Category: Link topic

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Online news

Young people and the news: a problem we must consider

Many of the problems we face in community journalism are the same ones our predecessors had to cope with. Reluctant sources, personnel problems, slow ad sales, competition, ethical dilemmas – the problems look different in 2012, but they’re essentially the same old issues re-framed for today’s media world.

But we do have one unique issue for 2012: Will the next generation of readers read newspapers, or will they even seek out news as we define it, at all?

So spend a few minutes with these two online articles. They’re talking about young people and where they get – or don’t get – news. And though they take different approaches, they agree that tomorrow’s readers will not approach news the same way our generation has. I remember our saying, a couple of decades ago, that young people may not read newspapers now – but just wait till they get married and have a family and a mortgage. Then they’ll read the paper. And maybe that was true then. No longer.

Young people frequently think, one of these articles points out, that if something is really news, it will find THEM. And the way it’ll find them is through their social networks.

What does all that mean for us? At the Center, we do a lot of thinking about that. And while we are not sure about the answers yet, one thing we do know is that it means that every newspaper needs to develop a dynamic social media presence. Social media are not an afterthought – more than 900 million people worldwide are on Facebook, and to be irrelevant on Facebook is to be irrelevant to the lives of many of those readers. And the same goes for newspapers that see Facebook as just another publication platform rather than an interaction with their audience.

The real question, and the one we’re looking into at the Center, is how to incorporate a social media strategy into the life of every Texas community newspaper. If you can see that your social media strategy is helping you reach new readers and making your newspaper more relevant to your community, we’d like to hear from you. No one has all the answers; we need to look for them together as an industry.

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Business of News

Ken Doctor offers insights on business models for news

If you’re following what’s happening in our business, you know that one of the big names today is Ken Doctor. He’s a leading news industry analyst and author of Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get. OK, I can hear what you’re thinking: “I’m trying to get out a newspaper in the most difficult economic times in my lifetime for this business. The last thing I have time for is some media theorist.” I get it. But Doctor writes about trends that aren’t as far down the road as we would like to think – and he definitely has some insights that everyone in community journalism needs to be thinking about. At the Center, we frequently talk about these issues as the difference between hurricanes and tsunamis. Hurricanes announce their presence with wind and tide shifts and bands of rain. Tsunamis are different. They are a gigantic wall of water created by tectonic shifts in the earth. You can be on a beach in sunny weather and be totally unaware that just past the horizon a giant wave is headed your way. The tsunami has already hit the metros, but we see less evidence in community journalism. Nevertheless, it’s coming. And Ken Doctor is one of those people who’s writing about the changing business models brought about by the digital revolution. If you haven’t read any of his stuff, here’s a great introduction. In this article, he starts out talking about Netflix and goes ahead to draw parallels to the news business. He calls Netflix “a canary in the circulation coalmine.” Take a few minutes to look over this interesting piece on the future “newsonomics” of our business.

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Facebook Social media Twitter

Call it what you will, journalists should develop their brands

One way to know you’re getting older: When you hear the word “branding” and cattle come to mind. But if you’re at all plugged in, you know that today the word is typically used to refer to a product’s – and now a person’s – identity. Who you are. What you’re known for. Your uniqueness. What one writer called your “digital footprint.” Some of the more traditional journalists still shy away from “branding” as applied to individual reporters – they see it as a concept that applies to cereal or soap, not journalists. But actually, many journalists have been branded for years, though they never thought of it in those terms. One reporter might be known as the go-to guy for public records and making sense of data in a way that related to readers. Another might be a word-person – her prose full of voice and the type of writing that made you want to read sentences out loud. But it’s more than that, and this is why you need to read Steve Buttry’s blogpost (Steve is also a consultant to TCCJ). This article will help you think through what your brand is, and what you can make it. And as an added bonus, at the end of the post he also refers you to a number of other postings that will help you to develop your personal brand. This is a must-read, especially for younger journalists.

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Business of News

Mixed news from NAA on ad revenues

New advertising figures are now out from NAA, and it’s a mixed bag of news. On the positive side, there was a 4 percent increase in print employment advertising, and newspapers attracted nearly two-third of Internet users – more than 111 million unique visitors in April. On the downside, total print advertising revenues fell 9.5 percent in the first quarter of 2011. And overall, print revenues are down $10.5 billion from 2006. The figures also showed that digital is now nearly 15 percent of total newspaper advertising revenues.

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Business of News

A real-life parable for our times

So we have two media companies. Both are wildly successful and make a lot of money. They have all the customers they could want. And then the media landscape begins to change. One company stands pat and believes that it offers such a valuable and appreciated service that it will weather the storm. Or to paraphrase TARP terminology, it is “too valuable to fail.” The other company realizes that it does not have to change the product it delivers, only come up with a new delivery system while still keeping the old product. Which newspapers are we talking about? Not newspapers – Netflix and Blockbuster. Netflix is still in the movie business, but changed from being a send-it-in-the-mail business to a video on demand leader. Blockbuster went bankrupt and got swallowed up by Dish Network, which is itself in trouble. There are definitely lessons here for the newspaper industry.

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Business of News Hyperlocal news New media Newspaper websites Online news

Revenue-generating ideas for your website

This article, “15 Ways to Generate Revenue for a Community News Site,” was written for hyperlocal online news sites — the competitors of most newspapers. But some of these ideas can easily be adapted for use by your own newspaper’s website. Here the first one: “Find a topic of interest to an audience and a particular advertiser. Have the advertiser put together a video to be aired on the site as a webinar. Readers sign up for it for free. The advertiser gets the names and emails of the attendees as possible sales leads in exchange for a sponsorship fee. A real estate agent might conduct a webinar on how to shop for a home, for example.” Let’s imagine, for instance, that you have a restaurant that’s known for making the best apple pie in town. Take your Flip camera down to the restaurant and let the owner show how to bake a great apple pie, step by step, on video. Then he/she can talk about the restaurant and the other pies they make there. At the end of the video (and you promote this at the very first to keep people tuned in), you offer a recipe if you click on a link — that helps to build the owner’s email list with the captured addresses. And who’s going to help the owner with the email campaign and tie it into your print and Internet editions? Your paper, of course!

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Circulation Community Journalism

Survey says: Readers love their community newspapers

So now the readers of NNA’s latest survey know what any community journalists have always known: Our readers think we’re doing a good job and almost three-quarters of them read us regularly.

What other industry can make such claims? Three-quarters of the people who live in towns served by community papers don’t shop regularly at Wal Mart or watch the same TV show or listen to the same music. But the latest Community Newspaper Readership Study by the National Newspaper Association and The Reynolds Journalism Institute indicates that a whopping 73 percent of residents in small towns and cities read local newspapers from one day to seven days a week. And more than two-thirds (78 percent) read most to all of the contents.
And there was even more good news in the survey: 80 percent consider local newspapers their primary news source; they prefer their community paper because it focuses on local news; and three-quarters say they look forward to reading their local newspaper.

What about other media? Eat your heart out, television – 50 percent chose newspapers for local news as opposed to 16.3 percent for TV and 6.7 percent for radio.

You can read a digest of the survey at the website of the Reynolds Journalism Institute (first link), or, if you’re a member of the National Newspaper Association, you can access the complete report that the NNA website (second link).

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Story ideas

Tips for reporting on Texas weather

May could be a bad weather month in Texas, and if so you’ll need the resources of the Weather Channel in your reporting. The Weather Channel has all types of information that will give you perspective on local weather emergencies — including this interactive map that will allow you to monitor weather radar for your city and county. SPJ’s Journalist’s Toolbox also has good weather reporting sources.

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Story ideas

Story idea: the impact of high gas prices

You think high gas prices are hurting your bottom line? What if you had to fill up a school bus? And what if that school bus made pick-ups in rural areas and drove many miles every day? Here’s a math problem for your fifth grader: Suppose a school bus gets 8 miles per gallon and drives 50 miles a day. The gas tank holds around 60 gallons and gas costs $3.81. How much more will the district spend on that bus per week than it did when gas cost $2.50 a gallon? It’s a great word problem for a fifth grader and a great story idea for any community newspaper in a rural area where school buses drive long distances. The link shows you what a Michigan TV station did with this idea.

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Newspaper websites Online news Website traffic

WaPo decides to speak English when it comes to understanding Web traffic

Aren’t you tired of webspeak?  Can you remember the days when we talked about readers, not uniques or pageviews?  The Washington Post has decided to try a new language in its reports to the staff on readership of the washingtonpost.com:  English.  Pageviews have become “pages read”; unique visitors have become (drumroll here….) “readers.” As Ken Doctor, the newsonomics guru, notes in this post:  “The idea: demystify foreign terms and turn them into what they are — stats any self-respecting journalist has to care about.” And results of these analytics are that the Post knows more about its readers – for instance, that 10 percent of its audience accounts for more than a third of its traffic, and that Facebook referrals are up 238 percent. If you want to read more about measuring traffic to your site, read this blog from Associate Director Andrew Chavez.