without the rights-owner's consent.

Now, from Cleveland comes a suggestion that is a tad more reasonable, but still troubling. Under the headline "Tighter copyright law could save newspapers," columnist Connie Schultz is promoting the work of the brothers Marburger who suggest resurrecting the old AP v. International News Service case and using the concept of "parasitic agcregators" to deny the ability of sites like the Daily Beast and Newser to rewrite and aggregate other news outlets' copy.

One suspects the real target here, however, are the hundreds of TV and radio stations who have done this long before the Intertubes and who have long been a bone stuck in newspapers' craws (and which Schultz briefly mentions).

So the Marburgers -- David, a First Amendment lawyer, and Daniel, an economics professor -- came up with the essence of a two-point plan (PDF) as relayed by Schultz:

• Aggregators would reimburse newspapers for ad revenues associated with their news reports.
• Injunctions would bar aggregators' profiting from newspapers' content for the first 24 hours after stories are posted.

For some papers, that last point may be the only value proposition they've got going in a world of otherwise largely "processed" news, and it's probably better than a total paywall. But not much.

There are so many ways to evade it. Are we going to have the "paraphrase police" out in force?

And are there really that many aggregators that are parasites to the extent they are cannibalizing traffic? (The authors pointedly say Google is not the problem.) And then there is this from Schultz herself:

Newspaper industry leaders are marinating in a brew of inaction and indecision. John Sturm, president and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America -- the chief lobbyist for newspaper publishers -- says his board of directors is considering various plans of action and hopes to agree on one "by the end of the year."

Let's hope some sanity prevails before then.

Posner's solution: Ban linking, paraphrasing

The old saying is that bad cases make bad law.

The danger is that ridiculous thinking out loud by respected jurists could make very bad law.

Let's hope the legislative and judicial communities do not take up the suggestion from U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner that it may be time to expand copyright law to ban not only linking, but paraphrasing, without the rights-holder's consent.

This is seriously flawed in so many ways.

Let's just consider what this would do to search, the only really practical way to begin to even find, let alone comprehend, the vast amount of information being created. So could a search engine link to any company's copyrighted page, for instance?

Erick Schonfeld of Tech Crunch had an effective response in the Washington Post:

Much of what Posner wants to outlaw is public discourse. Why is it okay for people to talk about the day's news in a bar or barber shop, but not online? People should be able to discuss the day's news on the Web without fear of violating copyright law. The natural way people discuss things on the Web is by quoting and linking to the source. (Except maybe Posner, he doesn't seem to link to much of anything in his blog posts).

Posner never squares his position with freedom of speech or fair use rights. He doesn't even mention them. Yet those are precisely the rights which allow me to paraphrase his argument without his permission so that I can disagree with it.

Posner calls sites linking to newspapers "free riders," but Schonfeld notes that a link in itself is valuable in driving traffic to a site.

We'll just assume the judge has had his little joke and is chuckling at the hand-wringing. If not, put a stake in this vampire of an idee.

Use common "action" words

Too many news Web sites still use "journalism" terms as they try to move people around the site.

"Multimedia," for instance - when was the last time you said "let's go out and shoot some multimedia of the kids playing"? Or "video," "audio," etc. Yeah, none of those are greatly offensive or confusing, but they work against you online.

Simply put, your online site is a retail store - much of the psychology of retail applies. You want users to do something; to do that, use common action words: "read," "watch," "listen." Use labels like "photos and video" instead of multimedia. And try things like "your photos and video" and "our photos and video" to be more conversational (or even use "pictures" instead of "photos').

I've been working with a small daily S.C. paper this summer, The Item. It's started adopting this nomenclature. What do you think?

Getting it right on Sanford coverage

Kudos to The State newspaper for getting it almost all right on covering the tragic story of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

The paper very effectively used its Web site to get all sorts of information up quickly. Once it got confirmation that the e-mails between the governor and his Argentinian paramour were legit, it posted many of them. As a result, it got lots of exposure including debriefs on the late-evening news shows locally and on cable.

It put up a timeline to help people digest the story.

It posted a link to a Twitter search for "Sanford."

It made sure all the elements were accessible from each page.

It put up a poll, etc. (About all it didn't do was play the theme from "Sanford and Son," a rather tacky little move done by "The Takeaway on public radio.

Now, a few minor observations -- not really criticisms, but something to chew on:

• The State is a McClatchy paper. Things tend to "go away" into the archives after a week or so. I would hope that does not happen here.
• I would hope that once things die down, the paper creates a "microsite" for all the coverage. And I would hope the paper would give it an easy-to-think-of URL, such as thestate.com/sanford
• It would have been very useful if the stories all had a "sanford" tag - or "sanford affair." Too many news organizations still don't use tagging. Yes, microsites are useful, but the tagging gives another way for people to easily access the thread of a story.
• The timeline is good, but why isn't it interactive? This is another way to help people easily organize "the story."

Again, we have to remember that "the story" is no longer an individual river of text or a specific path through a Web site. Your users will define "the story" by how they meander through all the elements (for me, the story is the e-mails, but for someone else it might be Sanford's political orientation and presidential aspirations dashed, and for yet another person it might be Jenny Sanford and how she has handled this). The more we can do to give them the navigational and interpretive tools, the better.

None of this, however, takes away from the fine job The State has done.

Newspapers' digital archives pose ethical challenges

Interesting story in the Chronicle of Higher Education (free area) this week on how college alumni, including former student journalists are trying to rewrite history by asking that embarrassing material -- including stories they have written -- be taken down from college publication Web sites.

So time for a little self-promotion here.

Larry Timbs, Will Atkinson and I did some of the first exploration two years ago into the ethical and operational issues raised by newspaper Web sites and the digitization of newspaper archives. We asked newspaper editors a wide range of questions, including some relating to four possible situations in which someone might ask that their picture or a story naming them be taken down.

You can find How America's newspapers handle (or don't handle) their 'digital attics': An investigation into ethical, legal and privacy issues emerging from publications' Web archives at the Grassroots Editor Web site. (The paper was presented at the 13th Newspapers and Community Building symposium.)

If you want the direct link to the PDF, here it is.

TVs advised to prepare for newspapers' demise

And now you can add this to the mix.

Some of us have been saying for years that if newspapers die, others will try to fill the void. (Don't pile on -- I'm not saying it will be anywhere near what the traditional newspaper newsroom can produce, and a "they can't match the quality" argument is somewhat pointless in this "good enough" age. And I am NOT saying I want them to die).

Now from Lost Remote is "How local TV sites can take advantage of newspapers" -- basically a recipe to TV stations of how to do it over the cold, dead bones.

If this doesn't get your dander up, you truly are working in the wrong business. I'd post a copy of it in every newsroom ... jus' sayin'.

(Besides, a little competition never hurt anything.)

It seemed like a good idea ...

In print.

Unfortunately, this example from The (Colubmbia, S.C.) State shows what's wrong with shovelware in a Web 2.0 age.

Look at the last line.

There is no "related story on this page" and -- it's the Web, dang it -- there's no link from that to the related story elsewhere on the site.

Newsrooms have got to learn to fix things like this. Yes, it may be hard the way they are set up, but it is imperative because it signals an operating mentality.

(Not so) Happy New Year

To start out 2009, the Guardian's Roy Greenslade has some brutal predictions -- mostly UK oriented, but you can find a lot of U.S. truth, too.

At least one major regional owner will go under. Even if there is no further consolidation, there will be "accommodations" between rival publishers. More, many more, local titles will be closed or merged. More freesheets will vanish. Needless to say, more journalists will lose their jobs. As for the national newspaper industry, it is probable that a couple of publishers will throw in the towel. I somehow doubt that their titles will vanish altogether, but that must be a possibility too.

He hits the bull's eye at the bottom of the column:

Meanwhile, and here is the rub, necessary online innovation is being stifled. There is a lack of genuine inventiveness about how to forge a new form of journalism, because companies are too focused on dealing with commerce. Many regional and local paper websites are so clunky that they cannot hope to gain new audiences, let alone retain the current ones. Staff required to "service" print and web on a 24-hour basis are not given the time and space to experiment and there is precious little encouragement from managers who are interested only in bottom lines.

Similarly, many national paper websites are chasing ratings rather than innovating - in the long term, building trust and credibility is far more important. The importance of online journalism cannot be stressed too often. It is foolish to call it the future because the future is now. ...

It is also sobering to realise that even if a national paper were to close - whether the Independent at one end of the market, or the Daily Star at the other - rivals will not benefit much. When Murdoch pulled the plug on Today in 1995, when it was selling almost 600,000 a day, the majority of readers vanished into thin air. Now, of course, they will vanish into cyberspace.

The fight that counts in 2009 is the one for online eyeballs seeking news and informed comment, not for the passive audience handed a freesheet with the minimum of journalistic merit or public benefit.

Patrick Smith at Paid Content:UK, a Guardian subsidiary, is as brutal, if not more so.

And a commenter on that site points to "Five Fatal Flaws that are killing local Internet Plays" by Dave Chase (the commenter credits Jeff Jarvis, but it was Chase's I found). Chase says, as I have written, that at least half the job of "saving" newspapers - in whatever form - is retooling the sales staff. But he gets into a lot more specifics.

I know firsthand from our work in Hartsville that his No. 3, inability to quantify the value of the audience, is a big problem, as is the mismatch in selling skills, or as he calls it, "Farming Hunters."