Some of you will remember Vicki Simons, who – along with her husband Tony Jones – led two seminars on newspaper management for us five years ago. Vicki has been heroically battling cancer, and, of course, blogging about it (vickicancer.blogspot.com). She died of that cancer on March 1. And in typical Vicki fashion, she left her own obit, which you can read at the URL above. I know you join us at the Center in mourning a great leader in community journalism.
Gone are the days when Americans got their news from only a few sources – maybe TV, a big-city paper nearby, and a community newspaper if they lived in a smaller town. The latest Pew survey, Understanding the Participatory News Consumer, shows that only 7 percent of Americans get their news from a single media platform on a typical day. Some 46 percent get their news from four to six platforms a day. The Internet keeps gaining as a news source – it is now the third most popular news platform, behind local TV news and national TV news. Where are newspapers in the American news diet? 78 percent get news from local TV, 73 percent from a national network or cable network; 61 percent online; 54 percent from radio at home or in the car, and 50 percent from a local newspaper. You can get a digest of findings at the Web site above and download a pdf of the entire survey at that site, too.
If you’re wanting to integrate someone else’s Tweets into your website there are a couple of options, some of which are quite easy and others that will require some technical know-how. Here are 5 easy options:
- Embed Twitter’s official widget. This widget is intended to embed your own tweets into a site but it works just the same for someone else’s. You’d just input the user name of the person whose tweets you’d like to integrate during the setup. You can also change the colors/size/etc. to make the widget fit the look of your site. Under “Preferences” you’ll want to be sure to check “Poll for new results” so the user’s tweets will update more or less in real-time. Then, you’ll just grab the code they give you and embed it in your site.
- Embed SayTweet. This method is a little more creative. With SayTweet, you upload (or link to) a photo and the latest tweet is automatically overlaid onto the photo. So you could have a photo of the person whose tweets you are integrating, and a thought bubble will hover on the photo with the user’s latest tweet. This is another widget you’ll be able to embed with copy/paste code. It’s also a creative option for integrating your own tweets.
- Embed TwitStamp. There are a lot of other widget providers out there, but one of the flashier ones I’ve seen is TwitStamp. You’ll want one of their “latest” widgets. There are a lot of options there in several different sizes.
- CoverItLive also integrates tweets. You’ll just have to put the name of the user in when you’re setting up your live chat. If you’re not already using CoverItLive (it’s a live-blogging platform), it’s worth checking out anyway. This is more of a short-term solution than the other options, though.
- And there’s the advanced method. You can also use a more complicated version of a Twitter widget that is a more streamlined widget but requires more work on your end. This is a more difficult solution to implement. One of the better examples out there is Tweet!. We’ve also used Monitter, which can be heavily modified to fit the look of your site. In both cases, you’ll have to download this widget, modify code, etc. The direction are on the site. This is going to provide a more heavily-customized solution and allow more flexibility in the end. It will also reduce your reliability on an outside widget provider.
This isn’t a quick read, but it’s one you should probably make time for. It’s a scholarly study by Scott Maier in the j-school at Oregon, and it compares the content of five prominent Web news sites to a cross-section of U.S. daily newspapers. Here’s a sample of the results from Maier’s conclusions: “In a time of turmoil for the press, this study’s findings offer a refreshingly positive perspective for newspapers—at least from the standpoint of content. Clearly, newspapers provide a product that offers depth and breadth unmatched by their online competition. This is a selling point that has not been made strongly enough by the press. With most major stories authored by named staff, newspapers also boast a high degree of story ownership and transpar¬ency—attributes largely missing from some of the nation’s most prominent online services. In sum, newspapers have good reason to boast that they offer in-depth, independent news unrivaled even in the digital age. The findings also underscore some of the strengths of online news. Read¬ers who now get their news on the computer rather than at their doorstep are not likely to miss out on the big stories of the day. The study showed that both newspapers and online news services shared similar news judgments regarding news topics and story prominence. But reflecting the Internet’s international audience, readers online are likely to get a broader picture of what’s happening around the world than do those who exclusively read newspapers, as well as a slightly heavier dose of analysis and opinion.”
At the Center, we talk a lot about the Web and social media as being platforms that Texas newspapers cannot afford to ignore. Some believe us; some don’t. But please take four minutes and 22 seconds to look at this video – and remember that those who put none of their eggs in the new media basket will come to regret that decision. Not in 20 to 30 years, or when their grandchildren are grown, but probably in the foreseeable future. So give this a look and think about its implications. And if you’re motivated to action, one such action might be to sign up for our workshop May 27 on developing a Facebook strategy for your paper.
Here’s a startup to watch: it’s called Patch, and it’s a company that goes into towns without a community newspaper or where the paper is struggling and starts a hyperlocal Web site. Patch is exclusively advertising-supported. Advertisers can either buy the traditional ad or get an ad where they pay by page views — $15 per thousand at this point. Check out this Forbes article – Patch and other similar ventures are showing some success, and we predict that it won’t be long before more start popping up in Texas.
We’re in the middle of a recession and unemployment is up and circulation is down. But in Claremore, Okla., one small daily’s circulation is up almost 10 percent. Publisher Bailey Dabney of the Claremore Daily Progress thinks lots of newspapers have lost circulation because they expect to do so. Here’s a quote from the article: “Dabney said a common misconception from naysayers is that the public isn’t interested in newspapers, but he doesn’t take that seriously. ‘If you want to buy into the notion that nobody reads newspapers anymore, get a DUI,’ he said. ‘And see how many people call your momma wanting to know what it in the world is going on in your life that would have you get a DUI. It is just incredible the number of people that see everything in the newspaper.’”
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Meet your new sportswriter
Northwestern University has produced a sportswriter they hope will be hired at community papers throughout the United States. Not a new graduate who wants to work in community journalism – a piece of software. The Intelligent Information Lab at Northwestern calls their new sportswriter StatsMonkey, and they think he’s perfect for community papers covering Little League games. The co-director of the lab says that StatsMonkey is designed “to write the stories no one else is writing.” The program takes the stats of the game and produces a sports story on the game. Click on the link above to hear NPR’s story about the new software, plus an example of the type of stories the software can “write.”
So here’s the quiz: Think of a media industry that’s facing real problems. The product of this industry used to be commonplace – everybody knew about it and pretty much everybody used it. Then a new medium came along with a significant challenge – people were getting the output of this industry easily, in their own homes, quickly on demand…and it was free! The industry asked what would happen when people could access for free what they were selling. Predictions for the future were understandably dire. And here’s the kicker – this isn’t about newspapers. It’s the music industry. Read Brad King’s take on why newspapers are wrong to circle the wagons and determine that they must make the square peg that is the old business model fit into the round hole of new media.
Steve Outing’s Nov. 30 “Stop the Presses” column in E&P focuses on community newspapers and their struggles to define the role of their online editions. Specifically, whether or not to erect pay walls. Outing tells about some smaller newspapers who come down on each side of the debate and fairly summarizes pros and cons. If you’re looking to make sure you consider all your options before you make a final decision on putting online content behind a pay wall, be sure to read this column. And especially, read through to the end and look at his section on the four negative consequences to your paper of putting most content behind the wall. There’s so much discussion out there on this issue right now, but Outing summarizes the issues fairly, so take time to look at this one.