New archive for The Convergence Newsletter

The Convergence Newsletter archives have a new address:

http://sc.edu/cmcis/archive/convergence/

Latest in trend study of journalists - why this one point bothers me

I had a chance the other day to read Indiana University's (I'm an alum, BTW) summary of the latest in its long series of studies of journalists, this one called "The American Journalist in the Digital Age." (PDF)

The full book is due out next year and follows on the last one, "The American Journalist in the 21st Century."

I was surprised by a few things, such as less emphasis on getting the news out quickly, in an age when the hamster wheel seems to be spinning ever faster. As I thought about it, however, it made some sense (or I was able to rationalize it) -- journalists are an ornery bunch, so it shouldn't be surprising that when the business seems to be putting more and more emphasis on getting it out now - and damn the verification in too many cases -- they'd answer that it wasn't so important to them anymore.

But there is one point that really bothers me. It's under the "controversial practices" section, lumped in with things like using personal photos and documents without authorization, using hidden cameras, paying people for information and pretending to be someone else.

That measure is "using confidential business or government documents without authorization." And those saying it "may be justified" has gone from 81.8 percent in 1992 to 57.7 percent today. (A good summary is at The Wire.)

Maybe that's "controversial." Count me in the camp that says it should be "de rigueur."

From the Pentagon Papers to Glenn Greenwald, with many people like Eric Nalder in between, some of the most important journalism of our time has been done only by getting those confidential papers and exposing them.

(Even Nalder's excellent "Breaking and Entering: How to dissect an organization," while it largely outlines public sources, has this nugget : Whether you are using FOIA with a government agency, or a mole at a private company, get your hands on the memo traffic.)

While I applaud the much greater use of the FOIA and data techniques, it remains reality that much of the "truth" that we seek remains buried in locked (now-digital) file cabinets.

I'm not sure why this is. But I see it among some of my students, too -- a corruption, if you will, of being in the age of vast information and data. That can lull journalists into thinking all that is great and good is just a few mouse clicks away and blind them into thinking that somehow it is "improper" to dig further.

It's hard, after all, to do those things Momma told you not do to -- be impertinent, ask hard questions, talk about politics and religion, ask a person's age, tell me how you know that. But that's our job description.

And so the IU results bother me greatly.

Most 'lliterate' cities

Why does it not surprise me that there is no S.C. city on this list of "most literate cities"?

Actually, the reason probably is that it covers only cities of 250,000 or more, and South Carolina, with its outdated and restrictive annexation laws, tends to choke cities so the core cities of much larger MSAs struggle to get above 150,000.

It's an interesting study nonetheless, though you probably can find more than a few quibbles with how "literate" is operationalized (is newspaper circulation, for instance, really a reliable indicator anymore).

If you want to understand newspapers' future ...

Then you have to read the interview with Media General CEO Marshall Morton in RichmondBizSense.com about why Media General agreed to sell most of its papers to Warren Buffett.

Say all you want about "Mismanagement General" - and there's plenty that can be said. But Morton lays some stark truths on the line:

Although the bulk of its cash flow — 87 percent in the first quarter —comes from its TV stations, owning newspapers put Media General at a disadvantage when it came time to renegotiate its huge debt load.

That blindsided Media General, Morton said.

“The banks who had lent us the money no longer wanted to lend to media companies,” Morton said. “They just don’t have confidence in newspapers. You can talk until you’re blue in the face about the value of newspapers in communities, but if you can’t get capital …”

And this:

Publishing revenues are down about 50 percent over the past five years, Morton said, but much of the costs— printing presses, delivery drivers, etc. — have held steady.

“There was nowhere to hide from these revenue declines,” Morton said.

“Over the past five years, our first thought was that this was heavily due to the recession and, like many other recessions in the past, that this was a cycle. You tighten your belt, freeze hiring and even drop the number of people.

“So we went through a couple years thinking that was the way to handle it. But it kept going.”

It wasn’t until the second quarter of 2011, Morton says, “that we realized the world had changed.”

I don't think Buffett is all nostalgic and doesn't understand the newspaper business as people like Clay Shirky suggest. In fact, I don't think he really bought newspapers at all - he bought cash flow from properties that, in general because of their location, are likely to throw off decent cash for at least a decade. He bought them at a fire-sale price. And he got the real estate and a 20 percent stake in Media General's broadcast operations as well (just as has often been noted, McDonald's is not so much a hamburger company as a real estate holding company that happens to sell hamburgers.

So when he's done getting he cash, he can flip the real estate (if not before)

Meanwhile, over at John Robinson's blog, in response to his skeptical post about paywalls, we continue to get from some of the comments the same old take-it-on-faith rubbish that as the younger generation gets older, has families, etc., they will become newspaper readers. Rip Van Winkle can't top that. Every stick of research in the past 20 years shows that each generational cohort reads the newspaper less and does not convert as it ages. Back to my rant last week about journalists failing to even read the research about their industry - and then waking up surprised.

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.

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.

A different way to look at new community newspapers study

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


From the release:

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

Some interesting research on links

In my online wanderings, I came across some interesting research by a University of Maryland prof dealing with the use of links in stories.

Ron Yaros' conclusion is that in complicated explanatory stories, linking to outside sources reduces understanding, but linking within the story to other explanatory elements (such as definitions and illustrations), increases understanding.

In less-complicated stories, the linking so prized by many Web pundits seems to work better.

Will that be controversial among the "do what you do best and link to the rest" folks - of which I am generally a member? I don't know, but it's good to see more work in this area because we really don't have a lot of current research (that I'm aware of) into how people use and perceive links and the various forms they take (some early research suggested sidebar links with little text snippets worked better than in-text links, but that was done at a time when the visual grammar of links was far different and I think is less valid today). We're working on a lot of assumptions that need testing and validation.

Please feel free to point me to other research in this area applicable to journalism. I have a high degree of interest.

Some new insight into where traffic is coming from

Outbrain, an outfit that provides content recommendation and sponsored links on sites that install their widget, says it's gone through 100 million sessions representing 100 publishers that use its service to see how people are finding content.

Keeping in mind all studies like this are limited and not generalizable, it still offers some insight that can be added to the mix with others:

• Interestingly, across the Outbrain sites, most traffic (67%) is coming from people typing the URL into their browser bar, bookmarks or the publisher's home page.
• Of the remaining third:
• 41% came from search
• 31% came from another content site (linking, Outbrain referrals, etc.)
• A portal (17%)
• Social media (11%), though Outbrain says social media appears to be "gaining" share (not sure how the company concludes that, since this is supposed to be an inaugural study). Social media is not just Twitter and Facebook, but things like Digg, Fark and StumbleUpon.
• Traffic from social media sites has the biggest bounce rate - in other words, they aren't sticking around to see what else you've got to offer.

Some other interesting observations:

• The traffic from social sources is mostly to news, entertainment and lifestyle material, with news getting 42% of the referrals (makes eminent sense to me when you include Digg, etc., which tend to feature lots of news stories)
• Readers going from one content site to another are more engaged (which makes sense, as the report observes, "presumably because they already are in content consumption mode")
• Social media falls way below search and traffic from other content sites when looking at "hyper-engaged" users - those viewing five or more pages per session. Makes sense to me, especially the traffic from other content sites. In other words, if you aren't linking to other sites and getting them to link to you, you still don't really get it.

The top five sources of traffic: By far Google, followed by AOL, Yahoo, Facebook and Drudge.

There's a PDF of the report available too.