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

How not to do customer service in 2014, newspaper version

So here's a wager for you (I'll provide a copy of AP's newswriting guide by Jack Cappon to the first person who can figure out the puzzle).

One condition: You must be a seven-day print and digital subscriber to The State newspaper.

The setup: Go to the newspaper's website. Pretend you want to look at various pricing to see if, as a consumer, there are options to consider. Try to find where it lists your subscription options other than your existing seven-day-plus-digital subscription.

That's OK, I'll wait.

Try the FAQs. See anything there (of course, that they haven't been updated since November 2012 might  speak for itself). Click on those links and it takes you to the page where you can start a new subscription "from $2.60 a week." Click on that, however, and you are prompted to set up a new account with all new user info and password. If you don't do that, you apparently don't get to see that "from $2.60 a week" rate -- or any other.

You can try it from any number of pages where there are links to manage your subscription, etc. -- same result.

So existing or prospective subscribers are denied some of the most basic information that should be provided so they can make intelligent decisions going forward. And nonsubscribers have to disgorge a bunch of personal information before they can get comparison pricing info. Imagine if Wal-Mart or any other retailer had a gate before you could get into the store. Of, if you don't like the analogy to a retailer, how about a service, like asking a plumber the cost estimate of a repair and being told it's none of your business until you give up a bunch of info (or, if you've used that plumber at all, it's none of your business whatsoever).

All in the name of what? Trying to force people into staying with their current option? Trying to force them to stay with seven-day print (you can do that by pricing, not by hiding the info).

Besides, it's 2014 -- you know, the digital era -- and as a digital user I even expect (hold your breath now), that when it comes time to renew I can go online and change my options (if I find them more useful) and pay for the new subscription instead of having to call an 800 number during business hours and be told traffic is "heavy" and wait untold minutes. (Well, sort of business hours -- 7 a.m. - 4 p.m. weekdays and 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Sunday. That's convenient and consumer friendly, eh? Makes Comcast customer service seem like it's worthy of a J.D. Power award.)

This is still one more data point on how some news orgs simply don't get that they have gone from a monopoly to a retail/service business. Spot checking around. (In none of these cases can I tell whether existing subscribers can change their plans online.):

• The Augusta Chronicle - not much better. Gives you an" as low as" monthly price, but no options for various home delivery frequencies. Clicking on "learn more" just gives you a bunch of sales copy about the service, no prices. Clicking on the digital only gives you a teaser rate. Clicking on print plus digital stops you with a wall demanding your ZIP code. Put in 30912 and you'll get the options (not sure if that link will work directly).
•  Post and Courier (Charleston): Well, at least there are options in pricing. But each is an "introductory rate" with no indication what the normal rate will be starting in the seventh month. (OK, so the paper is taking its cues from the cable or phone companies, but it's a start.)
• The Greenville News - a winner! All the options laid out. Now, if the paper would just get rid of the annoying splash screen with the condescending option "No, I don't want to save."
• Herald-Journal (Spartanburg) - another winner with it all laid out.
• Florence Morning News - It's all there, though not many options, eh? (This is the pricing model I referred to above.)
• Times and Democrat (Orangeburg) - It's there, but don't be fooled by putting a local ZIP code into the "home delivery information" form at the bottom. All you'll get is a 404 error. Instead, click on "start a new home delivery subscription" for print-only rates. If you want the print and digital package, or digital only, you'll have to click on "online subscription" and be hit with an annoying splash screen with the options. But here's the rub. It appears that if you want a print-digital bundle, you have to do the home delivery option first, create that and then go here to add the digital. So much for one-stop shopping (hey, guys, find out how Amazon does it).
• Island Packet (Hilton Head) and Beaufort Gazette (McClatchy papers along with The State) - well, it's there if you root around. One you follow that link, click on "print & digital" and then on "view delivery rates."
• The Herald (Rock Hill) - at first, looks like the other McClatchy papers. But lo and behold, click on the print and digital link and a really smart form comes up that lets you pick a plan before you have to disgorge any personal info (and you get a gift to boot!).
• Myrtle Beach (McClatchy) - just as bad as The State. (So if other McClatchy papers can show rates, why can't all?)
• Charlotte Observer (McClatchy) - Hits you with the ZIP code, but once you put that in, you get rates.

For all I know, The State will give you rates once you disgorge all your personal info, but I find that troubling  in so many ways (you harvest my data to sell to others just so I can see your pricing?).

The State makes it even more torturous. Log into your account and there is a "Delivery Options" link. Follow it (you can't from here without logging in) and all you get (at least all I get) is "start a new subscription," "vacation holds" and "report delivery problems." Click on the new subscriptions link, and all I get are options for Go Gamecocks and Lake Murray Magazine. Someone truly evil has had to figure out this consumer torture.

What is even more interesting to me is that on many of these websites, "subscribe" is in small type and has to be hunted down. Aren't we in the business here of getting people to subscribe? And many are pushing E-Z pay, the auto draft on your credit card or bank account. Read the fine print. Orangeburg, for instance, says that's an extra $18.

But maybe you know something I don't. Have at it and share.

Update, 2 p.m. 7/29: After a 12-minute call to customer service, here are some of the rate plans (compared with $288.60 for seven-day delivery and digital - 79 cents a day); all include digital:
Thursday-Sunday: $195.52 (94 cents a day)
Friday-Sunday: $177.84 ($1.14 a day)
Saturday-Sunday: $159.64 ($1.54 a day)

All per-day prices are approximate. I just multiplied 52 by the number of days each week; there might be slight variations, but I did not count actual days.


I did not price Monday-Saturday, Monday-Friday or Sunday only.

Allyson Bird's "Why I left news"

Allyson Bird, one of the best students I've ever had, writes at length about why she left journalism. You should read it.

I think there's a lot to chew on here:

I don’t think the Internet killed newspapers. Newspapers killed newspapers.

People like to say that print media didn’t adapt to online demand, but that’s only part of it. The corporate folks who manage newspapers tried to comply with the whims of a thankless audience with a microscopic attention span. And newspaper staffers tried to comply with the demands of a thankless establishment that often didn’t even read their work. Everyone lost.

People came to demand CNN’s 24-hour news format from every news outlet, including local newspapers. And the news outlets nodded their heads in response, scrambling into action without offering anything to the employees who were now expected to check their emails after hours and to stay connected with readers through social media in between stories.

There was never such a thing as an eight-hour workday at newspapers, but overtime became the stuff of legend. You knew better than to demand fair compensation. If any agency that a newspaper covered had refused to pay employees for their time, the front-page headlines wouldn’t cease. But when it came to watching out for themselves, the watchdogs kept their heads down.

Combine it with the latest from the State of the Media report and it's observation that "nearly one-third of the respondents (31%) have deserted a news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to," and I think it's time to reassess.

 One of the things I'm going to suggest to the S.C. Press Association this weekend: Do Less With Less - but do it better.

I think our audience is telling us very simply: We can get the "more" if we want it very easily. But if you want our loyalty and engagement, the formula isn't more, but better - do what you do well. Show us you care -- about us and about your own profession. And while you're at it, show us you're having some fun, because to read most news sites and papers these days is no-fun city.

(There's an interesting debate about some of this at Slate between author Matthew Yglesias and the reaction by the commenters on his article that argues journalism has never been in better shape.)

We need your views: Is some research threatened?

The December Convergence Newsletter is out with a couple of important articles looking at how news organizations' convergence practices have changed and challenging some of our assumptions about "digital natives."

But we also need your help beyond that. Here's an excerpt from the newsletter. Please weigh in:

Is some research threatened? We need to hear from you.
The article by Jake Batsell and Camille Kraeplin not only continues their significant research into the evolving nature of convergence, but also includes an observation that signals potential concern for researchers: "Our difficulty soliciting responses suggests that, in an age of information overload, email surveys are becoming a less effective mechanism for conducting newsroom research."
They found that many large and midsize TV stations and groups have adopted "no survey" policies. Others begged off, citing an increasingly burdensome workload. Such surveys have, in the past decade, become an important method of gathering significant information about changes in the field. Are you finding the same problems?
We'd like to hear from you, problems or no, about your views on this and whether you think it could be a significant problem for some research. Email us at convedit@mailbox.sc.edu, or comment on our Facebook or Google+ pages or on our blog. We'd like to compile your views in a future issue.

Newspapers: Some things never change

From Sean Ireland's latest column in the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association bulletin:

A group of newspaper publishers came to some clear conclusions about their future as they gathered for an SNPA symposium.

They agreed that “newspapers of the coming age will be smaller, better-edited, higher-priced and able to hold their own against any kind of competition.”

The publishers predicted higher costs, decreasing revenue, rising taxes and a growing threat of punitive legislation. Perhaps most importantly, they closed with this: “Newspapers should give more thought to their public relations. We need friends.”

“The Newspaper of the Future” was the discussion topic at the SNPA meeting, and though it was held 70 years ago – in 1941 – the conclusions drawn then seem no less relevant for the newspaper industry now.

Sigh - some things never change.

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.

How newspapers resemble the auto industry

In this month's Tennessee Press, the publication put out by the Tennessee Press Association, Jeff Fishman, publisher of the Tullahoma News, speaks truth to power in his withering comparison of the newspaper and auto industries.

Reprinted by permission:

Newspapers should learn from G.M.
Jeff Fishman

The U.S. auto industry could have saved itself earlier by paying attention to the way its business was eroding and listening to the people who were stealing its market share. U.S. auto executives came back from Japan and refused to transform their work environments from lumbering, stodgy bastions of tradition into places where workers
were encouraged to be creative and innovative.

The situation bears a strong resemblance to the newspaper industry. Let’s take a look at the places where the news industry and the auto industry screwed up:

In the ’80s and ’90s, sales declined as customers were turned off by shoddy quality.

Auto industry: anyone who drove a U.S.-made car in the ’80s knows what I’m talking about. Everything about the cars was sub-par. The seats were uncomfortable; the controls made little sense and were hard to deal with. These were minor issues, compared to the engines seizing and misfiring, the electrical system shorting out, the windows not rolling up (or down), the doors sagging on their hinges.

Newspaper industry: the buyouts and mergers started and with the accountants in charge instead of passionate content creators, many papers gutted staffs and started to run big colorful graphics and lots more wire copy, instead of local content for and about their neighbors. Most papers had a monopoly position in their markets and could pretty
much be assured of making a profit, no matter what they did. Meanwhile, the readers were starting to notice that their newspapers were lacking…how should I say this…news.

The workers felt ignored and belittled, so bad attitudes and fear took over.

Auto industry: the line workers had no power to offer suggestions and, indeed, were punished for speaking up. All that mattered to management was churning out enough cars to meet the quotas, no matter how bad the quality.

Newspaper industry: a culture of irrelevance took hold in newsrooms. The reporters knew the bean counters didn’t care about real news; the accountants just wanted something that would generate money and not get them sued. Many journeyman news professionals I met would, with little encouragement, go off about the corporate “suits” that were putting the vise on the newsrooms to “pop a number.” Reporters that dared to try to make suggestions about long-term changes (like less coverage of city/county government and more enterprising reporting like the underlying reasons for the continuing erosion of middle-class opportunities) were ignored or worse, discarded.

Temporary economic bubble created easy profits thus postponing needed change.

Auto industry: America’s “let’s consume as much oil as we can” faction pushed through tax relief in the early ’00s that meant people who leased a “light truck over 6,000 pounds” could take advantage of tax breaks. What this did was support the Big Three, despite their declining market share. The Big Three were making so much money from SUVs, because they were pretty cheap to make, and Detroit was able to charge about $10-$20,000 more for them than a typical sedan. And, of course, when the tax break ran out and gas prices skyrocketed, they were without a viable product to sell as consumers looked for more efficient cars.

Newspaper industry: the mortgage/real estate boom created a huge advertising windfall for newspapers. Many real estate sections were often larger than the rest of the paper. Thousands of pages of expensive classified ads, paid for by realtor estate agents who were so awash in cash that they didn’t care what the cost was generated huge profits. Of course, the rest of the classified business was under siege at that time. When the real estate market imploded, advertisers abandoned newspapers, looking for cheaper ways to sell their products. Thus newspapers were also left without a viable product to sell.

The industry blamed others rather than conducting an honest self-appraisal.

Auto industry: the Detroit execs blamed Consumer Reports for pointing out that the cars they were building were utterly without redeeming community value (remember the Chevette or the Chrysler Cordoba). They claimed the people rating cars were biased towards the Japanese and were unfairly criticizing patriotic Americans. The U.S. cars were better, if only people would realize that! The industry was in complete denial about how the auto-buying public had turned against it as a result of its collective apathy. Long gone was the nostalgia of people who fondly remembered their first car as independence. They were fed up with cars that broke down as a result of shoddy engineering and the industry’s appetite for greater profits.

Newspaper industry: many publishers viewed competition from radio, cable news, shoppers and yes, the Internet, as being anti-newspaper. The truth was, they had stopped listening to the market, which was craving instantaneous, colorful, creative solutions for news delivery. Not listening to the market was a complete departure from the reason they were successful in the first place. They were successful because they listened and then responded to what they learned.

Transportation, not cars; information, not newspapers

Let’s stop building SUVs and listen to our customers and respond with relevant, thoughtful, engaging, vibrant products that meet the needs of our readers. The public’s desire for credible information has not and will not change even though the delivery method might. Newspapers have been a part of American community life since 1690 and will continue in one form or another for a long time as long as we continue to invest in our core product, information.

The US auto industry finally realized they are in the transportation business, not the auto business. They created innovative, solution-oriented products designed to respond to market changes. The quicker newspapers embrace the fact they are information brokers, not in the traditional newspaper business, the better off the country will be. Our customers, both advertising and readers, are not hesitant about expressing their opinions, positive and negative, on how we are doing our job. News organizations just need to listen and react to their customers’ desires.

For more than 300 years, newspapers have endured the scrutiny of many and will continue to bring relevant news to the citizens of the communities they serve, in print, online with video and audio, or some yet-to-be-realized technology. Newspapers must continue to illustrate a commitment to our trusted customers by respecting tradition while embracing change.

Well said: David Sullivan on paying attention to it all

David Sullivan, whose day job is on the desk at Philadelphia Newspapers, has a nice post (When 10 is really 13) pointing out that while newsrooms shrink their editing but still promise to be thorough on the "big stuff," it's the small stuff that readers actually read - and that over time builds into a bigger problem.

I find it amusing when newspapers write about how they're going to make all these cutbacks but "the really big stories, the projects and major investigations, will still get multiple layers of editing." That's great, but that's not what readers read every day. It reflects the newspaper's sense of what it considers important, but doesn't speak to the reader's experience of the newspaper. A reader may not know firsthand anything that contradicts your six-months-in-the-making, four-part series. The reader knows that 10 best movies should have 10 items. And this has nothing to do with print -- stupidity on any platform is stupidity.

I see the same thing in my local paper, The State, almost every day. As Sullivan points out, however, you can't just blame this on copy editing cutbacks. It's as much about making arbitrary decisions without thinking them fully through, including how they might be perceived by readers.

One of my favorites is the arbitrariness by some papers of listing the man's name first in wedding and engagement announcement headlines or captions on the accompanying pictures, but the picture is almost always set up with the woman left and the man right. Sure, the reader will figure it out, but it takes that extra split-second and just a tad more work that makes us just that tad more unfriendly.

Or  the paper jumps a story to a separate physical section (yes, it still might be labeled "A," but the reader doesn't care about our arbitrary labels; if it comes out of the paper separately, it's a separate section).

Think of going to the bank and getting the wrong change from the teller or being told you can only get it back in quarters, not bills. You don't really care that the teller is having a bad day or about the bank's mechanical requirements. You want it the way you want it.

We are in a service economy, and journalism - and newspapers - have become a service, not a physical product. It's a lesson still being learned in many newsrooms.

Worth Reading - are American newspapers the odd ones out?

Earl Wilkinson of the International News Marketing Association, has some interesting observations from Australia, where those in the news industry suggested America is not the best example of newspapers' future.

Among the observations he sends on:

The two trains of thought among publishers worldwide are that:

• The United States is an early warning system of consumer and advertiser behaviour.
• Or, that the U.S. publishers have so under-invested in their print products that they have no root system when disruption hits. Thus, the U.S. story is avoidable in other parts of the world. ...

 What the Americans get wrong in print, I was told, is projecting a templated, soulless environment for the consumer who wants to slowly browse. In the past decade, this is an increasingly gaunt-looking print environment reflecting poorly on local media brands that haven't gotten a workout in decades. While quality print newspapers should be platforms for deep engagement, U.S. publishers have created tools to get readers in and out of their print pages in shorter and shorter time increments.
Advertisers won't invest in such a platform, my friend said. They don't want to be associated with platforms devoid of sizzle.

Getting a journalism job - the view from London

Ed Caesar ruminates in a column from the London Sunday Times this past week about why so many folks want to enter journalism school even as he exposes the underbellied reality of getting a job in the newspaper business these days.

It's a good read, filled, of course, with delightful Britishisms (if you can ignore that the paper's Web publishing system seems to have randomly cut off the first letters of several sentences).

The shortcoming is that he frames it entirely in the concept of the newspaper - and the British nationals. Journalism is quite a bit more these days, which might explain why there is the demand.

Still, one truism remains - it's no place to get rich.

New definitions of quality in a digital age

I missed these in the past couple of weeks on Paid Content.

Ben Elowitz knocks down traditional measures of quality in the first post and proposes some new ones in the second.

From his second post, commenting on traditional measures:
Here’s the problem: They simply aren’t enough to win audiences, drive financial success, or, for that matter, ensure viability. The demise of institutions like Newsweek proves that—and shows that publishers that don’t move beyond these anachronistic measures of success will perish.

I agree with Elowitz to the point of saying quality measures have been expanded in an age when there is digital abundance, and anyone who does not think long and hard about what he is saying is not understanding what is happening.

But I don't think it's quite the zero-sum game his posts might suggest. I don't think the "old" measures are "anachronistic," just too narrow. I think there still is value in "correctness" and "craftsmanship." "Objectivity" is a straw man - we never have been objective. Fairness, however, still has its place, if nothing else but for civility.

"Credential," I agree, does not count much among users in an age of transactional credibility. But Elowitz does not deal with the reality that it still carries quite a bit of sway on the other end of the pole -- news gathering. That makes for an interesting set of questions that need more research.

ASNE10 - Back to the future

I've been peeking in on the unofficial ASNE10 event blog, and I just can't help feeling, well, feeling like it's sooooooo back to the future.

Here's an example post: Editors Stress Convergence at ASNE10

• One panelist urged editors to consider: "What can we do to reinvent how we package?"
• With circulation and readership on a general decline, editors must take into account how they will get and hold their readers' attention, which includes taking marketing into mind.
• On the future of journalism, [Jane] Hirt [ME/news and features, Chi Trib] said that what we today consider newspapers will change into news organizations, dispersing information for multiple platforms.
• The panel was generally optimistic about the future of the industry as long as editors make the effort to adapt to the needs and wants of their readers.

Now there are some revolutionary thoughts -- in 2005.

(The other interesting thing - try to post a comment. I couldn't get it to work. If the comments are turned off, it's sort of emblematic, isn't it? I was going to share the link to my Amy Webb post on their Amy Webb post, but not to be. So you'll just have to get the one-say here.

Boehne's take on paywalls

Rich Boehne, E.W. Scrripps' president and CE, has an interesting take on TV station Web sites and newspaper site pay walls in an interview with TVNewsCheck (italics mine):

There's a reasonable amount of potential and it's the same for the TV stations. TV stations have every bit the opportunity that the newspapers have and some would argue they have a better opportunity. Thus far, they have not taken advantage of that and in many markets they're well behind the newspapers. But they're catching up.

As strange as it sounds, we are focusing more and more on print and online as separate businesses and not the same. There's a place for print. Maybe it's not seven days a week, but there are a lot of people who want this information in a print format and we should serve that market and do an outstanding job. At the same time, we should build a separate online business. So the online piece is growing, but it's still nowhere near the size of the print piece.

On paywalls:

I don't think we've seen anything so far that works forlocal newspapers. Part of the issue is scale. You need quality content, but you also need enough scale to sell it to enough people to make a business. That's not easy to do in a small or midsize or even a decent-size newspaper market. The same is true for a TV station.

Newspapers terribly underestimate the ability of TV stations to produce content outside of their core audience. If newspapers attempt to take a lot of their local content and put it behind pay walls, I have no doubt that TV stations will rush in and fill the void. Now, I know we would certainly do that in all of our TV markets. So that just changed the equation a lot and the newspaper industry just for some reason overlooks the ability and determination that a lot of TV stations have.

Read the rest.

'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.

I swear - newspaper reporter jobs rank low

Huffington Post reports on a new survey saying newspaper reporter jobs rank between seaman and stevedore.

Maybe this mean we can start talking like seamen and stevedores again. Would make newsrooms more interesting, at least.

Later: My boss, a veteran journalist, wrote a note back to me suggesting this might also mean an opportune time to bring in the longshoreman's union. Oh yeah, that would kick the fun up a notch.

E&P RIP

A sign of the times ....

Nielsen Media says it will stop publishing Editor & Publisher.

Losing E&P is a loss, no matter how many have derided it as old media. Judging from the number of online pointers to its articles, it remains a valuable resource.

E&P now has its own announcement up. And Columbia Journalism Review has an interview with E&P Editor Greg Mitchell - he expresses some outside hope that outrage will at least keep the Web site operating.

Meanwhile, American Journalism Review drops from six to four issues a year.

And Harper's piece "Final Edition: Twilight of the American Newspaper" is now online.

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

Newspaper video cuts

There is a lot of discussion about the state of "newspaper video" on the Yahoo newspaper video group after the decision by the Las Vegas Sun to pull the plug on the innovative 702.tv.

The general meme is that those long features and other innovative projects that draw critical acclaim, but not necessarily lots of viewers, are falling by the wayside and that the TV staples of breaking news - fires, accidents, news conferences and the like -- are becoming the standard fare.

This is not surprising, but misguided, though Chuck Fadley at the Miami Herald says hard news and sports drive the paper's video traffic.

But if you are doing that, all you are doing is competing with every other outlet in the market - in short, you are back to commodity news. And if you thought it was tough making a buck in the commodity news market when your tools are primarily paper and pen, it's a whole lot tougher in video where the equipment costs thousands of dollars.

One person writes that his newspaper, which went into video "with a vengeance," has cut back to one stringer and that if anything breaks, there is no money to replace it.

Dirck Halstead writes that video ad rates "MUST come up." Michael Rosenblum responds that the rates aren't coming up, that the problem is in the ad departments and that we have to radically reshape how we sell online ads.

They're both right. While earlier Pew data, for instance, still showed the heaviest use of online video to be at upper income levels, the latest shows no difference among income or education groups. But various types of video are likely to draw different audiences, some more valuable than others (think golf on TV), and there's no reason to think that, if sold correctly and with data to back it up, some video might not command a premium.

But that means knowing how to sell it and having the data and tools. And Rosenblum is definitely right that the problem is in the front office more than the newsroom. As I've worked with news organizations -- and I've said this before -- their ad and business sides are essentially moribund when compared with most newsrooms. Unlike a newsroom, they are even more intimately tied to a business model, and I'm not sure how you extract yourself from that, both psychologically and sociologically.

I don't think we can downplay the amount of managerial fortitude it takes to make this kind of change. You are screwing with people's livelihoods and, in many respects, asking them to jump into the pit with no guarantee where the bottom is. The money at this point, such as it is, is still to be made in selling ink on paper, not pixels on screen. Yes, it will change, but human reaction to such things tends to be a lagging, not a leading, economic indicator.

This pullback in video is not particularly surprising for two reasons:

• the general pattern of technology adoption
  
• the way too many newsrooms appear have managed it

In general, adoption of new technologies, especially information technologies, has been on a steadily upward curve, with the slope becoming even steeper with newer technologies such as the VCR, microwave, cell phone and Internet. (The telephone and airplane seem to have a dip or plateau in the graphs in that article, but that would seem to be more an effect of World War II.) But the technology adoption curve really isn't necessarily continuous bell curve, as Rogers posited. Some project a gap between the early adopters and the early majority. (See also part three of that series.)

The case of online video, especially news-related video, is further complicated because it is, for lack of a better term, a "secondary technology." It relies on still-developing underlying technology. It's only relatively recently that high-speed Internet has been available in most areas (and one can debate what we call high speed vs. the rest of the world), but the cost in rural areas is problematic.

There is continued debate over effective streaming technologies, especially in the era of high definition, and the devices on which to play such video remain limited. This is unlike the VCR, another secondary technology, which was a quick and relatively easy add-on (jokes about programming them not withstanding) to a stable underlying technology.

And even though the Pew data show widespread use of online video, that number is based on whether the person has ever watched a video sharing site. When you look at regular use, however, the numbers drop sharply (89 percent of those 18-29 say they watch videos, but just 36 percent on a typical day).

Truly widespread adoption, the kind that leads to the monetization and ROI needed for sustainability for organizations like newsrooms, is unlikely until online video is widely ported to existing TVs or to some kind of mobile device that improves on the current small-screen experience.

Having said that, I still see or hear of too many cases in newsrooms where things like video are embarked on without a rigorous thought and management process. (Newsrooms are not alone - a marketing director told me recently her organization had hired a social media firm. Why, I asked. Because everyone tells us we need to do it, she said.) As a result, as the one Newspaper Video list correspondent noted, they jump in with a vengeance, only to be disappointed. This digital age requires a more rigorous way of evaluating and managing. Four key points:

• At the outset you should ask "why?" Also "how" and "what": Why are we doing this. What do we hope to accomplish or learn? (In the case of online video, it might be to learn workflows, define audience, understand the technology). How will we define success and what will we do if we don't have success?
• Monitor: Who will monitor comments? Workflows? Cost vs. benefit? Content? The online production system is different from the old rigid get-it-to-press model (not to mention the added dimension of interacting with your audience). Effective monitoring is critical.
• Measurement: There's an old business saying - you can't manage what you can't measure. So how will you measure? What will you measure? (Are total views critical, for instance, or is it time on view? Demographics? Psychographics?)
• Manage: Did we reach our goals? If not, why not? What should we do about it - kill it or adjust it? Or redefine the goals?

None of this need involve ROI. In fact, smart organizations realize that to grow and expand, everything can't be about ROI (in pure dollars and cents, unless you want to get into gritty cost-benefit analysis).

We don't need to be quite so down in the dumps about "newspaper" video. But we do need to understand that many organizations jumped out without the rigor needed to evaluate it. As a result, the pullback also is likely to be overstated. But, then, that just seems to be the nature of the business right now.

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.)

Seven recommendations - for failure

OK, maybe not all seven, but as I was reading this summary on the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association bulletin of a speech by Galveston publisher Dolph Tillotson, it kind of crystallized for me why traditional newsrooms (aka newspapers, but I like to broaden the term) are struggling.

The title, Tillotson Offers Seven Rules for Cutting Costs, Finding Revenues, ought to give you a hint by the order of the way things are presented (costs first, revenues second). Here is his list:

1. Never do nothing: Some people are not acting simply because they fear change.
2. We are in a real emergency; we should act that way. He said, “We’ve got to act decisively and quickly.”
3. We can do things today that you could not do before and may never be able to do again.
4. Now is a great time to weed the garden. Tillotson referred to money-losing features and operations. Do away with things that newspapers do simply because they’ve always done them. Features that cost money with little benefit, such as TV books and old comics pages, can be cut now with far less outcry from customers because the economic environment makes those readers more sympathetic to change.
5. Getting costs in line should be the first step.
6. Focus on your company’s strengths: local connections, local news, local business.
7. Remember the power of personal leadership. Find the center of your operation and move your chair there. “I think the quality of leadership is what will make a difference in our industry in the future,” he said.

Maybe the bullet points don't do it justice, but I'm failing to see anything in there about innovation or investment. It seems to me the tone largely is cut, cut, cut.

No. 3, for instance, talks about doing things you could never do before and probably never do again. I'm betting he's not talking about totally rethinking your operation's structure, culture and ability to track and implement useful innovation. By the way, I say "operation" here and not just newsroom because much of the work to be done is up front, in the ad and business departments, where far too often it's still business as usual.

No. 4 - do away with things you do just because you do them. Good idea, but what about also do some things that you're not totally sure will work, but provide potential for good revenue opportunities? And then actually put the management muscle into measuring and evaluating them. Put another way, try leading your market, dang it.

No. 5 - I think this pretty much is the operationalization of all the other points.

No. 6 is good, but I'd sure feel better if it also had "and find new ways to broaden those strengths and reach new audiences or audiences in new ways."

I'm not sure you can have No. 7 if cutting is your primary stance.

Tillotson talked about creating "an atmosphere of hope." But if the focus is on cutting with little mention of innovation, where is the hope? It sounds as if he's hoping the storm, like Hurricane Ike, passes and dawn will come again, bluebirds will sing and all will be forgotten. And it may, but what happens if now the sun rises in the west, instead? All the cost-cutting in the world won't help if it still leaves you looking east.