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.

Jim Romenesko tells his side of the story behind his messy and public breakup with Poynter Institute, and he couldn’t be more gracious. Actually, there’d be no point in scolding the rank-amateur behavior that prompted him to resign suddenly earlier this month over allegations of improper sourcing by his Poynter editor, Julie Moos. Visitors to Moos’ Nov. 10 commentary have done the talking for him.

Romenesko is the prolific blogger who has attracted a large following with his almost obsessively updated newsfeed about the latest goings-on in media. His style for years has been to post short summaries or excerpts and one or two links to the source. Most media outlets consider it an honor to get a link from Romenesko, who has more than 40,000 Twitter followers and a huge mind share among media professionals.

However, Moos saw peril in the practice, and on Nov. 10 raised questions about Romenesko’s sourcing of third-party content, essentially accusing him of plagiarism. Using examples provided by a Columbia Journalism Review reporter, Moos demonstrated that Romenesko has republished rather lengthy passages without using quotation marks to cite  the source.

What Moos failed to do was consult others for their opinions or give Romenesko himself much more than a cursory heads-up that the post was going to appear. The reaction from readers – including several of the sources allegedly wronged by the sourcing practices – came down like a ton of bricks. As of this morning, Moos’ post had collected nearly 300 comments, most ranging from critical to hostile. Rather than taking umbrage at the Romenesko, most people said they were grateful for the service he provided and had no confusion whatsoever about where his information was coming from. And even if the sourcing wasn’t always rigorous, the outcome was: gushers of traffic to their websites. Which is a good thing.

Romenesko’s account on his new blog, JimRomenesko.com, fills in some of the background details. According to Romenesko, Moos’ blog post was preceded by months of negotiation over renewal of Romenesko’s contract, which expires on December 31. Two days before the post appeared, Moos expressed concern to Romenesko about his plans to sell ads on his new website, potentially cannibalizing Poynter’s business. Without explicitly accusing Moos of anything, Romenesko’s timeline portrays an increasingly panicked editor who is about to see her star columnist become a competitor. The sourcing accusations appear to be timed to cut off competition at the knees.

It’s unfortunate that this issue degraded into personal attacks, because the issues that Moos raised are legitimate. The old rules of attribution seem out of touch with the new age of copy-and-paste publishing. A decade ago, publishers sued each other over “deep links.” Today they beg for them. Erika Fry, the CJR  reporter who first raised the sourcing issue to Moos, published a calm and level-headed account of her concerns shortly after Romenesko quit. She was never out to get Romenesko, she says, but rather to understand how his own rules of sourcing work. Poynter could play a valuable role in facilitating a discussion over the new ethics of plagiarism. It’s unfortunate that one editor chose to use the issue for character assassination instead.

In places where paywalls are working – and yes, they are working in some places – publishers have abandoned the metaphor of a wall and focused instead on bundled subscriptions that looked a lot like cable television. So writes Poynter’s Rick Edmonds in a summary of a report by the International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA) that looks at 15 successful paid subscription models.

No two are exactly alike, and some even challenge credulity, such as the Oklahoman, which charges 20% less for a combined print/digital package than for an online-only plan. That’s right, they pay you to take the newspaper. All the models have one thing in common, though: they’re working. Instead of being positioned as obstacles, they’re marketed as ways to serve  readers’ need flexible consumption via computer, smart phone, tablet or some combination of all three.

The INMA report cautions that hybrid subscriptions aren’t any easy sale. Readers need to have options and explanations laid out clearly, and digital can’t be positioned as an afterthought. However, readers have adopted so-called “digital replica” editions with surprising enthusiasm, indicating a fondness for the look and feel of print even when reading on a screen. The report also indicates optimism that paid subscription models can work when tuned to the needs of the specific audience.

Start by discarding the concept of a wall. Digital subscriptions need to be seen a convenience rather than a barrier. The emergence of multiple digital platforms may be the best thing that has happened to publishers over the last decade. It has given them a way to make simplicity a feature worth paying for, and audiences are proving to like that story.

Andrew Birmingham isn’t quite so optimistic. The CEO of Silicon Gully Investments and a former associate publisher of the Australian Financial Review pens a lengthy piece in the Australian edition of CIO magazine arguing that pay walls are a fundamentally defensive strategy undertaken by panicked publishers whose entire business models are collapsing around them. “The time to implement paywalls was 15 years ago when [editorial content] was worth paying for,” he writes. “The time to invest in editorial was also 15 years ago when [publishers] should have been erecting paywalls.”

Birmingham’s conclusions aren’t particularly novel, but his explanation of the spiraling downward cost of online advertising is worth reading. Advertising networks in general, and Google in particular, come in for particular criticism. Both promised publishers easy money in the late 1990s, when times were good. The consequence, though, has been cannibalization leading to a plunge in advertising prices “from hundreds of dollars per thousand to $1 to $2 dollars per thousand in Australia across general news websites,” Birmingham writes. “In the US, they are now measured in cents per thousand.

Publishers did this to themselves, of course. Few understood the implications of the Internet on their businesses in the early days and most saw online advertising as simply frosting on the cake. Most are making the same mistake with social networks today, choosing to believe that Facebook is simply another publishing medium rather than a reinvention of the way people consume information. It’s good to see some paywall experiments paying dividends, but it’s also hard to believe that publishers will get themselves out of this mess. New entrants will have to figure that one out. In the meantime, playing defense probably makes sense.

Miscellany

Over in the UK, a hyper local startup called the Port Talbot Magnet is trying the direct approach: It’s asking readers to contribute donations to fund its news coverage. Visitors can pledge amounts starting at just £2 to sponsor a court reporter for a day, and PayPal is accepted.

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.