Can Newspapers be saved? And should we attempt to save them? Obviously, the business model needs to be changed. But what should replace the traditional newspaper model? What follows is an excellent column by New York Times Media Writer David Carr about his own hometown newspaper (The Minneapolis Star-Tribune) and attempts to revive it. As part of your readings this week you will review the Atlantic article, "How to Save News." We have already discussed the fact that most the content on the Web is generated by reporters at newspapers. Given this fact, can we just say: good riddance to newspapers? What will be the impact on news? And what will be the impact on our democratic society if newspapers and serious reporting cease to exist? I would like for you to address these questions and look at both the costs and the benefits of newspapers. Review this column, the readings for this week and the corresponding video I have posted here relating to whether the government should get involved and bail out newspapers. Your post is due by next Tuesday April 26. - MT
By David Carr
NYT - In 2008, when I last saw Michael Klingensmith, he was sitting in a corner office on the 34th floor of the Time Warner building, one of three powerful executives who controlled Time Inc., the biggest magazine publisher in the world.
It was the only company that Mr. Klingensmith, an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, had ever worked for. After three decades, including stops at Sports Illustrated and Time, he was on the short list to become the next chief executive. When the job went to Ann Moore, he hung in for a while as executive vice president in charge of strategy and acquisitions. “It was a real job, it just wasn’t a very fun one,” he said.
So in 2008 at the age of 55, he took early retirement. He could have gone to work at any publisher in Manhattan, but instead, after a short time as a consultant, he moved to Minneapolis to become the publisher of The Star Tribune.
It wasn’t a move to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The newspaper had been through years of upheaval, churning through bankruptcy, publishers and lots of layoffs.
But what could have been a quixotic last fling has turned into something far more impressive: The Star Tribune is adding readers — the Sunday circulation grew 5.7 percent in the last audit and will most likely be up again a bit in the audit that will be out in few weeks — the business is making money and, get this, distributing money from its profit-sharing plan to its employees.
It helps that Mr. Klingensmith is a local boy. He grew up in “friendly Fridley,” a suburb of Minneapolis, and he is a serious Twins fan. He traded deeply paneled rooms with a view of Rockefeller Center and its fabled skating rink for a fourth-floor office festooned with Twins memorabilia and a view of the staff parking lots, one of which is decorated with a statue of Joe Mauer of the Twins, a local hero, and another of Lucy from Peanuts, reading a newspaper.
Even Lucy probably notices that it’s a smaller newspaper than it used to be. Once a reliable moneymaker for the Cowles family, The Star Tribune was sold to McClatchy for $1.2 billion in 1998. As the midsize newspaper business tumbled, The Star Tribune became a drag on earnings for McClatchy and it was sold to Avista Capital Partners for $530 million at the end of 2006.
The private equity firm loaded $500 million in debt on the property just before revenue dropped by almost half. There were extensive layoffs, interim publishers, and in January 2009 the newspaper, the nation’s 15th largest, filed for bankruptcy. Like Mr. Klingensmith, I grew up reading the newspaper and I found it gut-wrenching to watch.
The newspaper ended up in the hands of its creditors, including the investment firm Angelo, Gordon and Company, which also has stakes in the Tribune Company and Philadelphia newspapers.
By the time Mr. Klingensmith said yes to the publisher’s job at the start of 2010, $500 million in debt had been reduced to $100 million in the reorganization, costs were way down because of the cuts, and revenues from both advertising and circulation had begun to crawl back.
The reason the company had profits to share is that while ad revenue was down 9 percent in 2010, it was far less than the 15 percent that had been budgeted. According to David Brauer, who covers the paper for MinnPost, a local news site, the difference yielded more than $30 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2010. And daily circulation has remained essentially flat even though the price of the daily newspaper was raised to 75 cents from 50 cents in May. The Sunday newspaper, which did not increase in price, has gone from a low of about 477,000 in September 2009 to 504,600 in September 2010, according to audit reports.
“When I was talking to them about the job, I looked at the financials and thought it had a good shot,” Mr. Klingensmith said. “I actually thought that newspapers have a lot more life in them than they get credit for.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/business/media/18carr.html
Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
The Internet: Will We Ever Be Able To Trust It?
Editor's note: The Internet is reshaping many things - two of the biggest are how we shop and communicate. For journalists, the Internet is an indispensable tool. It gives us unparalleled access to information. It allows us to connect with sources we ordinarily would have no access to. We can do extensive research. And we can access, post and send large amounts of information at speeds that weren't even dreamed of 5 or 10 years ago.
But with any new technology, there are other effects on society. Some of these are just starting to surface. Two areas worth mentioning: freedom of expression and our right to privacy. There is an ongoing debate over whether people should be allowed to post items anonymously - even if those comments defame the reputation of a business or individual. Another major area that has come into question is the accuracy of the information we are viewing. The two go hand-in-hand. Since anyone can post whatever they want, they can use the Internet to settle a score. Some people engage in this behavior. For the viewer, it is often difficult to determine the accuracy of what has been posted. Is it true? Is it a product pitch?
Sometimes it is hard to tell what is true and what is false. In the past, information was edited, checked and reporters were called upon to attribute their sources. This is not to say there never was a problem with the information. But media organizations (newspapers, TV stations, etc.) had rigorous policies dealing with corrections. Bad journalists were weeded out.
In the Internet world, everyone is a journalist (re: citizen journalists). Everyone has a megaphone. It is easy to disguise yourself and the true intention of what you are posting.
Some might argue that the Internet encourages people to post whatever they want no matter what it says (True or False).
Beyond mere opinion, the Internet offers financial incentives. The more outrageous the information, the more inflammatory the opinion, the more risque the video - the more attention (hits/views) the information receives. More views translates into an ability to reap financial profits in the form advertising.
The impact of this shift in behavior is just starting to emerge. You will read about later in this quarter about a businessman who loves it when people attack his practices and file complaints online because it improves his ranking in Google, leading to more customers. It may be perverse, but it works.
One previous post I made to this blog talks about female teens who transmit naked photos of themselves in an effect to gain attention (and acceptance) from male teens. The story I have posted here from the New York Times deals with an entire industry that is emerging designed to erase a digital past. The negative information may be true or untrue. We are all aware of Internet hoaxes .
But there is a social cost here, too. If someone posts negative (or untrue) information about you online, it can be harmful to you in both your social and professional life. What do you do? Internet posts can't easily be erased.I would like you to review this post and the links I have provided here. Next, I would like each of you to comment (and post) your thoughts about the challenges we face as journalists in an Internet era.
Journalists are required to check and make sure the information they use is factual and by all means accurate. But if much of the information we read/view is provided by people with an axe to grind and is filled with personal opinion and innuendo, how can we reliably use that information? How do we sort our whether what is simply reprocessed information with a new "spin" or angle?
And are we best serving the public by using secondary sources (another story or post) in any story we write or post we make? Doesn't the Internet in some ways make our job harder because of the difficulty it poses in checking the original source of a tip, post or story? Please post your thoughts and be detailed in your answers. - MT
Bryce Tom of Metal Rabbit Media.
NYT -THE Internet never forgets.
Just ask the New York City teacher who recently divorced his wife of five years. Drop his name into Google, and his ex-wife appears in pictures of vacations and Christmas parties. “It’s difficult when you’re trying to date and your ex is still in the picture, so to speak,” said the teacher, who didn’t want to make matters worse by having his name in a newspaper.
The same goes for Bryan, an advertising executive in New York City. He is an accomplished online marketer and New York University professor, but search his name, and one of the first Web results is a press release from the United States attorney’s office. Eight years earlier, he was charged with wrongfully receiving 9/11 grant money. “Even after all these years,” those links remained, said Bryan, who paid a $2,000 fine.
And then there is the Philadelphia physiologist who became unwittingly linked to a consumer advocacy site, when it listed him as a graduate of a distance learning school that was shut down. “I felt totally victimized because there was nothing I could do,” said the physiologist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want added attention. “My case load started to dry up.”
At first, some tried manipulating the Web results on their own, by doing things like manually deleting photos from Flickr, revising Facebook pages and asking bloggers to remove offending posts. But like a metastasized cancer, the incriminating data had embedded itself into the nether reaches of cyberspace, etched into archives, algorithms and a web of hyperlinks.
After failing to rid the negative sites on their own, most turned to a new breed of Web specialists known as online reputation managers, who offer to expunge negative posts, bury unfavorable search results and monitor a client’s virtual image.
Comments from readers:
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/fashion/03reputation.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/fashion/03reputation.html
http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=2511
But with any new technology, there are other effects on society. Some of these are just starting to surface. Two areas worth mentioning: freedom of expression and our right to privacy. There is an ongoing debate over whether people should be allowed to post items anonymously - even if those comments defame the reputation of a business or individual. Another major area that has come into question is the accuracy of the information we are viewing. The two go hand-in-hand. Since anyone can post whatever they want, they can use the Internet to settle a score. Some people engage in this behavior. For the viewer, it is often difficult to determine the accuracy of what has been posted. Is it true? Is it a product pitch?
Sometimes it is hard to tell what is true and what is false. In the past, information was edited, checked and reporters were called upon to attribute their sources. This is not to say there never was a problem with the information. But media organizations (newspapers, TV stations, etc.) had rigorous policies dealing with corrections. Bad journalists were weeded out.
In the Internet world, everyone is a journalist (re: citizen journalists). Everyone has a megaphone. It is easy to disguise yourself and the true intention of what you are posting.
Some might argue that the Internet encourages people to post whatever they want no matter what it says (True or False).
Beyond mere opinion, the Internet offers financial incentives. The more outrageous the information, the more inflammatory the opinion, the more risque the video - the more attention (hits/views) the information receives. More views translates into an ability to reap financial profits in the form advertising.
The impact of this shift in behavior is just starting to emerge. You will read about later in this quarter about a businessman who loves it when people attack his practices and file complaints online because it improves his ranking in Google, leading to more customers. It may be perverse, but it works.
But there is a social cost here, too. If someone posts negative (or untrue) information about you online, it can be harmful to you in both your social and professional life. What do you do? Internet posts can't easily be erased.I would like you to review this post and the links I have provided here. Next, I would like each of you to comment (and post) your thoughts about the challenges we face as journalists in an Internet era.
Journalists are required to check and make sure the information they use is factual and by all means accurate. But if much of the information we read/view is provided by people with an axe to grind and is filled with personal opinion and innuendo, how can we reliably use that information? How do we sort our whether what is simply reprocessed information with a new "spin" or angle?
And are we best serving the public by using secondary sources (another story or post) in any story we write or post we make? Doesn't the Internet in some ways make our job harder because of the difficulty it poses in checking the original source of a tip, post or story? Please post your thoughts and be detailed in your answers. - MT
NYT -THE Internet never forgets.
Just ask the New York City teacher who recently divorced his wife of five years. Drop his name into Google, and his ex-wife appears in pictures of vacations and Christmas parties. “It’s difficult when you’re trying to date and your ex is still in the picture, so to speak,” said the teacher, who didn’t want to make matters worse by having his name in a newspaper.
The same goes for Bryan, an advertising executive in New York City. He is an accomplished online marketer and New York University professor, but search his name, and one of the first Web results is a press release from the United States attorney’s office. Eight years earlier, he was charged with wrongfully receiving 9/11 grant money. “Even after all these years,” those links remained, said Bryan, who paid a $2,000 fine.
And then there is the Philadelphia physiologist who became unwittingly linked to a consumer advocacy site, when it listed him as a graduate of a distance learning school that was shut down. “I felt totally victimized because there was nothing I could do,” said the physiologist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want added attention. “My case load started to dry up.”
At first, some tried manipulating the Web results on their own, by doing things like manually deleting photos from Flickr, revising Facebook pages and asking bloggers to remove offending posts. But like a metastasized cancer, the incriminating data had embedded itself into the nether reaches of cyberspace, etched into archives, algorithms and a web of hyperlinks.
After failing to rid the negative sites on their own, most turned to a new breed of Web specialists known as online reputation managers, who offer to expunge negative posts, bury unfavorable search results and monitor a client’s virtual image.
Comments from readers:
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/fashion/03reputation.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/fashion/03reputation.html
http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=2511
Sunday, April 3, 2011
The Crazy World of Online Journalism
Welcome to Online Journalism. This is a class blog where students will be posting comments and answering questions about class readings and lectures. The course is Jour 416-516 offered at Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism.
During the the next 10 weeks, we will examine the impact of the Web on the field of journalism.
To help kick things off, I am posting a story from the New York Times that appeared last year that looks at how reporters and editors are frantic and fatigued. As my spouse, Julie, who works at the Chicago Tribune, put it recently, "You walk into work and they turn on the fire hose."
As a reporter, I used to get months to do an investigative story. Those days are gone as reporters work on three or four stories at once, attempting to produce content for multiple deadlines and multiple platforms.
The notion of Politico as journalistic sweatshop is pure myth, say John Harris, editor in chief, left, and Jim VandeHei, executive editor.
In a World of Online News, Burnout Starts Younger
NYT - ARLINGTON, Va. — In most newsrooms, the joke would have been obvious.
It was April Fools’ Day last year, and Politico’s top two editors sent an e-mail message to their staff advising of a new 5 a.m. start time for all reporters.
“These pre-sunrise hours are often the best time to reach top officials or their aides,” the editors wrote, adding that reporters should try to carve out personal time “if you need it,” in the midafternoon when Internet traffic slows down.
But rather than laugh, more than a few reporters stared at the e-mail message in a panicked state of disbelief.“There were several people who didn’t think it was a joke. One girl actually cried,” said Anne Schroeder Mullins, who wrote for Politico until May, when she left to start her own public relations firm. “I definitely had people coming up to me asking me if it was true.”
Such is the state of the media business these days: frantic and fatigued. Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way.
Tracking how many people view articles, and then rewarding — or shaming — writers based on those results has become increasingly common in old and new media newsrooms. The Christian Science Monitor now sends a daily e-mail message to its staff that lists the number of page views for each article on the paper’s Web site that day.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/business/media/19press.html
During the the next 10 weeks, we will examine the impact of the Web on the field of journalism.
To help kick things off, I am posting a story from the New York Times that appeared last year that looks at how reporters and editors are frantic and fatigued. As my spouse, Julie, who works at the Chicago Tribune, put it recently, "You walk into work and they turn on the fire hose."
As a reporter, I used to get months to do an investigative story. Those days are gone as reporters work on three or four stories at once, attempting to produce content for multiple deadlines and multiple platforms.
The notion of Politico as journalistic sweatshop is pure myth, say John Harris, editor in chief, left, and Jim VandeHei, executive editor.
In a World of Online News, Burnout Starts Younger
NYT - ARLINGTON, Va. — In most newsrooms, the joke would have been obvious.
It was April Fools’ Day last year, and Politico’s top two editors sent an e-mail message to their staff advising of a new 5 a.m. start time for all reporters.
“These pre-sunrise hours are often the best time to reach top officials or their aides,” the editors wrote, adding that reporters should try to carve out personal time “if you need it,” in the midafternoon when Internet traffic slows down.
But rather than laugh, more than a few reporters stared at the e-mail message in a panicked state of disbelief.“There were several people who didn’t think it was a joke. One girl actually cried,” said Anne Schroeder Mullins, who wrote for Politico until May, when she left to start her own public relations firm. “I definitely had people coming up to me asking me if it was true.”
Such is the state of the media business these days: frantic and fatigued. Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way.
Tracking how many people view articles, and then rewarding — or shaming — writers based on those results has become increasingly common in old and new media newsrooms. The Christian Science Monitor now sends a daily e-mail message to its staff that lists the number of page views for each article on the paper’s Web site that day.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/business/media/19press.html
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