Eric Kaiser

I usually don’t make quick hits on a topic, but I just read a post on Reflections of a Newsosaur that made my blood pressure rise.

This sums up his opinion best:

“If we are going to save the tradition of professional journalism, it is vital for publishers to begin producing content that is sufficiently unique, authoritative and valuable to motivate”

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Your editors is probably thinking “damn right!”. We do that everyday, set up the pay wall now!

Resist the temptation. If you read his full post he does make some compelling arguments and even admits that not every market is capable of charging for its content. But your management will overlook that little caveat.

Newspaper web sites must shift their primary focus from connecting people-to-content to connecting people-to-people first, a.k.a. social networking. This is how news is going to get consumed as well as generate new revenue. Will this revenue support the current newsrooms? Highly unlikely. News organizations need to restructure. Many are being forced to through layoffs.

We need creative minds to think of new ways to monetize the changing media landscape. Attempts to setup pay walls is nothing more than last gasp efforts to retain a dying business model in a new media world.

Back in 2004 Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson, with music by Aaron McLeran, created a video called Epic 2014. The video painted a bleak future for newspapers where Google and Amazon took over the media landscape. This foretelling video was received with skepticism by many in the newspaper industry, but some did see it as a wake up call. It’s interesting to look at that video now some 5+ years later.

Google indeed has changed the media landscape through Google News and the host of other tools and applications they provide in addition to their search. Amazon recently released the Kindle, which isn’t in direct competition with newspapers, but certainly puts another nail in the coffin of print.

Google’s latest foray into journalism comes in the form of “Patch“. Patch is being underwritten by Google’s president of advertising for North America and Latin America Tim Armstrong through his private investment company, Polar Capital Group.

Patch, in a nutshell, is a way to find about, and participate in, what’s going on around you. Google’s plan is to put small teams of journalists around the country to produce hyper-local content. This is not a new idea, Yahoo had a similar newspaper initiative some 6 years ago that failed. But oh how times have changed. Thousands of journalists are out of jobs. Talk about ripe for the picking.

Google was asked why don’t they bail out newspapers, now we know why. This is a serious shift in their business from indexing content to creating content.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know this could be devastating to newspapers. I’m sure this action by Google will spawn numerous lawsuits.  I would imagine most newspapers will take measures to prevent their news from appearing on Google News. I also wonder what this will do to their relationship with the Associated Press.

What’s equally surprising is how this venture has remained below the radar screen. Thanks to John Battelle for posting this on his blog. Please check his post out for more information.

I’ve just finished Day 1 of DrupalCon here in Washington, DC. The session topics were varied and thought provoking.

I went to:

• The Themer’s Toolkit
• The Keynote: State of Drupal by Dries (which was awesome)
• Drupal in the Newsroom, from Mother Jones to New York Observer
• Drupal Module Developement Kickstart
• Beyond the Web: Drupal Meets the Desktop
• Going Live: Content Scheduling With Slot Machine

I won’t bore you with all the details of these sessions. But let me highlight a couple of things as it pertains to newspapers.

There are 1400 Drupalers here this year. That’s 600+ more than last year’s conference in Boston. I’m sure there would have been more, but the conference sold out! This speaks to the community and enthusiasm behind Drupal.

There are a lot of newspaper and magazine people here. I have no way of knowing how many, but I’ve already met 3 new people this year from the newspaper industry. And one of them was from Sweden.

Dries gave a very good overview of how Drupal has evolved from a class project to a full blow content management system. He gave an excellent presentation that I can best sum up by saying we can’t understand and plan the future of Drupal until we reflect and process the history of Drupal.

The “Drupal in the Newsroom” session was interesting in how it spun into how to deal with commenting on newspaper and magazine’s web sites. We are all struggling with how to make these comments relevant instead of annoying. Nick Aster from Mother Jones magazine has some great insight into this as did Allen Freeman from McClatchy Interactive. Here’s their presentation if you would like to listen for yourself.

Nick’s angle was to somehow create a way of collecting these comments and serve them back to the reader as more of a solution to a problem. This would help weed out some of the nonsense. Possible solutions here are allowing users to tag comments as a solution or recommend a comment. The more votes a comment gets the higher up the thread it would go. I like the idea of empowering the community to do things like this. Another key point was getting the reporters and editors involved in the conversation. And please note the use of the word “conversation” over comments. That’s essentially what’s going on here. But the reporter and editor’s voices are missing from the conversation. What a perfect venue for a newspaper or magazine to engage it’s audience on a daily basis.

What is also worth noting here is McClatchy as well as Morris Interactive have embraced Drupal. These are two very large media companies. The reasons why Drupal is popular are varied, but one common reason is the Drupal Community. There is no other CMS that I’m aware of that has this large, or enthusiastic, community around it.

If you are in the publishing business you should, if you’re not already, take a hard look at Drupal. I cannot think of any reason why a news organization should spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a proprietary system. Out of the box it will do the same if not more than any system you will purchase. Don’t embrace Drupal simply because it’s free. Embrace it because of the community and it kicks ass.

The Hearst Corporation announced it was going to charge for its digital content. They publish 16 newspapers which include the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Houston Chronicle.

This will certainly kill the PI off for good which is already struggling.

I really don’t need to repeat myself on why I think this won’t work. Ready my prior post “Stop the madness, now” if you want get the details.

2009 projections for online revenue are grim. Most forecasters are saying only an 8-9% increase in online sales, which is drastically different than the 40-50% increases the past couple of years, which are still really low and cannot support most newsrooms. Especially large metros with unions.

The really sad part here is Hearst’s online business is going to drop like a lead balloon. Readers are going to get their news elsewhere. An easy thing to do in large markets. Sure, the PI and the Chronicle will say they have “unique” news, but the average reader won’t care about that. They will settle for the same story with a not so unique twist at the local free web site your TV station is doing (they are really the sleeping giants if you ask me).

I do applaud Hearst for looking into e-readers like Kindle. I really think in the next couple of years e-readers will replace home delivery. This would be a huge cost savings to newspapers. Just running the presses can be as much as 70% of a newspaper’s operating costs. Newprint alone is over $700/ton. Think about the additional savings in transportation costs as well.

If you are reading this and you do not work at a newspaper tell me what you think. Would you pay for online access to you local newspaper?

For those of you keeping score, an additional 1,000 journalism jobs were lost this week with many  more on the chopping block.

The Rocky Mountain News published its last edition Friday, February 27. The San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are probably on their way out as well.

These are troubling times for journalists and the industry. Below is a documentary about the RMN’s last day. Please watch it.

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Do you hear them? It’s the sound of newspaper management pounding their desks. It started out faint about a year ago, but has grown louder and louder the past month. Why all the noise? They want payment for their content.

Please, let’s silence this once and for all. I will tell you, from experience, that any barrier between viewers and content will fail, and fail miserably.

Oh, but we own our local news, people will pay. Really? I think you would be amazed to find out what people will settle for and how creative they will get to fill the void your newspaper’s content used to fill.

We had a paid model at the Sun Journal for two years. TWO YEARS! We implemented it at a time when we were rolling out a new site that included all our news from our four editions. The management team felt we should charge for this so people won’t drop the print edition for the free online product.

I wasn’t in favor of this for many reasons. After some convincing arguments we were able to reach a compromise, sorta.

We drafted a system where “premium” content, which were staff generated stories, were behind a pay wall. However, the compromise was viewers could access up to five (count ‘em), five premium stories a day for free. AP content and other wire content was wide open. We also didn’t include obituaries as premium content. To this day obits are the most viewed section of the site.

We launched this system in September 2004. Up to that point we were enjoying about 2 million pageviews a month. After we launched we saw less than 100,ooo pageviews for the month. We expected a drastic drop, but didn’t think it would be that bad. If that wasn’t bad enough I received nearly 500 emails and voicemails from viewers who were confused and angry.

We rode it out for two very long years. Before we pulled the plug we had 198 paid subscribers which did count towards our circulation numbers. But any circulation director will tell you that isn’t significant.

In the end, what we did was ruin a growing part of our business. We alienated our audience and pushed them to other free web sites providing similar news. And in most cases the same news if they waited a day when it hit the AP wire and made available to other Maine newspaper sites.

Another important factor, at least for us, was more than 65% of our traffic was from outside of our circulation area.

It has taken us nearly three years to bounce back to the 2 million pageviews per month. And consequently our online ad revenues to rise to an appreciable amount as well. Our online revenue is less than 2% of the overall revenue for the company.

You could argue the model here, but it clearly shows that any kind of barrier between viewers and your content is a bad idea.

I can’t help but think newspapers are just relapsing to old strategies. There needs to be more creativity in revenue models. What do those models look like? We’re all trying to figure that out. Check out John Newby’s blog at “Newsmedia Innovation” for some creative ideas as well as Steve Outing’s.

I will be posting our initiatives at the Sun Journal here after we launch them. For obvious reasons I cannot do it now ;+)

It’s with great sadness that newspagedesigner.com ceased to exist today. The brain child of Tim Frank when he was the ME of Design at the Sun Journal (where I work), and the first ever PHP project I ever tackled.

The Sun Journal graciously hosted it the site free of charge for 6+ years. I can’t thank them enough for doing that. And I can’t thank the design community enough for their contributions.

We have over 200,000 pages posted and more than 13,000 registered users of the site from every corner of the world. That just blows my mind. The depth and variety of designs were amazing. Even though I don’t design pages anymore, I always enjoyed browsing the pages.

NPD lives on at newspagedesigner.ning.com if you would still like to contribute. Thanks again to everybody.

There’s a small church doing big things to save marriages. The Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, has produced three movies to date. The latest, Fireproof, was released in theaters September 26, 2008 and starred Kirk Cameron of Growing Pains fame.

Fireproof is the story of firefighter  Captain Caleb Holt (Kirk Cameron) who feels like he doesn’t get any respect from his wife Catherine, (Erin Bethea) and she’s over sensitive. Whereas his wife feels he is insensitive, selfish and doesn’t understand her needs. After seven years of marriage the couple’s marriage is failing, and neither one understands the emotional and physical needs of the other.

Caleb’s addiction to Internet pornography, and his plan to use his savings to purchase a boat, puts the couple over the edge and prepare for divorce.

Caleb’s father steps in and asks him to try something before signing the divorce papers. It’s called “The Love Dare”. A forty day test where Caleb has to do things for his wife each day. Caleb says he will try it, but only because his father asked him. When he discovers the book is tied to their new found faith Caleb is less than interested. Caleb forges ahead, often getting rejected and frustrated by his good deeds. At his weakest, Caleb finally cries out to God to save his marriage. Caleb doesn’t understand how he could love somebody who constantly rejects him.

Enter Dad to explain this. During a walk on the grounds of a former church summer camp, his father explains the Gospel to him. From that day forward Caleb is “in” as he tells a Christian co-worker and tries to rebuild his marriage.

I will stop there. Hopefully this is enough to encourage you to see this movie. If you are in the Lewiston/Auburn area you can see the movie Friday, February 13 at East Auburn Church in Auburn for free. There will be two showings: 6:30 and 9:00 p.m. All you have to do is call or register online.

The movie was made using volunteers from Sherwood Heights Baptist Church, Kirk Cameron was the only professional actor who donated his time. The movie has grossed more than 33 million dollars to date. Not bad when it was made for $550,000. Also checkout their other movies, Facing the Giants and Flywheel. The production quality isn’t quite as polished as Fireproof, but the storylines are really good.

Invest in your marriage, see this movie and give the “Love Dare” a try.

A catchy little phrase that’s making the rounds at your newspaper I’m sure. But what does that mean? Specifically, what does that mean at your organization?

The meaning behind the saying is newspapers need to change the way they do business, and do it fast. The last 100 years of the way you did things will not keep you alive in today’s economy and ever changing media climate. So what do you do?

I could be over simplifying this, but it comes down to education and communication for your staff.

Most newsrooms have people that are eager to experiment and learn. It is imperative that every news organization have some kind of in-house continuing education program that is accessible to everybody.

Think about it like this. Would you go to a doctor who never step foot in a classroom after medical school? Of course not, which is why the AMA requires continuing education for all physicians. The news industry is no different. It is constantly changing, and to keep on top of this change requires continuing education.

Define the road blocks to new media at your organization the develop a program around those. Common ones I see are:

• Understanding video
• RSS feeds
• Social media
• Mobile technology
• Using search effectively
• General PC knowledge

Your list may vary, but ask around in various departments and you will get a very extensive list.

I know times are tough, but now is not the time to shut down any funds for conferences, seminars or workshops. Many states put on local, or somewhat local, workshops. Here in Maine we have NENMA and NENA that put on some great, reasonably priced workshops.

Communication is key in any relationship, personal or professional. There are a lot of organizations that communicate often and very well with their employees. I can’t speak for everybody, but my current employer does this so well it’s almost annoying. Our HR and Marketing departments use email and print newsletters as well as good ‘ole fashioned bulletin boards to keep us up-to-date on things. Our company newsletter, FYI, even includes an area called “Counting The Beans” that tells us how well, or poor, we are doing as a company. I recently visited one company that keeps their books open to their employees. They can see everything from the electric bill to paychecks.

So what does all of this have to do with innovation? I haven’t talked about one innovative idea. True, but what I’m suggesting here is to create an environment that fosters innovation. The innovative and creative ideas will come from your staff if you give them a safe haven for exploration that must include education and communication.

Our Executive Editor, Rex Rhoades and I had the good fortune to be part of the CNN Newspaper Summit in Atlanta December 1-3.  The purpose of the summit was to discuss the possibility of a CNN wire service for newspapers. This proposition came at a crucial time for newspapers.

The Associated Press was raising its rates for newspapers in 2009. Not what the industry needed when layoffs are running rampandt and newspapers are trying to make ends meet. Many newspapers are faced with cutting jobs or continuing their AP service. And the kicker is that if you wanted out of your AP contract you have to give a two year notice.

The view outside my hotel room.

Upon arrival we were shown to our room at the Omni in downtown Atlanta, which is adjacent to CNN World Headquarters.   My room overlooked a park across the street all decked out for Christmas. I was very impressed. That evening there was a reception and dinner in the atrium of their World Headquarters. We got a chance to meet some of the on-air personalities and other staff of CNN.
The first impression I got from every person we met is they are all on the same page and enthusiastic about this new venture. They were genuinely interested in what we wanted out of a news service.

The next day was a combination of us getting to know CNN and them getting to know us and our needs. They weren’t actually presenting any real solutions at this point.

We got to meet their political team which is headed by John King, who it turns out comes from a print background and was excited about writing copy for their news service. Very bright and articulate. I enjoyed his reports election night. I was really impressed with the touch screen they were using that night. It was like one big iPhone. Very cool. The rest of the team was equally impressive.

Fast forward towards the end of the day and we get into the meat of the meeting. What are they prepared to offer? Basically CNN was offering up their national and international news to newspapers. Which sounded good given that they have some 22 offices around the world. However there were some pretty big holes to fill.

The quantity of stories wasn’t there, and there were no photos. CNN realized this would be a problem, but I don’t think they realized just how important this was. It was very clear by the end of the day this was a show stopper. (Note: they are supplying photos now).

Will CNN’s wire service replace AP? Not at this point and time. The President of CNN Worldwide, Jim Walton, concluded the Summit by saying very clearly that CNN’s wire service is not a replacement for AP. I think all of us were really hoping it would be, and it would cost substantially less. It certainly looks like it could fill the national and international news gaps, but there isn’t a lot of regional and state news (Maine in our case). Perhaps this is a better solution in larger markets.

There’s still a lot of uncertainty about AP. They are releasing a new pricing structure in June. We are all waiting to see what that’s all about before making any further moves. It’s possible that many newspapers can get rid of AP and pull together content from other sources such as McClatchy, PA Sports Ticket and KRT to name a few. But until June, I think we’re all just waiting on AP to see if they respond responsibly to newspaper’s needs.

FYI – the AP rates at the Sun Journal have gone down for 2009 according to a VP from AP that just called me about this blog post. Glad to see somebody is noticing my blog ;+)