Rji-pivot-comments

RJI Pivot Point Participant Comments

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Discussion suggestions from Chris Peck, editor, The [Memphis] Commercial Appeal and board member, ASNE

Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:51:31 -0700
From: "Peck, Chris" <peck@commercialappeal.com>

1. Focus on tablets. For legacy newspapers, I firmly believe the tablet offers the best hope for moving current print subscribers to a paid digital model.
2. Paid digital subscriptions. The revenue issues continue to eat away at the heart of journalism for legacy companies. The focus simply must on holding circulation revenues in a digital formats.
3. Partnerships. The ideas we discussed at Rutgers about building partnerships now between legacy media and emerging media would see ripe.
4. Privacy issues. Not central to discussion of future of journal per se, but an issue that likely will cut both ways for journalists in the years ahead. Less privacy could mean more access to information for journalists and the public. But less privacy will also stir up concerns about open government and public records. Journalism needs to be on side of openness, but also respect personal privacy concerns.
5. Finally, I've attached slides of the most recent research on the usage of digital devices done by Roger Fidler. Some good stuff here for your use ....

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Comparison by Buzz Wurzer of community-needs assessment process in Vero Beach, Fla., absent media help

Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2012 11:29:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: Henry K Wurzer <hkw36@earthlink.net>

Chuck's words yesterday regarding how our current news gathering efforts are closed and thus the community shuts the newspaper out....ring true.

I mentioned in an earlier call that I serve on the board of the Indian River Community Foundation which is in its third year of operation. It is a 501C Non-Profit that serves some 200 NP's in the region as an unbiased, convener, catalyst and collaborator. I have two key Community meetings prior to Chicago that have relevance to our effort. I am responsible for the branding, messaging and communications to the area and residents we serve.

My current assignment is to bring together the various publics that are stakeholders in the Homeless/Poverty/Hunger Sector as well as the stakeholders in the Enviornment Sector. Vero Beach's metrics in unemployment and its fallout are far worse that the US averages. The Indian River Lagoon is facing major pollution problems for a sector that is the lifeblood of the region.

These are two huge local issues that are being ineffectively reported by local media. Indian River County residents are in need of "actionable" ongoing information. We have had three meetings with each sector to frame the issues from all sides of the issues. My job is to then build the case for action to meet the unmet needs in each sector and bring them back to the community at large for funding. We are close to case statements leading to a community wide initiative for solutions.

As an unbiased convener of all stakeholders, local media has been conspicuous by their absence. As we continue our work with these two Sectors and initiate work with the other six Community Sectors....we will involve local media. Thus the newspaper is in a position to participate fully in all sides of the issues through a continued dialogue.

The bottom line is news gathering and distribution needs to have transparency. Thus all publics are included. Thus information becomes actionable. Without doubt, a new interface for compelling information is a must to entice and engage users.

• More from Buzz Wurzer: "The industry's last change."

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Martin Langeveld recalls 2008 API convening, and Outing's comments

Martin Langveld writes:

In 2008, an American Press Institute gathering had very few visible results and certain no visionary consensus, but the Newsright concept did emerge eventually from threads that had their origina at that gathering. In 2009 another major gathering in Chicago galvanized the industry's swing toward paid content models, a shift that is still in progress.

Here's a Steve Outing column from 2008 on the API "Summit for an Industry in Crisis" ^T the gathering that put Chuck Peters on the map for us: http://steveouting.com/tag/api-summit/ See also and especially, Steve's 11 suggestions for that gathering: http://steveouting.com/my-crisis-advice-to-newspaper-company-ceos-11-points-to-ponder/

• 1-5 have pretty much come to pass.
• No. 6 is the one they still balk at, but it will happen in 24-36 months.
• Nos. 7-11 is what they have mostly ignored

Here are my own posts from the same period:
http://www.newsafternewspapers.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html
(scroll down to Nov. 19 and before, back to Nov. 14)

Now, [RJI Pivot Point Chicago] seeks to find the next major vision. Can we create that vision using building blocks that include Newsright (and its own longer-term vision for broad, automated management of content rights and payment) as well as paid content models, and combine these with the vast opportunities inherent in new and developing technologies especially the tablet and smartphone models, possible other mobile models, retina displays, apps and HTML5? 

• MORE LANGEVELD: On "Wikipediaing the news" and nuking the newspaper.

Notes about reader engagement in the Netherlands

Martin writes: Here's another great idea for reader engagement: http://metrocolumn.nl/ (try Google translate Dutch>English)

Here's how it works, from Piet Bakker, Dutch blogger. 

• The Dutch edition of Metro has introduced a new online forum for readers^Ys columns:Metrocolumn. Columnists must first register, and can upload their columns and share tehm though social media. Readers can also vote for their favorite columns and comment on the content. Every week one column is selected by the editors to appear in the newspaper on Monday. The selected columnist gets ¬100.

You could skip the print part, that's not what's making it work. I would enhance the social ranking part. Also, I'd incorporate a "suggested edits" feature where registered users can privately message columnists to make spelling, grammar, style and other improvements. (Something Quora does.) And, columns should permit hyperlinking and illustrations. Beyond this, you could do videos and even audios (songs, comedy routines, etc.), plus short fiction, poetry and art uploads.

Benefits:

• Site can be used to point to news site content
• Collect email list addresses and FB likes
• Site could serve ads
• Pointers from news site to columns site extend reader engagement
• Lots of social sharing 
• Brand extension

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Notes about topic pages found by Chuck Peters from Richard Gingras' presentation at the MIT Media Lab

http://brownbag.me:9001/p/gingras

Quote - Richard argues strongly for evergreen story pages. It is not the brand, not the site, but the story itself that is the lifeblood online. Publishers should not think about editions, or even ephemeral streams of articles, but rather living story pages. Story pages are the most valuable real estate. Wikipedia was beating the Washington Post's search results despite all of the Post's great reporting. [You'll find journalists complaining about this sort of internet result filed under "P", for "Parasites"] The Post publishes a stream of new articles with new URLs and sends the olds ones to die in the archives becauase they're still producing content for the daily newspaper content model. The Wikipedia page is constantly changing and remaining updated, probably to this day, with a persistent URL where people can find it.

News publishers complained to Google that their topics pages were being consistently beaten by Wikipedia. These topics pages are not updated in realtime. The newspapers redesigned the topics pages and began to see success. Their long-term answer to this question, though, was to hire batches more rewrite people to maintain these topics pages. To someone familiar with the internet, this is crazytalk. Why wouldn't the journalist and editor, who are experts in this topic, just own this page as they own the beat itself? Shouldn't the news articles themselves flow from changes to the topic page, rather than rewriting articles to produce an index? The changes needed aren't just in content architecture, but in human workflow and roles. It comes back to, "How do we build trust?" Trust requires getting transparent about all of the content we have available to publish. It's expensive to produce, so share it.