I encourage you to take a 6-minute break and listen to this Seesmic video essay by Paul Bradshaw, senior lecturer in online journalism at Birmingham University (UK), as he talks about new distribution models for news. It’s important stuff.
Y’know, in the decade and a half that I’ve been involved in new media/online journalism and covering it as a journalist, I often find myself covering themes. In recent years I’ve ended up writing and thinking a lot about “citizen journalism” and “social media.” Right now, the theme is the distributed web, just as Bradshaw emphasizes in this video.
If you want to know what to focus on in 2008, this is your clue.
WCNC-TV (Charlotte, North Carolina) web gal Kayla Castille wrote in today to report on a journalistic success with using Twitter:
“I just wanted to update you on our Twitter coverage at WCNC. We did it for the primary yesterday, and it was incredibly successful. It was the 3rd most-viewed page on our site, right behind the complete election results and the top story on Obama’s win. The reporters, anchors and producers really got into it, and they were all excited when it succeeded.”
There’s a pet peeve of mine that crops up every January: Website publishers (including some big names) routinely forget to change the copyright dateline in the footers of their pages and in their e-mail deliveries. I usually post a blog item reminding everyone to make this simple change.
Surprisingly, I’m still seeing a lot of “copyright 2007″ notices, especially on e-mail newsletters. Here are a few screen grabs from e-mails that I received in recent days:
For those of you who still need reminding, stop publishing in the past.
Since I needed to move this site to a new host, I figured I may as well incorporate a new design (since I was SO sick of the old one) at the same time. I think this is an improvement. At the least, it’s something NEW!
Related to the move, I’ve also shut down GrowingYourNewsWebsite.com, an advice website that I thought better of seeing through. There were quite a few posts from the couple months I experimented with that site, and they’ve now been incorporated into the content of SteveOuting.com. If you typed in a GrowingYourNewsWebsite.com URL, you ended up here (so all external links to items from that site should redirect to the proper content).
There are a few little things still to be worked out on the new blog. Please let me know if you spot any glitches. Thanks!
Argh! Intense Debate (used for comments on this blog) has been having problems today that still aren’t resolved. I know from their tech support folks that they’re working on it. Meanwhile, comments to this blog are stuck in moderation queue and I can’t get to them to approve for publication. I can be patient, but I wonder if many of their others users won’t be.
This points to the dangers of relying for outside services. You have to be prepared for the occasional glitch or outage that’s beyond your control. Not that the same thing can’t and doesn’t happen with internal services.
Apologies to anyone who left a comment here today. Perhaps I can get to them tomorrow.
(Update: Intense Debate did fix this problem and it’s back to normal. Excellent customer service — especially when you consider that the service is free to use!)
You can read about what we’re doing here: Can newspaper classifieds really be saved? The answer to that question is yes, I believe. But ONLY if newspaper publishers are willing to completely reinvent themselves. I don’t think that incremental changes or improvements to the newspaper classifieds model will be enough.
Frankly, I often feel pretty pessimistic about the newspaper industry. industry leaders seem to give me plenty of reason to see the glass as half empty and draining. But I am optimistic that through this and an affiliated initiative by Christopher Ryan of Future of News that there’s a way out of the darkness.
One of the keys to ReinventingClassifieds.com is serving as a showplace for innovative ideas by industry leaders and innovators. I’m starting to poke around and ask the industry’s brightest people to share their ideas about what it will take to save newspaper classifieds. I’ve already got a couple yes answers from people that I’m very excited to hear their thoughts.
If you’ve got a good answer to the question “What strategies do you believe are necessary to turn around the newspaper classifieds business?” please contact me (steve@outing.us). I’d love to add your perspective to the discussion we’re starting on ReinventingClassifieds.com.
Please take a look at my latest column for Editor & Publisher Online, posted today: “How to Create Killer Niche Web Sites Without Hiring.” I think the two initiatives I’ve profiled are truly significant innovations that can move the news industry forward.
For lack of a better term, Examiner.com’s Examiners program and the Mail & Guardian’s Thought Leader initiative might be described as “Citizen Journalism 2.0.” Thought Leader’s developer also uses the term “By Invitation 2.0.”
The key point is to leverage citizen media and blogging intelligently by integrating it with traditional journalism practices like (what a shock!) editing and gatekeeping. I’d like to hear your opinions on these innovations.
He reports on the Capital Conference newspaper convention in Washington, D.C. last week, where Anthony Moor (a smart and innovative guy now at the Dallas Morning News) asked some publishers on-stage: Can you each give an example of one of the most far-out ideas you have heard recently for editorial and/or business? Not necessarily one that you would do, just that you have heard about?
The question was, according to Edmonds, answered with initial silence and then some pretty lame, not very innovative answers. Edmonds: “So after countless references in this conference (as in last year’s) to transformational change and an excellent panel the day before featuring CEOs from other industries who have pulled off huge makeovers, it comes down to this: The publishers can’t think of anything transformational and are into incrementalism instead?”
I read this after spending time yesterday answering criticisms of my last Editor & Publisher Online column, in which I announced that I was suspending my print-edition subscription and warning newspaper publishers to expect a wave of people behind me doing the same thing. A bunch of newspaper editors and publishers berated me; it felt like I was in 1998 again, not 2008.
Geez, perhaps it’s time for some of those folks to retire and hand over the reins to a younger generation of managers who probably could answer Moor’s question in a heartbeat.
My April 1 Editor & Publisher Online column (not an April Fools joke) about ending my long-held subscription to my local newspaper’s print edition generated a fair bit of controversy in the form of letters to E&P. I apologize for not responding more promptly, but it’s been a crazy period for me. Belatedly, here are some of the letters received (previously published on Editorandpublisher.com), and my responses to them.
The uproar over the performance of ABC News presidential debate moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos on Wednesday night was loud and furious. On ABCNews.com, as I write this there have been nearly 19,000 comments posted to the site — the vast majority of them, it appears, blasting the ABC personalities for focusing on political BS and ignoring actual issues.
With both mainstream columnists and the blogosphere criticizing them, Gibson really couldn’t ignore the controversy in tonight’s newscast. Frankly, I expected them to do the standard old-media thing and ignore the public outcry. To ABC News’ credit, Gibson introduced a report by correspondent David Wright that actually addressed the public outcry and criticism. So bravo for that.
I find this whole episode to be significant. No longer do we watch something on a major network that we think is awful and just yell at the TV. When it’s bad enough — as last night’s debate performance by the ABC moderators was — and enough people get angry, their voices will be heard. This is another in a long line of indicators demonstrating the weakening power of traditional media.
Gibson and Stephanopoulos must be feeling humbled tonight, though Gibson during tonight’s news show did his best to hide it and remain detached — even though he had become the news and was not just reporting it.
