Author Archive for Steve Outing

I just renewed my subscription to Wired magazine. $12 for another year of the print edition, plus I get the tablet edition for free to read an enhanced edition on my iPad. What a deal!

Alas, I don’t want the print edition! I’d prefer to receive only the iPad edition and reduce my carbon footprint a bit by causing one less copy of the magazine to be printed, shipped around by trucks, and so on. Also, I prefer reading on my iPad over print magazines, the latter which tend to get lost in piles of paper and books around the house. But for the $12-a-year renewal offer, I have to get the print edition.

Sure, I could opt for paying for just the digital-tablet edition with no print delivery, but that would cost me $19.99 a year. (That also happens to be the price advertised for new subscribers on the Wired website for print edition and tablet subscription. The site doesn’t offer tablet-only for that price, as far as I can tell; you can pay $19.99 a year and avoid the print edition by purchasing a digital edition via the iPad app.)

If I was truly committed to avoiding the extra resources consumed and pollution created by taking the print edition, I could of course just pay the extra $8 a year. It’s not much, right? I considered that, but I’m on a meager university salary and my wife is a public-school teacher, and in this economy we’ve had to watch expenses and cut back on some things (bye-bye, exorbitant cable-TV bill!), so if I have a chance to save money, I do. (I’ll donate my printed Wired magazines to my wife’s school library.)

Besides, what logic is there to charge subscribers more for getting less (i.e., digital-only subscription), and charging more for subscribers who want to do the right thing environmentally? It’s stupid.

Well, it’s not stupid from the publisher’s standpoint, of course. Wired and its parent company want me and others to continue to take the print edition, whether we want it or not, because those colorful print ads that fill up the magazine bring in lots of money. It won’t do to encourage or support subscribers giving up print in favor of digital only, because the print ads would then bring in less money.

I get that. But it pisses me off that in this media transition that we find ourselves in, print publishers resort to discouraging the digital transition and encouraging subscribers to continue receiving a product that consumes physical resources (trees) and pollutes the environment (trucks and delivery).

It’s not just Wired. Making the cheapest option for newspaper and magazine subscriptions be print + digital is a current major trend in media business models.

In another few years, perhaps we’ll be past such stupidity (I mean in an environmental sense, not a business one). For now, all I or any magazine or newspaper subscriber who wants a publisher’s product and are caught in such a situation can do is gripe, or be altruistic and pay more.

For this month’s Carnival of Journalism (Twitter hashtag #jcarn), Lisa Williams is leading the show, and she has this question:

“Right now, nominations are open for the Online Journalism Awards. What qualities should awards like this endorse in an era of such tremendous change in the news industry?”

I’m a bit late, so I’ve had the opportunity to read some of the earlier entries. A common theme is that good, solid, hard-hitting journalism is a must for receiving OJA recognition, and where new technology comes in is for journalists to select the right (digital) technology to best communicate the story in innovative ways. It’s a consistent, logical message: Balance strong journalism with digital innovation. I can’t argue with that.

But I also picked up some disdain about ONA — indeed, about technology-focused and forward-thinking journalists — obsessing too much on “the latest shiny new thing” and downplaying the serious-journalism part. So here I get to veer off the common path and praise shiny new digital things that can be useful in the practice of journalism.

Clearly, no one (including me) is going to advocate ignoring or downplaying the great-journalism piece. But I like the shiny new things that today’s technologists foist on the market, especially those that have interesting and potentially powerful applications for journalism and storytelling.

Of course, I’m biased. My digital-media program at the University of Colorado Boulder serves, in part, as the horizon watcher for the Journalism & Mass Communication program. So it’s my job to take a look at all the shiny new digital things that come along and assess whether or not they might be useful to journalists (and non-journalists doing journalism-like things, like recording disasters and news events when they find themselves as eyewitnesses holding a phone capable of recording audio, video, taking photos, and sharing any of that instantly with the world).

Having done this for a good long time, I like to think that I can identify the new digital toys (um, I mean tools) that have the potential for significantly impacting how we practice journalism. Likewise, I can usually spot the ones that aren’t worth my enthusiasm. Of course, I’m not always right, and neither is anyone else who calls him/herself a media geek.

Again, I’m biased because of the work that I do, but I really wish that more publishers, editors, and journalists working in news organizations would take a more adventurous path and try (the most promising of the) shiny new things. Ditto for professors in journalism programs (and that includes the one where I work). Too many, in my experience, view it as a waste of their time and prefer to wait for others to prove that the latest new technology is important to journalism — then maybe they’ll climb on board.

Oh, Steve, I can hear the skeptics mutter as they read this, you’re just a gadget freak; you enjoy this, but we don’t! … But let’s think about why being a student of “emerging digital technology” is not just an idle pastime for those of us concerned about the future of journalism.

Consider the news industry. Newspapers have died, are dying; journalists by the thousands have been shown the door, and those jobs aren’t coming back. There’s a (small but) thriving new news landscape shaping up, but it’s still dwarfed by old media, and too often funded by foundation and philanthropic money because this new wave of news organizations is not yet sustainable without charity. On the former, slowness in adopting emerging digital technologies is one of the major reasons that the news industry is in such a mess today.

Consider journalism education. Sure, there are plenty of digital innovators teaching tomorrow’s journalists. But they remain the minority. If most journalism educators at colleges and universities focused a decent portion of their time on digital innovation, perhaps the “answers” to resurrecting a failed news industry would have been discovered by now — by faculty, students, and researchers in the higher-education system!

Consider, too, this old Apple TV commercial, “Think Different,” celebrating the innovators and the risk-takers:

Since I first moved from old news to an Internet career in 1994, the ones who “thought differently,” became fabulously wealthy, and invented new industries (thus disrupting old ones) have been in the technology sector, primarily. Journalists mostly “thought the same” about the digital revolution swirling around them, or “thought a little bit differently.” It’s little wonder, then, that our profession still struggles to find its way.

It’s not realistic to believe that journalists can suddenly “think different” to such a degree and achieve as much as the founders of Google, eBay, Twitter, Facebook, et al. But more modest and doable is to take risks and try out promising new digital technologies right away; experiment now, not tomorrow. Accept failures as part of the deal, and run with the successes.

Which leads (finally) back to the Online Journalism Awards. I’d like to see OJA’s organizers recognize and honor the risk takers in the profession. Such an award might not be given to an individual or organization that has yet chalked up a big success. But it is these people and companies that will lead the news industry through this rough digital transition and to success on the other side of the chasm.

I’d like to see OJA reward the misfits and the tinkerers within journalism. Without them guiding the news industry forward, there will be little great journalism on which to bestow awards.

I’m not the most organized person, but I do try. And thanks to some wonderful digital technologies that I’ve discovered, I’m much better at staying organized than in the past. So I do feel qualified to participate in this month’s Carnival of Journalism, where the challenge is:

What are your life hacks, workflows, tips, tools, apps, websites, skills, and techniques that allow you to work smarter and more effectively?

Here are just a few things that I find most valuable:

Omnifocus

While I prefer to do my work and store it in the cloud, Omnifocus is an exception. It’s a client app (Mac only) for organizing projects and your life, and it’s by far the best I’ve found. And I’ve tried LOTS of personal organizers, going all the way back to paper Franklin Planners (failed), to using a Handspring Visor (an old Palm Pilot clone), to Remember the Milk, and loads more that failed me — or more accurately, I failed them. But Omnifocus is great. It takes some time initially to get it set up with your projects and personal behavior patterns reflected, and you need to use it regularly to keep it up to date, but the effort is worth it. Omnifocus also syncs with its iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad apps, but both of those must be purchased separately from the $80 price of the Mac app. (While Omnifocus syncs to the cloud, you’re working on your Mac or iOS device, so I differentiate that from actually working in the cloud, as with something like Remember the Milk.)

Google Docs

This is obvious, but worth mentioning as a cloud-based way to create and store your work and notes. Rather than my old way of taking notes (say, during a phone interview) on TextEdit, I open up a new Google Docs text document and save it to a folder. I also do my writing on Google Docs (unless I’m away from Internet connectivity); I like the security of knowing that if my Macbook’s hard drive dies while I’m writing, my work won’t be lost. (Yes, that has happened to me in the past.)

ActiveInbox for Gmail

I love Gmail, and I’ve loved Gmail for many years. (I cannot believe some people still use Outlook! Yuck!!) What makes Gmail even better is adding on ActiveInbox, which helps you manage e-mail tasks and projects and overall makes managing a massive and active inbox much easier. It works with Gmail’s existing labels, and the learning curve is close to zero. It’s based on GTD (Getting Things Done) principles. I love it.

Rapportive

This is another Gmail add-on, and I can’t recommend this one highly enough. With Rapportive on top of Gmail, when you open up an e-mail, say from someone you don’t know, Rapportive looks up the sender on various social networks and displays that information (along with a photo of the person, usually) in the right column, so it’s simple to learn about the mysterious e-mail correspondent. Hover over any address in an e-mail and Rapportive will instantly reveal details on that person, which is great when an e-mail has multiple recipients and you want to find out more about them.

Scrible

Scrible is a browser bookmarklet that allows you to highlight any webpage and add comments to it. You can then save the highlighted version of the page to your personal Scrible.com library and tag the articles for grouping, or e-mail the highlighted copy of the article to someone else. This is a very new product, so it’s not perfect; I occasionally try to mark up or save an article and Scrible’s servers are super-slow or don’t respond. I wish that I could share my personal library of highlighted articles, or groups of tagged highlighted articles, with others, but that’s not possible (and probably would violate copyright law if it was). But I really like the interface of this bookmarklet. My wife insists that Diijo is the best of these types of save-stuff-and-mark-it-up solutions, but I prefer Scrible; it just seems faster that using Diijo. I’m hoping that Scrible will evolve to be even better, but it’s off to a great start.

USAA Mobile Deposit

If you don’t bank with USAA, perhaps your bank has a similar phone app. USAA’s iPhone app allows you to take photos of both sides of a check and deposit it instantly. Thankfully, electronic deposit, Paypal, et al are fast making paper checks go the way of printed newspapers. But just like newspapers, checks will be with us for a while, so it’s a great time-saver to be able to use my iPhone to deposit them.

Zite for iPad

I own an iPad (1), and it’s my favored device for keeping up with RSS feeds (i.e., personalized news). I’ve tried most of the slick RSS readers and personalized-news apps for the iPad, like Flipboard, News.me, Trove, Reeder, and others that I’ve now put out of my memory. But Zite stands out and is the one that I continue to use regularly. Highly recommended.

I don’t want to break my record of contributing to all of the resurrected Carnivals of Journalism, but this month I’m just too darned busy. However, a few years ago, I did write up the lessons I learned from a start-up company where I was one of two co-founders: the Enthusiast Group. It was published as one of my then-regular columns for Editor & Publisher Online. (I’ve also spoken publicly about lessons for the news industry from our experience trying to make a business from niche grassroots journalism and online+physical social networking.)

Since my old columns (15 years worth!) are no longer available at EditorandPublisher.com (speaking of Fail!), I’ll link to a version of the column that I have on this, my personal website:

An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media

Harking back to a failure from 2007 does not imply that there aren’t other Fails I could write about and share lessons learned. But those will have to wait.

I’m looking forward to reading about others’ failures (but more importantly, what can be learned from them).

Fail forward!

So, yesterday evening I was at a reception for Tom Rosensteil, director of Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, after he gave a lecture here at the University of Colorado Boulder. His latest book is Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload.

While chatting with Rosensteil about a project that a small team and I are working on for the Digital Media Test Kitchen which fits snugly with the topic of Blur, CU School of Journalism & Mass Communication advisory board member Linda Shoemaker joined the conversation and pulled out a print copy of Blur, asking if the author would mind signing it.

Hey, I had a copy of Blur with me at the time, too! Umm, autograph? Afraid not. It was on my iPhone.

E-book author autographs: There’s not an app for that.

For this month’s Carnival of Journalism, ringmaster David Cohn asked something I wasn’t sure I wanted to answer. But I’ve got a solid track record participating in the resurrected Carnival so far, so I decided not to break my streak.

Cohn asked us to give advice to either the Knight Foundation about its next steps (as the 5-year-old Knight News Challenge ends its run, and a new vice president arrives) or the Reynolds Institute at the University of Missouri about its fellowship program.

Since Knight turned down all three Knight News Challenge submissions from my program at the University of Colorado Boulder (including one I thought was and is damn good and important for the future of journalism credibility and accountability!), I’ll pass on Knight in case any disappointment-inspired bias might spill out in my words. So Reynolds it is!

As Cohn (a Reynolds fellow himself) noted, the program is only four years old. It’s not as big and doesn’t accept as many fellows as, say, Stanford’s renowned Knight Fellowships program. Therefore, the program is still shaping itself. Cohn asked:

1. How would you shape the fellowship to drive innovation?
Because the program is small, I’d narrow the focus significantly. In fact, for each fellowship year, I’d pick a theme and find fellows who all wanted to work on complementary aspects of the theme. Let’s say for the next crew of fellows, select all of them because they want to focus on variations on a theme of “business models for journalism in the digital age.” Next year, I’d pick a different theme. The key would be that the theme is the most important challenge or opportunity facing journalism at the time. Business models for journalism addresses solving a big problem for the news industry and for journalists who want to make a living. A theme that could address an opportunity instead of a problem would be best utilizing emerging mobile technologies in the news realm.

Such an approach is less appropriate for a larger fellowship program, like Stanford’s, which takes on 20 fellows each year.

2. What types of fellows should they be looking for?
If we go with my answer to No. 1, then I’d say find a mix of fellows from multiple disciplines who can work together to address the year’s theme issue or opportunity. If the theme is business models for news, then, of course, bring in a business expert who perhaps is not a journalist but has a strong interest in publishing business models. Or an economist. Or a marketing guru. Don’t invite in as fellows people who don’t know or care about the news industry, but rather individuals who want to engage and can work well with the journalist fellows. One word is key: interdisciplinary.

3. What types of fellows should they avoid?
Pure journalists. I’d much rather see Reynolds recruit journalists who also hold MBAs, or are extremely competent technologists. Avoid one-dimensional journalists. And especially, avoid anyone who doesn’t believe with 100% of their being that in the media of today and the future, digital is at the center of things and is the control hub for any media or news organization.

4. What programs should the fellows go through in order to drive innovation?
Bring in lots of outside experts to get the fellows thinking beyond the confines of journalism. If mobile is the theme, bring in mobile industry leaders and force them to shift gears and think with the fellows about how the news industry can leverage emerging mobile developments that the industry leaders are working on today. Bring in entrepreneurs who may not be focused on news and journalism as a market opportunity, yet who are building digital products or services that have significant potential for news; force them to focus on news applications, and let the fellows lobby the entrepreneurs to put some thinking and resources into addressing news problems and opportunities.

Get the fellows to roam the university, finding partners in other disciplines to assist them in thinking through and developing innovative news-beneficial projects that cannot be done by journalists alone. If any of the journalist fellows come out of the program with any old journalistic dogma still in their heads, the program will have been a failure.

Monday marks the rollout of NYTimes.com’s “metered paywall,” which I wrote about (and criticized) here last week (before going on vacation for a week). Here are a few quick developments and additional thoughts about what is an important milestone in the digital-news space:

What do you think of the NYT paywall? Tell Columbia researchers!

Columbia University researchers Shahzeem Attari and Jonathan Cook are conducting a survey on attitudes about and intentions of using (or not) the new New York Times metered paywall. Take the survey here and help them get a good number of responses so that the results are meaningful. (They’ll also appreciate it if you share the link further.)

Can NYT lower the price after starting so high?

I’m sticking to my criticisms as expressed in my last blog post about the NYT paywall. One thing that absolutely confuses me is why Times executives would choose to begin the program at such a high price for digital access ($15 per 4 weeks for web + iPhone/smartphone app; $20 per 4 weeks for web + iPad/tablet app; and $35 per 4 weeks for web + iPhone/smartphone app + iPad/tablet app). Starting high will make it awfully difficult to lower the prices to levels that will work for more than the few NYT supporters willing to help out the company.

Last week, NYT’s David Carr wrote a defense of the program and pricing, and reading through the user comments is telling. Lots of commenters said that they would be willing to pay $4.99 a month; that number appeared often. Indeed, many indicated they’d sign up in a heartbeat for a digital plan (no print edition) that allowed access to NYT content on any device (PC, laptop, smartphone, tablet) at that price. But the vast majority in that comment stream balked at the Times’ high asking price. They’ll go elsewhere for quality free news online, or work around the paywall limits, which is pretty easy to do.

Let’s imagine that this is an accurate reading of public reaction to the Times’ pricing, and that NYT executives wake up to realize that $4.99 is the monthly price that will bring in the greatest success all-around, in terms of dollars incoming and number of paying subscribers. The people already paying the exorbitant rate will all have to get refunds based on the new rate, I guess — or feel like dummies for paying so much in the first place.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to start with a (pretty standard-model) charter rate that was very low, then raise rates later? Odd.

‘We need this to survive!’ … zzzzz

Catching up on reading after my vacation, I spotted David Winer’s March 17 piece, “Comments on NYT paywall announcement,” and he makes a strong point that I’m 100% in agreement on: The Times’ pitch for people to begin paying for news online is that “We need this to survive.” … Fail!

So much better, Winer wrote (and again, 100% concurrence here), would be an offering of value to consumers. “Wouldn’t it have been wise to, at this juncture, offer something to sweeten the deal. Something truly exciting and new that you get when you pay the money. Something that makes your palms sweat and your heart beat faster?”

This supports my notion that premium memberships are a smarter idea for most news companies that want to bring in more revenue online. Currently, the Times is asking for people to pay for something that they’ve received free online for many years; that’s a difficult sale, when other quality news providers continue to be free. To compound it, the Times offers nothing new to “sweeten the deal.” … Fail.

False charge: I say news should be free

My last blog item got tweeted and shared quite a bit, and I spotted some pushback like this tweet: “NYTimes’ new pay model: They blew it!, or Why I want to bitch about paying for stuff on the internet (Via @steveouting)”

I need to push back on that one. In the case of NYT, I do think they can succeed by charging. As explained in my last post, I believe that a larger success will come from asking a much, much lower monthly fee; I suggested 99 cents for web-only full access to NYT content, and $1.99 for all-device access. As noted above, David Carr’s commenters indicate that $4.99 a month might be a price point that fills the NYT Co.’s bank account nicely.

No, I’m not bitching about paying for stuff on the Internet. I’m criticizing a pricing model that reflects an old-media view of doing business on the Internet and fails to address the realities of the Internet (one of them being that under-30ies are extremely unlikely to pay for NYT content online, so the debut price structure completely writes off younger readers; how smart is that?). If NYT execs followed my advice on the 99-cent/$1.99 pricing, they might still have a chance at the younger audience. Apparently they don’t care, which I find appalling. I guess the younger crowd can continue getting their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Oh, and Arianna Huffington.

Also, a high rate charged by ONE news provider damages the rest of the industry. If I as a typical consumer decide I love the Times so much that I’ll fork over $15, $20, or $35 every 4 weeks for access, I am extremely unlikely to add any other paid news sources that also demand payment, including my local newspaper website, should it charge. The more general-interest news sites that charge for access to non-premium content, the amount any one can attract will dwindle over time. There are too many quality news sources available online for site-specific charging to work over the long term among news websites.

Back to the premium-membership model: I think that for general-interest newspapers that are NOT the New York Times, free general-news content and a fee for premium “stuff” is the strongest option. What that stuff is I’ll address at a later date, after some research by a few of us at CU-Boulder is completed or at least further along.

Thanks, Lincoln, for the free NYT subscription

Finally, here’s another NYT-paywall development that has me scratching my head. Lincoln (the car brand) sent out e-mails to (I’m assuming) frequent-visiting NYTimes.com registered users, including me, offering a free NYT web + iPhone/smartphone account for the remainder of 2011. Yes, I accepted the offer; presumably I’ll be getting e-mails from Lincoln marketing a car I’ll never buy.

I don’t grok the logic of this, other than that Lincoln probably waved some nice cash in front of the Times. For those who pay $15/$20/$35 per 4 weeks, won’t they feel like chumps if they didn’t receive this offer and learn about it?

I don’t know NYT execs’ logic on this; perhaps they’ll let me know. Perhaps the e-mail went out to long-time registered NYTimes.com users. If that was the case, that would be a group of people long used to free access and difficult to transition into paying a high monthly fee. So this offer could be a way to ease them toward paying later on. … Perhaps the e-mail offers only went to older registered users — the target market for a brand like Lincoln. Though the problem with that is that older NYT readers are the most likely to pay a high monthly NYT subscription fee! … What’s your analysis of this move?

If any non-niche, general-interest news organization could successfully pull off a digital “metered paywall” model, I thought it would be the New York Times. Alas, today the Times announced its plans and pricing, beginning March 28 in the U.S. (and being tested first in Canada).

I’m disappointed. This is really a bad move that shows how Times management thinking remains stuck in the past. (Or perhaps it’s classic “decision by committee” dysfunction.)

First, the details:

• Home subscribers (to print edition) get full access to NYT digital content across all platforms, no limitations: website, tablet access, smartphone access. No extra charge.
• Non-print subscribers:
  • Using website: 20 free articles per month on NYTimes.com before hitting the paywall. Articles reached via an inbound link (blog, Twitter, Facebook, search, etc.) will not be counted against the 20.
  • Using NYT smartphone or tablet app: “Top News” sections free; accessing anything else will hit the paywall.
  • Digital subscription package #1: $15 every 4 weeks. Full access to website and smartphone app.
  • Digital subscription package #2: $20 every 4 weeks. Full access to website and tablet app.
  • Digital subscription package #3: $35 every 4 weeks. Full access to website, smartphone app, and tablet app.

Wow, there are so many flaws in that strategy. Let me count them:

1. 20 articles a month free, or 1 article every weekday for the 4-week subscription period. This means that nearly everyone who visits NYTimes.com regularly and directly will hit the paywall — and the majority will turn away. What this will do is ensure that an increasing amount of NYTimes.com traffic will come via social-media links and search. The NYT homepage will become much less of a draw to many people. …
   I would have set this much higher if the monthly fee had to be as high as it is. Many casual users who will not pay will hit the paywall with the announced plan; it would have been better to limit paywall exposure to only NYT’s most-frequent web users; i.e., those most likely to pay.
    

2. Pricing is absurdly high. Yes, the New York Times is a great news organization producing the best journalism in the world. But faced with those fees when there are so many other quality news websites a click away, a small percentage of NYTimes.com visitors will pay. …
   My suggestion for smarter pricing: 99 cents every 4 weeks using the 20-free-articles-per-month model. $1.99 per 4 weeks for full website access plus smartphone AND tablet app full access. Here’s why: NYT has not learned from the Apple experience. Apparently, NYT executives would rather have a small number of elite digital readers pay a high monthly fee than millions of people paying iTunes- or App Store-like fees. What the high price point will do — because of the low limit on monthly free articles — is dramatically diminish the Times’ importance as a global news organization, ceding its longtime lead to other credible news organizations that choose not to charge online. A 99-cent price point would be a “no-brainer” for many people who like the NYT brand, just as paying 99 cents for a song on iTunes or an iPhone/iPad app is an easy impulse buy: “Why the hell not?! It’s only 99 cents!”
    

3. Separate fees for smartphone and tablet app access goes against the trends in media. Increasingly, as consumers add more gadgets capable of consuming news, more people will be switching between viewing news on a laptop or PC, smartphone, and tablet. For that privilege, the Times wants $35 per 4 weeks. To separate pricing for smartphone and tablet apps flies in the face of where media consumption is heading. And that price will attract only a small, affluent customer base. $35 per 4 weeks for ONE NEWS SOURCE online? That is completely off the charts for non-niche news. …
   My solution is simple: one price across all platforms, to make it most convenient for today’s early adopters and tomorrow’s mainstream news audience. See my $1.99 suggestion above.
    

4. The high digital price point is obviously designed to retain high-paying print subscribers and extend the life of the print newspaper. After all, if the Times followed my low-pricing recommendation for digital, many print subscribers would be inclined to dump their expensive print home-delivery subscriptions. Fine, I understand that, but it’s a backward-looking strategy that hobbles the potential success of the digital side. I contend that no news organization — even the New York Times — can succeed long term when it makes decisions based on looking over its shoulder at the dying legacy product.
    

5. Finally, the Times overlooked offering, ALSO, a higher-priced “Times Premium” membership. Charging 99 cents or $1.99 per 4 weeks is probably the most they can get the majority of people to pay for their news alone. But NYT could also offer a higher-priced premium membership that included not only full access on web, tablets, and smartphones, but also other valuable benefits that make it worth paying more. (I won’t get into that now. It’s another blog post, and I’m running a research project at the University of Colorado Boulder looking at effective models for news premium memberships — so more on that another time.)

I hope someone from NY Times management will respond to my criticisms. If they do, I expect that the justification for this announced pricing model will be that they can’t do harm to the newspaper product. I guess that’s the way it is. But in my view, this over-priced metered-paywall mistaken strategy puts the “Gray Lady” a step closer to the grave rather than getting a chance at a new life.

Once again, the high grades go to the “new” digital media players. I’ll give the Times a “D.” (That at least gives me a tiny fudge factor in case the Times proves me wrong. But I really doubt it.)

So, it’s Carnival of Journalism time of the month again, and ringmaster David Cohn this time has posed the question, “Considering your unique circumstances, what steps can be taken to increase the number of news sources?”

OK, that’s an easy one when I apply my “unique circumstances,” which is that I live in Boulder, Colorado, and focus my career on digital media. You see, there’s this project at work that this question is tailored for, exactly. The result so far is the website SlicesofBoulder.com, which is a project that’s part of my Digital Media Test Kitchen program at CU-Boulder’s School of Journalism & Mass Communication (and utilizing technology and consulting from our Toronto friends at Eqentia).

SlicesofBoulder at this point addresses David’s question by not “increasing” the number of news sources serving Boulder, but rather by “finding” them, since so many exist online. Last summer, we (SJMC instructor Sandra Fish, master’s student researcher Jenny Dean, and I) attempted to find all the credible news and information sources in and around Boulder that send content about Boulder flowing onto the web. (If you want to know more, here’s an old blog post explaining the project.)

Here’s my first point: There’s no great need to increase the number of news sources, at least in our scenic college town of Boulder, nor in most cities. If you expand your definition of “news source” beyond its traditional meaning, Boulder and lots of other communities have hundreds or thousands of “news” sources online.

Where the need exists is not in “creating” more news sources, but rather in developing “online hubs” like SlicesofBoulder.com to track them all, intelligently sort and filter them, and provide a simple-to-use interface and personalization features so online users can find the flow of news and information they want from all the sources that now exist in this digital, everyone’s-a-publisher age.

I used the term “online hub” above because that was Recommendation #15 of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy’s Informing Communities report: “Ensure that every local community has at least one high-quality online hub.”

Anyway, for Boulder, at least, the first pass at creating a community online hub has been accomplished. But the next step, I believe, is the most important: Developing systems to analyze and rate the many online news and information sources that serve a community like Boulder, so that a local resident who while using our online hub comes upon a never-seen-before website, or blog, or institutional news feed, or whatever is able to determine if this unknown digital-content entity provides credible information or not.

Researcher Robin Donovan and I currently are working on this next phase of the SlicesofBoulder project. The idea is that a user of the site will be able to see credibility, accuracy, bias, popularity, and other ratings of any source that we track on the site.

My dream is that at some point in the near future, I’ll have a web-browser extension (or the functionality will be built into the browser) that will give me a wide range of ratings representing various and multiple parameters for whatever website I find myself on.

I don’t know that the need is so much that we need to create more news and information sources online, but rather that of the unfathomable number of sources that already exist on the web to provide us with news and information, that we have a way to know whether to trust them or not, or have some indication of their quality based on multiple layers of automated and human analysis.

I’ll be interested to read other contributions to this month’s Carnival of Journalism. Perhaps other writers will suggest that we do need more sources. If so, I’ll be especially interested in how they justify that when we already are faced as news/information consumers with major digital information overload.