The federal judge has ruled that a woman who describes herself as an “investigative blogger” is not entitled to First Amendment protection for allegedly defamatory statements she made about an Oregon attorney.
Crystal Cox (right), a real estate agent and blogger from Eureka, Mont., set up a network of websites, including this one, that criticize the conduct of attorney Kevin Padrick in his role as trustee of the failed financial firm called Summit Accommodators, which collapsed in 2008 amid charges of fraud.
Among Cox’ accusations is that Padrick hired a hitman to kill her, a charge that Padrick vigorously denies. The attorney says that Cox’ allegations have so overwhelmed the search engines that his business is off more than 80% this year. “Google ‘Kevin Padrick’ and you’ll see the first 10 pages are from Crystal Cox,” Padrick told Oregon Live.
Cox, who sarcastically describes herself as an “Unhinged Blogger Exposing Corruption in the US Bankruptcy Courts,” fills her blog with accusations, obscenities and character assassination, tactics which are typical of hate bloggers. “‘Unhinged Blogger’ Crazy Crystal Cox Says that Jeff Manning of the Oregonian is Bought and Paid for AGAIN, oh and Jeff Manning, Oregonian, is an Asshole,” she titled one post. It’s filled with accusations about an investigative reporter for the Oregonian newspaper, none of which are backed by citations. The post is peppered with links to copies of the same article on other websites, most of which are presumably maintained by Cox, as well links to other hate sites that the author has created.
On the other hand, Cox has also assembled a substantial library of documents related to Kevin Padrick and the trust he administers. She presents most of these without comment, challenging her audience to do their own research. We demurred, but we admit that she appears to have done her homework.
In ruling that Cox was not entitled to the protections provided to mainstream news outlets, U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez said the blogger “was not a journalist because she offered no professional qualifications as a journalist or legitimate news outlet. She had no journalism education, credentials or affiliation with a recognized news outlet, proof of adhering to journalistic standards such as editing or checking her facts, evidence she produced an independent product or evidence she ever tried to get both sides of the story,” according to the AP report.
So who’s right in this case? Much as we find Cox’ vendetta-fueled tactics repugnant, we’re more concerned about any efforts to inhibit free speech, even by someone who is clearly a little nuts. However, we are also concerned about attempts to create distinctions between traditional and new media. We’d rather see this case judged as a libel issue, where precedents are clearly established. Why is the distinction between blogger and media outlet even meaningful at a time when properties like Huffington Post and Mashable can go from sideline to superpower in a matter of a couple of years?
There is an intriguing dimension to this case that the court didn’t address: the impact of Cox’ activities on her target’s search engine performance. The case illustrates that a motivated and energetic blogger can significantly damage someone else’s reputation by surrounding their name with negative keywords in search results. Is that a form of libel? Could Google be compelled to change its search algorithm as a consequence of a First Amendment court decision? Do we even want to go there?
News coverage of a fatal single-car crash that occurred early on Thanksgiving Day in our home town of Framingham, MA spotlights the tradeoffs between traditional news reporting and the less constrained world of the real-time Internet. Look at the distinctions between them and tell us what you think.
The first report of the crash came from Framingham Patch, the one-person news bureau that covers the town for AOL’s Patch network. It reported Thursday morning that a vehicle had struck a utility pole and tree at about 3:30 a.m. and that an occupant may have been killed. The news of the fatality wasn’t confirmed, but was speculation based upon police scanner requests for a medical examiner and accident reconstruction team.
It was nearly a full day before Patch published a more complete account of the accident, republished here unedited and in its entirety. The latest version is here.
Junior Koga Killed in Franklin St. Crash; Wife Pregnant
Members of the Framingham Brazilian community were discussing the death of Junior Koga on WSRO radio in Portuguese, on Twitter and even on Framingham Patch Thanksgiving day.
Friends say Junior Koga is man who crashed into a pole and then slammed into a tree killing himself on Franklin Street, early Thanksgiving morning around 3:10 a.m.
Framingham Police and other authorities have not returned calls or emails about the fatal crash. No official identification of the driver has been released.
At the scene, Thanksgiving morning Framingham Police requested, on the scanner, for the Massachusetts State Police reconstruction team, the Middlesex District Attorney’s office and the medical examiner.
Friends say Koga’s wife is pregnant. Koga, according to friends is a Brazilian national from Santa Catarina, a state in South Brazil. One friend said his wife is due to give birth in a couple of weeks. Koga is employed as a mechanic and lives in Framingham, according to friends. He is in his 30s.
Thiago Prado commented on Framingham Patch Thursday “very very sad news – Junior we gonna miss you.”
Nayara Martins, who tweeted the Framingham Patch video of the accident, also tweeted “Hate to see once again another life cut short so quickly because of driving drunk. When are people going to learn?! <|3 #RIPJunior”
Friends tell Framingham Patch Koga “came back from a night club, was brought to his home and got into his own car to go out again.”
Friends said they suspect alcohol may have been involved.
Police are still investigating, and have not released any information on the fatal crash, including an identification.
The crash happened just after the Mt. Wayte Shopping Center at 384 Franklin St.
At the scene, Framingham Police blocked off the road. The Framingham Fire department placed a sheet over the car lodged into the tree and then added a second sheet to block the scene, while awaiting the State Police reconstruction team, which was coming from another Thanksgiving fatality in Freetown.
A neighbor near the crash, who didn’t wish to be identified, said the driver was partially ejected from the car. “It is a nasty scene,” he said.
Nearly 10 hours after the Framingham Patch report appeared, the local Metrowest Daily News reported its version of the story, again reprinted here in its entirety.
Framingham man dies in car crash
A 31-year-old Framingham man died early Thanksgiving morning after crashing into a telephone pole and then a tree on Franklin Street, police said today.
Ricardo Junior, of 67 Georgetown Drive, was the only person involved in the one-vehicle crash, which happened at about 3:10 a.m. yesterday, police said.
“It looks like he was killed on impact,” Deputy Police Chief Craig Davis said.
Davis said alcohol may have been a factor, as police found several Heineken beer bottles in the vehicle Junior was driving. Some of the bottles were full, and others were broken, he said.
“The initial indication is the cause is excessive speed,” Davis said. “There was an excessive amount of damage to the car.”
Junior crashed in the 300-block of Franklin Street, near Newton Place, Davis said.
We were struck by several contrasts between the coverage by these two outlets and the questions they raise about the conventional rules of sourcing in this tweet-saturated times. The spelling, formatting and grammatical mistakes aside, it’s unlikely that the Patch story would have ever made it past the desk of an editor at a metro daily. Among the factual holes are:
The identity of the victim is unconfirmed and an age and address aren’t supplied.
Most of the details about the crash and the victim are sourced to unidentified friends.
Details about the reported pregnancy of the victim’s wife are sketchy and unconfirmed.
The police would neither confirm nor comment upon any of the facts in the story.
Perhaps most importantly, allegations that the driver was drunk are raised by unidentified “friends” but never confirmed.
In fact, the Patch story got an important fact wrong: the victim’s real name was Ricardo Junior, not Junior Koga. Other than that, though, Patch provided more information and better context than the official account published by the local newspaper. And it did so nearly 10 hours earlier.
Among the unique details in the Patch story are a photo, news that the victim’s wife is pregnant (unconfirmed, but likely, given the photo on Junior’s Facebook page), the location of his home town in Brazil and comments by friends who knew him.
On the role of alcohol in the crash, Patch provides context about the incident that the official account lacks. The report that Junior was driven home from a night club by friends would indicate that he was probably seriously intoxicated when he got in his car. It also raises questions about his judgment and responsibility, given that his wife is due to deliver a child shortly. However, that information is sourced to unidentified “friends.”
Community Service or Slipshod Reporting?
So the Patch account is better than that of the local newspaper, but its use of unconfirmed and anonymously sourced information would make it unfit to publish under the traditional rules of news journalism. But should those rules apply any more?
The Metrowest Daily News’ sole source in its coverage is the local police department, which is standard practice in these cases. Patch had no access to those official channels and so had to piece together its story from unidentified friends, talk radio accounts and Twitter chatter. Anonymous sourcing permitted Patch to beat the local daily by many hours and to add details that would never appear in the police log. In the hours since its account appeared, other people have confirmed the victim’s identity and added a few details via comments.
Anonymous sourcing is dangerous, though. While the events would indicate that Junior was drunk (high-speed, single-vehicle crash in the early morning hours on the eve of a holiday), there was no official confirmation of that fact. Driver impairment is an important issue not only because of the victim’s reputation but also for legal reasons. What if Junior was sober and responding to a friend’s call for help when he hit a police cruiser parked with its lights off? The town could be liable for damages.
Standard journalistic practice is to confirm a story through official channels before publishing, but standard practice assumes archival permanency. Online, our mistakes are quickly corrected. For example, in the time since we began writing this entry, Patch has already corrected the victim’s name. The Patch editors sacrificed absolutely accuracy for speed and the interests of residents who wanted details as quickly as possible. In the process, it made one major mistake and an inference that could have legal ramifications.
Patch’s sourcing style is increasingly typical of online-only news operations. Is it making the proper tradeoffs or sacrificing accuracy for expediency? Post your comments here.
The news just keeps getting better at The New York Times and the Financial Times, as new numbers indicate that paywalls really work if you’re among the most respected news organizations in the world.
The FT reported that it has breached the 250,000 subscriber mark, having grown digital subscriptions 30% during the last year. The FT charges about $390 for an annual subscription to its website, which would indicate total digital subscription revenues of nearly $100 million if everyone was paying the full annual price. However, the actual total is almost certainly lower than that, since print subscribers pay discounted fee and not all subscriptions are annual. However, the performance is still impressive. The FT said 100,000 of those subscriptions are from corporations.
The Times is confident enough in its paywall experiment to declare victory and begin branding itself as a social media poster child. Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger took the stage at the London School of Economics last week to crow about a report by lead mining firm NetProspex that declares that the Times is the number one most social company in the U.S., based upon the total number of employees using social media and their fan/follower reach. Sulzberger said the designation recognizes the success of individual employees, such as Nicholas Kristof and C.J. Chivers, at building their own social followings.
“In 2000, we were #3 in terms of uniques behind the Washington Post and USA Today,” Sulzberger said. “Today we’re proudly the #1 newspaper website, with a worldwide audience of over 45 million uniques…and that’s after we started asking readers to pay for unlimited access to our content.” The Times’ aggressive adoption of Twitter, in particular, has paid off in word-of-mouth awareness. Sulzberger said a Times story is now tweeted every four seconds.
Read a transcript of his comments for more examples. Note, in particular, the emphasis on “digital first,” and the speed with which the Times is creating hash tags and real-time Twitter feeds to lead the conversation on breaking news. Sulzberger also has some interesting points about the reading habits of mobile users and how they differ from those of traditional print subscribers. The ability to “literally get into bed” with readers is an opportunity to expand the Times’ franchise, not simply an adjunct to the print product.
The good news continues overseas, where News International reported a 10% increase in digital subscriptions to the Times and Sunday Times over the past three months to a total of more than 111,000. The company said it would start reporting monthly digital subscription updates, indicating confidence that the number will grow.
Does this mean paywalls are the answer to the industry’s woes? We’ll believe that when we start hearing similar success reports coming from major metro dailies that aren’t The New York Times or that don’t deliver high-value financial news. For now, publishers can take some comfort in the fact that the hemorrhaging appears to be under control. Print circulation is actually growing in emerging markets like Latin America and Southeast Asia, and North American advertising revenues actually were up slightly last year.
Nonprofits Gain Traction
Nonprofit news organizations are some of the most promising candidates to replace the investigative journalism that’s been lost to cost-cutting in mainstream media, but one of the keys to success is to go beyond simply filling that gap. That’s according to an impressive new report from Knight Foundation, co-authored by our good friend Michelle McLellan, that looks at critical success factors for nonprofit success.
Poynter’s Rick Edmonds has an excellent summary of the study, which looked at the business models of seven promising local ventures, ranging from the ambitious Texas Tribune to the much smaller, hyperlocal St. Louis Beacon. While none has reached self-sustainability just yet, these startups are learning tactics that can serve as a model to others.
The report cites three “next-stage” opportunities, but they can really be boiled down to one truth: Go beyond replacing the newspaper model. Successful ventures are leveraging the unique advantages of online media to deliver information that can’t be expressed in print, such as databases and first-person video. That means hiring technology and data analysis specialists, not just reporters. The featured nonprofits are also diversifying their income streams beyond a few big foundations to include paid memberships, syndication fees, events and sponsorships.
Knight’s study is an encouraging sign that investigative journalism will not perish from the earth, and may even be reborn in a smaller, focused and more-efficient form.
Go Google+
Has your news organization registered its Google+ page yet? Better hurry. Google opened up its rapidly growing social network to company pages on Monday, and news operations like The New York Times have already staked a claim (tagline: “All the News That’s Fit to +”). Even if you have no immediate plans to build a Google+ outpost yet, you want to be sure to grab your brand before somebody else does. As many businesses learned with Twitter, failing to register accounts on new social networks can create an embarrassing situation when others begin speaking on your behalf.
When Tropical Storm Irene plowed into the New England coastline a week ago, Susan Petroni (right) was ready. Armed with a computer and a cell phone, she set out to mobilize the citizens of the largest town in the U.S. to help her cover the story.
Petroni live-blogged throughout the storm, encouraging her readers at Framingham.Patch.com to be her eyes and ears. Readers snapped cell-phone phones and e-mailed them to Petroni to post on the Patch site. Locals flocked to the Framingham Patch page on Facebook to update each other on power outages and roads blocked by fallen trees. Petroni stayed on the phone with town officials to update her audience on disaster preparedness warnings and clean-up plans. For residents who had lost power, the Framingham Patch Twitter feed kept updates coming to cell phones.
In the days that followed, Susan Petroni’s online outposts became rallying points for citizens trying to find out when power would be restored or whether the opening of the school year would be delayed. Much of this information came not from her but from each other. Facebook was a quicker way to find out where the lights were coming on than the overwhelmed officials at the local utility.
The same scene played out at dozens of Patch sites up and down the east coast, demonstrating the power and agility of a new type of media we might call “curated citizen journalism.” It’s a model that relies upon the news judgment of professionals like Susan Petroni, who is an accomplished and award-winning journalst, and the contributions of concerned citizens who want to be part of the action.
Like many online journalists, Petroni left the daily newspaper grind for Patch in order to gain scheduling flexibility and spend more time with her young daughter. She posts five to seven stories on a typical weekday and a couple on Saturdays and Sundays. Like any good Metro reporter, she covers the important local government meetings and any news that would be likely to make the regional newspaper. However, most of her posts are short and few are earth-shaking.
About the Editor
One other Patch innovation that strikes us as novel and worth emulating: the “about the editor” page. Mainstream media typically sanitizes these profiles to limit them to professional accomplishments, but Susan Petroni’s page is far more personal. It includes disclosure of her religious beliefs, political affiliations and even opinions on some local hot-button issues. “We promise always…to adhere to the principles of good journalism,” the profile states. “However, we also acknowledge that true impartiality is impossible because human beings have beliefs.”
This approach is both endearing and practical. It gives the newsgathering operation a personal face while also heading off the constant bickering that takes place in newspaper comment sections over the political leanings of the editors. You may not like Susan Petroni’s politics, but at least you know what they are. And what’s wrong with that?
A typical Patch story might update residents on how long traffic will be disrupted by a sewer renovation program or tell how school bus routes are being changed. A weekly police log update tells where crime was a problem in the last week. Not Pulitzer Prize-winning stuff, but these are the stories that matter to the daily lives of the people who live nearby.
Curated Citizen Journalism
Patch encourages citizens to contribute to the effort without mixing their contributions with those of the single professional editor and assortment of freelancers who make up the core of the typical Patch site. Bloggers from the community get their own digital sandboxes, and comments are clearly distinguished from reported stories. People are free to post news reports to Facebook or the forums, but news only makes the main news feed after it’s been vetted by a pro.
Patch disclaims reports from the community, but also encourages them like crazy. There has been little problem with error or abuse, says Danielle Horn, Associate Regional Editor for Patch Metrowest Boston. The key is to know when it’s appropriate to turn over the reporting job to the citizens and when a pro needs to step in.
“If someone says the power is out on their street, then the power is probably out,” Horn says. “We haven’t run into any situations where people have posted news that is clearly incorrect. [Community newsgathering] is working out great.”
Patch has a thin staffing model, with typically one full-time editor anchoring each region. “Each editor knows his or her community like the back of their hand,” says Horn. The meat and potatoes of a Patch site is the little details that matter in residents’ everyday lives: library programs, school sports and street closings. “We want to be a resource for information that can enhance people’s daily lives,” Horn says.
Addicted
We’ve developed a mild addiction to our local Patch site, and we even contributed some photos to the recent storm coverage. Why? Because we were asked. As our photos began to show up on the gallery, we found ourselves mildly intoxicated by participating in storm coverage. We were also gratified to get a thank-you note from Petroni herself. At the nearby Boston Globe, e-mails to editors generally disappear into a black hole, and phone calls are rarely returned.
Patch, which now boasts more than 850 hyperlocal sites nationwide, has been criticized for maintaining a sweatshop atmosphere and for paying its editors meager wages. In our brief conversation with Petroni (corporate policy dictated our interview request be directed to a regional editor), she said the flexible working conditions were one of the best parts of the job. Horn noted that while Patch editors are expected to produce content seven days a week, they have considerable latitude in how they do it.
Essential Truths
The jury is still out on whether Patch will succeed, but we believe the experiment is already proving some essential new truths:
The Internet rewrites the economics of news. Our town could never support a daily newspaper, but it can pay the salary of a single editor with no overhead other than a PC and a couple of cameras. Thanks to thousands of layoffs at newspapers nationwide, quality journalists can be found who will work for modest salaries in exchange for workplace flexibility.
Hyperlocal is instinctively appealing. We long ago stopped reading our regional newspaper because so little of its coverage related to our local community. In contrast, the daily Patch e-mail is packed with news that impacts our daily lives, mundane as some of those issues may be.
Empowerment is intoxicating. Patch is drawing lines that enable the community to participate in newsgathering while keeping a firm editorial hand on the tiller. As we waited for Internet service to return following the storm, we monitored the Patch Facebook page from the local library and found it to be a more timely source of information than the statements of utility officials.
In our town, and in hundreds of towns like it, Patch is filling a gap left by the collapse of traditional media. The question is whether its business model is sustainable, and a lot of people think it isn’t. We hope AOL will stick with this venture and innovate beyond the traditional advertising-funded model. Even if the Patch business fails, it has laid a foundation upon which others can build.
We will not be charging to view the following content online: the front page, classifieds, all advertisements and advertising promotions, special sections, auctions, community calendar or customer service pages.
Webpages that will be charging for viewership – after 15 free views per month – are local, state, national and world news pages; local and regional sports; news accessed by Facebook and Twitter; opinion pages; obituaries; entertainment (except AP wire); health, outdoors, weddings, anniversaries; births, lottery; weather; archives; comments; photo galleries and videos.
A monthly online subscription is $4.99; if you have a print subscription, your online subscription is only $1.99 per month. An annual online subscription is $49.99 per year; or if you have a print subscription, it is only $19.99.
Got all that? Better keep a pen and paper handy, because once you get to those 15 views, get out the credit card. That is, unless you’re reading the front page or a “special section,” whatever that is. And forget about the kind of free pass from Twitter that The New York Times gives you. Social media referrals count toward the 15-ppm limit.
Existing print subscribers get free digital access. Non-print subscribers can either sign up for an “all-access” package for $19.95 per month, which includes digital access and a print subscription for one person, or purchase a digital-only subscription—the price of which varies based on location. Oahu residents pay $9.99 per month or $50 per year; other Hawaii residents pay $4.95 per month or $25 per year, and those outside the state of Hawaii pay $1.95 per month or $10 per year. The site is also offering a $0.99 day pass, primarily aimed at tourists and former tourists who are interested in specific events.
Clear enough? If you really want to know what’s going on in Hawaii, you’re best off moving out of state. God forbid you’re unlucky enough to live in the newspaper’s home city.
Digital-only subscribers get unfettered access to our site for $6.95 per month. This subscription fee will include the iPad app as well. Current print subscribers pay a reduced rate of only $2.95 to add these services…Passers-by and casual readers still will have access to breaking news, video, photos and blogs. We also will allow all users access to 25 premium pages monthly as a sample.
We’re not saying variety is a bad thing – lots of businesses compete on price – but when the product is already perceived as a commodity, then confusion tends to drive customers away. Small publishers evidently don’t see it that way, given the large number that are settling in the paywall camp these days. But are they growing their businesses or just trying to protect what’s left of them?
The biggest flaw in a paywall isn’t that the math is questionable, or even that a wall is inherently a backward-facing strategy, aimed at stacking sandbags around a paper’s content…The biggest flaw…is that walling up your content is an invitation to free competitors…to come and take away your readers.
One of the major reasons the newspaper industry is in such dire straits right now is because barrriers to entry have collapsed. Paywalls are an invitation to competitors to take away all but the most loyal (i.e., oldest) readers. AOL’s Patch has recently opened an outpost in our home town, and we admire the work its tiny staff is doing to bring us news from around the corner that our regional daily doesn’t cover. Despite allegations of sweatshop-like working conditions at Patch, we believe AOL will have no trouble finding journalists to staff its local offices. Between Patch, labor-of-love sites like this one and an assortment of listservs and Facebook pages, we’re more aware of what’s going on in our community than we ever were when we subscribed to a daily.
We believe that paywalls can work if they are simple, transparent and perceived by the customer to be reasonably priced. There is room in the market for services that could federate many small publishers under a single subscription plan, and we expect some cohesion to emerge from the current mess.
Ultimately, though, paywalls will only work if the publishers who deploy them can deliver value their readers can’t get anywhere else. Can the newspaper owners holding the sandbags today honestly say they are doing that?
Combining the Saturday and Sunday editions isn’t a cutback in frequency, but a reader service, said publisher Eric Bauer. “It will be available in the Saturday mail, so people will have more time to enjoy it,” he said. And editor Gabriel Pruitt is almost giddy about cutting frequency to thrice-weekly: “I could not be more proud and excited about how we will better serve this community…Readers can expect more in-depth stories, insightful information, photos and videos.”
The words “reduction,” “cutback” or “cost-cutting” don’t appear anywhere in the story. In fact, there’s no indication that the changes are anything but a reader service. We suspect that if the announcement was coming from the local public works department, it would be handled quite differently.
Print stalwarts will be relieved to hear that at least one major professional group is still committed to the supremacy of ink on dead trees: America’s school administrators. A recent survey conducted by The Haselton Group found that administrators prefer print editions of top trade magazines rather than online editions or e-newsletters from the same publications. Administrators get 45% of their industry-related information from printed trade magazines, “far outweighing the combined total of next three greatest sources: blogs, national newspapers and local newspapers.”
Administrators are joined in their loyalty by the many college journalism programs that are still teaching inverted pyramid style and how their students can find their first job on a daily.
Publishers send us a lot of books to review, and we wish we could get to them all more quickly. It took us 18 months to finally read Ken Doctor’s Newsonomics, but we’re glad we did. Doctor’s perspectives on the future of news are as fresh today as they were in early 2010. We were surprised and encouraged by his optimism.
Many journalists view the economics of their profession as bitter medicine. Doctor makes it clear that survival in the new world will mean understanding the business, but those journalists who know how to package and market their work will thrive. And they won’t have to sell their souls or lower their standards to do it. Here’s our review on Amazon:
Journalists hate to talk about the economics of their profession, which is why this is such a valuable book. Doctor proceeds from the assumption that the newspaper industry as we have known it is an irreversible decline and that only a handful of national dailies will exist in a few years. There’s no reason to belabor that point, and he doesn’t.
Instead, he devotes the rest of the book to the much more important discussion of how journalism can be reinvented and deliver value in an economically sustainable model. His perspective is both optimistic and uplifting. Doctor sees the end of the vertically integrated news organization as creating opportunities for focused and nimble ventures to emerge that can indeed deliver quality journalism and pay their reporters a living wage. Competition will raise quality standards and ultimately deliver a better product. We have to go through an ugly deconstruction process in order to get there, but Doctor sees bright light at the end of the tunnel.
A lot of journalists are uncomfortable with Doctor’s views because they fear the loss of the comfortable salaries and modest output demands they have long enjoyed. Well, welcome to the new world. Jobs are going away and journalism is becoming a business of self-employed contractors. Journalists with initiative, innovation and skill will be able to make a better living working for multiple masters than they could have made working for media companies. News organizations will be under pressure to be more responsive to their readers’ demands, but Doctor does not believe this will result in the “dumbing down” of news. Tiered models will emerge that deliver high-quality journalism to those who are willing to pay a modest amount for it.
Newsonomics was published 18 months ago, but its lessons and predictions are just as valid today as they were then. This is a clear, concise and ultimately hopeful look at the economics of $45 billion industry in the middle of wholesale reinvention.
How bad is it in the magazine world? Two years ago we bought a subscription to ESPN magazine after finding a promotional offer of 26 issues for just $2. We subscribed simply for the experience of getting a fortnightly magazine for less than the cost of postage.
But it turns out we were getting a lot more than just ESPN. Around the time our subscription expired, we started getting Golf magazine every month in the mail. Golf’s promotional price is $10 a year, but we never paid for or requested a subscription. Then, about three months ago, Sports Illustrated began showing up in our mailbox each week. We like that because we’ve actually paid for Sports Illustrated in the past. However, we aren’t paying for this one. It appears to be another side=benefit of our $2 ESPN deal.
We’re not sure if this embarrassment of riches is at an end, but we do know that altogether we’re receiving about $70 worth of magazine subscriptions for $2. Why? Because the publishers are desperate. New Audit Bureau of Circulations rules have significantly relaxed the criteria for paid circulation. That means the publisher statements for Golf and Sports Illustrated now count us as subscribers despite the fact that we never requested or paid for either subscription. Any advertiser that thinks it’s getting an engaged audience through this accounting sleight-of-hand is fooling itself. Don’t get us wrong: We hope the SI subscription never runs out, but we are never, ever going to pay for it. Are we as valuable to an advertiser as a paying subscriber? Not so much. Is the print magazine industry in a crisis? We think so. BTW, we did not get the attractive tote bag that comes with a paid subscription..
Gannett Pounds 700 Nails in Print’s Coffin
If you need any further evidence that print has no future, look no further than Gannett’s announcement of 700 layoffs this week, says Poynter’s Rick Edmonds. Revenues at Gannett’s 81 community newspapers were down 7% overall and nearly 10% in print, even as most mainstream media are experiencing a modest recovery right now. Not so in print. Publishing operating margins fells four times as fast as revenues, and it’s been a decade since Gannett bought any print properties at all. Meanwhile, the company has reduced its stable of newspapers from 99 to 81. Its broadcast and online operations are actually doing just fine, but they’re not growing fast enough to make up for declines in print advertising. That’s the problem across the industry. Online revenues are growing, but the volume and margins are a tiny fraction of print revenue.
Gannett, which traditionally dances to the tune of Wall Street, is sending a message in aggressively cutting back on its already lean print businesses. In that respect, it’s ahead of the market. Edmonds points out that, ironically, “Metro papers like the Boston Globe and Dallas Morning News that have adopted a high price/high quality circulation strategy know readers will not be satisfied with skinny papers that have little worth reading. So those newsrooms are protected and, in a few cases, growing.” For a while, that is. Those papers are milking an aging but still profitable population that will dwindle sharply over the next decade. When the tipping point is reached and paid subscribers no longer justify a printed product, the closures will happen en masse.
Nonprofits Figuring It Out
We wrote recently about California Watch, a nonprofit investigative news operation that is breaking even by syndicating its content at low cost to dozens of news outlets to customize as they wish. California Watch and others like it understand the economics of multiple revenue streams. Few newspapers can afford to support large investigative reporting staffs, but a bunch of smaller publishers can collectively contribute enough to make an independent investigative team viable.
Co-director and veteran New England TV reporter Joe Bergantino (left) says, “To be successful you have to walk through the door and immediately think about how to make money.” And what’s wrong with that? For the last 50 years or so, journalists have had the luxury of having the bills paid by people they don’t even know. Very few businesses operate that way, so Bergantino and his tiny team are simply functioning by the same rules that small businesses have lived with for years. Does that make the quality of their work less reputable?
Got HTML5?
The Financial Times’ new mobile app racked up 100,000 users in its first week. The twist is that the FT decided to develop the app in the new HTML5 format instead of coding it for the iPad or Android platform. If you don’t know what HTML5 is, here’s a tutorial. It’s an important new technology that could make Flash animation and other plug-in-based multimedia obsolete.
HTML5 works entirely within the browser and gives the publisher considerably more control over display, organization and animation than earlier HTML versions did. Information can be stored and read offline, as well as updated automatically without user intervention (No more Adobe updates; how cool is that?) The trick is that most browsers don’t fully support it yet, but that’s just a matter of time. Apple’s Safari is one of the best browsers for HTML5 apps. That’s not surprising, given that Steve Jobs has engaged in a bitter public dispute with Adobe over Flash. The downside for Apple is that HTML5 enables publishers to deliver apps themselves without using the iTunes store as an intermediary. That’s why the FT is updating its content directly, without going through the iTunes store. HTML5 will also make it easier for publishers like Playboy, whose content wouldn’t make it past the Apple censors, has also gone the HTML5 route.
Miscellany
If you’ve ever wondered whether the image you’re about to publish has been Photoshopped, try out this new service from Google. Upload or type the URL of an image and Google will now scan its database for images just like it – including the exact same image. We’re not sure what it will find if given a photo of one of Lady Gaga’s dresses, but for those beautiful sunset landscapes that come in from “citizen journalists,” it might be worth a try, just to be safe.
John Locke has become the first self-published author to sell over 1 million books on Kindle. The 60-year-old Louisville, KY resident has written nine novels, mostly thrillers, and charges only 99 cents for the Kindle versions. He says he has no intention of raising his prices. Having brought in about a million dollars this way, Locke is making a decent income for a novelist, especially since he doesn’t have to pay publisher and distributor costs that typically leave the author with only about 10% of a book’s cover price.
In deference to Huffington Post, The New York Times plans to intermingle news and opinion in its “Week in Review” section, saying, “We thought readers would find it more useful to have the stories, photographs and charts offered in an integrated way.” Back in the day, op-ed sections themselves were controversial. Now they will be indistinguishable, although the Times says it will clearly label opinionated content.
And Finally…
This one is almost too bizarre to be believed. A couple weeks ago, it was revealed that a popular Syrian lesbian blogger who went by the name of “A Gay Girl in Damascus” is actually a 40-year-old married dude from Scotland. Despite the fact that gay activists in Syria believe this guy put their safety at risk, he continues to blog under the pseudonym, although he did post a profuse apology for the ruse.
The very same week, a guy in Ohio named Bill Graber admitted that he is Paula Brooks, an executive editor for lesbian site LezGetReal.com. Graber used his wife’s name in the hoax and even posed as the father of the fictitious blogger for media interviews, claiming Paula is deaf. Graber got away with hoax for three years because he was so believable, according to LezGetReal’s managing editor.
Months ago, Graber, posing as ”Paula Brooks,” reportedly encouraged “Amina Arraf” to start a blog, but neither Graber nor MacMaster knew the other was really a man posing as a lesbian woman online. According to the Washington Post, Arraf and Brooks “often flirted” with each other online as well.
This week, after both hoax identities unraveled, Graber described his interactions to the Washington Post with Arraf/MacMaster as a “major sock-puppet hoax crash into a major sock-puppet hoax.”
We can only hope neither sock puppet survived the collision.
We say “trust” because that is at the essence of Densmore’s argument in “From Paper to Persona:” the vast profusion of online information has created a trust crisis that represents a business opportunity. People have no incentive to pay for information any more, but they may be willing to pay for information they can believe. The risk is that the collaborative effort needed to solve this problem may be so massive that no one will attempt to undertake it.
Densmore’s “nut graph” is the following:
Free information is so devalued and so frequently untrustworthy that the public is now looking for alternatives that save time, promise reliability and are always available from multiple platforms.
Sound familiar? Have you recently sought medical advice online? The most common complaint we hear about the Web in general these days is that you can’t trust anything you read. While Wikipedia, Snopes and IMDB are pretty accurate, they aren’t going to tell you much about the possible negative effects of drug interactions or the real risks of radon in the average home.
Not to mention whether Osama bin Laden is alive or dead, a conspiracy theory topic that already shows signs of reaching Elvis Presleyan proportions. Not only has news become a commodity, it has also become so politically polarized that partisan echo chambers continually corrupt whatever the reliable channels of news may tell us.
Densmore proposes that this chaos may be quelled by consortia created – with or without public funding – that “uniformly exchange payments for the sharing of text, video, music, game plays, entertainment, advertising views, etc., across the Internet… Consumer users should have a choice of providers – agents – for accessing services, with one account and one ID providing simple access to multiple resources.” Sort of like iTunes, except a lot broader in scope.
This is going to be a tough pill for many conventional media veterans to swallow, however. It requires that they migrate from “the most-trusted information source” to and “information valet,” which Densmore describes as “a combination of curator, adviser, authenticator and retailer of personalized news, entertainment and service information from anywhere.”
The proposal makes sense, but the problem is that news people aren’t trained to be valets; they’re educated in the school of hard knocks and worn shoe leather, where scoops were trophies and one would no more cooperate with a competitor than evict one’s mother from her apartment. But as this blog has been arguing for three years – and Densmore argues much more eloquently – all that stuff has got to change.
Sustaining journalism requires rethinking the very notion of advertising, and of news as a service…Aggregate for advertisers and sponsors audience measurement and selected demographic data…track, aggregate, sort and share revenues, including payments to users for the use of their “persona.” The user should be in control of the data use and flow concerning them.
In other words, trade the two assets consumers have to offer – money and personal information – for a service they increasingly crave: truth. The answer isn’t all-or-nothing notions like paywalls; it’s creating something with perceived value and flexible options for paying for it.
Can Densmore’s vision work? It has to. The two billion people in the world who are now connected to the Internet have already moved beyond the notion that information is a scarce commodity, even if a lot of news publishers still haven’t. The information-consuming public understands that today’s problem is not lack of knowledge but lack of trust. News organizations are actually in a pretty good position to deliver on the trust equation, but they have to discard the notion of propriety and exclusivity.
In Densmore’s words:
The Next Newsroom could be a service organization — like a law or accounting firm — and it will be paid accordingly. For now, it will be extremely difficult to convince people to pay for such a service. But as the years go by, it will be seen as an absolutely indispensible way to get through the day. People will become as reliant on their “newshare” as on their doctor, lawyer, accountant, teacher or business colleague, or for 1their water, gas heating or phone service, all of which are services for which we pay on a project or metered basis.
California Watch’s “On Shaky Ground,” an account of the dangerous vulnerability of many California schools to collapse in the event of an earthquake, is “old-fashioned, shoe-leather, box-opening, follow-the-string journalism, and it is well done,” Doctor says. It also cost over a half million dollars to report, an amount that would have caused most newspaper publishers to gulp even before the industry entered its string of 21 consecutive quarterly revenue declines.
But a half million is a relative bargain when you consider the number of media organizations that benefited from it. Pieces of the series ran in six major dailies and were picked up statewide by ABC-affiliate broadcasters. Top public radio stations in the Bay Area and Los Angeles ran with it, and a number of ethnic and online outlets (including more than 125 Patch sites) also picked up the coverage. Many localized the content by snipping local maps or extracting information about their area from the voluminous database of school-by-school information that the project produced.
Doctor notes that California Watch is building a new kind of syndication business around investigative journalism, which is the branch of news that has been hardest hit by budget cuts over the last three years. This is not a reincarnation of the Associated Press model, which mainly delivered breaking news. Bloggers, citizen media and Twitter have diminished the value of that function considerably. What citizen journalism can’t do it spend 20 months developing a story, which is what California Watch did.
California Watch is still “feeling its way along,” in Doctor’s words. Syndication revenue won’t support its current $2.7 million annual budget, so donations are grants are still essential to its livelihood. But look at what donors get for their money: About 70% of that $2.7 million goes to support the project’s 14 journalists. By comparison, a typical daily newspaper’s editorial costs are about 20% of overall expenses. These nonprofit models are vastly more efficient than the newspaper investigative teams they’re replacing.
And when you spread those costs among a lot of subscribers who pay a few thousand bucks a year to get access to the reports, it’s really not that expensive. “An owner…can hardly reject the offer of paying one-hundredth of the cost for space-filling, audience-interesting content,” Doctor writes. Particularly when compared to the value of a single child’s life who might have been saved (hearings are already under way).
Doctor’s analysis raises an important point about the evolving economics of information. In a world in which raw data has become a nearly valueless commodity, value is derived from filtering and contextualizing information for specific audiences. The small California weekly that could never dream of spending a half million dollars on an investigative project can spend a few hundred dollars to buy the work of a dedicated investigative team and then extract the information that’s relevant to its readers.
This is a much more efficient way to deliver news, but taking advantage of it requires discarding treasured assumptions like the not-invented-here syndrome and the belief that scope and scale define importance. It’s good news for local publishers. In the traditional model, only a handful of California papers could have tackled a project the size of On Shaky Ground. Now nearly everyone can share the wealth.
The Long, Slow Bleed
Lest anyone think the lack of major metro daily closures over the last couple of years is a sign of strength in the newspaper industry, consider recent earnings reports. Ad revenues at Gannett, McClatchy, Media General and Journal Communications were all off between 6% and 11% in the first quarter, and there’s no sign of a turnaround. Alan Mutter’s analysis makes an important point about why newspaper advertising isn’t sharing in the sputtering recovery.
The more advertisers of all types experiment with Web, mobile and social advertising, the more they will come to appreciate the power of the digital media to tightly target qualified prospects while granularly measuring the costs and effectiveness of their campaigns.
In sales jargon, the buying process is a funnel, with a large number of uninformed prospects at the mouth and a few qualified buyers at the tip. As consumers increasingly research their purchase decisions online, the need for merchants to advertise their availability declines. They get more leverage from intercepting buyers during the decision-making process. The deeper into that process buyers get, the better the prospect of converting them to customers. And incidentally, vendors only have to pay for actions like clicks and leads, not vague measures like circulation.
The reason newspaper closures have largely stopped is that the industry’s near-death experience in 2008 – 2009 focused publishers on slashing costs, raising subscription prices and squeezing as much blood as possible out of the stone of an aging and shrinking circulation base. That is not a prescription for growth. We continue to stand by our 2006 prediction that major metro daily print newspapers will all but disappear by 2025. In fact, we think it’ll happen sooner than that. It’s just that death will come from cancer, not heart attack.
Miscellany
The Las Vegas Review-Journal is expanding its business model beyond pure advertising. according to a press release, a partnership with parent company Stephens Media LLC’s digital arm will enable the Review-Journal to launch a service to provide local businesses:
…full website, branding and logo design; hosting and customer support for websites and related digital services; email marketing; mobile marketing; training to provide local businesses easy tools to maintain and update their own sites and analyze web traffic; search engine optimization and search engine marketing; customer reputation management with daily reporting; social media presence and tracking tools for digital and traditional marketing efforts to ensure monitoring of ROI.
Desperation often drives innovation, and the miserable state of the Las Vegas economy no doubt played a role in this quest for new revenue sources. We think it’s a smart move; most small businesses have no idea how to market themselves online and a local newspaper is a trusted partner that’s in a great position to give them a hand.
AOL’s Patch network of hyperlocal news sites intends to recruit 8,000 bloggers over the next few days. It’s asking each of its 800 sites to sign up 10 community members to blog. No word on whether the contributors will be paid, but given that Arianna Huffington is now running the show, we think we know the answer to that one.
And Finally…
Reports emerged in the Twittersphere early this week that the world’s last manufacturer of mechanical typewriters was closing down its India production plant. A lot of people, including us, were taken in by this. But there’s good news for the old-timers who still appreciate the clatter of metal on paper. Atlantic Wire reports that several factories in China, Japan and Indonesia are still manufacturing typewriters. Even if production shuts down, there’s a pretty good used market. For old time’s sake, we bought an IBM Selectric, which used retail for $450 in the 1970s, for a buck at a yard sale a couple of years back. We’re still not sure what to do with it.
Should journalists avoid expressing opinion in their social media comments for fear of calling their objectivity into question? Or is the myth of real objectivity finally being torn by a global conversation in which everyone is expected to weigh in with his or her views?
Ingram thinks the policy is nuts, and the story’s headline – “Newspapers and Social Media: Still Not Really Getting It” – leaves no question that Ingram’s objectivity isn’t in doubt. We’re not so sure we agree with him.
We’ve written three books about social media, and we buy in fully to the idea that we are all better off when there is an open and free exchange of views about just about anything. However, a journalist’s ability to behave in an impartial manner – even if he or she has an opinion – is a core skill of the profession.
The issue isn’t whether people are biased or not: Everyone has opinions. It’s whether a professional journalist can put those opinions aside in the name of telling a story objectively. The ability to do that is essential to good journalism. It’s what enabled Alex Haley to draw a revealing interview out of American Nazi Party head George Lincoln Rockwell for a Playboy interview in 1966, despite the fact that Rockwell wouldn’t even look Haley in the eye during the session.
We frankly worry less about how opinions expressed on Twitter may raise doubts about a reporter’s impartiality in the minds of readers and more about how they may influence sources. Another core asset that professional journalists and media institutions bring to the table is access: They can reach people in the know because they’ve earned their trust. Revealing bias about an issue may influence a reporter’s ability to speak candidly to people who hold contrary opinions. That isn’t right, but it’s human nature.
Does this mean reporters shouldn’t engage in social media conversations? Of course it doesn’t. For one thing, the issue is situational. Sports and entertainment reporters for example, have more latitude to share their views than journalists covering a presidential campaign. And even a reporter covering Chicago City Hall probably isn’t going to do himself or his employer any damage by expressing a preference for the Cubs over the White Sox.
Then there’s the issue of language. It’s one thing to called Donald Trump “unconventional” or “controversial,” and quite another to refer to him as a “fruitcake.” Social media has become synonymous with rampant editorializing, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Journalists can add value to a discussion without using inflammatory words. In fact, a voice of reason is often a welcome respite from the flame throwing that characterizes many online debates.
As to the Star‘s prohibition on trashing coworkers or tipping one’s hand on a scoop, that strikes us as common sense. In any case, we suspect the management at the paper would consider the circumstances before taking action against an employee in that situation.
We’re curious about your views, particularly if you work for a media organization. Does your employer put strict limits on what you can say in social media, and if so does it enforce those rules? Let us know, and let’s have our own rational discussion.
Paywalls and Social Media
Mashable looks at three news organizations with paid subscription models and asks how they’re faring in social media. Paywalls are a problem in social channels because they go against the culture of free information exchange. Mashable’s Meghan Peters says encountering a truncated story on a link from Twitter or Facebook is an “unpleasant reader experience.” She talks to community managers at the Dallas Morning News, The Economist and the Honolulu Civic Beat.
All treat their social followings differently, but all are hyper-conscious of not delivering poor experiences to fans and followers. The Economist has actually made its paywall a bit more porous recently. Visitors can now read a limited number of articles each month, whereas previously the entire site was gated. The strategy has produced a surge in social media referrals, says the site’s community manager.
The Civic Beat has what we think is the most interesting strategy. The site is free to casual visitors at any time, but readers who return frequently are asked to subscribe. The timing of the paywall is based upon an algorithm that takes frequency and time spent on the site into account. “If you read a couple of times a week, it will take a while before we ask you to register,” says Dan Zelikman, the marketing and community host.
Miscellany
The New Zealand Press Association (NZPA) is closing after 132 years, apparently a victim to a major subscriber’s decision to go it alone. The NZPA is an agency that employs a staff of about 40 journalists and provides up to 1,000 news items to New Zealand’s news outlets each day. Until five years ago, the agency used an Associated Press-style model in which all New Zealand newspapers shared their content. More recently, it has focused on providing original reporting. The union that represents journalists in New Zealand said the closure was “a huge loss for journalism.”
With their ranks depleted by layoffs, media organizations are becoming appealing targets for pranksters with an agenda. Last week, a group called US Uncut, which describes itself as “a burgeoning grassroots movement pressuring corporate tax cheats to pay their fair share,” succeeded in taking in both USA Today and the Associated Press with a fake press release announcing that General Electric would donate its entire $3.2 billion tax fund to charity. The AP story that ran in USA Today is here. The stunt was pulled off with the assistance of Yes Lab, an organization that describes itself as “a series of brainstorms and trainings to help activist groups carry out media-getting creative actions.”
We expect we’ll see more stunts like these as media organizations continue to pare back on frivolous expenses like copy editing and fact-checking. We’re just waiting for the story about the Nigerian princes with the huge inheritance to share to hit The Wall Street Journal.
Crystal Cox (right), a real estate agent and blogger from Eureka, Mont., set up a network of websites, including this one, that criticize the conduct of attorney Kevin Padrick in his role as trustee of the failed financial firm called Summit Accommodators, which collapsed in 2008 amid charges of fraud.
All treat their social followings differently, but all are hyper-conscious of not delivering poor experiences to fans and followers. The Economist has actually made its paywall a bit more porous recently. Visitors can now read a limited number of articles each month, whereas previously the entire site was gated. The strategy has produced a surge in social media referrals, says the site’s community manager.
