Archive for August, 2009
Ask yourself, what would Dan do?
Posted by jareetz in Digital, Industry, Newspapers on August 29th, 2009
Like a modern-day Rip Van Winkle, my friend Dan last month walked back into the publisher’s office he once occupied at a medium-size Texas newspaper.
He hasn’t been asleep in the Catskills the last four years. He’s been on his motorcycle cruising past the Tetons, hurtling across the desert. He was at his ranch home off Galleywinter Lane (it’s a Texas country song, too), calling his Longhorns to the fence line the way you or I would call the dogs to the back door.
He left four years ago because it was the right thing to do; he came back last month because it was the right thing to do.
His other retired publisher friends said he was crazy, but no more than normal. He’s just glad to be back in the saddle again (on a temporary basis), helping a friend who bought the paper transition it from its former corporate ownership to local ownership once again.
A lot has happened in the four years since he left. Papers have died, others moved to online only, staffing has shrunk. Grabbing a big ad contract is about as easy as chasing down a tumbleweed on the prairie west of his ranch.
Dan and I, and those on his management team, worked closely together in a different lifetime, not that long ago. Through the years, I visited his paper 30-plus times, and it was always a place you’d want to be. Real people. Doers, not talkers. No pretense or preening or posing. Just get it done, and get it done right.
So it’s been natural to pick up the conversation, to be there when he wants to chat, and bounce ideas off of each other on the transition and newspapering in general. He knows he missed four years, so wonders if he ’s missed something of value, or lost touch. Nah. In fact, most of us in the business would agree that if four years had to disappear, those would be at the top of the list.
As I said in one of our emails: “…being out of the business and coming back in and taking a fresh look is probably just what is needed right now there, and in about a thousand other newspapers these days.”
Which raises the question: As newspapers and media companies rebuild, will they learn from history, repeat old mistakes, strike out in bold new ways, stick to comfortable paths?
Every newspaper is different, and every financial sheet is different so one size doesn’t fit all. Some weathered the downturn better than others; some did worse than their counterparts. So, one size doesn’t fit all.
But there must be some truisms that work for the “new” newspaper industry, and I asked myself: What would Dan do?
• Protect local news, on the Web and in print. It’s the main thing a paper has going for it; if coverage dies, the paper follows.
• Maintain church and state, but treat ad people with the same ranking and respect that newsrooms receive.
• To repeat a Web-ism popular after the first bubble burst, don’t do something just because you can. What’s the business reason for adding this feature, or that Web tool? Sometimes it’s just for quality reasons, and that is a valid business reason, too.
• Avoid ill-defined jobs with no real or obvious contribution to quality or revenue. They sprouted as newspapers got intrigued with the Web about a decade ago, and many have disappeared in the cutbacks. But be cautious in adding jobs that don’t directly increase revenue or improve quality.
• Ban 65-page PowerPoint presentations, whether done under the guise of Business Intelligence, knowledge sharing or whatever. Instead of a 65-slide PowerPoint, how about a shorter, simpler game plan where something is actually DONE, other than watching a PowerPoint.
• Follow up. Ever attend a meeting where plans that rival the Normandy invasion were unfurled for senior management? Whatever happens to those plans? Anything concrete, like revenue?
• Make everyone a part of the solution; employees will actually love this. More stake in the outcome; contributions and ideas gladly accepted.
• Make everyone accountable. Ad salespeople have goals to meet. Newsrooms have pages to fill, and ethics and editing guidelines to follow. Are there standards and goals for others? Marketing, product, business development? Tangible, measurable goals? Again, employees will like it, because their voice is heard, and they also know that everyone is working to the goal, and no one is along for the ride.
• Look at a vendor relationship as a partnership. You are buying a product, but you are also buying a relationship, customer service and responsiveness. Do your vendors return your calls promply, or at all? Remember, you are the customer.
• Avoid the bureaucratic padding that grew like moss under a rock at some big papers over the last decade. Maybe a “director” is more hands-on, and you don’t have a “deputy director” or a “manager” in the structure, unless you have a heckuva large role, department or function.
• Media groups and big papers should consider modeling their operations like small to medium size newspapers. This doesn’t mean quality suffers; we can all name plenty of smaller papers that we think perform better than some bigger papers, quality-wise. What does this mean: hold meetings as needed, but stick to the point, and make decisions. Don’t allow internal turf battles and kingdom-building; it’s all about the paper and its mission, and survival, not the individual. Respect your community and be involved; don’t talk down to your readers. Build a community of ideas with your readers; not all knowledge sprouts from the newspaper, so find a way to truly, not superficially, engage readers. This requires work.
Does this solve everything? No way, but I’m guessing that these are some of the things Dan would do. For starters.
What’s a j-school to do?
Posted by jareetz in Digital, Industry, Newspapers, Radio, Television on August 25th, 2009
The media industry seeks a path to survival, even as the layoffs continue. The cost-cutting is far from over. There’s talk of a modest rebound for newspapers in 2010, but how do you define rebound?
So how do the educational institutions that provide the talent and energy to help save the business succeed in this very ugly environment, when it’s hard to recommend journalism as a career without feeling a hint of guilt?
What’s a j-school to do?
Adapt, and survive. Maybe even prosper.
Naturally so much focus today is on the industry overall, how it got into this mess, how it gets out, what’s left when the rebound takes hold.
But there’s a huge “related” industry - the colleges and universities that help produce the journalists of the future, and the vendors that provide the tools and technology for newspapers to march into that unknown future.
A different topic for a different day, but at its core, the vendors who support the industry will survive - or not - as they always have: free enterprise competition, who provides the best and most innovative widget, at the best price, with the best service.
What about journalism schools? Those of us who went through j-school like to think there are different forces and values at play: the importance of a free press, a journalist’s unique role in society, ethics, morality, responsibilities. My j-school days were filled with those elevated thoughts, along with the realities of how do you make a living on that tiny salary.
Not much has changed, but there is one more big question out there: after I land my first job will my newspaper survive?
Despite all these fears and doom and gloom, journalism enrollment is soaring.
But why? Every j-school professor has his/her ideas, but a few to consider:
1. Just because you’re in j-school doesn’t mean you have to work at a newspaper.
2. Communication skills that you learn in j-school work anywhere, and there is always a need for people who can read, write and communicate cleanly and effectively.
3. Who wants to take math and science courses?
4. It’s a brave new world in the media; lets go along for the ride.
5. Surely, newspapers will figure out the Web one day and let’s be there when it happens.
As enrollment soars, the savvy schools are taking steps to make sure they lead the way for students.
And those j-schools are more likely to not only survive but thrive. Word gets around, as would-be students look around for the best j-school offerings. Students don’t want to learn to draw pages on paper dummies. They want to be challenged and go with a winner, a j-school looking ahead past today’s crisis.
They also want to be part of the solution. They want to be part of the change. “There’s something sexy about being on the ground floor when an industry revamps itself,” says one j-school grad, former reporter, but still in the industry in public affairs with a college seeking to meet the needs of today’s j-students. “For many of those students, it’s not about being along for the ride, it’s about driving the car.” Goodness knows, based on how some papers have managed up to and through the collapse, it might be wise to pass along those car keys to Web savvy, business-minded grads, while the car is still running.
Who’s doing it right?
A recent Poynter Online E-Media Tidbits blog by Maurreen Skowran listed several colleges and universities that are adapting their offerings to meet tomorrow’s needs.
One, Elon University in North Carolina, offers a Master of Arts in Interactive Media. Elon also has a class on virtual environments, and how games and Second Life can help deliver news, plus a requirement to produce a project for public good, spreading participation beyond traditional journalism students.
At Northwestern University’s Medill school, there’s a strong emphasis on understanding audience, content creation and marketing.
And Western Kentucky University has a new IMedia certificate which includes a course in online advertising.
The clear message from these schools is “we’re looking ahead.” Let’s make sure we don’t skimp on ethics, integrity and mission, but teach students how to help rebuild this industry.
For years, a retired AP executive, Conrad Fink, has been teaching media management at the University of Georgia.
Why do his classes work? Because they challenge students and put them in the real world, where they will be a few months later, thinking about how to manage a newspaper, make the right business decisions, make the right editorial calls. Make a business work.
He was teaching media management to students before it was cool, back in the day when some might argue that most media companies weren’t doing a lot of managing.
Ahead of the curve - for an educational institution, and the industry.
Not every school has a Fink on the faculty.
But every school can look to tomorrow, not to yesterday.
The cost of staying in business
Posted by jareetz in Digital, Industry, Newspapers on August 15th, 2009
Henry Grady statue in downtown Atlanta
Because big city newspapers have history behind them, they also generally have real estate of high value. That’s particularly true for the papers that have been around a while.
Many sit on valuable downtown property. Some have classic historic buildings. Some have modern-era concrete and glass boxes, many looking dingy because the pressure washer budget item was the first and easiest thing to cut.
Over the past year many newspaper buildings have gone on the market. Most notable is the architectural gem that serves as The New York Times building. It’s spectacular inside and out, though a bit unnerving when you’re walking through the interior, and the energy-efficient blinds open and close on their own, reacting to heat or sunlight or a small man behind the curtain pulling the strings.
Last time I was there, when that happened in a stairwell with no one else around, I felt a bit like Dave in the movie 2001, and expected to hear HAL ask of me: “Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?”
In the street level glass-enclosed atrium, the silvery birch trees, surrounded by moss, are relaxing and stunning. But you just have to wonder, like we wonder about the newspaper industry every day, can they survive, and what will they look like five years from now if they do?
The Times sold a portion of its building earlier this year, and leased it back, trying to help cover loss of ad revenue.
So it came as no surprise last week when another big city newspaper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, announced (after the Atlanta Business Chronicle first reported it) that it is considering moving out of its downtown location, and out of the city limits. A decision will be announced in a few weeks.
The move makes sense. It’s a superb location, and when the real estate market rebounds, could bring a nice price and be a prime location for a hotel or other large facility, close to Centennial Park, Phillips Arena, CNN and Five Points.
And while the move makes sense, you just have to hate it, because it’s one more signal of the changing landscape.
The building itself, an early 70s creation, is no historic treasure. But The Atlanta Journal (founded 1883) and The Atlanta Constitution (founded 1868), once separate newspapers, once under separate ownership, do have a long history in downtown Atlanta.
I spent 22 years in that building. The first six at The Atlanta Journal, located then on the sixth floor of the 72 Marietta St. building. The Atlanta Constitution was on the 8th floor. In six years there (first time around before I left to buy and run my own small weekly), I never sat foot on the Con’s 8th floor, though I did sneak into their computer system (allegedly a firing offense) a few times. Competition was fierce, and you didn’t dare step onto the competitor’s floor.
Journal folks always took pride in knowing that as afternoon papers elsewhere died in the 70s and 80s, The Journal lived on. In fact, it took Elvis ’s death on the Con cycle to finally let the morning paper ease ahead of the afternoon paper in circulation.
The Journal owned the classic slogan: Covers Dixie Like the Dew, and those of us working there were fiercely proud and lived to cover Dixie like the dew. The reporters and editors on the Constitution, I am sure, felt they were the best, but they were saddled with not only a fanatical crew at The Journal but a weak masthead slogan (”The South’s Standard Newspaper,” if I recall correctly. Can’t find it on the Web because likely no one wants to remember it.)
There were many fond memories. Herb, my boss, legal pad in hand, walking over at 6:55 a.m., 35 minutes before deadline for the second edition of the day. We had six editions daily, truly amazing. Herb’s greeting: “Bud, we got three dead in Telfair County. Need 6 graphs for the Early. That’s all I know. Get on it, Bud.” ”Bud” wasn’t my name then; that’s what Herb called all the guys. All the young ladies were “Gal,” until one day one young lady told him differently. Thirty-five minutes to find the sheriff, get him to talk to you, or find a deputy if he’s not around, hoping somebody would answer the radio call (remember, no cell phones then). Write it, get it edited, and sent off to the copy desk. We always did it, for the readers, and for The Journal.
Other times you could feel the power of a newspaper, like on Thanksgving Eve, when the paper was bursting at the seams with ads and editorial. On my second stint there, in the 90s, when I was in newsroom management, I’d go to the pressroom to wait for the all-critical press start of the biggest paper of the year. We felt like every second counted, though in reality it was “only” every minute that counted. If it didn’t start on time, and if it was editorial’s fault, I’d answer why. So I liked to be present. I’d stand squarely in a spot I determined was exactly in the middle between those four massive TKS presses. I planted my feet on the steel planking (second floor level, presses still rising several floors to the high roof), waiting for all four presses to crank up and be in sync. Every press unit was in use, the only day of the year that happened. There was a steady thrumming, a building of both pressure and sound, the steel planking trembling under my feet, then the papers rushing out through the folders, hooking up to the Ferag system, circling around the roof, headed to the mailroom upstairs. That’s one meaning of power of the press.
Then there was the Olympics. Am amazing period of collaboration and teamwork. I wonder sometimes how today’s paper would pull off covering an in-town Olympics, probably the same way people wonder if we’ll be able to fly to the moon again as easily as we seemed to do forty years ago.
It was one end, and beginning of another march to another ending, in November 2001 when The Journal was closed. The slogan on the last day: “Covered Dixie Like The Dew.”
Fond memories, but that was then, and now is now.
So I will respectfully disagree with my AJC friends (some current employees, some former employees) on Facebook mourning the likely move. (Feelings are mixed, it seems.)
Though I hate it, a move is so economically logical, it’s a must-do.
And anywhere a paper can apply economic logic, a commodity seemingly in short supply in recent years, do so.
It’s a shame it came to this.
But remember, the soul of a paper is not built around brick and mortar, presses or digital, whether the building is downtown or located in Jasper, Georgia.
The soul comes from its people, its writers, its heritage, what the paper stands for, how it includes the community. It doesn’t come from jingles or marketing slogans. If readers don’t like the paper and truly connect with those who run it, it will become very easy to find a nice cozy location elsewhere.
Those who helped make The Journal and The Constitution what they were a few years back would likely be aghast. I can visualize Celestine Sibley’s response to a move, and can hear Lewis Grizzard grousing over it.
And Margaret Mitchell and Ralph McGill likely wouldn’t be pleased.
And of course, Henry Grady, the editor of The Constitution and spokesman for the New South in the years after the Civil War, would have hated to depart the heart of the city.
But they all would likely say, do it. Save some money. Save the paper. But first, make sure you save your readers, make them want to read you. Don’t talk down to them. Respect them, and give them a good paper.
If the paper does move out of downtown, that means that Henry Grady’s statue, a few paces from the newspaper, will be all alone.
And what of the little-known tradition of the Constitution editor firing the paper’s little black cannon at the base of Grady’s statue, on election night whenever a Democrat is elected President?
That, too, gone with the wind.
A light at the end of the tunnel?
Posted by jareetz in Digital, Industry, Newspapers on August 10th, 2009
Or is that a train loaded with unused newsprint rushing full speed ahead at us?
Three promising signs indicate that possibly, maybe, perhaps the newspaper industry is finally starting to break free from the bottom, where it has been mired for many, many months.
Those signs:
1. The New York Times reports that The Seattle Times, the city’s surviving newspaper after the rival Post-Intelligencer closed its print operation several months ago, is in black ink. With the P-I’s closing, The Times circulation jumped 30 percent, from 200,000 to 260,000, in June. And at the P-I, a Web-only operation now, owner Hearst says things are going better than expected, with audience and revenue better than forecast.
2. Gordon Borrell, a long-time observer of the newspaper industry and head of Borrell Associates, is forecasting a “mild rebound” for local newspapers in 2010, perhaps a 2.4 percent increase in advertising. Borrell reports that smaller newspapers “are firmly entrenched in their niche of providing rich local content that people seem to prefer in print – rather than screen – format.” That matches the thinking in corporate conference rooms three years ago when the bottom started to fall out. Then the only solace was a belief that at least the small to medium size newspapers would weather the building storm. Borrell suggested we all might want to remember his forecast and take a look one year from today.
Good stuff, but not yet time to uncork the champagne bottle.
Newspapers face a very tough road, and so far the attempts at righting the ship have come mostly from slash and burn cost-cutting over the last 12 months. Not much room or time to innovate or invent “the new model.”
But now newspapers are in Phase 2: trying to publish a quality print product, while moving forward on the digital front and trying to woo advertisers back.
Any one of those alone is a tall order in good times; an amazing challenge when staff ranks are depleted and morale is down.
But as Yogi Berra and Lenny Kravitz agree, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
And these three reports seem to indicate it ain’t over.
As a pal/editor at the Palm Beach Post says: Onward.
It’s the content, mister
Posted by jareetz in Digital, Industry, Newspapers on August 3rd, 2009
Bill Robinson - writer extraordinaire, the man who dubbed Richard Petty “The King,” the man who once rolled a flat tire into the office to save his job - died last month in Alabama.
What does that have to do with this blog’s normal topic, digital news and trends? Nothing and everything. More on that later.
I, and a bunch of other now-
departed reporters and editors, spent some time with Bill (I called him Robbie then, but he also went by Billy Bob or Bill) at The Atlanta Journal (it really did “Cover Dixie Like the Dew,” like it said on the masthead) a good many years ago.
Robbie was a true gentleman, but also a true character in an era when there was no shortage of characters in newsrooms. This was a time when it was normal for your city editor to scream across the room, “John, come up here and tell me why we ought to run this piece of xxxx.” It was rough and tumble, take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. Robbie, and the rest of us, kept on tickin’.
Sometimes he was late for work. One day his boss laid down the law: next time you’re late you’re fired. No doubt it’d be a quick and merciless firing; the HR folks back then didn’t even know where the newsroom was, much less get involved in its inner workings. One day soon, Bill doesn’t show up at his start time; the clock ticks on. The elevator door opens and Robbie comes out, rolling a flat tire: “I swear guys I had a flat tire. Here it is.” He made it for another day.
So back to the question: what does the death of a true wordsmith have to do with the industry today, the digital environment we’re in?
Robbie probably never heard of audience bifurcation, and he would have thought a “personal brand” was something only Texans had.
I doubt he ever gave a PowerPoint presentation about what he was going to do; he just did it. I doubt he ever worked a room in the insincere way of so many digi-jorno wanna-bes, halfway talking while glancing around for someone more important to latch onto. He was as sincere as they come.
What Robbie brought to the table was a reminder that content is still what it’s all about, that words can make a difference, that they can paint a picture, they can make you cry, or rejoice.
In a nice obit in the last newspaper where he worked, the Opelika-Auburn News, colleagues from years past talked about his sincerity, his genuineness, his appreciation for good reporting.
One of the writers recalled one of Robbie’s famous leads from his NASCAR reporting days, when he wrote that a car won by “running flat out, belly to the ground, chasing a hurrying sundown.”
Read that lead and tell me words don’t matter. Read that lead and tell me content isn’t important.
Thanks, Robbie, for reminding us.