Lessons in user-contributed content

Lessons in user-contributed content
Steve Outing, one of the true pioneers in digital media, continues his
contributions to the field. Sadly, his contribution comes in failure. He folded his Enthusiast Group, a grassroots media and social networking group of Web sites. Observers might say that if Steve Outing couldn’t forge a successful business model from user-contributed content, then who can? Well, let’s just look at the lessons first:

• Building a business on a core of user-submitted content is tough.
  
• Traffic did grow slowly and steadily, but not enough to sustain the business. People came, a few stayed, then they dropped off when interested waned.
  
• While there was a lot of great user-contributed content, the overall experience for the user was weak when compared to (and this is key) reading a publication with quality professional content throughout.

The bottom line is that there just isn’t enough outstanding content from users. There is some outstanding, some abysmal, and a lot of mediocre stuff. This formula might attract eyeballs, but it won’t keep them glued to the pages or get them to return frequently.

Once again, however, newspapers can take the lead in this readership revolution. User-contributed content, grassroots media, citizen journalism, hyper-local media—whatever you want to call it—is important. So is social networking. This is how new generations of information users interact. User contributions and social networks need to be built around newspapers’ high-quality, relevant information. Not the other way around. Newspapers need to lead the readers (and listen to them, too), not follow them.

This is roughly how Scripps has done it with YourHub. It was an early project that is thriving, unlike others such as Backfence.com that were more highly touted.

Outing’s column direst readers to an outstanding white paper he wrote on ways to encourage user participation. This is another aspect of social networking/U-CC that is being neglected—the whole leading a horse to water thing.

Advertising as content

I learned about this gutsy newspaper move from Crosscut, an online, citizen-journalism based newspaper serving the Pacific Northwest. The Tucson Citizen upped its single-copy price of 35 cents to $1.50 for the Thanksgiving Day edition. NOT, as Crosscut is quick to point out, because of increased editorial content, but because of the massive amount of inserts in that edition. I think this is great. It puts a truer value on the content.

Crosscut blogger Knute Berger stops short of criticizing this move, though he seems to decry it. However, his point is a strong one—readers do value advertising. And they value it as content, not just as a bunch of ads. Newspapers too often forget this. As pointed out by Readership Institute studies, selling more ads as well as different kinds of ads (from different kinds of advertisers) is a proven readership builder. Ad departments cannot forget that readership is their responsibility too.

By the way, Crosscut is pretty well done. The design breathes and does not collapse under the weight of all the content. Check it out for some good citizen journalism ideas such as the editors’ ranking of the top news stories (archived over time).

Web's influence on print

Atlantic Monthly writer Ross Douthat blogs an interesting point here about how Web traffic will influence editorial decisions for print editions. He cites fellow blogger Alex Massie. Analyzing Web traffic can be good, Massie argues, because you can actually deliver information readers want. His caveat is that Web traffic analysis should be coupled with “original thinking.” Strong editors will be needed.

Douthat goes on to cite fellow Atlantic writer Michael Hirschorn’s analysis. Hirschorn is less optimistic about the potential for Web behavior’s influence on how a print edition serves readers. His analysis focused more on the viability of studying “most e-mailed” ranking rather than Web traffic. His conclusion: newspaper front pages should move away from commodity news (council meetings and the like) and toward more pleasurable news, which he defines as stories that are simply fun to read. They need not all be celebrity gossip and goofy features. Instead, he offered this…

In late August, The New York Times ran a story about new scientific explanations of the mechanics of out-of-body experiences. Surely this was a story with wide appeal, engaging everyone from evangelicals to philosophers to the death-obsessed to current and former acid-heads. Yet it was buried in the back of the front section. Meanwhile, the front page spotlighted a story about minor college sports teams (fencing, swimming) needing to hustle to find funding, an issue with perhaps a bigger demographic footprint, but of literally zero interest to anyone not immediately affected.

Readership research and newspaper experience support this assertion. People will read even long stories if they are relevant and engaging.

A good example from the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., a pioneer in the use of alternative story forms.

"Chiseling isn't a growth strategy"

A sound strategy from
Newsosaur blogger Alan Mutter—employ journalists to obtain the information necessary for survival. Mutter says journalists alone possess the ability ask the tough questions that need answers such as what advertisers really think and what readers really want…if only they can overcome their reluctance to get involved in the business of their business.

Some good news: Times-News bucking the trend…
Times circulation still on the rise…The industry needs more stories like these instead of the avalanche of stories about sliding circulation. These stories are out there.

Things Fall Apart

(This will be an abnormally long, self-indulgent post. Bear with me…)

As one of my former colleagues put it, the days of the old H-A have officially come to an end. I’m sure the spirit of dear, departed Don Benn is furious.

My first job out of college was at the LaPorte (Ind.) Herald-Argus, the same place my hero, Ernie Pyle, got his start. Within weeks, due to turnover, I was the senior reporter on staff. I was 22. Two years after that, I left, too. It was the natural course of things, as was noted by a janitor at the county courthouse, where I spent a great deal of time covering circuit court. He noticed me, even if I never really noticed him.

“I heard you’re leaving,” he said one day. Shocked, I said that I was. “That’s what happens,” he said. “All the good ones leave.” Well, the H-A staff was a bunch of “good ones.” We did great work in all departments. Many stayed but many of us moved on. As T.S. Eliot wrote, the center cannot hold. Things fall apart.

Small dailies will always struggle with turnover and that is a shame. Every community, no matter how large or small, deserves to have a talented, hard-working news staff cover the important events that define a community. Each reader deserves to have an insightful reporter deliver information important to his or her life. And they deserve the dedication and sharply honed skills of the pressmen, the pre-press workers, the circulation folks, the sales reps and everyone else working to bring them the most vital piece of media that community will ever see—the newspaper.

It’s hard enough to produce a newspaper of quality. It’s exponentially harder when that staff turns over so frequently. It is nearly impossible when that staff is gutted.

Just ask the Herald-Argus. (“LaPorte paper cuts almost half its jobs”)

The economics of the newspaper business will forever conflict with their mission. There have always been layoffs and cutbacks and things done in the name of efficiency. Exceptions are rare (read “Salvation in Tupelo”...scroll down). So I don’t get angry when I read about more “corporate” edicts that destroy good things like the Herald-Argus—because, make no mistake, the Herald-Argus will never again be as good as it was. Nothing can be as good again that suffers such a loss of institutional knowledge, of devotion to the community. Nothing can recover from such a brutal, devastating hit to credibility. Sure, the Herald-Argus will rebound a bit and maybe even thrive, but it will never be the same.

No, I don’t get angry about these things. I grow sad over the loss. I feel an emptiness inside that will never go away and will never be filled. I’m sure once and current staffers know what I mean. Maybe even readers do, too. I’ve been gone a long time, but I still suffer the loss. That’s what a good newspaper does—it stays with you.

Do the new owners sense this, though?

The nation—perhaps the world—seems to be caught in an accountability crisis of indeterminate length and origin. No one stands up anymore. Whatever the circumstance, you would think there would be enough bravery and intelligence among the leaders of business (and governments, too) to know that the right thing to do would be to say, “This is tragic and we are sorry. We value your service. You are good people. But we must do these things to survive and thrive and be vital in the future” and then offer just compensation for the very real pain involved.

But nice guys don’t win this game. It’s just a primal, hardcore, waste-laying process I can’t quite grasp, I guess. I just don’t know what it takes. I was never a businessman.

I was always a journalist, though. And I know what it takes for a newspaper to thrive. It takes people. It takes compassion. It takes a mission. It takes honesty.

Not a line item.

My heart goes out to the staffers cut and those that remain…and to the readers who lost a good newspaper. I hope the new H-A can serve them as well.

Venturing from the center

Break the bonds of conformity—newsroom leadership guru Edward Miller offers this advice in his excellent newsletter, “Reflections on Leadership” (go to newsroomleadership.com to sign up). Why? Because newspapers need to venture from their “center” to do the pioneering and groundbreaking work (enterprise reporting, investigations, and online storytelling, in particular) needed to keep them moving forward and thriving, Miller says. How? Two ideas from Miller:

Tinker with the structure – Newsrooms are “top-down, hierarchical, command-and-control, 19th-century German industrial models of organizations,” Miller says. Instead of propelling all ideas to the top, decisions should be made at the lowest practical level. Lessen the “let’s-cover-our-butt-and-first-see-what-the-bosses-want” mentality. Start by letting the staff evaluate the work of the staff. Set some identifiable and measurable readership goals for the coming month, set up a three-staffer panel to evaluate each paper and pick “winners” (specific examples of how goals were met that day), and ask the panel to answer two questions about each goal: What are we doing right? How can we teach everyone to do that more consistently? Highlight success. Avoid criticism.

Encourage experiments – Editor often encourage risk-taking, though they really mean that you should try something innovative, but if it doesn’t work then it’s off with your head, Miller says. Instead, try something new while prudently reducing risk. Editors must accept that initiatives will fail. Start by asking a designer and a reporter to make a prototype metro page targeted to a particular demographic that is abandoning the newspaper. After they present their idea to the staff, let staffers throw out ideas about how to attract that demographic without losing other readers.