Is this the tipping point for print?
The announcement by the Christian Science Monitor that it will discontinue its daily print operation, shifting to weekly print editions with an online-first focus marks the first major national daily newspaper to take the leap.
Newspapers continue to be beset by a brutal combination of declining subscriptions, loss of ad revenue, and an onerous production/distribution cost structure for printing and delivery of their core product. Gannett newspapers has announced an additional 10 percent reduction in staff at its community newspapers by year-end, after already eliminating 1000 jobs earlier in the year.
The economy is tough for everyone, inside and outside of journalism. Of greatest concern should be newspapers' continuing loss of audience. Subscriptions have fallen just under 5% in the past year.
We all know the audience is migrating online. Perhaps the CSM decision to take the leap to weekly and online-first is the only way to shed the burdensome production cost structure and survive in the new media world.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Can a blogger also be a journalist?
Can a blogger also be a journalist? The answer appears to be: It depends who you ask.
At the fall conference of the Oregon chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists, I shared a panel with two former newspaper managing editors. Like many traditional reporters, their disdain for blogging was thinly veiled.
Since the topic of the panel was purportedly the future of journalism, and my panelists represented the end of the biz seeing the sharpest declines, I found myself using bloggers as an example of the hope for journalism's future.
My view is that blogging is just another method of publishing content, like printing a paper or broadcasting a newscast. The transformational power of blogging is that it is so easy that anyone can now be published. No wonder traditional print editors hate it. For decades, those who controlled the printing presses controlled the definition of what was news. Blogging gives publishing to the masses.
But as Steve Engelberg, managing editor of ProPublica, noted at the SPJ conference, the American revolutionary pamphleteers were the "bloggers" of their time, finding a grass roots way to publish views excluded from the official state press.
This issue stopped being academic in Oregon recently, where a local blogger was denied access to closed-door meetings because the city deemed him to not be a member of the "press". The blogger, on Loaded Orygun, argued that he shouldn't be denied press status merely because he did not work for some large media organization. Not surprisingly, in an Oregonian editorial, Bob Caldwell worried about who would hold an individual blogger accountable for journalistic misdeeds, the implied promise being that no reporter for a mainstream news organization would violate the principles of journalism. (Does anyone else immediately think of NY Times plagiarist Jayson Blair?)
In German last year, a blogger was named journalist of the year. It seems clear to me that some bloggers are engaged in journalism and others are not, and it is the content that they create, not the backing of a media monolith or the 'publishing platform' used that should define them. Professor Jack Balkin suggests exactly this kind of practical test for bloggers as journalists.
A post in Media Shift documented the continued blurring of the lines between bloggers and journalists. Although it clearly torments some traditional print reporters, a number of new voices have emerged thanks to the blogosphere, voices that were not previously heard when a few dominant media companies did most of the talking in their local markets.
Some of these blogging voices are original, knowledgeable, and add to the conversation as watchdogs and protectors of the public trust. That sounds like journalism to me. What do you think?
At the fall conference of the Oregon chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists, I shared a panel with two former newspaper managing editors. Like many traditional reporters, their disdain for blogging was thinly veiled.
Since the topic of the panel was purportedly the future of journalism, and my panelists represented the end of the biz seeing the sharpest declines, I found myself using bloggers as an example of the hope for journalism's future.
My view is that blogging is just another method of publishing content, like printing a paper or broadcasting a newscast. The transformational power of blogging is that it is so easy that anyone can now be published. No wonder traditional print editors hate it. For decades, those who controlled the printing presses controlled the definition of what was news. Blogging gives publishing to the masses.
But as Steve Engelberg, managing editor of ProPublica, noted at the SPJ conference, the American revolutionary pamphleteers were the "bloggers" of their time, finding a grass roots way to publish views excluded from the official state press.
This issue stopped being academic in Oregon recently, where a local blogger was denied access to closed-door meetings because the city deemed him to not be a member of the "press". The blogger, on Loaded Orygun, argued that he shouldn't be denied press status merely because he did not work for some large media organization. Not surprisingly, in an Oregonian editorial, Bob Caldwell worried about who would hold an individual blogger accountable for journalistic misdeeds, the implied promise being that no reporter for a mainstream news organization would violate the principles of journalism. (Does anyone else immediately think of NY Times plagiarist Jayson Blair?)
In German last year, a blogger was named journalist of the year. It seems clear to me that some bloggers are engaged in journalism and others are not, and it is the content that they create, not the backing of a media monolith or the 'publishing platform' used that should define them. Professor Jack Balkin suggests exactly this kind of practical test for bloggers as journalists.
A post in Media Shift documented the continued blurring of the lines between bloggers and journalists. Although it clearly torments some traditional print reporters, a number of new voices have emerged thanks to the blogosphere, voices that were not previously heard when a few dominant media companies did most of the talking in their local markets.
Some of these blogging voices are original, knowledgeable, and add to the conversation as watchdogs and protectors of the public trust. That sounds like journalism to me. What do you think?
Saturday, October 25, 2008
SPJ at UO
Carla Savalli, author of the Newsroom of the Future report, speaks at a Multimedia storytelling workshop at the University of Oregon. The Oregon chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists held its fall conference Saturday in Eugene.
Savalli, a career newspaper journalist, described how she transformed the Spokane Spokesman Review's process from a once-a-day print cycle to a 24/7 news cycle, including introducing a Breaking News team that started each day at 5 a.m. Savalli said she expected print reporters to continue to be expected to develop 24/7 reporting skills for online, while the likely future for print editions was as a source of depth, content and context.
Joining Savalli on the panel, I shared some of the multi-media tools detailed here, including blogging, hyperlinking, mapping the news, and embedding slideshows
Friday, October 24, 2008
A Picture is Worth...a Slideshow
Slideshows are one of the most powerful ways to enrich a text story. Just take a look at this slideshow from the Dallas Morning News after Hurricane Ike pounded Texas.
The good news is, building slideshows is also surprisingly easy, and is an effective way to increase views for a story.
Traditional reporters who once relied on a print or TV photographer to take care of collecting images and video in the field for them now need to develop visual storytelling skills themselves.
Cost-cutting has reduced the number of photojournalists; 'one man bands' require story-tellers to collect the pictures as well as to write the words; and, camera-enabled cell phones give first-on-the-scene reporters the opportunity to collect and publish images from the field long before video or still images can be driven back to the newsroom.
Composing and capturing compelling images is a skill in itself. Legacy photojournalists can be an invaluable resource in learning the basics of shot composition and lighting. The National Press Photographers Association web site has multiple resources for developing shooting skills.
Once the shots are taken, manipulating those images doesn't have to require an advanced degree or a big software budget. Irfanview is a free downloadable image manipulation program that can be used to crop, resize, and adjust images quickly. Photoshop Elements from Adobe is the simplified, lower-cost version of the industry standard Photoshop imaging software.
Building slideshows and publishing them to the web doesn't have to be hard, either. While many media companies have proprietary tools within their own content management system, Soundslides is a popular, low cost ($39) and easy to use product that enables swift creation and publication of slideshows, with the option of adding narration or music audio track.
The good news is, building slideshows is also surprisingly easy, and is an effective way to increase views for a story.
Traditional reporters who once relied on a print or TV photographer to take care of collecting images and video in the field for them now need to develop visual storytelling skills themselves.
Cost-cutting has reduced the number of photojournalists; 'one man bands' require story-tellers to collect the pictures as well as to write the words; and, camera-enabled cell phones give first-on-the-scene reporters the opportunity to collect and publish images from the field long before video or still images can be driven back to the newsroom.
Composing and capturing compelling images is a skill in itself. Legacy photojournalists can be an invaluable resource in learning the basics of shot composition and lighting. The National Press Photographers Association web site has multiple resources for developing shooting skills.
Once the shots are taken, manipulating those images doesn't have to require an advanced degree or a big software budget. Irfanview is a free downloadable image manipulation program that can be used to crop, resize, and adjust images quickly. Photoshop Elements from Adobe is the simplified, lower-cost version of the industry standard Photoshop imaging software.
Building slideshows and publishing them to the web doesn't have to be hard, either. While many media companies have proprietary tools within their own content management system, Soundslides is a popular, low cost ($39) and easy to use product that enables swift creation and publication of slideshows, with the option of adding narration or music audio track.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Mapping the News
Where is the world is a story taking place? It's one of the fundamental "W's".
In the world of online news, there's no reason not to answer that question visually, and interactively.
Quikmaps is a simple, free online tool that can be used to create an embeddable map in a matter of minutes:
For more elaborate features and functionality, Google maps offers zoom, pan, linking and more.
Here's a simple application KGW.com built to tell the story of a homeslide: SW Portland home slides 300 feet down hill
Mapping the multi-media elements of slideshow, video, 911 call audio, and additional background took about an hour.
Going forward, geo-tagging stories by location (embedding meta tags that capture address/location information) and automatically being able to map those stories so users can choose their news by location is the exciting and logical next step.
In the world of online news, there's no reason not to answer that question visually, and interactively.
Quikmaps is a simple, free online tool that can be used to create an embeddable map in a matter of minutes:
For more elaborate features and functionality, Google maps offers zoom, pan, linking and more.
Here's a simple application KGW.com built to tell the story of a homeslide: SW Portland home slides 300 feet down hill
Mapping the multi-media elements of slideshow, video, 911 call audio, and additional background took about an hour.
Going forward, geo-tagging stories by location (embedding meta tags that capture address/location information) and automatically being able to map those stories so users can choose their news by location is the exciting and logical next step.
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