WANDERING THE NEW MEDIA UNIVERSE
Start with the basics. I am a Boston Globe Sunday subscriber, and as it did with me for the New York Times, the soon-to-be subscription-only online edition of the paper will keep me a subscriber. The new Globe site doesn’t blow my doors off, but it’s enough to give me something easy to digest during the week along with my Sunday coffee ritual.
So – they’re keeping me. Mission accomplished.
The comment on my post about Ann Murray Paige’s remarkable story from Ann herself reminded me of one of the things I was sad to give up in my move to digital media.
Ann said:
What can I say? I still see you telling me my script wasn’t good enough while at the same time smiling and wondering what time we were all going to meet at Boru’s for a drink after work.
I can still see that as well, and it reminded me of the satisfaction I got from editing other people’s writing as an Executive Producer. It was fine to go through the little 30-second stories we’d do throughout a newscast, but it was much more rewarding to work more closely with a reporter to help hone their story. [Read more...]
So, Hurricane Irene becomes Tropical Storm Irene and doesn’t do her anticipated damage – at least not in the major media markets. First, I want to note that if you think Irene was a dud, there are millions without power and thousands dealing with flooding who would beg to differ. But that’s not what I am actually posting about today. I am about to defend the media (a little) and challenge you to make a difference.
First, a little secret. At most news organizations (and I won’t say all – but I will say at every one I have worked at), the folks you love to be mad at when a storm doesn’t live up to your expectations would like nothing more than in fact to give you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth… [Read more...]
I tried something new this week when I attended the Moby Dick Project gathering at Stanford. I didn’t take notes. I didn’t tweet. I just listened and tried to engage.
What did I learn? Well, for one thing, apparently my memory is shot. I’m looking forward to seeing the posted photos and videos to help jar some more detailed remembrances.
But I do remember some things from the experience. Among my takeaways:
*** We need to have more events like this that bring together journalists, designers and developers to communicate with each other. The mixing of the players forces each to engage the other, and forces everyone to set aside his/her concerns about how changes in media affect them. Instead, we focused on the user.
*** Small groups can come up with engaging ideas when the focus is put on solutions, rather than problems. I could give kudos to Ben Huh for a lot of things about this conference, but this is the biggest one. Without defining an agenda (in fact, he threw his initial idea for the focus of the day out the window before the day began), he made it clear from the outset that we would be creating solutions, not just identifying problems, and in the end, there were some excellent ideas and prototypes that came to the surface.
Just writing a quick post as I head to California to take part in the inaugural meeting for the Moby Dick Project, an idea which has grown out of a blog post by Web-entrepreneur Ben Huh, who asked the question, “Why Are We Still Consuming News Like It’s 1899?”
It’s a good question. Here’s the thesis:
“The limited amount of space on news homepages and their outmoded method of presentation poses big problems for the distribution of news as well as consumption by the public. Even though it’s been more than 15 years since the Internet became a news destination, journalists and editors are still trapped in the print and TV world of message delivery.
“The traditional methods of news-writing, such as the reverse pyramid, the various “editions” of news pose big limitation on how news is reported and consumed. Unfortunately, internet-based changes such as reverse-chronological blogging of news, inability to archive yesterday’s news, poor commenting quality, live-blogging, and others have made news consumption an even more frustrating experience.”
I’m not going to go so far as to change the title of this blog, which by the way, has nothing to do with a certain baseball team to the south of Boston that has a guy who just got his 3,000th hit.
But I am changing a lot of other things. Friday, after almost seven years, I packed up my boxes and left NECN for the last time as a full-time, daily employee. There are a lot of reasons for my decision to leave NECN, where I arrived the day after the Democratic National Convention in 2004. It’s not appropriate for me to say all I might otherwise, but I can say a few things. The business of media has changed since I unpacked my Mazda 323, sans air conditioning, at a small apartment in Tallahassee, Florida in August of 1995.
Back then, there was no internet. We had one computer in the newsroom, on which we put together the show rundown, but everywhere else there were electric typewriters. We ripped the carbon paper out from between the layers of the scripts, divided them up, and the prompter operator scotch-taped the pages together (or just laid them out carefully) on a conveyor belt attached to a camera, which displayed the scripts to the anchors in their teleprompters.
The technology, and that thing called the Internet, is the most obvious change, but a lot of other things have changed in 16 years, including me. And it finally got to the point where I had to make a break. Someday, I’ll sit down and write my longer piece on the way media works today – there is good and bad, as well as what the audience expects and gets. I’m not ready to do that yet. But I will say this, since I have already said it for years.
If you don’t like the “crappy media,” stop watching the crap. If people stopped being mesmerized by Casey Anthony, Will and Kate, and all the like, media companies would pay them less mind.
But while you’re choosing to avoid the garbage, back to me. As I said, it is time for a change for me – and I enter this next phase of my career with two goals:
1) I want to stay connected in the world of media and communications. (Heck, it’s all I really know, so I better.)
2) I want to work with ‘content’ that really matters. The stuff that’s actually important. Issues of relevance. The things that have an impact on our lives and communities while we are looking at the latest plan for Charlie Sheen to return to Hollywood.
There is a 3), as well. I plan on staying in the Boston area, if I can at all make that happen.
I have some ideas – and will share those on this site along with a lot of other items. One of the things I am hoping my time between gigs gives me is the luxury of time. Time is a commodity I want to spend with family, with friends, and with myself. It’s what I need to get a sense of what is out there in the world outside of TV stations and major media in general. (It’s hard to see the full landscape when you’re really focused on nuts-and-bolts work for 10 hours a day, and in a car commuting for a couple of hours around that.) And it will give me a chance to blog again, to exchange ideas with anyone out there who actually reads this blog.
Where I’ll end up is unclear. But I’m looking forward to taking some time at the start of this new journey, and sharing it with you.
Apparently, I’m not alone in making a change. Kai Nagata, the young Quebec City bureau chief for CTV, has posted a lengthy explanation of why he walked away from his job last week. It’s a great read, and I think there is a lot in it that has been discussed a ton among journalists as they go about their work. Give it a read by clicking here.
PATCHY CLOUDS OVER ONA NETWORKED JOURNALISM PANELS
The Online News Association’s annual convention is getting underway Friday in Washington, D.C., but Thursday was chock full of pre-conference workshops, including a discussion on “networked journalism” and how news organizations can build and strengthen partnerships with hyperlocal sites – citizen journalists and bloggers who can get target individual communities.
But while the panels that made up the session, from Tucson to Seattle to Miami to Charlotte to Asheville, N.C. had different approaches, as they looked ahead there was a cloud on the horizon – AOL’s Patch. None of the partnerships have much active Patch competition yet; Patch has rolled out a pair of Seattle neighborhood sites, and none in the other places represented. But across the board, there was a wary eye toward eventual Patch competition.
Bob Payne of the Seattle Times, whose network of 28 hyperlocal or subject-themed citizen blogs is under the most immediate challenge from Patch, called Patch an ‘interesting challenge’, but said content would eventually win out – and seemed confident that local bloggers who are already living and blogging in their communities, like Tracy Record and the West Seattle Blog, had a leg up.
Other papers with local blog partners agreed that Patch brought a welcome focus on hyperlocal, but that the network of large numbers of cookie cutter sites could be beaten by blogs/citizen journalists dedicated to one community. Rick Hirsch of the Miami Herald said Patch should inspire local blogs and papers to work harder – a welcome opportunity. But Steve Gunn of the Charlotte Observer said the best local blogs will win out over Patch. “I don’t know what the future is, Gunn said, “but I’d take (the local blog) davidsonnews.net over Patch any day.”
In the end, though, it will be the business model more than the content that determines whether Patch can succeed. AOL can build broad networks, but they might not be able to match the local connections a resident-blogger can make, or the potential multi-platform sales potential of local papers creating web content.
But Patch has their attention, even in places where it has yet to launch. So if nothing else, AOL can be assured already that it has had an impact on local online content.
It’s hardly a surprise that the Boston Globe is erecting a paywall for parts of its site – by creating two sites, one of which will contain all of the Boston Globe’s content for a fee, and the other (the already heavily trafficked Boston.com) to house entertainment, lifestyle and some news content for free. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t generated some discussion.
So what’s it mean? A heck of a question – and one we can’t answer easily.
First, we just don’t have quite enough of a sense of where the free/paid line is going to be, and that is going to determine a lot about the success of both sites. A Boston.com sports producer reportedly tweeted that sports will be on the free side of the equation. If true, it means that one of the strongest parts of the Globe won’t be part of its revenue-generation model. While that secures a good chunk of traffic for Boston.com (and perhaps rightly notes that most users would simply choose other sources rather than pay), it takes away a big part of the appeal for paying for bostonglobe.com access.
Now repeat that discussion with most of the rest of the Globe. Arts? Investigative? And so on…
Of course, we also don’t know the other parts of the equation – what the cost will be to get the paid access. We can assume that at least some subscribers will get the online access, as they do now with GlobeReader, the paper’s desktop equivalent, which 7-day subscribers get for free.
And we don’t know what if any additional features bostonglobe.com subscribers will get. Where will video live? Other added features? And what about the Big Picture? It’s one of boston.com’s most popular features, but it’s also something the New York Times Co. has tried charging for on the iPhone platform. Where will that end up?
The new site won’t show up until the second half of 2011, so we have plenty of time to watch the discussion evolve.
So what would you do? Me? I thought I’d likely pay. But then again, I thought that with GlobeReader, and I didn’t stick with that, either. Add your thoughts in the comments.
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Loving those who hate you…
With a little more time on my hands now, I have a lot of ideas for posts – so I’ll be blogging more in between home projects. (Bought a pressure washer yesterday – awesome. Of course, now I have to paint that fence. Less awesome.)
But a post from Paul Gillin caught my eye this morning as I reflected on things. On the CMO blog, in a post entitled ‘Why Brands Should Love Public Complaints’, Paul notes that companies need to recognize that negative comments are a part of the new interaction between brand and market, and that censoring those complaints can do more harm than good – because the only thing worse than a brand who doesn’t respond to your complaints is one that deletes the complaint, too.
Media are in a tough spot in this – because it’s so often that complaints are targeted at individuals within the organization. What’s been the number one issue brought up by commenters at my most recent news jobs? No question – wardrobe. Not editorial slant, not content complaints – clothing. The biggest other complaint? – personnel changes.
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