Paid content: Not a question of price, but of relevance

Many reports have stated that the hope for Apple's ipad is that it does for newspaper and periodical content what iTunes did for music. Music, however, is a commodity people are used to paying for...online news and information is not.

Sure, people pay for news when they purchase a newspaper. But look at the value differential--50 to 75 cents for all that news and advertising information. That's cheap. When news organizations first put content online without pay walls, the expectation was set even lower. It will take a long time to change this consumer attitude. Nick Szabo's 1996 essay on "price granularity" still rings true--comparing the value of goods might require a mental expenditure greater than the price of those goods.

And that is fine because the question really isn't if content should be free or should cost money; the question is how do we get people to look at it? If they don't feel it is necessary to view, it doesn't matter if it is free or not. That's what escapes the debate over free vs. paid. The work that needs to be done first is to reduce the mental expenditure required for readers to gauge the value of our content.

Step one is to ensure that content is repurposed for maximum reach. Are you delivering information in the formats people most prefer? At PTA, our readership is still fairly traditional. They consume information on the website through browsers and our e-newsletters through their e-mail programs. However, iPhone usage is growing steadily and we will be looking to optimize content for it soon. What ways does your audience want to receive the information?

Step two is to conduct a relevancy check. Are you delivering the information that your audience finds most relevant? Or are your news and information choices based on what has been done in the past? Have you conducted a survey lately? Have you asked your neighbor what he/she thinks of the publication? Have you asked readers what is important in their lives? Publications need to fill empty information niches (and there are plenty...but you have to ask people what they are).

Step three is to get back to basics. Readers (in all formats) will always respond to strong writing and compelling narrative. You need headlines and subheads with impact. You need clear, simple sentences free of jargon. You need to be aware of format, too. The web is not a print medium. Write appropriately--shorter sentences and paragraphs, for instance. Don't neglect emerging formats. Twitter is not a joke. It can serve as a lead-in to larger content.

Follow these steps and then worry about what and when to charge.

Building strong connections for readership

Too often the struggles of media lead to misplaced blame. There is continuing talk of "the competition" or readers "not having enough time" or anything from the effects of El Nino to the price of vanilla beans. But it's always about the readers. It's about relevance, the very foundation of readership. What are you doing for readers? And is it really what they want?

Publications, in whatever form they take, must connect with readers. Here are initial steps I have employed over the years to ensure a strong reader connection:

• Assess just how far off base you are with your readerships. Ask your staff for their input. Ask friends or family members for honest assessments of how useful the publication is in their opinion. Ask a non-competing publication to offer an assessment.
  
• Quantify how many stories, features or services fulfill important needs for readers. Take a look at your publication’s content and determine how many stories are written for readers and how many are written because they are routine coverage. Are features truly lively and enlightening pieces or do they simply fit a preconceived notion of what a feature story is? Establish a benchmark so you can note improvements.
  
• Brainstorm ways to connect with readers. Involve as many staffers as possible. Don’t edit ideas. Promote free and open discussion. Don’t dismiss ideas as illogical or expensive.
  
• Get out of the office. Get everybody out of the office. Interact with readers on a non-business level. Learn about them as people, not customers. Don’t even bring up the publication in discussion. Ask about their lives.

The Editor as 'Point Guard of Readership'

Much is made of the need for editors in this digital age. I've always argued that this new age increases the need for strong editors in order to bring clarity to the chaos of information at people's disposal. New media and media consumption patterns dictate that editors direct how messages are delivered.

I use the term "point guard of readership," borrowing the term from the late Rich Somerville, a California newspaper publisher. He used the term to describe his "readership editor," which was a position designed to help the newspaper become more outward-focused. The intent was for the point guard to guide efforts to become more reader-centric and relevant to those who picked up the paper. In my analogy, the point guard takes the information to be delivered, much as the point guard takes the ball, and delivers it in the best possible way to ensure success--success being that the information is consumed and used.

Editors must understand the why behind the platforms they use. Understanding this will enable them to choose the right delivery platform (or sequence of platforms) to deliver the information...in the same way a point guard decides whether to shoot, pass, drive or even call time out.

We recently published a special section on gender equality in education on PTA.org. And I am using this as a test to basically benchmark how to most effectively "score" with our content. I will be analyzing not just web traffic but where the traffic comes from (especially via our Facebook and Twitter posts and our RSS feed). Knowing all I can about the audiences for social media and the web will tell me what to shoot out first and how all of these media work together.

So far, the note on the PTA Facebook page hasn't delivered many readers nor has the Tweet. We still need an RSS push, though traffic has been mixed with this tool--worked well for some pushes, not much for others. However, in another example, Twitter was enormously successful driving traffic to this blog a few weeks ago when a post was picked up by Jeff Jarvis. Editors need to be aware of the benchmarks behind these platforms and what it takes to sucessfully utilize them.

Mindy McAdams writes of clarity of purpose in this Teaching Online Journalism blog post. She urges writers and publications to figure out what they are doing and why they are doing it. My purpose at PTA is clear--get relevant information in the hands of parents. Increasingly, this is done by means beyond the magazine and even beyond the website. The key to the future is unraveling what means readers find most relevant.

Six Things Every Customer Wants

I've always been a fan of Newspaper Next, the American Press Institute's newspaper innovation initiative, and use much of its strategy in what I do for PTA (and did for Inland Press Association). It's all about fulfilling information needs for audiences that desperately seek knowledge. It's about being relevant.

Joe Gracia of Give to Get Marketing echoes this audience-focused philosophy for advertising and marketing. In an interview years ago, he put it bluntly: Prospects and customers really don’t care about you or your company…or even your products and services. They care about one thing--How you can help them get what they want. People don’t want to be sold. They want to be helped.

I still apply that strategy to content on PTA.org, in the PTA Parent newsletter and in the magazine, Our Children. I frequently review Gracia's list of six things every "customer" wants (or reader or viewer or prospect or whatever) and apply it to editorial content:

Free information – Be generous in the information you provide your customers.

Solutions to their problems – Ask yourself what problems your publication solves.

To be happy – Focus on making your customers happy before and after the point they consumer your content. That means guiding them to your content quickly and answering their questions or fulfilling their needs to the point of satisfaction (or, even better, surpassing their expectations).

To have no risk – Put customers at ease. Deliver what you promise.

To feel important – Treat customers with respect and consideration. Show appreciation.

For things to be easy – Design your publications to make it easy for your customers to find and consume your information.

Editing in the "Post-Media" World

The Buzzmachine blog's Jeff Jarvis always has something intelligent to say. You hate to lavish praise on someone so unequivocally, but Jarvis is just so darn right all the time. In his latest insight, he explains further why newspapers and most other media should move away from the story an into the "wave" or "stream" of news and information. The information consumer will always be on and so the media must always be on, too. The page the audience turns to will be a collection of information, some constantly updated, and will serve as a base for collaboration, as much as anything. A static page of old news will be just as irrelevant and hard to access as a dusty old tome in library basement.

This does not diminish the need for strong editing; in fact, it creates an even greater need for curating the vast amount of information, some of it unfiltered, coming through the stream. Jarvis points to others (Clay Shirky, Marissa Mayer) that have been espousing the same idea. Editors need to help readers cut through the clutter. Bring clarity to the chaos. Establish priorities.

This does not mean radical change. Editors can move toward more "stream-like" content without having to blow up everything and start over:

• Integrate all your media. Add social media feeds wherever possible. Push RSS. Include Facebook comments and tweets in stories. Think about a hub-and-spoke model for your media. Everything, in some way, should be connected to form a very strong unit.
  
• Participate in conversations. Learn how to engage in dialogue in online communities. Post comments on blogs. Offer advice in forums. Let people seek you out for more information. How is this "editing"? This exercise will make you more familiar with how people seek and consumer information in these venues, which will give you greater insight into how to edit for this audience.
  
• Consider setting up a web page with constantly updated information on a specific topic. Let your audience come to a single site to get a glimpse of what is going on. Let them see what other peiople are talking about. Encourage their interaction. Educate them, but also let them talk.

Revolution can be good. But evolution can be easier to manage. Evolve your content.

New morning show format key to audience development

I don't write much about television, especially TV news, partially from a lingering disdain for TV news operations and partially because they lack innovation even more than newspapers do. But I spotted an interesting, why-didn't-I-think-of-that innovation that deserves mention from WCIU-TV here in Chicago.

To compete with the numerous soft-news programs on the airwaves each morning, WCIU launched "You & Me This Morning." It's a soft launch, intended to work out a few bugs before going big time. The format is segmented. Instead of running continously from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., the show runs in short burts (four to 11 minutes) in between programs like "Everybody Hates Chris" (which is on air from 6:47 to 7:22).

Weigel Broadcasting Executive VP Neal Sabin says they are "exploring new ways of doing content." I applaud anyone who can say that with a straight face. No, this concept isn't earth-shattering but it is innovative and smart. Channel 26 is starting small and not committing to filling the three-hour span (which inevitably leads to a reliance on puffery and fluff). There are also plans to post original content on the web and deliver it to mobile devices.

I'll tune in to see if it works for me. I won't miss anyone from the other station I watch to get the weather every morning. I chose them simply because they are the least annoying bunch.

Kill 'em all dictum does make point

Michael Miner, the brilliant media columnist for Chicago's The Reader alt-weekly, suggests in his Sept. 17 column that the struggling Chicago Sun-Times might benefit from killing all its columnists...at least that is what the headline suggests. His point, which was based on ideas from Columbia Journalism Review's ME Brent Cunningham, was to make star columnists "inquire and reflect" instead of filling a weekly quota of star turns. It's about reallocating resources, which has been mentioned in this blog several times.

Instead of focusing efforts on things like breaking news that newspapers can't seem to do anymore, papers should focus more on "sustained coverage of ideas and--crucially--solutions," writes Cunningham in his article in the latest CJR. As Miner points out, Newspaper Next pushes newspapers to become a "new kind of local information and connection utility."

Throughout the column, Miner emphasizes that key word: local. Readership depends on relevant, local information. This is true beyond newspapers. It's true for any media serving any audience.

The information can be relevant and still serve the needs of a wide audience--like the parenting information that we provide at PTA. We address important topics like parent involvement, child safety, children's health and wellness. These cover all types of parents and parenting situations. The relevance is broad. This approach serves the most people. If we tried to serve individual groups within the general category of "parents" (single parents, for instance) we would simply publish a collection of narrowly relevant topics that might have impact for that group, but not extend very far beyond that group.

That's not to say the "narrowly relevant" approach is wrongheaded or that these groups don't deserve specific information delivered to them. But the argument goes back to the question of resource allocation. Where can we get the most impact for our time and effort?

But to make this wide relevance approach work, there can be no gaps between the information and the audience. In other words, a medium needs strong leadership that is connected directly to the audience. Any obstacles that get in the way will dampen the relevance of the information, even if the block is well-intentioned and positioned to benefit the medium. That's why beat reporting is effective. That's why face-to-face communication works best. Distance--whether literal or figurative--is not good when it comes to audience development.