Monthly Archives: June 2008

Not all information needs to be crafted into a story

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Howard Owens

Via Martin Stabe, comes this provocative post on the deconstruction of the story.

But here’s the thing: journalists have always been far more entranced by ‘the story’ than audiences. Less than a quarter of newspaper readers claim to read to the end of a story, even one they’re interested in … and of those, over two thirds don’t read every word.*

Word people — and this seems to apply to many visual people, too — love a good story. But news isn’t always about story.

We get into this business because we want to tell a good story.

The readers — or viewers — don’t always want that.

Storytelling, whether written or visual, then becomes something that is more about serving your own ego than serving your readers.

So check your ego, whether writing or shooting, and give people useful or entertaining information in an accessible package.  Save the storytelling for when you really have a story to tell.

*(A note about video — I find on long video that hasn’t totally engaged me, I tend to skip ahead in the player looking for a bit to interest me … sort of the same way I read mediocre stories.) Continue reading →

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Owning your name in search, variations and nuances

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Howard Owens

Christopher Wink sends this e-mail:

What is the line with all of these online networking devices? I read with interest through my Google reader your post on increasing one’s searchability online , which was exactly why I started my Web site back in December. I have a Flickr account and Youtube and, as you know, LinkedIn and some others, use my actual name and use these products, all with links to my Web site, pushing all traffic to one place, so I can control what potential employers or others interested see and know about me.

But I never had a Facebook account or MySpace page. I dismissed them as slop and wastes of time. But I also know they can definitely direct traffic to my site. …But do I want these readers? …Do I sign up for Vimeo, and Twitter and a Tumblr – I understand their purposes, but don’t think they serve me – though, I’m sure, they all, in their own way, would bring traffic to my site. So, do I set these accounts up and let them sit – knowing I won’t really use them – just so I can have the opportunity to push to my site, or not? …Should I pick and choose, or truly optimize and control my name search?

In a slightly related topic that I would be interested to hear your thoughts and could provide good blog fodder – when it comes to Google name searches, any advice about name variations? Howard Owens is fairly straightforward, but my byline is Christopher Wink, plenty of people call me Chris Wink – which happens to be the name of a founder of the Blue Man Group, and a pesky competitor for name recognition. People with names like James, John and Jack, and certainly names beyond the Christian tradition change form with popular nicknames. That is pesky for branding.

Do you think it’s best to pick one name and run with it, or should I try to compete with Christopher and Chris Wink for example.

Just some thoughts. Discard or ignore any or all of them, but I would be interested to hear your thoughts and thought they might be good for your blog, too.

This is a good topic to cover because while I believe it’s an ironclad rule that every journalist should own his or her name — his identity, his brand –  in search, the are variations and nuances that I don’t think are as important, but maybe others do.

You could drive yourself crazy trying to join all of the thousands of social networking sites out there.  Just joining and creating a basic profile helps, but there’s also value that comes from participation and you lose some of that by over extending yourself.  There are only a handful of sites you need to join to get sufficient SEO juice, especially if you’re blogging, because that is naturally going to generate links to your site.

As for owning variations of your name — it’s fine if you can do it, but I think most editors are going to understand if you don’t own Chris when you go by Christopher, especially when there is a prominent person using the variation.  Anybody searching for you specifically, will probably default to the brand you’ve established for yourself.

One of the rules of branding is being consistent. If your brand is going to be Christopher Wink, you should always be Christopher Wink.  I’m always Howard Owens.  I’m never Howie Owens (though this post just gave me an idea — not a bad idea to own the domain name variations of your name if you can get them, and I was amazed to find nobody had ever registered howieowens.com, so I just did; I already own howard-owens.com).

Anybody have any thoughts? How deep do you have to dive?  And in the future, will you need to dive deeper to stay competitive? Continue reading →

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Is it a burning bridge, or just a short window of opportunity?

Posted on June 27, 2008 by Howard Owens

Interesting post from Howard Weaver about what some newspaper companies are going through (and I think his primary intended audience is McClatchy).

He says this:

Time is not our friend. Mark Zieman in Kansas City introduced me to the poem Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day, which includes the memorable couplet, “Time is the school in which we learn/ Time is the fire in which we burn.” (I think Mark probably heard it on Star Trek, but maybe he was an English major.)

That works well with some advice I offered a young editor at a non-McClatchy paper in an email exchange earlier today. Maybe I got a little wound up in my argument, but I closed by writing, “My current metaphor for our business is this: We have to move, and we can see a secure spot for ourselves right across the river. The good news is, there’s a bridge; the bad news is, it’s on fire. There’s time to get across, but not to [screw] around. I intend to get to the other side before the bridge burns up. Who’s coming with me?”

In the past, I’ve been a bit of an alarmist about the need for newsrooms to “get it,” and I still think that is terribly important. But not because the bridge is burning, but because we have a window of opportunity to build a new business that will be better for journalism, better for society and better for the companies we work for. (I should note, I’ve always made a point of saying journalist should prepare for the worst, because the preparation will help them and their companies take advantage of the best opportunities … there’s nothing to be lost by becoming online intelligent).

It’s a window in time, to be sure

Some hard choices have to be made by newsrooms (unlike Mr. Weaver, I believe there is a problem with modern journalism, that our revenue crisis has as much to do with journalism being broken as it does with competition from internet classifieds start ups), but I think newsrooms can find ways to evolve. Most journalists are pretty smart people.

Those newsrooms that do evolve will produce journalism that is better for society and because of that they’ll grow audience, which will make their classified platform more valuable (Unlike Mr. Weaver, I don’t believe that most newspapers are really extending their in-market reach with their web sites, and that’s a problem).

Those newsrooms that don’t evolve may survive despite themselves, because there will be a market left for a long time for the kind of stilted journalism that they produce; and, of course, some may be shuttered. And those that are shuttered will close because those local audiences will have been offered better alternatives from disruptive competitors.

The smaller the newsroom, the more likely it is to make the necessary changes.

But I no longer fear the crisis as I once did. I’m feeling surprisingly calm these days. Maybe that’s just because I work for a company that is doing pretty darn good, comparatively. I’m feeling pretty optimistic about the ability of many newspapers (but not all) to survive the current shake out — and I’m thinking that may be all that’s going on … some papers will close, some papers will morph into different kinds of operations, but a good number may actually grow stronger.

And I’d like to think I’m in a position to help make that happen.

And most of the crisis in newspapers is about big metros, who get all of the attention, rather than the kind of community newspaper I’ve spent my entire career working for, caring for and being passionate about.

That said, nobody should think I’m going to let newsrooms off the hook for “getting it.” The work still needs to be done — whether it’s motivated by a sense of crisis, or because it’s just the right thing to do — the work still has to be done. There’s still threats. There’s still defensive measures to be taken. (And of course, there’s huge opportunities.) It’s still an all-hands effort. We can afford to be confident, but we can’t afford to be cocky or cavalier.

So, you can still expect me to get riled up at times :) Continue reading →

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Cheap camera video journalism going mainstream

Posted on June 26, 2008 by Howard Owens

Ok, so I’m going to show bad form and gloat a bit.

I read this post from Beet.tv this morning with some sense of vindication.

With hand held cameras, video reporting is a natural extension of print reporting and holds great advantage for newspaper publishers, says pioneering news producer Tammy Haddad.

In the world of innovative television news producing, Tammy is at the top. She has produced “Larry King Live,” “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and others. These days, she’s reporting on the presidential campaign as a contributor to Newsweek.com with her small Sanyo video camera.

…

Newspapers, with legions of print reporters, are positioned to expand in video coverage, Tammy says. The equipment is not expensive . Tammy’s Sanyo costs less than $800. The Flip used by Kara Swisher and CNET News.com’s Dan Farber is under $200.

Last week, we reported that the Washington Post has trained nearly 200 staffers in how to use video cameras.

In the fall of 2005, I handed out point-and-shoot cameras to the Bakersfield Californian newsroom (an idea I stole from Jack Lail). My earliest blog post advocating small-camera video can be found here. Of course, this line of thinking has pissed off a lot of people over the past two or three years. I’ve been called a few names and dismissed as a crank.

For some hint of that, look at this post and this post.

Now you’ve got Newsweek, the Washington Post and even some network TV people, going the cheap camera route.

The party is just getting started.

BTW:  GateHouse Media is approaching some 400 small video cameras in the field.  The results vary (some good video, some bad video, and unfortunately, some “no video”), but we continue to push the effort and are improving and refining our training efforts.

Continue reading →

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Spare me the fancy redesigns and give me some text to read

Posted on June 26, 2008 by Howard Owens

The blogosphere has been abuzz with chatter about the Orlando Sentinel redesign, so I’ll skip hunting up some relevant link for this post — you all know what I’m talking about.

The whole hullabaloo reminds me of a thought I’ve had many times recently: Why not just let a print newspaper be a print newspaper?

Spare me the big graphics and four-column photos and color splashes. Stop trying to turn your print front page into a web page.

Why not go back to pre-USAToday newspaper design? It’s time to let stories meander, let front pages be grey and full of information; rather than stuffing as high a story count as possible into the A and B sections; why not just tell the stories that need to be told, and then tell them well?

On the web, frequency and quantity (much more so than quality or depth) is what drives page views.

Online is about information grazing. Reading print is a more leisurely activity, even if it’s just 20 minutes over toast and coffee before rushing off to work.

Train your newsroom staff to keep that web site fresh, and then let them take their time on writing the really important stories in a way that provides meaning and context; for an added bonus, make sure those longer stories are well written, since print readers — shocking revelation here — like to read.

On a daily basis, a good reporter should be able to produce three or four web updates (some call it breaking news) and then pick one of those items to turn into a quality, longer print story (or have some other print-appropriate piece in the pipeline).

Rather than trying to figure out how to use graphics and space-wasting indexes to capture the attention of “time starved readers,” or young readers, or soccer moms, or NASCAR dads, or whatever flavor-the-day your design consultant says you should reach, why not just cede the fact that local news is a niche interest, and your core audience for that niche doesn’t care about fancy packages — they care about the news, the information. Oh, and they also want comics, classifieds, stock listings and movie times (print is still a package).

If they want timeliness, they’ll go online.

News isn’t about a demographic (as in, “How do we target women, age 24 to 35, with one child and two cats?”), which seems to be the approach taken by the expensive design consultants. News is about meeting the needs of people of both sexes, all ages, religions and nationalities who want to understand the world around them. Sadly, that isn’t everybody, but it’s a lot of people, and surveys show newspapers are doing a poor job of meeting that need.

So fix it

Any copy editor with a pica poll should be able to put together a decent front page. It shouldn’t take an eye for art or snazzy color combinations.

The print product and the online product should be different products. They may serve the same audience, but they serve different needs at different times. The print product should provide context and a moment’s respite. The online product should say, “this is what is happening now.”

Hey, Mr. Publisher — you want to save your print circulation? Try digging into your archives and looking at your newspaper from 1971. Make your 2008 paper look like that. It should read like that. That should be your print design model and your print content model. I’d even bet that you would get some young readers back with such an approach, because your paper would finally appeal to what should be your target demographic — people who like to read the news. Continue reading →

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A quick look at people who are not currently with newspaper companies

Posted on June 25, 2008 by Howard Owens
  • Chris Jennewein, Ron James and Jim Drummond are out at SignOnSanDiego.com. We can only hope they land newspaper industry jobs soon, if that’s what they want to do.
  • Sean Polay left Ottaway for a magazine company.
  • Bob Benz, Wes Jackson, Mike Higgins and Heather Lamm are now with Maroon Ventures, which consults for newspapers, but is more than just a newspaper-related company.
  • Michael Bazeley now works for Berekley’s law school.
  • Lucas Grindley, according to his LinkedIn profile, is still looking for work.
  • Joe Michaud left MaineToday.com to become a consultant. John Wilpers is consulting. Melinda Gipson is consulting.
  • Ken Sands is now with Congressional Quarterly.
  • Ed Canale, VP of Interactive for the Sacramento Bee, is moving on.

Wow, that’s a lot of smart, talented, experienced people — people who pioneered the online newspaper business — who are not currently employed by newspaper companies. Though some still help newspaper online operations through consulting, that’s quite a brain drain.

Of course, there are still lots of smart, talented, experienced people — including many pioneers — still in their newspaper jobs; it’s just surprising to look at such a distinguished list of people who are in different roles now. Continue reading →

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How registration is going, leading to thoughts on the value of registration

Posted on June 24, 2008 by Howard Owens

So far, 18 people have registered to comment on howardowens.com.  For a fairly low traffic blog, I think that’s pretty good.

What’s interesting is how many people have registered — the majority — without then leaving a comment.  They just registered.

That’s a phenomena we’ve observed at GateHouse, too, where we recently launched a registration system for comments.  People just register.

I’m not sure why:  Is it a matter of trust with the brand; they want to affiliate themselves with that brand? Or just anticipation of commenting later?

I will say most — but not all — of the people who have registered on howardowens.com have commented previously.

Only two people registered without their real names, but in both cases they use handles I know and recognize (one person is somebody whom I know his offline identity).

Observationally, I would say my comment traffic is about what it was before registration — some, but not much.

There’s still some people who think all of this registration tied to participation is somehow anti-net, or that it kills participation, that people will never accept it.  It’s a fool’s delusion to fight against the web’s built-in bias toward anonymity and unfettered communication.

Balderdash, I say.

At GateHouse Media, the level of participation and registration is quite healthy, and the feedback generally positive.  The vast majority of people want a safe, civil environment to hold conversations about topics of interest. They trust their local newspapers and don’t mind giving up a little personal information in order to achieve that worthy goal — if registration will cut down on the flamers, race haters, insult idiots, etc. — then they see registration as not just a necessary evil, but an absolute positive step.

The information ethic of the web is trending toward a bias in favor of real identity, or at least reliable persona (we may not know your real name, but we know who you are — you present a consistent persona online that we can trust).  In order to be credible, you need to be a trusted user.  Trust can be built over time in an open system, or a certain level of instant trust can be gained through a site owner’s registration system.

Some of what inspired these thoughts this morning was a post from Nick Carr about Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia moving away from the language of the bazaar to the language of the club (Carr’s characterization).

Wales described Wikipedia: “the online encyclopedia in which any reasonable person can join us in writing and editing entries on any encyclopedic topic.”

Which makes his conception of Wikipedia today far more insular than it was ten years ago, when anybody could do anything.

I’m fine with that. Rules and expectations are good. Apparently, Carr, who advises Encyclopedia Britannica, thinks Wales is selling out.

In part, I go back to Kevin Kelly’s post on how economic value is derived from something that can be endlessly copied — such as digital content.  When content wants to be free, content only gains value through non-tangible values that cannot be copied.  One of those values is trust.

Registration in exchange for participation helps establish trust.

Trust is not one of the values mentioned in Kelly’s post, but it is a value that obviously can’t be copied, so it fits within his thesis.  Registration, however, does mesh with another one of his values — authenticity.  Users want to know that there is a real person who stands behind the content — be it a news reporter or a person leaving a comment on that reporter’s story — whom they believe to be real with a reputation to protect.

Of course, any registration system can be gamed, but gaming — false registrations for the purpose of deceit or incitement — can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis by an engaged community manager.  It isn’t difficult.

In an era when news is increasingly treated as a commodity by the market place, it’s essential for news site owners to recognize the true value of what it is they can deliver to an audience.  Among those values are trust, authenticity and a safe environment for participation and conversation. Registration can help us achieve those goals.

As I suggested previously, it isn’t a magic bullet, but it is a step toward better online communities. Continue reading →

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Orlando redesign may be bold, but it’s not original

Posted on June 24, 2008 by Howard Owens

There is much being made of the Orlando Sentinel redesign.

Yes, it’s shocking. It’s bold. It’s wild.

But original? Hardly.

Just take a look at the Bakersfield California’s front page from today.

Orland’s plans seem tame by comparison, and Bakersfield launched that format on March 1, 2006 (I know, I was there; it was the same day we launched the current design of Bakersfield.com).

I’m surprised so few people have noticed the copy-cat nature of Orlando’s new design — and asked more questions about how well it’s worked where it was first tried.

It would be interesting to see what the BC’s current circulation numbers look like. After a major marketing push (Radio, TV, Billboards) launched contiguous to the redesign, the initial returns were not impressive. But maybe things have turned around. I don’t know.

In defense of Bakersfield’s circulation declines linked to above, it would be fair to note — the bakersfield.com site upgrade was substantial (in all modesty), and may have pulled readers from print; Bakersfield has long been aggressive with other online and print products, which could pull readers from the core product; and in an unfortunate coincidence, the Bakersfield economy took a nosedive immediately after the redesign was launched (contributing, in no small measure to the fact that my former Bakersfield home was sold in a foreclosure auction today, at about $125K less than we paid for the house (UPDATE: I assumed it sold at the time of post; but it didn’t, so the bank just took title — so it’s still on the market if you want a great home in Bakersfield at a bargain price).

UPDATE: Steve Yelvington tells us how to look up ABC circulation numbers.  For some odd reason, I’ve never been able to find that link myself, though I knew it was out there and have searched for it (so, Thanks, Steve!).  From the search, we learn that BC’s circ has fallen to 59,433.

Again, we can’t say for sure what impact the redesign has had on BC’s circ.  There are any number of factor’s at play.

Doug Fisher posted this:

Past experience shows newspaper makeovers don’t necessarily translate into financial success. After the Bakersfield Californian underwent a drastic redesign two years ago, the 60,000-circulation paper in California’s Central Valley saw a small initial jolt to circulation and revenue, sparked by the brighter look and expanded coverage of hot topics like immigration. But the gains have been erased as the area economy struggles. Bakersfield Californian Chief Executive Richard Beene says the steps were necessary to keep the paper relevant, but he has advice for others considering a similar redesign: “Don’t expect it to turn around circulation or revenue overnight. It’s not a magic bullet.”

Which originally came from the WSJ Continue reading →

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Journalists who want to own their names in Google need follow a few simple steps

Posted on June 22, 2008 by Howard Owens

My post critiquing the online activity of SPJ’s Mark of Excellence caused a stir. Predictably, not everybody liked it. But it also seemed to do some good. A few of the students mentioned came to the site with positive responses.

Claire St. Amant just left this comment on the post:

I came across your blog while googling myself, or “ego-surfing” as you call it. My site was in a bit of a holding pattern, but your critique spurred me on to further development—see http://www.clairestamant.com I’ve also started a technorati account in hopes of generating traffic. Thanks for the shout-out and constructive criticism. Glad to see you’re back online, too. Oh, and I share your disdain for the “Frat Boys News” byline. Any advice on how I could get that moved down and/or off would be greatly appreciated.

Her site is considerably improved. She’s even got a blog going.

That is all to the good, I think, but if I were to go all Simon Cowell on her, and be “totally honest,” I’d warn against calling her blog posts “blogs.” I find that a common mistake among print people — I’ve seen print people call comments on stories, forum postings and individual blog entries all “blogs,” which isn’t quite correct. A blog contains posts. “Blogs” is a collection of blogs, not individual posts. You don’t post a blog; you post a post on a blog.

Also, I would recommend making her blog her home page, rather than a section of her site, and make everything else she wants to put on the site a section or separate page (such as her resume, pointers to her work, etc.) Blogs have mad SEO, especially if she can get some people to link to her, and would help her with that unfortunate byline on the Frat Boys site.

She asked for advice specifically related to pushing down the Frat Boys link in a Google search. I’ll offer some advice below, but hopefully others will jump in (and we could all do her a favor by linking to her site as Claire St. Amant, to improve her page rank and help her own her own name in search (which shouldn’t be hard, because it’s a fairly unusual name).

My advice:

  • Get a Facebook profile going. Use it to link to your site.
  • Start a LinkedIn profile (be sure to take advantage of the service that allows you to create a URL containing your name). My LinkedIn profile page does well in Google. Also, link to your site.
  • Start a profile page on Wired Journalists. Link to your site. My profile page hits the second page of a Google search for my name.
  • My Buzznet site ranks real high for my name in Google, so start posting photos to Buzznet.
  • Ditto for Flickr.
  • Grab your name, as in “clairstamant,” as a Twitter account. My Twitter account ranks high on Google.
  • Start a Digg account. Be a good Digg member and digg worthwhile links, but also when you do a good post, digg your own post. This will help with SEO, too. My Digg account ranks high on Google.
  • Start a YouTube account with your real name as your account name. This should rank high, then, in Google searches for your name. Of course, you’ll want to post some videos. I don’t know how other hiring managers would feel, but I’m going to look more at the spirit of the effort than the quality of the content. I’m not expecting your personal creative expressions online to be NBC ready.
  • Start a second blog. This is an opportunity to add a little SEO juice to your main, professional domain, and it gives you an outlet for personal expression, while keeping your name.com site for professional purposes.
  • Always use your real name online — for EVERYTHING you do. Never leave an anonymous comment. Never use an assumed name. You want people to know you, find you, look for your, know who you are and what you do. Not only is posting anonymously unethical for journalists to do, it robs you of a chance to increase your visibility. Also, cheap and easy anonymity can lure you into a career-ruining mistake. Remember, you can always be found out.

Clair has two big advantage for owning her own name in Google (and other search engines). First, she a unique name; second, she’s had the forethought to register a domain with that name. All journalists with unique names should follow suit, and the Jim Smith’s of the world should work out some variation of their name, register tha

One other thing for Claire — who owns the copyright to the Baylor Lariat piece? The amount of the excerpt looks to go beyond fair use, so you or the paper might want to issue a DMCA takedown notice. That should get it out of Google eventually. Continue reading →

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Topix getting more aggressive in going after local information franchise

Posted on June 21, 2008 by Howard Owens

I’ve told you before, Topix is not your friend.  They’ve been taking your headlines and links, even your photos, and using them to build a community of people interested in those local topics, your franchise. And all the while, trying to build a local classified network of FREE classifieds.

Now comes word that they’re going after your event listings, your business listings and your movie listings.

So why are you still letting them scrape your headlines and links?

It would be one thing if they were sending you traffic, but they’re not.

Topix wants to own your local information franchise.  How much help are you willing to give them? Continue reading →

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