Drumbeat of terrible earnings news continues

As if the newspaper industry needs any more bad news, a new survey finds that high-margin print classified ads perform dismally compared to online competition. The only exception: recruiting blue-collar workers. Quoting:

‘A survey of human resource executives revealed that print ranked the lowest when it comes time to finding good candidates. ‘Statistically and anecdotally,’ editors with Classified Intelligence wrote, ‘print advertising is an ineffective medium for recruiting candidates.’ Seventy percent of respondents said print was either ‘very ineffective’ or ‘ineffective’ up 60% from 2006. Only 14% of the 70 recruiters polled said that print was a good way to find employees. One interesting piece of information from the study: Recruiters did give print high marks for finding blue-collar candidates.”

It’s getting a little bizarre out there

Perhaps some unscrupulous publishers are taking advantage of the situation

• In the first case of its kind that we can remember, a publisher has been fined for running a journalism sweatshop. E&P reports that the Chinese Daily News has to pay $5.2 million for allegedly forcing reporters to file five stories a day and to rush between news conferences and interviews. Ad quotas were unreasonably high and production workers were forced to labor nonstop. Reporters testified that they had to work six days a week, 12 hours a day, but weren’t able to complain because of pressure and the culture of intimidation. We’ve heard that morale is bad in newsrooms pretty much everywhere, but this is extreme!

• And this would be funny if it weren’t true. The following item is reprinted in its entirety from Media Post: “Under a new Wall Street Journal policy, if a reporter writes a book based on a newspaper story, Rupert Murdoch wants a piece of the action, reports Crain’s New York. Any reporter’s book that uses research for Journal stories would qualify. In exchange a share of the book’s proceeds, the newspaper provides marketing and advertising support for the title. Most publishers do not require such a fee.”

Bright spots: some small-town papers are thriving

Not all newspapers are suffering. While the big metro dailies struggle to become more local, a host of existing local newspapers are seeing revenues and circulation grow to record levels. The secret seems to be focusing on mom-and-pop advertisers, making editors a part of the communities they serve and coming up with new ways to get the paper into the hands of everyone in the community.

E&P reports on several, including “the publisher of two paid Texas weeklies that between them don’t quite sell 5,000 copies: the Aransas Pass Progress and the Ingleside Index. The papers ended 2007 up 14% in ad revenue from 2006. ‘We are planning for a similar 2008,'” the publisher says.

Most of these papers are free, by the way, and that’s how they’re getting results for advertisers. Quoting one publisher: “I can remember for years Bill Dillard, the head of [department store] Dillard’s, would tell all of us daily newspaper publishers year after year — you have to get into more households. I don’t think he said you have to go out and get more paid subscribers.”

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Alan Mutter has expertly documented the crumbling business models of American newspapers, often finding insights in the financial reports that everyone else has missed. In this post, he focuses on the good news: there’s evidence that some small publishers are figuring out innovative new publishing models that are both profitable and popular with their readers. The one thread through all of them is that they target small audiences.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune is the latest casualty of the overall decline of newspaper advertising. The paper, which is one of several in south Florida owned by The New York Times Co., will consolidate several offices and lay off an unspecified number of people.

While shutting down one of its regional print editions, “[T]he Herald-Tribune will start new interactive Web sites geared toward allowing the public to share their news, photos and videos.” Hmmm. Photo- and video-sharing might have been interesting two years ago, but it’s very me-too today. And what’s this about “share their news?” Is this a citizen journalism experiment?

Mark Hamilton notes the difficulty newspapers have reporting this kind of bad news about themselves. It is indeed a fine line to walk. While the reporters and editors no doubt have strong opinions about this story and its importance, they also have a responsibility to their readers to keep it in context and to report it straight. The WSJ’s coverage of the Murdoch takeover is particularly challenging in that respect.

It’s interesting to see the paper deciding to scale back on local coverage in favor of big features. In my opinion, local newspapers will be the big growth area in the business in coming years. Who needs another food section? But perhaps the economics just didn’t work here.

Things are looking up in Seattle. Shortly after the closing of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer just five months ago, the surviving Seattle Times asked publicly if the city was about to become a “no-newspaper town.” Hardly. Since the P-I went under, circulation at the Times has shot up 30% to 260,000 daily readers. The paper has crept back into the black on a month-t0-month basis and is enjoying its best outlook in years.

One of the last family-owned major metros in the country, the Times has been weighed down for years by a joint operating agreement that required it to support the money-losing P-I. Fortunately for the Times, it managed circulation for both papers, so when the P-I went under, the Times simply switched subscribers to its circulation list and gave them the option to cancel. A remarkable 84% opted to stay with the Times.

But it gets better. The online remnant of the P-I is beating its numbers. Although SeattlePI.com has only one-eighth the editorial staff of the failed newspaper, it has focused its coverage and kept most of the reader traffic it had before the newspaper went under. Hearst won’t say if SeattlePI.com is making money, but it does say that audience and revenues are ahead of projections.

In other good news, Cox Enterprises has pulled the Austin American-Statesman off the market, saying the bids it was receiving didn’t reflect the true value of the paper. The American-Statesman is one of 29 titles Cox put up for sale nearly a year ago. While there were many visitors and several bids, the offers were in the fire-sale range, said publisher Michael Vivio. “it just did not make sense to sell it for the prices offered.” The story quotes newspaper analyst Ed Atorino speculating that “there are signs that the newspaper industry may have bottomed out. ‘We see hopes for better conditions by the end of 2010,’ Atorino said. ‘It’s been very difficult, and now, maybe, the worst is over.’”

A Reader Revenue Model That Works

Amid the wreckage of the media industry, there is at least one publisher who’s charging readers for content and making a lot of money at it. He’s Christopher Kimball, the intense, non-nonsense publisher of Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines. The flagship Cook’s Illustrated has nearly a million subscribers who pay between $25 and $35 a year for six issues. There’s no advertising. The business is reportedly insanely profitable.

Kimball’s recipe is to give readers exactly what they want: no-fail recipes vetted with exhaustive trial and error in kitchens outfitted with the best gadgetry money can by. You won’t find exotic dishes in the Cook’s magazines. What you’ll find is instructions on how to make the perfect pancake, combined with exhaustive background information on details such as the role of baking powder in the process.

The Boston Globe profile says Cook’s Illustrated enjoys an almost unheard-of 78% renewal rate. Kimball charge for website access and finds readers through intensive direct-mail campaigns and a successful spinoff cooking show called America’s Test Kitchen. Though he’s a multi-millionaire, Kimball can usually be found on weekends at his Vermont farm, testing new recipes. He’s a rigid perfectionist who believes advertising is an unholy alliance that does a disservice to readers. So far, he’s confounding the critics.

Miscellany

The 23^rd annual Veronis Suhler Stevenson media survey is out (TG; we’ve been on pins and needles) and  finds that for the first time last year, consumers spent more time with media they paid for – like books and cable TV – than with primiarly ad-supported media. The study also forecasts somewhat counter-intuitively that media/communications will be the third fastest-growing industry in the US over the next five years, trailing only mining and construction. The growth won’t come from traditional media, though. Rather, it will be driven by new areas like paid product placement, e-mail marketing, in-game advertisements, mobile advertising and video downloads.

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The New York Daily News is hiring a social media manager.  It’s joins crosstown rivals New York Times and New York Post in recently putting some bucks behind the explosion of interest in Facebook and the link. The Daily News has a long way to go: it’s roster of Twitter followers is about 1/10^th that of the Post’s.

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The Boston Globe interviews New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger and CEO Janet Robinson. They say the threat to shut down the Globe unless major union concessions were made was not a bluff. They also don’t plan to sell the paper to the highest bidder. They want someone who’s going to continue a history of quality journalism. And they think the Times Co. has been a splendid custodian of the Globe’s reputation. Sheesh.

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We stumbled across a new search engine: Yebol that “utilizes a combination of patented algorithms paired with human knowledge to build a Web directory for each query and each user.” We’re not so sure what that means, but the search results pages are very cool.

The San Francisco Chronicle is removing its paywall after just four months and the Dallas Morning News plans to follow suit. Observers are speculating that this could be the end of the nearly two-year-old binge that has seen more than one-third of U.S. newspapers erect barriers to their online content.

Neither company is abandoning the idea of gated content entirely, but both are reportedly pursuing new models based on premium services. That’s basically a reversal of the paywall formula. The premium-service model is aimed at monetizing a small part of the audience while a paywall denies service to everyone except those willing to pay. We think this amounts to a concession from both papers that paywalls are ineffective in their geographies.

San Francisco is a particularly tough place to make a paywall work, with its abundance of media and its tech-savvy audience. Also, the Chron isn’t exactly The New York Times of the west coast. In our view, it was a mediocre newspaper before cutting more than half its staff over the last few years.

All the Chronicle content will now be available on SFGate.com. What content will remain paid? A vaguely worded message from the new publisher and president said the paid SFChronicle.com site “will continue to provide readers with an online version that replicates a newspaper experience and reflects the changes in the news throughout the day.”

Replicating the newspaper experience online is a non-starter. We assume they’re working on better ideas.

The premium content model that the Chron and Dallas Morning News reportedly hope to implement is difficult to pull off. It has worked for ESPN, Cooks Illustrated, Consumer Reports and a number of financial publishers, but we’re not aware of any successes in the general news market. The premium model works best with investor audiences or those who are passionate, affluent and have an insatiable thirst for knowledge about a topic. None of those characteristics applies to local news.

It could be that San Francisco and Dallas are just early indicators that paywalls are not a good strategy for most newspapers. If so, we’ll know soon. Many publishers are coming up on their first year of experience, and they’ll have both the data and the experience to make a decision.

Bezos-Watching

If you need any further evidence that Jeff Bezos is the Lady Gaga of media-watching, look no further than this roundup on Nieman Journalism Lab. Everyone is speculating about what the Amazon.com founder plans to do, but Bezos himself is offering few clues. We didn’t read everything Nieman’s Mark Coddington found, but we did peruse a few analyses.

A profile in The New York Times highlights the paradox of Bezos’ interest in being a media magnate, given that Amazon is an extremely secretive company. “There are fewer leaks out of Amazon than the National Security Agency,” write David Streitfeld and Christine Haughney.

What little we know of Amazon comes from its famously vague quarterly analyst calls. Outsiders are rarely permitted to tour its buildings and even its own executives don’t know where all its data centers are located. Bezos himself makes few public appearances and keeps a low profile in his hometown of Seattle.

So why does he now want to carry the First Amendment flag in our nation’s capitol? Ken Doctor sees three reasons why he and other super-rich people are buying into newspapers: Low valuations, a call of duty and the hubris to believe they can turn around an industry everyone thinks is dying. Also, no one else is willing to do it. “The few remaining people with the stomach to run daily newspapers have bank accounts with at least nine zeros after a non-zero numeral of some kind,” he writes at Nieman.

Kudos to Doctor for reminding us of EPIC 2014, a vaguely creepy spoof video made in 2004 that forecast the emergence of a media Death Star created by the merger of Amazon and Google in 2014. Some of the parallels are striking (watch below).

Writer and futurist Tim Carmody says he’s studied Bezos for years and believes the Amazon founder is driven by a fascination with the future and the urge to leave something behind other than the company he runs. Carmody also has interesting details about the sale of the Post, which appears to have been more a coincidence than a plan. “By all accounts, Bezos did not go looking to buy a newspaper,” he writes. “When he was approached by his friend Donald Graham about buying the Post, he initially begged off considering it.” It was Graham who pushed the deal more than Bezos sought it.

A few consistent threads run through the accounts we read. One is that Bezos is intensely focused on customer experience. The Times relates the story of how Amazon stationed ambulances outside its Allentown, Pa. warehouse during a heat wave rather than turn up the air conditioning or reduce the workload for its employees. Meeting shipping deadlines was more important than the health of its notoriously overworked fulfillment staff.

A second is that Bezos is a long-term thinker who aims high. Whereas many entrepreneurs would have been satisfied to build the world’s largest online bookseller, Bezos has set his sights on becoming an infrastructure powerhouse that can deliver goods and services physically or virtually anywhere in the world. The newspaper industry could benefit from this kind of vision right now.

The third is that Bezos is an unpredictable experimenter who disdains the status quo. It’s a given that he will ruffle feathers among his conservative colleagues in the publishing ranks. Again, not a bad thing.

There are also conflicts of interest that will merit scrutiny. The biggest is Amazon Web Services, a contract data center operation that hosts thousands of large research and commercial entities, including more than 500 government institutions. It’s Amazon’s fastest-growing business, and the government market is a huge opportunity.

Will Bezos be able to balance his dual role as free press agitator and major government contractor? Most people seem to think so. As the Times’ headline summed up:  “Expect the Unexpected.”

 

Related articles

• Five things Jeff Bezos should do to reinvent the sinking ship that is the Washington Post
• Is the SF Chronicle the beginning of a paywall rollback trend? [GigaOM]
• SF Chronicle Said to Demolish Paywall After Four Months
• Chronicle Kills its Paywall — After Only Four Months
• San Francisco Chronicle Drops Its Paywall
• Dallas Morning News Will Get Rid of Its Paywall and Debut New Premium Site in September (Eric Celeste/FrontBurner)
• This Week in Review: Gauging Bezos’ Post plan, and tech companies’ surveillance dilemma

Paywalls continue to spring up across the news landscape while new-media enthusiasts warn that gated news is a throwback to a bygone age.

Britain’s Telegraph and Sun announced plans to erect paywalls almost simultaneously after successful tests. The Telegraph, which claims to have the largest circulation of any U.K. daily, will give away 20 articles free every month and charge £1.99/mo. thereafter for unlimited access to the website and smartphone apps. The Sun‘s move is timed to make the most of parent company News International’s £20M deal to show near-live clips of Premiership football highlights on its websites beginning in August.

In Canada, Postmedia Network will roll out paywalls across all 10 of its properties, including the National Post. The move completes an experiment that began two years ago and has been deployed in stages. Digital-only subscribers will have to ante up $9.99/mo. for reading more than 10 articles in any title within a month.

Perhaps most indicative of the surging popularity of paywalls, though, is Politico’s decision to experiment with the idea. The Washington, D.C.-focused news service, which was once personified the new breed of digital-only publishers, has given in to the reality that advertising rates continue to fall and subscriber revenues must become part of the business. “We believe that every successful media company will ultimately charge for its content” said a memo signed by several of the Politico’s top executives.

Circling the Wagons

We continue to be more interested in experiments that break new ground in publishing economics than efforts to resurrect old models. There’s plenty to report there, as well.

Ken Doctor kicks us  off with a fine analysis of where NewsRight went wrong. NewsRight was a consortium of 20 publishers that sprung out of the Associated Press in early 2012 with the mission of tracking down copyright violators while also creating a subscription model that would permit digital publishers to license quality content for redistribution.

“Publishers have seethed with rage as they’ve seen their substantial investment in newsrooms harvested — for nothing — by many aggregators…” writes Doctor on the Nieman Journalism Lab, “…but rage — whether seething or public — isn’t a business model.”

Bingo. Consortia are good for only two things: setting standards and raising awareness. They’re a terrible way to create new products. The idea of pursuing copyright violators individually is ludicrous, anyway. It’s like trying to stamp out ants. There are always more where the first batch came from.

The only anti-piracy tactic that works is a public awareness campaign, and the newspaper industry has shown little interest in that. NewsRight died because the members inevitably had conflicting priorities, and it was impossible for everyone to find common ground when everyone had something to lose.

Does BuzzFeed Have it Right?

Doctor points to the work being done at NewsCred, BuzzFeed and Forbes, among others, as examples of new ideas worth developing. “In 2013, we’re seeing more innovative use of news content than we have in a long time,” he writes. We’re particularly interested in BuzzFeed, the viral content engine started by Jonah Peretti and others in 2006. At first glance it looks like any other new-age news site, with a bottomless home page stuffed with a jumble of seemingly unrelated content ranging from the profound to the ridiculous.

As New York magazine points out in a lengthy profile, though, there’s a lot more going on there than cat photos. BuzzFeed is tuned to create content that people want to share, and it could care less who the authors are. The home page blithely mixes contributions from staffers and advertisers with minimal labeling. Every element within every story can be shared on every social network you can imagine. Every page is designed to maximize audience interaction with the content.

BuzzFeed makes little effort to segregate advertiser contributions from the work of its own staff. A photo essay on “12 Tips to Have An Amazing Barbecue” from Grill Mates sits next to “Just The London Skyline, Made Out Of Sugar Cubes” by staffer Luke Lewis. Some of the branded stuff is actually pretty good, like, JetBlue’s “The 50 Most Beautiful Shots Taken Out Of Airplane Windows.”

Is this serious journalism? Well, no. We don’t think corporate brands will ever produce that. But if they want to run their grilling tips next to similarly lightweight content from professional editors, why not let them? The genie that goes by such names as “brand journalism” and “content marketing” isn’t going back in the bottle. A recent survey concluded that corporate marketers and agencies consider branded content to be among their most effective branding tactics, and that 69% plan to spend more money on it in the coming year.

The bigger issue is whether sustainable publishing business models can be found that don’t rely entirely upon display advertising or subscription revenue. BuzzFeed and NewsCred are making some progress there. We don’t believe they produce serious journalism, if sex, gossip and voyeurism can attract a large enough audience to support real journalism, then we’re in favor of it. The idea isn’t new. It’s worked in the U.K. for decades.

Related articles

• Does BuzzFeed Know the Secret? (Andrew Rice/New York Magazine)
• BuzzFeed business news wants to be scoops (Chris Roush/Talking Biz News)
• Get your cat on: BuzzFeed creates new section where readers can publish [GigaOM]
• They put the U in UGC: BuzzFeed builds a Community vertical as a talent incubator
• The newsonomics of recycling journalism

The Pew Research Center’s annual State of the Media Report paints a dismal picture of the condition of mainstream media – in particular broadcast and magazines – but Slate’s Matthew Yglesias says the report looks at the wrong things. Which side are you on?

There’s no question that Pew’s annual media audit and survey of 2,000 consumers is about as depressing as any of the 10 annual reports that the nonprofit media watchdog has completed. Among the lowlights:

• Nearly a third of U.S. adults have stopped using a news outlet because it no longer met their needs.
• That’s not surprising when you consider that low-cost sports, weather and traffic information now account for 40% of the content produced on the average local newscast.
• The population of full-time professional newsroom employees fell below 40,000 for the first time since 1978. It’s down nearly 30% from its 1989 high.
• In an election year, the declines in coverage were particularly evident. Live broadcast reports fell from from 33% of the news hole in 2007 to 23% in 2012. And 2007 was not an election year. Commentary and opinion, which are cheap to produce, now make up 63% of  news airtime on cable channels, while straight news reporting comprises only 37%.
• An examination of 48 recent evening and morning newscasts found that 20 led with a weather-related story. Weather coverage is cheap.
• Only about a quarter of statements in the media about the character and records of the presidential candidates originated with journalists, while twice that many came from political partisans. The report runs down a list of informational websites that political parties and advocacy groups have set up to influence media, but some are now actually becoming the media. Pew notes several examples of major news magazines that have carried partisan reports as part of their branded news stream.
• In that vein, Pew notes a 2008 analysis of Census Bureau data by Robert McChesney and John Nichols that found that the ratio of public relations workers to journalists tripled from 1.2-to-1 in 1980 to 3.6-to-1 in 2008. That gap has likely grown since then.
• In summary, “News organizations are less equipped to question what is coming to them or to uncover the stories themselves, and interest groups are better equipped and have more technological tools than ever,” Pew states.
• Incredibly (to us, at least), the public is mostly unaware that the news media is struggling. Only 39% of the 2,000 consumers surveyed said they have much awareness of the industry’s problems.

Newspapers actually come off pretty well in this year’s report. Thanks to paywalls, which are in place or in the works at one-third of U.S. newspapers, circulation held steady year-to-year. The New York Times said its circulation revenue now exceeds advertising revenue for the first time.

However, the long-term trends are still negative. Newspapers lose $16 in print ad revenue for every $1 in digital ad revenue gained, and that figure is up from $10-to-$1 in 2011. Equally ominous is that Facebook and Google are doing a better job of figuring out how to target digital advertising locally, which threatens one of the few pockets of revenue strength newspapers have left.

Because the long-term outlook is so bad, newspapers have become an attractive investment vehicle. Pew notes that value investor Warren Buffett has been snapping them up at a rapid clip because they are so cheap. The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News were bought for $55 million last year, which is 1/10 of the price they commanded in 2006.

Out of Mind

Perhaps the most surprising finding is the low public awareness of the news industry’s crisis, and that’s where Yglesias’ analysis on Slate is most interesting. “American news media has never been in better shape,” he states at the outset, using the Cypriot economic crisis as proof. We’re not sure the media itself is in great shape, but readers are doing fine.

Yglesias cites a “bounty” of online resources that provide context, analysis and even an interactive calculator that lets visitors try out different ideas for solving the island nation’s financial problems. It’s easier than ever to produce news using public sources and simple publishing tools, and the Internet makes boundless background information available in seconds.

Assessing the state of media by looking only at the health of traditional outlets creates “a blinkered outlook that confuses the interests of producers with those of consumers,” he writes. “[T]oday’s readers have access to far more high-quality coverage than they have time to read.”

The finding that only four in 10 Americans are even aware of the media’s struggles can be interpreted in several ways. The pessimistic view is that Americans are basically dumb, lazy and happy with the partisan screaming matches that characterize a lot of broadcast news.

A more positive view is that Americans have already moved on to using other sources and haven’t noticed the loss of their once-trusted brands. It’s impossible to know without further research, but we have to acknowledge Yglesias’s point that the decline of mainstream media certainly hasn’t resulted in a dearth of information.

No Expiration

One important point the Slate business writer makes is that news no longer carries an expiration date. Traditional media assumed that news would be consumed within a few hours or days. Archival or background information was tedious to find, so readers were mainly limited to whatever the newspaper or broadcast provided within its limited space.

Now everything is part of a grand, searchable archive, which permits people to go as deep as they want whenever they want. Those who don’t have the time to come up to speed on the banking crisis in Cyprus can put off learning about it until later. Then they can go to a resource like Wikipedia’s coverage and spend hours digging into background for more than 40 sources cited there.

We prefer the glass-half-full perspective. While the loss of the media’s watchdog function is troubling, the power of having timeless access to resources we didn’t even know existed is energizing. The challenge is to find ways to fund the valuable services that media has provided in the past so that the information that doesn’t attract search engines and sponsorship dollars still has a platform.

Related articles

 

• State of the media: The cracks are still widening, but some light is also getting in
• The News Business Is Awful; People Want News
• 5 Key Takeaways from Pew’s State of the News Media 2013
• ‘Glory days’ of journalism? No, yes, no and yes.
• Mediatwits #72: Sad State of the News Media; Reuters’ Social Editor Indicted
• The Glory Days of American Journalism
• 31% of Americans Have Abandoned News Outlets Due to Perceived Decline in Quality

Media critics have been buzzing for more than a week about “Snow Fall,” John Branch’s feature in The New York Times about a tragic avalanche that claimed three skiers’ lives in the Tunnel Creek area of Washington state early last year. Some people say it‘s the future of journalism, and they’re right – in a way. A loud chorus of naysayers who point out that “Snow Fall” is just the Times showing off. They’re right, too.

What’s important isn’t whether this package – which doesn’t fit neatly into the category of article, video documentary or e-book – is a turning point, but rather its importance as an evolution in story-telling. There’s nothing revolutionary about the technology the Times used. It’s the way the elements were combined that makes “Snow Fall” a great experience.

For example, some of the graphics unfold as the reader scrolls down the screen, illustrating elements of the narrative in a way that feels seamless and natural. Embedded slide shows appear next to the names of key people in the tragedy, showing them in happier times. It’s a moving tribute to dead and their families that doesn’t seem heavy-handed or maudlin. It’s just part of the story.

Romenesko says the package racked up 3.5 million page views in its first week and that one-quarter of them were new visitors to nytimes.com. Ad Age complains that the ads the Times ran next to the copy nearly ruin the reading experience. Mathew Ingram superbly balances comments from both fans and critics. He concludes that, for all its elegance and beauty, “Snow Fall” still doesn’t address mainstream media’s frustrating fiscal woes. Laura Hazard Owen suggests that the “e-single” version of the feature – which sells for $2.99 – is an important endorsement of the growing mini-book concept.

We dropped by to see what all the fuss was about and ended spending an hour reading every last word and viewing every last video. “Snow Fall” is a visually stunning example of what a well-resourced news organization can produce when it spares practically no expense to break the mold. Few media companies can attempt something so ambitious (although there are some corporate marketing departments that could foot the bill). What’s important about “Snow Fall” is the ideas it introduces – ideas that will be adopted and iterated by other publishers on a smaller scale. We don’t think that’s showing off. It’s just being creative.

Related articles

• The good – and the bad – about the NYT’s Snow Fall feature
• More than 3.5 million page views for New York Times’ ‘Snow Fall’ feature
• Snow Fall: Finally an articulation for the digerati of what a big, expensive newsroom can do (Sarah Lacy/PandoDaily)
• What the New York Times’s ‘Snow Fall’ Means to Online Journalism’s Future
• Expect ‘Snow Fall’ To Be The First Of Many Online News Experiments

Media critics have been buzzing for more than a week about “Snow Fall,” John Branch’s feature in The New York Times about a tragic avalanche that claimed three skiers’ lives in the Tunnel Creek area of Washington state early last year. Some people say it‘s the future of journalism, and they’re right – in a way. A loud chorus of naysayers who point out that “Snow Fall” is just the Times showing off. They’re right, too.

What’s important isn’t whether this package – which doesn’t fit neatly into the category of article, video documentary or e-book – is a turning point, but rather its importance as an evolution in story-telling. There’s nothing revolutionary about the technology the Times used. It’s the way the elements were combined that makes “Snow Fall” a great experience.

For example, some of the graphics unfold as the reader scrolls down the screen, illustrating elements of the narrative in a way that feels seamless and natural. Embedded slide shows appear next to the names of key people in the tragedy, showing them in happier times. It’s a moving tribute to dead and their families that doesn’t seem heavy-handed or maudlin. It’s just part of the story.

Romenesko says the package racked up 3.5 million page views in its first week and that one-quarter of them were new visitors to nytimes.com. Ad Age complains that the ads the Times ran next to the copy nearly ruin the reading experience. Mathew Ingram superbly balances comments from both fans and critics. He concludes that, for all its elegance and beauty, “Snow Fall” still doesn’t address mainstream media’s frustrating fiscal woes. Laura Hazard Owen suggests that the “e-single” version of the feature – which sells for $2.99 – is an important endorsement of the growing mini-book concept.
We dropped by to see what all the fuss was about and ended spending an hour reading every last word and viewing every last video. “Snow Fall” is a visually stunning example of what a well-resourced news organization can produce when it spares practically no expense to break the mold. Few media companies can attempt something so ambitious (although there are some corporate marketing departments that could foot the bill). What’s important about “Snow Fall” is the ideas it introduces – ideas that will be adopted and iterated by other publishers on a smaller scale. We don’t think that’s showing off. It’s just being creative.

Related articles

• The good – and the bad – about the NYT’s Snow Fall feature
• More than 3.5 million page views for New York Times’ ‘Snow Fall’ feature
• Snow Fall: Finally an articulation for the digerati of what a big, expensive newsroom can do (Sarah Lacy/PandoDaily)
• What the New York Times’s ‘Snow Fall’ Means to Online Journalism’s Future
• Expect ‘Snow Fall’ To Be The First Of Many Online News Experiments

As USA Today celebrates its 30th birthday, columnists are wondering it it’ll see 40. Or even 35.

Writing in Editor & Publisher, John K. Hartman breaks down McPaper’s run into three stages.

The first decade was growth and massive disruption, as USA Today challenged many of the industry’s assumptions about how and what people wanted to read.

The second decade was prosperity, when USA Today became the most widely circulated newspaper in America and Gannett reaped the spoils of more than $1 billion in investment.

The third decade was decline, marked by competitive surges by The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, changing reader habits and all the economic pressures that have hit the industry. Hartman offers 30 ideas to rejuvenate the national daily, but his list looks a bit forced. The situation “has all the makings of a death spiral,” he admits.

We liked Alan Mutter’s analysis better. The Newsosaur recalls some of the innovations USA Today brought to the market beyond jump-less stories and “We’re Eating More Broccoli” infographics. Founder Al Neuharth astutely scoped out changes in the audience for newspapers before anyone else. He targeted the paper toward business travelers who were time-pressed, mostly male and equipped with expense accounts. Neuharth bet that airline deregulation, which had happened just four years earlier, would spur an explosion of air travel and a boom in the hospitality industry. Hotels are still the single largest distribution channel for USA Today.

Gannett was successful in attracting upscale ads from airlines that were competing on amenities at the time, Mutter notes. Not so much today. Travel has become a cutthroat business, and business travelers now make decisions based more upon TripAdvisor reviews and price-comparison engines than on which airline has the best food. Sports coverage, which was long a USA Today strong point, has been co-opted by ESPN.com and other online channels for the rabid fan. Even USA Today‘s once-prominent full-page weather map is now an  artifact, thanks to smart phone apps.

Mutter points to a more fundamental weakness in the business model: “Nearly two-thirds of its coast-to-coast circulation is built on free copies distributed by hotels and other businesses, meaning that barely more than a third of its readers actually think enough of the paper to pay for it.” Those who do pay have to fork over one dollar, which is far less than they pay for the Times or Journal. The fact that both those dailies are eating USA Today‘s lunch would indicate that price isn’t much of a factor for the dwindling ranks of newspaper buyers.

Neither columnist holds out much hope for USA Today‘s long-term survival, and we have to admit the situation doesn’t look good. This is ironic in light of the fact that Gannett anticipated many of the changes in reading habits that other newspapers grudgingly adopted. While newspaper publishers may have hated USA Today, their reluctant move toward shorter stories, more graphics and full-color production probably staved off the industry’s decline by a few years.

USA Today continues to resist the paywall trend, and its free website may be one of its few distinguishing features. However, the price of advertising is in long-term decline, and it’s hard to believe that free will be a virtue in a crowded market. Unfortunately, USA Today may have little choice. If more people are willing to pay $2.50 for a  copy of the Times or $2 for the Journal, then it’s hard to imagine that a paid website strategy will get much traction. USA Today arguably had more impact on American newspapers than any publication of the last 30 years. Sadly, it may be one of the earliest casualties.

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Ebyline Challenge Seeks a “100% Solution”

A service that pairs freelancers with editors has teamed with Editor & Publisher to launch a $35,000 journalism contest called the Ebyline Challenge. The contest picks up on a post by Jay Rosen two years ago that asked readers to envision how they could cover 100% of a large topic using a combination of sources. This is basically an innovation contest. “First, come up with an idea for reporting on 100% of something….Fill out an entry form and tell us how you’d use freelancers to make your idea happen,” the contest page says. The 35 grand isn’t cash, but a one-year credit toward use of the Ebyline service.

We like the idea in principle, but the focus on freelancers is too narrow. If you’re going to cover something 100% these days, your available resources should include blogs, tweets, people on the spot with phone cameras and community publishers, among others. That isn’t in Ebyline’s best interests, of course, but the option would open up opportunities for innovation. Not all journalism carries a price tag anymore.

As USA Today celebrates its 30th birthday, columnists are wondering it it’ll see 40. Or even 35.
Writing in Editor & Publisher, John K. Hartman breaks down McPaper’s run into three stages.
The first decade was growth and massive disruption, as USA Today challenged many of the industry’s assumptions about how and what people wanted to read.
The second decade was prosperity, when USA Today became the most widely circulated newspaper in America and Gannett reaped the spoils of more than $1 billion in investment.
The third decade was decline, marked by competitive surges by The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, changing reader habits and all the economic pressures that have hit the industry. Hartman offers 30 ideas to rejuvenate the national daily, but his list looks a bit forced. The situation “has all the makings of a death spiral,” he admits.
We liked Alan Mutter’s analysis better. The Newsosaur recalls some of the innovations USA Today brought to the market beyond jump-less stories and “We’re Eating More Broccoli” infographics. Founder Al Neuharth astutely scoped out changes in the audience for newspapers before anyone else. He targeted the paper toward business travelers who were time-pressed, mostly male and equipped with expense accounts. Neuharth bet that airline deregulation, which had happened just four years earlier, would spur an explosion of air travel and a boom in the hospitality industry. Hotels are still the single largest distribution channel for USA Today.
Gannett was successful in attracting upscale ads from airlines that were competing on amenities at the time, Mutter notes. Not so much today. Travel has become a cutthroat business, and business travelers now make decisions based more upon TripAdvisor reviews and price-comparison engines than on which airline has the best food. Sports coverage, which was long a USA Today strong point, has been co-opted by ESPN.com and other online channels for the rabid fan. Even USA Today‘s once-prominent full-page weather map is now an  artifact, thanks to smart phone apps.
Mutter points to a more fundamental weakness in the business model: “Nearly two-thirds of its coast-to-coast circulation is built on free copies distributed by hotels and other businesses, meaning that barely more than a third of its readers actually think enough of the paper to pay for it.” Those who do pay have to fork over one dollar, which is far less than they pay for the Times or Journal. The fact that both those dailies are eating USA Today‘s lunch would indicate that price isn’t much of a factor for the dwindling ranks of newspaper buyers.
Neither columnist holds out much hope for USA Today‘s long-term survival, and we have to admit the situation doesn’t look good. This is ironic in light of the fact that Gannett anticipated many of the changes in reading habits that other newspapers grudgingly adopted. While newspaper publishers may have hated USA Today, their reluctant move toward shorter stories, more graphics and full-color production probably staved off the industry’s decline by a few years.
USA Today continues to resist the paywall trend, and its free website may be one of its few distinguishing features. However, the price of advertising is in long-term decline, and it’s hard to believe that free will be a virtue in a crowded market. Unfortunately, USA Today may have little choice. If more people are willing to pay $2.50 for a  copy of the Times or $2 for the Journal, then it’s hard to imagine that a paid website strategy will get much traction. USA Today arguably had more impact on American newspapers than any publication of the last 30 years. Sadly, it may be one of the earliest casualties.

---

Ebyline Challenge Seeks a “100% Solution”

A service that pairs freelancers with editors has teamed with Editor & Publisher to launch a $35,000 journalism contest called the Ebyline Challenge. The contest picks up on a post by Jay Rosen two years ago that asked readers to envision how they could cover 100% of a large topic using a combination of sources. This is basically an innovation contest. “First, come up with an idea for reporting on 100% of something….Fill out an entry form and tell us how you’d use freelancers to make your idea happen,” the contest page says. The 35 grand isn’t cash, but a one-year credit toward use of the Ebyline service.
We like the idea in principle, but the focus on freelancers is too narrow. If you’re going to cover something 100% these days, your available resources should include blogs, tweets, people on the spot with phone cameras and community publishers, among others. That isn’t in Ebyline’s best interests, of course, but the option would open up opportunities for innovation. Not all journalism carries a price tag anymore.