Media

I can’t say I’m surprised that Denver-based MediaNews Group (well, technically its holding company, Affiliated Media Inc.) has said that it will file for bankruptcy protection. The Wall Street Journal has a report on the latest newspaper-industry dour development, pointing out that the Hearst Corp. has $400 million in equity and debt tied to MediaNews, “and the investment will be wiped out by the bankruptcy filing, according to people familiar with the matter.”

MediaNews is likely to survive, but not without some unfortunate consequences for its newspapers. From the WSJ article:

“(MediaNews Group CEO Dean) Singleton also said cleaning up the company’s debt load allows him to help lead newspaper-industry consolidation, which some people in the industry say would help publishers stay afloat by creating stronger, more efficiently run groups of papers. Others are less sanguine about the benefits of consolidation.

“People in the industry have pointed to MediaNews’ paper in St. Paul and the Star Tribune in Minneapolis as potential candidates for a combination, as well as to adjacent papers in Southern California published by MediaNews, Tribune Co. and Freedom Communications Inc.”

In other words, yet another newspaper-company bankruptcy means that more muscle will be cut from newsrooms (the fat’s already gone) and communities will be more poorly served in the consolidation that’s necessary for industry survival.

We’ve seen plenty of awful things happen to newsrooms, and now we’re seeing things like copy editors being considered for elimination to save money. (E.g., Star Tribune.)

The newsroom cuts keep coming, and as newspaper companies emerge from bankruptcy owned largely by the banks that held their debt, a return to strong staffing levels and higher quality is unlikely anytime soon. (And why would advertisers return to that?)

So, it looks to me like now is a great time to be in journalism!

I’ve said that a few times recently when speaking to groups of college journalism students, and while I’ve gotten some nods of agreement, I’ve seen more heads shaking and puzzled expressions. But here’s what I mean:

Newspapers across the land are declining in quality, and lacking in coverage of their communities. A retired university journalism department head just today wrote this to me in a private e-mail about his local paper, owned by one of the largest newspaper companies in the U.S.:

“Today’s [newspaper name redacted] is a bulletin board of one-paragraph meeting and event announcements, with canned features from other [corporate parent redacted] papers, local columns by city and county functionaries, booster pieces by c-of-c officials, religious claptrap by evangelists, columns on how and why to clean up your garage, pet care, etc. People who want to announce weddings and funerals are charged by the column inch, and the practice of depth reporting is a distant memory.”

I don’t see a way out of this for local and regional newspapers owned by large media companies. Do you? So newspapers will likely continue to decline, while simultaneously, new digital news entities (for- and non-profit) will continue to increase in quality. After all, the newcomers don’t have massive debt to worry about or expensive presses to maintain; digital publishing is cheap in comparison.

And, of course, many of the new news entities emerging are run by the talented journalists laid off by the once-great newspaper companies. So new news providers’ quality will continue to improve.

The problem for all the new-comers to the (reinvented) news game is the lack of a clear business model to support quality journalism in sufficient quantity. But I’m more confident that they can figure that out than I am in the newspaper industry figuring out the digital business model while also handling the collapse of their legacy business.

“New” news media rises as the old falls. MediaNews Group’s troubles are only the latest to open up more opportunities for the new news eco-system to develop.

It’s an exciting time to be a journalist, if you can stomach the chaotic environment. It’s a lousy time to own an established news media business if you’re still in love with its outdated business model.

Throughout much of my nearly 15-year gig as a freelance columnist for Editor & Publisher Online, I’ve cringed at its website. Now that E&P is shutting down (though with some hope of a last-minute save) and my “Stop The Presses!” column has ended its run, I’m free to stop the self-censorship.

Actually, I don’t really need to say that much, since (now former) E&P editor Greg Mitchell acknowledged the obvious in an interview published yesterday:

“At E&P, overly frugal ownership forced the publication to scrape by with an antiquated Web site — even though E&P advocated since the mid-1990s that newspapers and magazines embrace the Internet, or else suffer the consequences.

“‘For four years we were pushing our owners to update our site, and we couldn’t do it,’ Mitchell said. ‘As a result, we have this dinosaur of a Web site. It hasn’t been updated in five years; we can’t do video, you can’t leave comments.’”

Thank you, Greg!

For me, not a month has gone by over the last, oh, 5 years or more that, following publication of my monthly column, I didn’t get reader e-mails complaining about not being able to leave a public comment responding to what I’d written. I often resorted to using this, my personal blog, as the place for E&P readers to leave feedback or have a public discussion.

The worst were my (many) columns advocating that news websites be more interactive and participatory. Readers couldn’t resist the opportunity to point out the irony, though of course they had to do it either in a “letter to the editor” sent to EditorandPublisher.com, or to my personal e-mail address (or sometimes with a phone call).

That said, that’s a hit only on E&P’s penny-pinching overlords, not the E&P staff. My column tenure lasted through several editors before Mitchell, and each faced the same problem. Whenever I repeated my request that comments be added to my column, I got the same frustrated response: We want to do it but we can’t get corporate to allow it!

For me, the ultimate irony — and there’s a lesson here, I think — is that when I switched this blog to the popular Wordpress open-source content management system (CMS) years ago, my personal website was in many ways more sophisticated and flexible than E&P’s! If I wanted a new feature, I just found a free Wordpress plug-in and added new functionality in a few minutes. E&P’s poor editors had to beg corporate IT for any new features to be added, which either took weeks or months, or never happened (like adding user comments).

Open-source platforms like Wordpress, Drupal, and others are now remarkably advanced. You have to wonder why companies like E&P owner Nielsen (and VNU before that) would cripple themselves using a proprietary CMS.

OK, I’ve got that off my chest. I’ll end with high praise for the editorial work of E&P’s staff over the years. E&P was around for 125 years, and deservedly so. I’m proud to have been associated with the E&P brand, and leave with great respect for everyone in the now-shuttered New York City office.

You can still find them on the new (temporary?) blog, E&P In Exile.

Oh, and feel free to leave a comment below.

(Disclaimer: I worked as a contract or freelance columnist for Editor & Publisher Online from 1995 till this week, covering for the site and sometimes E&P magazine the intersection of newspapers and the digital revolution. I do not have inside information about why Nielsen Co. shuttered E&P, and the words below are strictly my opinion.)

The demise of Editor & Publisher (the now-monthly magazine and companion website) can be quickly understood from the following three links:

1. John Temple: Rest in peace, E&P: Killed by an aggregator
   

   “It’s easy to underestimate the power of aggregation. But the truth, in my view, is that Romenesko replaced Editor & Publisher long ago as the place where journalists turned to find out what was going on in their world. It’s not limited by one medium or industry. It’s timely. And it’s deep. The magazine couldn’t compete. And it’s not just Romenesko. There are many sites and blogs to turn to today to learn what’s going on in journalism. Which is why E&P couldn’t survive as a viable business.”

   The former editor and publisher of the defunct Rocky Mountain News hits the nail on the head. E&P still operated like a traditional trade-magazine publisher, just using a different medium (the web) for daily coverage and cutting back on print (from weekly down to monthly in its later years). To this day, it was weak on user participation and aggregation from other sources, even though its traditional news coverage was strong and well respected. E&P probably should have hired Jim Romenesko years ago rather than let the Poynter Institute lure him.

2. Steven Berlin Johnson: “Old Growth Media and the Future of News“
   This is a transcript of a speech presented in early 2009. It’s long, but it is the best description I know of about why traditional trade publishers are doomed unless they properly adapt to the new digital media environment. Johnson uses the example of the old Macintosh magazines, pre-web, and how they were marginalized by the growth of Mac insider websites, e-newsletters, and blogs over the years.

   What started out in technology journalism, Johnson explains, eventually will spread to many other sectors of news. It already has in some areas such as sports and politics. For industry news, the same dynamic will strike in niche after niche. Johnson’s message also points to the importance in the business press of aggregation and curation.

3. A tweet by Vin Crosbie yesterday
   

   “Root of E&P mag’s death was Steve Outing’s start of Online-News listserv in ‘93, creating ability to report industry news faster than print.”

   News media consultant and now university educator Crosbie is referring to an e-mail discussion list that I started either at the end of 1993 or early in 1994. Online-News and its companion discussion list Online-Newspapers grew to be significant and lively gathering places of news professionals and innovators looking to leverage the Internet to bring news into the online age. The information shared by a large group of passionate and knowledgeable news innovators was often the kind of stuff not found in traditional media trade publications.

   Crosbie is perhaps stretching things to directly link E&P’s demise in 2009 to the start of an industry listserv in 1994, but his point is valid.

Tags: E&P, editor & publisher, john temple, steven johnson, vin crosbie

I’ve gone back and forth in my mind about the chances of the beleaguered Tribune Co. in the Sam Zell era. On the one hand, I’ve applauded his (occasionally profane) approach of shaking things up and imploring the Tribune staff to think out of the box and start seriously innovating. There can be little argument that that’s what the newspaper industry needs.

But then this week Zell’s “chief innovation officer,” radio guy Lee Abrams, sent out a wake-up call memo to the company’s newspaper division, which was made public on Romenesko. Parts of it were (my opinion) laughable, and already parodies of the memo have turned up on Romenesko.

• Lee Abrams’ original “Think Piece: 15 Points That’ll Grow Newspapers” memo
• Parody No. 1
• Parody No. 2

No doubt Abrams has a difficult job, but he really blew it with such doozies as, “Before I joined Tribune, I had NO idea that reporters were around the globe reporting the news.” That alone probably caused every newspaper person in the company to not take him seriously.

I don’t know Abrams, but I question why a radio guru is put into the roll of reinventing the company’s newspapers. It’s not that a newspaper person must be the person to head up an innovation on the newspaper side of the company. But someone from a likewise-suffering industry, radio, seems like an odd choice. Yes, Abrams came most recently from satellite radio company XM; but I consider that to be a less innovative than such music innovations as Pandora, or the iPod, for that matter.

Zell might have made a wiser choice by bringing in a big-picture innovator, not tied to the newspaper industry but also not influenced by old and outdated media sectors. A futurist like Paul Saffo is the type of person Tribune probably needs; or grab a star analyst and forward thinker like Josh Bernoff or Charlene Li.

Yet another reason I’m suddenly sour on Tribune’s chances is having looked at the preview of Tribune’s Orlando Sentinel print edition redesign, to be released this Sunday. I’ll write up some thoughts on that one later.

This bears repeating and spreading around. It’s a quote from Jay Rosen (NYU, Pressthink) that appeared on his Facebook status today:

“News people who wonder why their industry gets creamed by Google and Yahoo are the same news people who dismiss an idea after it fails once.”

He may be referring to the trashing that Rob Curley’s LoudonExtra hyper-local site for the Washington Post is getting from some quarters. (And if he’s not, he could be!) Yes, “hyper-local” journalism hasn’t worked out yet. (Remember Backfence.com?) But considering that local is what most newspapers have to cling to in an era when national and international news is a free and easily found commodity, they best not give up on figuring out how “local-local” can succeed.

This reminds me of my most recent failure, the Enthusiast Group (2006-07), which aimed to build interactive social communities around enthusiast sports. Just this week I learned that Dave Morgan (founder of Real Media, Tacoda), one of the smartest and most successful media people I know, is becoming chairman of a tennis venture that sounds similar to what we were attempting at EG.

I won’t be surprised if Morgan and his new colleagues figure out to turn passionate enthusiast communities into a viable business. He’s a way smart businessman (Tacoda sold to AOL for $275 million) and I’m willing to bet he’ll find the secret sauce that we didn’t. I suspect many traditional media companies will look at EG’s failure and say, “Don’t want to go there!”

News companies, especially, really need to inject some entrepreneurial folks into their operations. Entrepreneurs fail, learn from it, and move on. They don’t give up.

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.

How depressing. Did you see this Rick Edmonds post at Poynter.org? “Far-out Ideas? We Have No Far-out Ideas.”

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.

Continued

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.

It’s beginning to feel like we’re getting somewhere on the issue of mainstream news websites linking outside themselves. Yesterday in a story about Elliot Spitzer’s alleged call-girl hook-up, “Kristen” (aka, Ashley Youmans, aka Ashley Alexandra Dupré), the Times linked to her MySpace page. Hurray!

Linking offsite is a no-brainer for Internet native publishers. But it’s taken a while for mainstream publishers to come around. Perhaps the tide has turned?

There’s also the issue of linking to controversial websites. I noticed yesterday that a story in the Huffington Post about prostitution provided links to two of the biggest legal brothels in Nevada, the Kit Kat Guest Ranch and the Bunny Ranch. Both those websites feature partially nude photos of the ranches’ “girls.” I doubt that NYTimes.com would publish those links.

But I’ve long thought that if a link is particularly newsworthy, it should be made even if highly controversial. Online users only need click over to Google to find a controversial site in a few seconds anyway. I’d rather see news site provide the link, possibly with an intermediary warning page about what the viewer is about to see. Serve the readers; don’t make them jump through unnecessary hoops.