Chip Griffin: Pardon the Disruption

Providing Fresh Value by Reporting on Reporting

Fred Wilson is right. There’s lots of good information on blogs. Sometimes it is better than traditional media, sometimes not. The bottom line is that to get the best perspective on news and events, one needs to take advantage of a blend of old and new media.

Scott Karp is right. His concept of “link journalism” has a lot of merit in today’s environment. There’s no reason not to extend coverage by taking advantage of what other people are already creating.

Jeff Jarvis is right as well. He preaches the need to avoid commoditized news coverage and instead provide something that nobody else is creating. By serving up new and useful information, rather than the 432nd version of the same coverage, old and new media alike can find a winning formula.

The problem is that these three smart people all have slightly different visions, even though they are somewhat complementary as well. So how do we make sense of it and take advantage of what they are seeing? Simple. Blend the concepts.

It would be great to create a service that digests information from a variety of different sources, old and new, in order to deliver information consumers a product that isn’t commoditized, incorporates the best existing coverage, and offers new perspectives that might otherwise have been overlooked by the reader.

It will take a combination of solid technology and excellent human editing in order to create something that truly delivers real value. Ultimately it is more than simple links, but rather "reporting on reporting."

Will it be traditional media who embraces this first? Or will it be a new media entity? Time will tell.

Extending Coverage Through "Link Journalism"

Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 lately has been extolling the virtues of linking as part of professional media coverage. Hardly a new concept in social media, but one that still hasn't gained complete traction as traditional media migrates online.

He dubs it "link journalism" and recently touted the efforts of one of his company's clients, Knoxville News Sentinel, in using it. I happen to agree with his overall outlook, but I think the devil is in the details. First, read his original post for context and then the comment I left on his post:

I agree that “link journalism” is something that more media outlets should explore. But notice what you did differently with your post than the paper did with its own. You included excerpts from the original sources rather than just raw headline links.

Headlines like “Snow” or “More Snow!!!” don’t tell me much about what to expect from the post, so therefore don’t entice me to click over. To be successful, I think that such journalism needs to provide added value beyond simply linking, by helping to guide the reader to the best content or at least setting expectations on each link.

It’s much like creating a news story. The reporter must decide what facts to include in writing the story rather than simply publishing a bulleted list of facts.

Scott Karp Launches Publish2

Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 has quit his job and is starting a company, appropriately named Publish2.  He aims to "put his money where his mouth is" by betting on the vision of the future of media that he has outlined on his blog.  His stated goal is to create the ultimate consumer-facing news site by networking online journalism (everything from "news bloggers" to more formal journalists).

The details are still a bit vague, though an invitation-only beta is slated for September.  It sounds like something similar to what I have suggested is the future of news aggregation: a cross between free-for-all ranking sites like Digg, automated ones like TechMeme, and highly edited ones like Yahoo News.  Plus it may have original content, though I haven't had a chance to read all the material Scott has put online to achieve clarity on that point.

If Publish2 really does incorporate all of these different components, then I think it has a chance to be a powerful news resources. Hopefully, it will incorporate more than just text and pictures, as my own vision for the future of media sees convergence of text, audio, and video, with the right medium utilized for the content being conveyed.

This will certainly be a company I will be keeping an eye on.

Assuming Fatigue Not in Evidence Weakens NY Times Story on Internet Retailing

The Sunday New York Times splashed a page 1, above the fold story on painting a picture of gloom and doom in online retailing ("Some Buyers Grow Web-Weary, And Online Sales Lose Steam").  A chart even accompanies the sensational headline.  The first sentence is particularly inflammatory: "Has online retailing entered the Dot Calm era?"

Paul Kedrosky does a nice job of rebutting the underlying argument of the story by pointing out that growth rates must necessarily slow, lest brick and mortar sales cease altogether.  No industry can sustain astronomical growth rates forever.

In fact, the authors of this piece admit this fact:

The slowdown is a result of several forces. Sales on the Internet are expected to reach $116 billion this year, or 5 percent of all retail sales, making it harder to maintain the same high growth rates. At the same time, consumers seem to be experiencing Internet fatigue and are changing their buying habits.

Paul hit on that first point, but I want to drill in to the bit about "Internet fatigue" and "changing their buying habits."  But first, here's what he writes:

it's no surprise sales is slowing. The law of large numbers still holds -- always has, alway will. But the raw revenue numbers are still gigantic, with online commerce adding more incremental revenue this year than was the entire e-commerce market in 1998-1999.

Does it have anything to do, however, with people balking at buying online? You have got to be kidding.

Precisely.  Where's the support for this claim?  Surely somewhere in the article there must have been some survey results that suggest people are "tired" of using the Internet to make purchases, right?  Not a chance.  So perhaps there are some anecdotes about people who used to like shopping online but don't anymore, right?  Not a chance.

In a courtroom, it would be called "assuming facts not in evidence."  Here, we're just talking bad journalism.  There are several quotes in the story from people who don't like to shop online, but no evidence that this is a change in behavior for those individuals.  Therefore they aren't "fatigued" or "changing their habits." 

The closest this story comes to trying to prove this sensational claim is in the following paragraph:

The reaction to the trend is apparent at Dell, which many had regarded as having mastered the science of selling computers online, but is now putting its PCs in Wal-Mart stores. Expedia has almost tripled the number of travel ticketing kiosks it puts in hotel lobbies and other places that attract tourists.

Yet neither of these examples demonstrates either fatigue or changing habits.  Rather it shows online retailers seeking new markets not following shifting customers. 

It's unfortunate that the New York Times decided to take a tabloid approach to this issue.  One expects more from the paper, especially for a page one play.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I read this story in the City Edition of the paper yesterday, as I am in New York for business.  In seeking out the image of page one of the Sunday NYT to include in this post, I noted that it was not included on page one of the national edition.  In addition, the online edition today lacks the inflammatory start of the headline ("Some Buyers Grow Web-Weary") and opts for the more sedate second half ("Online Sales Lose Steam").  I wonder if the paper's own editors shared my concerns, at least to a degree?

Technorati tags: New York Times, journalism, online retailing, Paul Kedrosky

Time Inc. CEO on Value of Readers, Professional Journalism

Rafat Ali has a very candid and revealing interview with Ann Moore, the CEO of Time, Inc.  The whole interview is worth a read, but I want to draw specific attention to two portions.  The first one deals with the different value of online and offline readers:

The average reader of Sports Illustrated delivers about $118 to the bottom line in Time Inc. The average very engaged user of SI.com can generate about $5 in advertising contribution. I need many more online viewers to equal one magazine reader. That is why you have to go for big volume and that is why you got to have partnerships.

Now I find this interesting, and I don't doubt there's some truth in it, but I question whether we're comparing apples and oranges to some degree.  One of the problems is how she defines "average reader" and "average very engaged user."  We don't know whether for the print edition it includes subscribers or subscribers plus pass-alongs.  And for the online what is a "very engaged user"?  I assume it isn't every unique visitor, but is it every repeat visitor?  3 visits per month?  Is it a registered user or email subscriber? 

Time and SI are big enough properties that I assume they have studied this every which way to Sunday, but it is important to carefully study your online audience and figure out if you could actually generate the same revenue on a smaller user base.  If you find that certain users/readers are more lucrative, to the extent you can focus on them, you may be able to get around the need to generate eyeballs in massive quantities just to survive.

The second point she made that I think is worth noting is on the subject of professional journalism versus user generated content:

I think one of my priorities is to make sure we build enough fences around the journalistic part of our company, that we protect it and nurture it. Real fact-based news is very important for the country, for our company, for our democracy, for your business. You are not going to want the world to just run on user-generated content. We need to protect real journalism, and it is very much in our DNA.

A company like Time can't survive on user generated content alone.  And despite the real value I see in what users create, I still see enormous value in professional content.  As much as we all may like to read blogs and watch YouTube videos, there's still plenty of room for magazines, newspapers, TV, radio, movies, etc.  It's all a matter of balance, not an either-or choice like some would like to make it.

Technorati tags: Rafat Ali, PaidContent, content, old media, magazines, new media, user generated content, consumer generated media, YouTube, online video, online advertising, Ann Moore

Will They Still Print the New York Times in 5 Years?

Publisher Arthur Sulzberger isn't so sure.  "I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either," he is quoted as saying.

It's all about the Internet, according to an interview he gave at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and reported at Haaretz.com:

The Times, in fact, has doubled its online readership to 1.5 million a day to go along with its 1.1 million subscribers for the print edition.

Sulzberger says the New York Times is on a journey that will conclude the day the company decides to stop printing the paper. That will mark the end of the transition. It's a long journey, and there will be bumps on the road, says the man at the driving wheel, but he doesn't see a black void ahead.

This merges well with the discussion by Jason Fry at the Wall Street Journal of the difficulty in finding serendipity in the post newsprint era.  He accepts some arguments about the difficulty of reading newspapers online, but not that one:

There's one common complaint I don't buy, however. And that's that an online newspaper can't possibly replicate the experience of paging through a traditional paper and having your eye alight on a story you wouldn't normally have read. The shorthand for this is "serendipity," and mourning its loss, struggling to recreate it or steadfastly defending it has become a ritual at every newspaper trying to navigate the wrenching transition between the print and online worlds.

But here's the thing: Serendipity isn't lost online. In fact, many newspapers desperate to recreate it don't realize they've already done so.

This not-so-secret weapon? It's variously called Most Popular or Most Viewed.

In general I agree with Jason, but even the most popular story links may cause me to overlook something that I would find interesting.  Often I find curious or even useful stories in newspapers or magazines -- even ones that may not be popular with others -- simply by browsing them.

That's not to say I mourn the potential loss of newsprint editions.  As someone who travels frequently, I hate carrying more paper than I need to.  That's why I have switched to the Sony Reader for most of my book consumption, and I use online sources for most of my news needs. 

But it does signal that Mr. Sulzberger and others will need to find a way to replace the essence of the browsing experience online.  The Times is already working on that through a partnership with Microsoft to develop the Times Reader product (which I have yet to try). 

The other missing piece is to provide subway and other travelers a means to read that content without firing up a laptop.  ePaper technology like that used in the Sony Reader will need to become more available, affordable, and feature-rich to help make the transition comfortable for most people.

Kudos to the New York Times for not fearing the future.  It will be an exciting ride, and as Mr. Sulzberger points out, we don't know when it will end.

 

Technorati tags: New York Times, journalism, internet, Sony Reader, ePaper, e-paper, serendipity, online newspapers, jason fry, Haaretz, Davos07, Davos, World Economic Forum

Journalists Have Always Been Paid for Performance

Steve Rubel essentially puts the question today: is pay for performance journalism right or wrong?  He specifically discussed ZDNet which now reportedly compensates its writers, in part, based on how popular their blogs are.

Here's an excerpt from Steve's take:

Many of the ZDNet blogs are written by veteran journalists turned bloggers. So, I don't anticipate that the performance based compensation changes their ethics one iota. Bloggers such as Foley, Dan Farber and David Berlind have been around a long time and they are highly ethical. They have a nose for news. And news is often what gets clicks. The newer voices on the site may have a taller trust hurdle to climb given this revelation.

To me, the debate is a moot.  Journalists have always been paid for performance.  Web traffic tracking simply makes it easier and more explicit.  But just because magazine or newspaper writers aren't directly paid per click doesn't mean that their employers don't focus on it heavily when they set compensation numbers.

Perhaps the most obvious case is freelancers, who make up a significant share of the writers for many magazines.  These folks are paid based on anticipated interest from readers.  In this case, they are effectively paid in advance but the same ethics situation would apply.  Is a freelancer more likely to pitch an obscure story that may interest few, or shoot for one about a big company with broader appeal?

But it isn't limited to freelance writers.  Staff writers for publications large and small are compensated in part based on how interesting their product is for readers.  Does anyone doubt that Walt Mossberg is compensated better than other tech writers because he is must reading at the Wall Street Journal?  Similarly, David Broder and Bob Woodward don't make more than colleagues at the Washington Post simply because they have been there forever, but because their columns and articles are must-reading and sell papers. 

So let's not get all exercised about the fact that bloggers are getting paid for traffic and may choose their topics accordingly.  All writers do it.