The recession that has impacted rural employment throughout the nation has left most Texas counties untouched. In fact, employment in Texas is actually up. The Rural Blog from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky has an article about this trend that you should look at. You’ll get great ideas for a story about employment in your county. The blog links to a study (second URL) that includes a map and a data rundown in tables that show where jobs have been lost and gained. Maverick County in Texas, for instance, was No. 4 in the nation in jobs gained over the past three years. Texas was one of five states that gained jobs. The dailyyonder.com site gives the name of the organization at Mississippi State University that compiled the numbers, in case you want to call for quotes. If you localize this story, send the Center a link so we can share it with other Texas papers.
Author: Kathryn Jones Malone
Kathryn Jones Malone is co-director of the Texas Center for Community Journalism. She began her career as a staff writer at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, then worked as a staff writer for the Dallas Times Herald and The Dallas Morning News; as a contract writer for The New York Times; as a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly magazine; as editor of the Glen Rose Reporter; and as a freelance writer for numerous state, regional and national magazines. She teaches journalism at Tarleton State University.
The good news for newspaper advertising is that it just experienced its smallest drop in any one quarter since 2007. Spending for print ads was down 7.6 percent. It shows you how bad things have been overall that we consider that figure hopeful. But online spending was actually up by 13.9 percent. – giving us a total drop of 5.5 percent. Here’s the official glass-is-half-full interpretation from John F. Sturm, president and CEO of NAA: “The steady transformation of the newspaper industry is clearly evident in these latest revenue figures. Despite a highly competitive environment, online advertising growth rebounded back into double digits, while declines in traditional revenue categories continue to moderate as the general advertising recovery progresses. The fact that online now represents nearly 12 percent of overall newspaper advertising revenues bodes well for our medium’s future in an increasingly digital environment. Even as the economy is slow to rebound, there is heightened optimism within the industry – a confidence reflected in second quarter earnings reports from public newspaper companies. New business models are taking hold, with publishers continuing to invest in platforms that deepen audience engagement in print and online. In a world where trusted, high-quality content is in demand, newspaper companies are uniquely positioned to benefit from the advertising recovery.” Or, if you’re a half-empty type, try this observation, from Alan Mutter: “Following a historic pattern that shows newspapers take in roughly 47 percent of their ad revenue in the first half of the year, it is possible to project that full-year sales for the industry will drop some $2 billion this year to finish at approximately $26.5 billion. Assuming no major positive or negative changes in the economy between now and the end of the year, this will put newspaper ad sales back to the lowest level they have seen since 1985.”
English King Canute once took his throne to the seashore and commanded the tide not to come in. Of course, his feet got wet. Don’t judge him; newspapers are still erecting paywalls and expecting people to pay their newspaper for what they can get for free. To be fair, there are some specialized situations — niche publications and some community papers that hold a near-monopoly on news — that have experienced some success with paywalls. But if you’re still wrestling with this issue, take time to read blogger Alan Mutter’s latest posting. His thesis is that a growing number of free local news sites are driving another nail in the coffin of paywalls. An example from his blog: “While newspaper executives have agonized for the better part of two years about whether and how to charge for their costly-to-produce content, every indication is that the portals, local broadcasters and other media companies have no intention of asking anyone to pay for access to the increasingly ambitious local sites they are building. With a fast-proliferating number of respectable local sites giving away news to build traffic for their ad-supported ventures, newspapers simply won’t be able to charge for access – especially when their own stories are likely to become freely available within minutes at any number of competing sites.” And as frequently happens with well-thought-out blogs like Mutter’s, some of the comments from readers are as interesting as the blog itself. Here’s an example from one reader: “The only way newspapers can make the transition to online is to radically cut costs. We’re talking 80 to 90 percent cuts in personnel. An online news business needs to be built from the ground up, not have a legacy news module imposed on it. This is why I continue to believe the newspapers original sin wasn’t a failure to charge for content, but a failure to create completely separate online companies.” So add this posting to your consideration as you consider your paywall options.
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Another competitor for ad dollars
Just in case the Ambien you were prescribed is working now and you’re finally getting some sleep instead of worrying about all the new challenges facing our business…let’s look at one more and find out how effective the Ambien really is. Here’s a quote from the beginning of this article: “If local newspaper, yellow pages, radio or local TV companies thought that Google, Yahoo, eBay and craigslist were disruptive, they are now going to face down a competitor that will have an even bigger impact on their businesses than any one of those companies did.” That competitor is the location-based marketing made possible by mobile phones. Articles like this one predict the impact on urban and suburban markets more than rural ones, but we all know that urban phenomena soon spread to smaller cities and towns. This is one we’ll have to keep tabs on.
Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, recently spoke at a meeting I attended and shared a PowerPoint presentation I thought you’d be interested in. Al has graciously shared that with us. Look it over – it has some information that can be helpful with you as you make presentations about the overall health of community newspapers – and some information your ad reps need to have to share with customers who have questions about the effectiveness of a newspaper ad buy.
Copyeditor-types, if you just can’t find someone to engage in a deep discussion of comma splices and arcane points of word usage, check out this weekly column online from The New York Times. There’s enough there every week to delight you and bore the pants off anyone around you. And if that still doesn’t satisfy, check out writing coach Roy Peter Clark’s fascinating new book, The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English. Fascinating book – you’ll agree when you read the Times’ interview with Roy at http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/stray-questions-for-roy-peter-clark/?ref=review.
Some newspapers and online news sites trying “news cafes” – sending reporters to coffee shops to interact with patrons. The model is a little different everywhere, but basically reporters go into a coffee shop with the permission of the proprietors and set up shop. They write, phone, do interviews. One even has a sign that says “the journalist is in.” The idea is to make the paper and its reporters accessible, to demystify the news process, and to connect with readers. The Poynter story has lots of hyperlinks to various places that are trying this, if you want to get more information on how it works.
Check out this story in All Cross’s rural journalism blog in Kentucky. It reports research from Kansas on rural grocery stores, many of which are closing because of the competition from nearby big-box stores, among other factors. If you have seen a trend like this in your area, click on the link above — it’ll take you to Al’s story and his link to the Kansas study about grocery stores in the Midwest. You’ll have all the background (and sources, if you want to call the researcher in Kansas) you need to do a story if you’re seeing this trend yourself.
Someone asked last week for a summary of online articles about the pros and cons of paywalls. Nothing is more relevant right now in Texas community journalism: Are our newspapers going to charge for access to their websites, or should they remain free in hopes that they will generate additional advertising revenue? There is no easy answer to this.
We know that the ethos of the Internet is that information should be free. And since Al Gore invented the Internet, that’s been the prevailing practice. Some news sites have implemented paywalls. Others have gone from free to paid and back to free. And there are many options in between those polar opposites.
The paywall concept seems to be working in a few places, and especially among some of what we call “niche” sites – websites that offer specialized information for limited audiences. Even such a well-known paid site as The Wall Street Journal can be considered a niche site because of its focus on specialized business coverage.
You’ve heard publishers claim that the best way to establish value is to put a price on the information. The price we impose on the online product becomes the value of that product, they say. But in a supply-and-demand economy, the seller does not establish value; the buyer does. Let’s say you want to sell your old Yugo, and you want it to be seen as a sought-after and valued purchase. So you price it at $50,000.
Good luck. If there’s such a thing as a Yugo collector, you may well get it. But if someone is just looking for a car, there are too many options out there.
So if we expect consumers to pay for the online product, we have to offer something the consumer perceives as value (as opposed to something we think is valuable) and something that the consumer cannot obtain elsewhere. (In the paywall literature, that’s typically called “premium content.”)
And remember that “elsewhere” may not just be another newspaper or a news medium – it can be other online sites, blogs, and especially social networking. The most recent Pew study reported that 35 percent of respondents had a favorite news Web site, but of that number only 5 percent said they would be willing to pay if their “favorite site” erected a paywall.
Sounds like a blanket condemnation of paywalls, but that’s not what I intended. Instead, the point is just that the whole paywall issue is more complex than it seems.
So as you consider this issue, and your own decision about whether or not to put up a paywall, here are some considerations. The following five articles are examinations (all written in readable style) of the paywall issue. There give options and they bring up perspectives you need to consider.
Whatever you do, do this first — make a pot of coffee and lock yourself in your office and read through these articles. You may still choose the paywall route, but you can say you’ve looked at some of the important options. Here they are:
- Fees for online news yet to succeed: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/1071443/1/.html
- Five ways to monetize the future of the news media: http://mediachannel.org/blog/2010/05/5-ways-to-monetize-the-future-of-news-media/
- Pitfalls of the paywall: http://mediachannel.org/blog/2010/05/5-ways-to-monetize-the-future-of-news-media/
- Newspapers experiment with charging for premium content: /blogs/whatsnew/newspapers-experiment-charging-premium-c
- On newspapers and paywalls: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mcquaid/on-newspapers-and-paywall_b_211508.html
So you heard someone talking about Ruby on Rails and it sounded like a Merle Haggard ballad — and then you found out it was a Net platform? And you’ve always wanted a plain-English explanation of SEO, CSS and cloud computing? You’re in luck. Poynter has posted a glossary of Internet terms that every digital journalist should know. And even if you don’t “need” to know, imagine how impressed everyone in your office will be when you throw terms like metadata and data visualization into the conversation.