TheWayoftheWeb

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Journalists, marketers and job losses…

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I need to tread carefully with this post, which came from a link via @davidcushman and @ajkeen. The article in question is Journos Losing Jobs at Three Times Rate of Average Workers which looks at the number of journalists being laid off in the U.S.

To put it in context, I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid losing any fulltime roles, although I’ve been part three large scale redundancies for companies. Plus as a child, my father was made redundant and was unemployed for quite a while (during one of the previous times of crisis for the British economy). But at the same time, I don’t think the current wave of media unemployment is necessarily a bad thing overall (Obviously I know how bad it can be for the individuals involved).

The reason being that this can’t have been unexpected by anyone. The media industry has been struggling for a while, and roles like writing (and I’m also referencing  marketing in this as it shares a lot of the same occupational traits) are always in the firing line. I don’t think there’s ever been a point in my career when I’ve thought about either my editorial or marketing roles as being secure position for life – they’re an evolving set of challenges. We’re not talking about air traffic controllers, brain surgeons or even bin men (garbage men?).

But the modern writer, journalist or marketer has a huge advantage over those other roles – a sacked air traffic controller can’t get sacked and respond by building his own airport, but it’s possible to publish online, on mobile and even in print for free in a matter of minutes. A brain surgeon isn’t likely to build his own operating theatre, but a digital marketer can easily create an online business and find people with a need for their services.

I’m not saying monetising editorial or building a marketing business are in any way easy or guaranteed to be a success. I’m simply saying that the barriers to doing your own thing in the media, whether that’s text-based, audio, visual or promotion-based, has never been easier to my knowledge, and in a time when the big companies are generally struggling, there are advantages to being small and nimble.

And the costs are getting increasingly small – the bare minimum is a Netbook and somewhere with free wifi. Or just ask any techy friends for any old laptops/desktops they might want to give away for a while. Can’t afford an operating system? Use Ubuntu. Can’t afford Word? Open Office. Photoshop? GIMP (not an insult, honest!). Newswires? Build your own feed of information using Google Reader and Twitter. If you want to start earning money, you can put a blog on Blogger for free (about the only hosted free service to allow adverts), or spring for a cheap hosting package from the likes of Godaddy and then go wild with WordPress. Or even publish your own book via Lulu.

And that’s just the start, but it’s perfectly possible to begin creating your personal empire with a donated or sub-£200 computer and some free wifi access.

I’m not saying that you’ll have a sustainable living wage a week later, but the biggest barrier to creating anything like this is time, and that’s something you’d actually have. And even if you’d rather go back into paid employment when possible, in the meantime you’ve built up digital knowledge and a digital calling card for people to find.

And just be glad you’re not a brain surgeon after all…

Why newspapers will need 1000 true fans…

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Newspapers will need to focus on their ‘1000 true fans’ when they switch on paywalls, judging by a survey released today by Paid Content UK and Harris.

The survey has appeared in response to plans by Rupert Murdoch and others to start putting news content behind a paywall, and reveals that if their favourite news site started charging, 3/4 of people claim they’d find another free site – only 5% would pay to continue reading.

And ironically, it’s younger readers who are more likely to cough up some cash than the older users – the 35-44-year-olds are the ones most likely to go elsewhere- although the middle class readers are most likely to pay.

Now that doesn’t have to be bad news for newspapers, if they can provide something that is worth subscription payments which make up for the lost readership.

The problem, as identified by Matt Thompson at Nieman Reports, and covered by Karthika Muthukumaraswamy at Online Journalism Blog (OJB), is that the majority of online news lacks in depth and detail what it gains in ‘24/7 access, real-time updates, increased transparency, and multiperspectival discussions’

In fact ‘The home page of almost every popular news site looks like a commercial for news stories other than the one you’re reading’.

The problem isn’t the internet itself, which is what the OJB article ends with – Thompson uses the example of Wikipedia to form great long form articles and stories, whilst Muthukumaraswamy picks out the New York Times, CNN, the BBC and The Guardian as examples of news orgs producing great standalone features.

The problem is one of perception by news teams.

The online format has always been taught as following the ‘hard news’ example – get the story across as quickly and in as few words as possible. People don’t have the time or patience to read more online, so hit them with hundreds of brief news items and they’ll flit about like a moth in a well-lit kitchen. The same thing we’ve seen advised for blogs, online video, and has been supported by the rise of microblogging.

But that’s wrong – as you can see by the success of full-length novels on mobile phones in Japan, for example.

Many, many people are now accessing the web by an ever-increasing number of devices, and as the digital familiarity has increased, we’re looking for increasingly different things.

Meanwhile newspapers heading behind the paywall will have to flip their editorial approach as quickly as they flip their business model. They’ll need to provide depth, detail and context to justify payment, using editorial teams which have been cut back more and more to try and survive on display advertising. And I haven’t seen a huge number of Murdoch titles hiring staff, for example. In fact, it appears to be AOL that’s hiring! (1500 writers is a clear indication of intent).

The paywall model will be doomed for exactly the same reason that most display-ad model newspaper sites were doomed – a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of online journalism. Almost 10 years ago I saw a competitor site switch to a paywall model and heard many people ask how they could survive – and at the same time those people were imagining a world in which the print news team would seamlessly move across to an all-conquering website.

Meanwhile hundreds of blogs and websites were springing up on a daily basis by starting small and experimenting their way into growth and editorial staff – the exact opposite of businesses which closed small-scale publications and dismissed any launches which didn’t look likely to drive an immediate huge audience with a corresponding need for staff and resources.

A handful of news organisations will make it through the next few years, whether by spreading themselves far and wide, or by engaging totally with their 1000 true fans to the degree that they can secure repeated subscriptions. Any that don’t commit fully to one of these directions, and achieve it to their maximum potential, are going to fail to crawl out of the swamp and evolve digital legs.

Off to London Twestival tonight… And Google’s news masterstroke

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And then I’m spending a long weekend concentrating on my family, so don’t expect many updates until Monday…

Details of London Twestival 2009.

And in the meantime, two things have caught my attention:

 

One is the fact that the Government’s quoted figure of 7 million illegal file sharers seems to have been revealed as being spun out of a very small original survey, with some assumptions distorting the figures. (Hat Tip to  JP Rangaswami)

 

The other is the response to newspapers from Google – they’re creating a micropayments system to appear within the next year. (via Mashable).

I’d guess there are a few reasons for Google adopting a checkout-type micropayment system for newspaper content:

  • It’ll shut the newspaper owners up for a while – allowing Google to press ahead with book deals etc to own even more alternative content.
  • It will also be available for Google properties, meaning that there are ways to cream off some of the money at the top, as well as by providing the service itself.
  • Bugger all people will embrace fixed internet micro payments for generic content.

The last one is the most important – and even in the world of mobile there are divisions between iPhone app spending and Android app spending which suggests that even on an supposedly highly chargeable platform (mobile), many people are starting to expect apps for free.

-NB- I’ve just though of another reason why this benefits Google more than anyone else:

  • If the newspapers are fooled into believing this system will make them rich, then they’ll start pushing pressure on aggregation sites to pay – Digg, Reddit, etc. Those sites are unlikely to be happy about paying for content, and the efforts and traffic newspapers currently drive from those sites will disappear. Meanwhile, the one aggregation destination which will be safe and secure will be: Google News.

Start the week with a great guide to multimedia journalism

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There are increasing numbers of journalists and bloggers utilising every channel in multimedia to convey their stories and information, but whether you’re contemplating starting to embrace digital multimedia, or you’ve engaged in mixing text, audio, video etc for a while, you’re bound to pick up at least a couple of new tools and ideas from Mindy McAdam’s Reporters Guide to Multimedia Profiency.

It’s the single PDF compilation of her 15 excellent blog posts on the subject.

And worth reading if you’re publishing anything online, whether or not you’d define yourself as a journalist or editorial staff.

Former colleague (although we never met in person), Adam Westbrook has also been doing some brilliant guides to using multimedia and video.

And for interesting inspiration, I tend to look at Christian Payne, and spend some spare time trying to persuade friend and former colleague Angus Farquhar to spend more time doing crazy stuff and blogging about it.

BBC reminds me of two elements of consumer satisfaction

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I’m a big fan of much of the work the BBC does online, and in general it does a very good job of providing a massive amount of content in a fairly logical manner.

But using the site as a consumer with a couple of urgent needs highlighted a couple of things which I think are good lessons for any website:

Multi-channel delivery:

I’m a huge fan of the BBC iPlayer, and the fact it allows me to watch good quality online and on-demand television. So on Sunday morning, I rushed to watch Match of the Day, having missed it on Saturday night (and with the Absolute Radio Fantasy Football game meaning I need to pay extra attention to every team this year!).

But the listing was greyed out – and with no reason given, I had to presume it was down to the licensing rights for the Premier League.

So it was a bit weird to be looking for something else a bit later, and stumble across it in the sport section! (Flaw here was attempting to browse my way to it, rather than using the site or Google search.)

The lesson: If you’re putting out content through two difference channels for whatever reason, then link between them! And always try to explain why someone can’t access something if they might logically think they should.

Reassurance:

The BBC carries a lot of event coverage, particularly in areas such as music, and especially sport. For example, it’s great to be able to watch the MotoGP series via the BBC, and also great to be able to see the full list of races (125 and 250cc) online, as my TV set-up seems to struggle with the Red Button Freeview channels.

But although it’s nice to see everything go live at the same time, as if a single switch somewhere brings everything to life, unless you’ve got Freeview and the website running at the same time, it isn’t that impressive. And the fact the online feed wasn’t listed from the MotoGP page of the Sport section until the video went live two minutes after the listed time meant that I probably wasn’t the only one frantically refreshing the page to see if it would appear or if there was a problem.

The lesson: If you’re covering an event that starts at a specific time, why not have a page and link ready and live in advance, which can provide a bit of reassurance for internet users? That way, we can relax knowing that everything will go live at noon, for example, rather than worrying that there’s a technical fault with 1 minute to go. Whatever happens afterwards, we’re already stressed and less likely to enjoy and appreciate your hard work!

I’m still a huge fan of the BBC, and there are hundreds of sites which could have been used for the same points – the reason it stood out for me was that I was a completely powerless consumer. Reinforcing the final lesson – always look at your website as a consumer trying to achieve something.

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