The new GameChanger iPhone app is designed to help keep score in Little League and high school baseball – without a pencil. You can now record every pitch, hit and run on your phone. It’s free, but the originator, Fungo Media, plans to launch a subscription service to let people get digital simulations of live games. Says a Fungo exec: “This is real-time game content for local sports. This is like ESPN Gamecast for Little League.” Up next: Fungo want to partner with newspaper websites, so that papers can receive get box scores without anyone ever having to call the newspaper.
The name is ePodunk. And having grown up in a town so small we used to go watch the druggist fill prescriptions on Saturday, I was a little put off by the “podunk” name. But I went, and I checked out a few Texas cities and a few in other states, including the Arkansas “podunk” where I was born. You’ll find lots of interesting information and links here on your town and those around you. Check this one out.
Media managers have long had access to simple statistics about their product’s consumption. Newspaper publishers, for example, have relatively easy access to circulation figures. But more detailed information about consumption habits traditionally has only been available via extensive research, often from outside providers.
That is far from the case online, though. Free blogging platforms track statistics as do most media-sharing sites such as YouTube or Flickr. Rare is the service that even charges to get such information. And free services such as Google Analytics allow anyone with a website insight into how content is being consumed.
But knowing how to interpret those data can be a difficult task. In fact, some argue that all of this data isn’t necessarily a good thing if nobody knows what it means. James Robinson, director of web analytics at The New York Times, is quoted as saying that all of this data is useless if it’s not being used to learn about how people are engaging with content. He said “it’s not about the data, it’s about the insights….it’s not about the page views or click-throughs – it’s about making New York Times customers happy.”
Q & A is by far my favorite, being able to ask specific questions about something going on at my newspaper and how the materials being presented can be used or adapted for use. Also, being able to talk with my peers at other papers, and know we are all indeed ‘in the same boat.’ Perhaps most helpful, though, was being there made me stop thinking about my next paper, and got me to think about my paper’s survival in the future.
My favorite part was doing a features page layout for a graduation. It allowed me to try out some ideas that I have been wanting to use at my paper. With help and ideas from Broc, I am now ready to tackle a features page with a scrapbook theme! And I will always remember all the CRAP I learned here! 🙂 {Editor’s note: CRAP is an acronym for something the workshop participants learned about design. Join us for the next design seminar and you’ll never forget the CRAP you learned here, either!}
My favorite part of the workshop was meeting people and listening to their stories about the newspapers they are at. I also enjoyed the workshop; it was very informative and interesting!
My favorite part of the workshop was the crash course for InDesign and playing with the program.
I enjoyed meeting new people and having fun with page design. Also, going out to eat at the Stockyards was AWESOME.
I liked the hands-on InDesign and Photoshop. I liked the examples of papers and how they could be changed. That was very helpful to me.
I loved hearing all of the Photoshop tips, and then just being free to create and learn as we go.
Just being able to have fresh eyes on my work and get feedback helps a lot.
I enjoyed seeing what other papers are doing. I also enjoyed learning aspects of Photoshop I was not familiar with. Broc was great working with everyone.
I have to admit I have been greedy taking up space in your classes the last three years and think maybe next year I should let others take a spot instead, but there again if you will let me come back again I sure will! I did find out quite a few things about myself from this little junket, maybe more than anything else.
I was very inspired by Jim Riddlesperger, and even though I thought I hated politics and I am now motivated to do at least 3 stories from his discussions.
Also found out that my love of writing really is in the column format, which I have done for many years, so I should start back and put pen to paper. Meanwhile I will go back to work tomorrow and make a living, doing everything else!!
Paula LaRocque has been one of my favorite authors on writing for years — her presentation was absolutely solid, convincing, and beneficial beginning to end. The session on Cop Shop was also great. The workshop overall was one of the best I’ve ever been to.
My favorite part was being able to lay out my own page and actually do it, since I have never done it or even used a Mac.
Coming from an English background, I found that the workshop offered a solid baseline for journalism writing, techniques and presentation. I now am far more confident in my skills as a working community journalist and editor. We’ve put out one issue since the workshop, and I paid extra attention to the five pieces that I contributed, making sure that they had “multiple entry points” and were “written for the reader.” No more Jane Austen novels from this writer. I gave the same treatment to other pieces in the paper that I edited.
I want to personally thank you for hosting another fantastic workshop. It caused me to second-guess every word I print in the newspaper (which proved extra stressful on deadline day), but it has also made me a more dedicated journalist, one who takes that title seriously. If they could, I believe our readers would thank you for that.
I immensely appreciated being in the presence of people who are passionate about journalism and who have the expertise to teach writing on specific topics. The editorial lesson was of particular significance to my paper. And, of course, the meals were amazing and both Dr. Thomason and Chavez were more than hospitable.
The entire workshop was excellent! I feel privileged to have been able to attend. I will be able to use pretty much everything I learned. Reporting and writing stories is somewhat new to me and I was amazed by what I learned in a day and a half. I didn’t know it was possible to soak in that much information in such a short time. I enjoyed hearing the guest speakers and have much respect for Tommy and Andrew! I am now even more interested in reporting and newswriting. I didn’t want to come back to work, I wanted to stay there and learn from those two guys! There should be a newswriting workshop part 2!
My favorite part was knowing that I am not alone in this business and meeting people with similar problems, battles and concerns. I liked being able to hear others share their experiences how they resolved them. I enjoyed seeing a few familiar faces and meeting new people in the business. It’s comforting and rejuvenating all at the same time.
I particularly enjoyed Broc’s rebuilds on several of the pages submitted to him, where he shows you what you could do with what you have — rather than what he can do with Pulitzer-prize caliber art!
Paula Laroque’s [workshop] was extremely helpful in fine-tuning my writing skills. It made me realize some of the ruts that I get in when it comes to compiling articles. Andrew and Tommy’s information showed the passion of their views on making stories become the best they can be and how our writing needs to reach the readers. Roy Eaton’s talk on community journalism was extremely helpful due to the fact that a lot of the topics he covered applied to our community. The other presenters were strong and I learned a lot from them as well.
Categories
List of participating newspapers
Here's a list of the newspapers that have sent staff members to our workshops over the years:
- Advocate magazines
- Albany News
- Alpine Avalanche
- Alpine Daily Planet
- Archer County Advocate
- Argyle Sun
- Athens Daily Review
- Austin Community Newspapers
- Azle News
- Bandera Bulletin
- Bastrop Advertiser
- Bay City Tribune
- Baylor County Banner
- Baytown Sun
- Beeville Bee-Picayune
- Big Lake Wildcat
- Big Sandy and Hawkins Journal
- Blanco County News
- Boerne Star
- Bowie News
- Brackett News
- Brady Standard-Herald
- Breckenridge American
- Bridgeport Index
- Brownfield News
- Bryan-College Station Eagle
- Buffalo Press
- Bullard Banner News
- Burleson Star
- Burnet Bulletin
- Cameron Herald
- Canadian Record
- Canyon News
- Carrizo Springs Javelin
- Cass County Sun
- Castroville News Bulletin
- Cedar Creek Pilot
- Cedar Park Citizen
- Cherokeean Herald
- Clarendon Enterprise
- Clarksville Times
- Claude News
- Clay County Leader
- Colorado City Record
- Comanche Chief
- Commerce Journal
- Community News (Aledo)
- Cooper Review
- Corsicana Daily Sun
- Daily Court Review
- Daily Sentinel
- Daily Sentinel (Nacogdoches)
- Daily Tribune
- Dalhart Texan
- De Leon Monitor
- Deer Park Broadcaster/Progress
- Del Rio News-Herald
- DeLeon Free Press
- Denison/Pottsboro Press
- Diboll Free Press
- Dillard Newspapers
- Dripping Springs Century-News
- Dublin Citizen
- Eagle Press
- Eastland County News
- El Campo Leader-News
- Ellis County Press
- Ennis Daily News
- Everman Star
- Examiner (Navasota)
- Farmersville Times
- Fayette County Record
- Focus Daily News
- Fort Worth Business Press
- Franklin News Weekly
- Frankston Citizen
- Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post
- Freestone County Times
- Gatesville Messenger
- Gladewater Mirror
- Glen Rose Reporter
- Golden Gazette
- Goldthwaite Eagle
- Gonzales Cannon
- Graham Leader
- Grand Prairie Reporter
- Granite Publications
- Grapeland Messenger
- Hansford County Reporter-Statesman
- Hawley Voice
- Hays Free Press
- Hereford Brand
- Highland Lakes Newspapers
- Highlander
- Hometown News & Riesel Rustler
- Hondo Anvil Herald
- Hood County News
- Huntsville Item
- Idalou Beacon
- Irving Rambler
- Island Moon
- Jacksboro Newspapers
- Jackson County Herald-Tribune
- Jacksonville Daily Progress
- Jefferson Jimplecute
- Jewett Messenger
- Jewish Herald-Voice
- Joshua Star
- Junction Eagle
- Katy Times
- Kaufman County Life
- Kaufman Herald
- Keene Star
- Kerens Tribune
- Kerrville Daily Times
- Kilgore News Herald
- Killeen Daily Herald
- Kingsland Current
- Kirbyville Banner
- Knox County News
- Kyle-Buda Eagle
- Lake Country Sun
- Lake Travis View
- Lampasas Dispatch Record
- Leonard Graphic
- Light and Champion
- Lindsay Letter
- Little Elm Journal
- Lockhart Post-Register
- Lufkin Daily News
- Madisonville Meteor
- Malakoff News
- Martin County Messenger
- Medina Valley Times
- Midland Reporter-News
- Motley County Tribune
- Mount Vernon Optic-Herald
- Mountain Sun
- Muenster Enterprise
- Munday Courier
- Murphy Monitor
- Navarro County Times
- Newton County News
- Nocona News
- North Lake Travis Log
- Oak Cliff People
- Olney Enterprise
- Palestine Herald Press
- Pampa News
- Panhandle Press Association
- Paris News
- Patriot Talon (UT Tyler)
- People Newspapers (Dallas)
- Pflugerville Pflag
- Picayune and River Cities Daily Tribune
- Pilot Point Post-Signal
- Plainview Daily Herald
- Pleasanton Express
- Polk County Enterprise
- Port Aransas South Jetty
- Port Arthur News
- Port Lavaca Wave
- Prime Time Newspapers
- Princeton Herald
- Progress Times
- Quad City Messenger
- Rains County Leader
- Raymond Chronicle and Willacy County News
- Red Oak Record
- Red River Reporter
- Rix Quinn Communications
- Rockdale Reporter
- Round Rock Leader
- Sachse News
- San Angelo Standard-Times
- Sanger Courier
- Sealy News
- Seminole Sentinel
- Silsbee Bee
- Smithville Times
- Stamford American
- Star Group Newspapers
- Stonewall County Courier
- Suburbia News
- Sulphur Springs News-Telegram
- Sun Newspapers
- Swisher County News
- Tawakoni News
- Taylor Daily Press
- TCU Daily Skiff
- Teague Chronicle
- Terrell Tribune
- Texas Community Newspaper Association
- Texas Jewish Post
- Texas Press Association
- Texoma Enterprise
- The Facts (Clute)
- The Grizzly Detail
- The Informador
- The Island Moon (Corpus Christi)
- The Shorthorn
- Throckmorton Tribune
- Today’s Catholic
- Trammel Trace Tribune
- Vernon Daily Record
- Waco Tribune-Herald
- Wallis News-Review
- Waxahachie Daily Light
- Weatherford Democrat
- Weimar Mercury
- West Austin News
- West Kerr Current
- Western Observer
- Westlake Picayune
- Wharton Journal Spectator
- White Oak High School Gauger
- White Rock Lake Weekly
- Whitesboro News-Record
- Whitewright Sun
- Wilson County News
- Wimberley View
- Winnsboro News
- Wise County Messenger
- Wood County Democrat
- Wylie News
- Yoakum Herald Times
- Zapata County News
OK, you need some good news amidst all the gloom and doom about newspapers. We had to go to England to get it, but here it is: A study in Great Britain said that newspapers have one major advantage – consumers trust us more than any other medium. And in community journalism, where people actually run into us at the Little League game or singing in the church choir or buying nails at the hardware store, there’s probably more trust than what showed up in the Brits’ study. The research showed that 66 percent trust newspaper advertising as “informative and confidence inspiring,” vs. just 44 percent who feel that way about TV and only 12 percent who’d agree to that for Internet advertising.
What reader wouldn’t love this? Marlene Skowran’s blog at PoynterOnline shares an idea we should all look at. The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., publishes “topic pages” that aggregate years of news stories. Check this out – no matter what your interest, from local history to sports, you can review lots of news stories with one click of the mouse.
AOL has announced its entry into community journalism. An AOL subsidiary, Patch Media Corp, has launched Patch.org, a series of hyperlocal news sites. Patch will partner with community foundations and other organizations to launch community news Web sites. At least at this point, AOL says its target markets are communities and neighborhoods that lack adequate news media. Patch.org is a charitable foundation that will return profits to the community it serves. Patch will include both news content and advertising.
Well, Chicken Little, the sky could indeed be falling. So reports Alan Mutter in his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog. Mutter is reporting NAA figures that actually passed along the “good news” that newspaper sales were off 23.7 percent in the final quarter of the year. That’s the good news? It is when you consider the fact that sales were off 28.3 percent in the first quarter, 29 percent in the second, and 29.9 percent in the third. So 23.7 percent is looking pretty good now, huh? Mutter says: “If the rate of decay continues to slow in 2010, the industry will shrink at a slower pace than it did last year. But it still will continue to shrink. And declining shrinkage should not be taken as a sign of health.”
William Durant didn’t like automobiles.
Durant, who was in the carriage business in the 1890s, thought cars were smelly and noisy, not to mention downright dangerous. But he realized that automobiles, as distasteful as he thought them to be, were the wave of the future. So he left his still-successful carriage company, one of the world’s largest, to join the new Buick company.
Ultimately, Durant went on to found General Motors.
The point? Durant’s times were a lot like ours. He was living at the edge of a paradigm shift-a whole new mode of transportation. Cars did not take over from carriages immediately, but within a decade, it was obvious that they would soon rule the road.
We live in a similar age, but the paradigm that’s shifting is communication, not transportation. One advantage that Durant had over today’s current industry-in-crisis — newspapers — is that the industrial landscape of his day was shifting more slowly. Metro newspapers have gone from boom to bust in a decade (though many in the know have been pointing to the danger signs for metros even before the advent of the Internet).
The just-released Pew Report only confirms the bad news for big-city newspapers. According to the report, newspaper ad revenues (including online) declined by 26 percent last year, bringing the total loss for the past three years to 43 percent. The Gawker blog even headlined the recent post on the Pew Report this way: “There is Literally No Way to Make Money Selling News.” Wrote Gawker: “That is the only conclusion a reasonable person can reach reading this new Pew Foundation report. Paywalls are anathema. Nobody clicks on ads. The value of news is zero dollars and zero cents.”
To be fair, the Pew Report did talk about some encouraging news, mainly that metros, after having shed considerable expenses and salaries, are returning to profitability. But even that has a downside: These papers are now mere shadows of their former selves. The Report quotes a journalist who said that the independent contractors who deliver the paper complain that the Monday edition doesn’t have enough throw-weight to get all the way up the porch. The report said that newspapers now spend $1.6 billion less annually on reporting and editing than they did a decade ago.
But what about community papers, generally acknowledged to be the most successful part of newspaper journalism right now? Is our situation as bleak – or at least uncertain – as that of our metro brothers? And what are the modern-day journalistic Will Durants doing as they face that future?
First of all, what’s the good news in community journalism, as compared to the metros in crisis? Community journalism is different in the following ways:
- Competition. If you want the news in communities across Texas, typically newspapers are your best bet. We don’t have all of the magazines, radio and TV competitors that big-city papers have. And Internet penetration is not as significant – some rural communities do now have broadband services available and mobile service is sometimes spotty. We have a near-monopoly on the news that matters. You can’t say it better than one small-newspaper editor in Pennsylvania did: “It’s often said that newspapers are dying, but that’s a gross oversimplification. The papers with the big problems are the metropolitan dailies. But here, if you want to read a professionally written news story about what the Board of Township Supervisors did on Thursday, you really don’t have much choice but to pick up the Elizabethtown Advocate, because I was the only journalist at that meeting. I am the only game in town.”
- Demographics. The population is often older, which means they are more print-loyal. Older readers are comfortable with their coffee and morning paper and less likely to want to go online for their news — even if there were an online source for local news, which there typically isn’t.
- Advertising effectiveness. The bottom line is that if you want the news in many communities in Texas, we’re pretty much the only game in town. And local businesses who want to reach consumers know that — there’s no medium more effective than the newspaper. All newspapers have been affected by the economic downturn as the advertisers they depend on suffered in the recession. But community newspapers have taken less of a hit. In the second quarter of 2009, metro ad sales dropped off a little more than 30 percent; ad sales in community papers dropped off just over 12 percent.
But the Pew Report contains some disquieting news for community newspapers:
- As we drop pages in cost-cutting and because of less advertising, our product becomes less attractive to readers. A less attractive paper will draw fewer readers, and fewer readers mean advertisers see less value in newspapers….the classic chick-and-the-egg dilemma. One small-city newspaper owner quoted in the report said he is “worried as hell we’re not going to have enough news in the newspaper to make it worth picking up for 50 cents, let alone 75 cents.”
- One hopeful sign for journalism cited in the report may not be hopeful at all for community papers in Texas. The report noted that it is easier than ever now to start new newspapers on the Web, without the overhead costs that ink-on-paper media have. In other words, it has never been easier for someone with a computer and just a little Web savvy to become your competitor.
- We are faced with a significant dilemma: Our readers are older and are not being replaced by younger readers. The future is clearly on the Web, but most of our revenues are from the traditional print product.
The first automobiles hit road experimentally in the 1890s. The horse still ruled transportation. In the early 1900s, when cars began to be manufactured on a larger scale, most people still rode horses. Lots of folk thought they were a fad. Carriage makers were still profitable.
But Durant and others realized that the future was in the automobile — that cars would not instantly dominate the road, but they would inevitably dominate the road.
Unfortunately, we in Texas community journalism are faced with the challenge of playing on two courts at one time. Our revenue and most of our audience are in print, and we cannot afford to neglect our newspapers. But our future is inevitably digital, and while we focus on putting out the best print product we can, we must explore what our digital future will be like.
At the Center, we’re dedicated to helping all we can. We have done workshops on building your Web presence, and we will do more. We are already flight-testing our free content management system with several Texas community papers; we hope to make it widely available — free — as soon as possible. And we offer consulting services to those papers who are taking the first steps toward an improved Web product.
Will Durant was making money manufacturing carriages. But he realized that the future was elsewhere. And if he had stayed with carriages, he may have ended up losing everything.
The Center wants to help those of you who are looking to find your place in a future of digital community journalism. And in the meantime, we hope to help you produce the best possible printed newspaper.