On OJR, Robert Niles has a fascinating suggestion for completely rethinking online news: replace inverted-pyramid newspaper articles with staff-written wikis. (For which he suggests the delightful nickname "stikis." You heard it here first, dear reader.) Why? To attract search-engine traffic.I'm suggesting that -- instead of distinct daily takes -- news stories could be covered with encyclopedia-style articles that staffers would update with new information whenever available. How many more inbound links would such an approach get?
Inbound links, of course, being the current currency of the search-driven Web.
I see two obvious problems with the suggestion:
1) the writing required would be so different from that used in the print product that editorial resources would be taxed, and
2) the lede would be perpetually buried; that is, readers would have trouble figuring out what parts of the news are new.
Though the second problem might be avoided with constant rewriting and clever formatting, my hunch is that self-contained news stories will remain the dominant delivery device for news. They're simply easier to pluck relevant details out of. This isn't to say that local papers couldn't launch parallel stiki or wiki services for their coverage area. But I doubt extensive stikis are likely to be worth their while.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Reinventing news for a search-based world
Using tags in local newspaper archives
How can small papers get the most out of their archives? Folksonomy is sexy, but most Web audiences are too small for it to work well. However, old-fashioned, top-down tags can be a useful tool for the many local papers that, like many Web newcomers, still sort their Web content with print principles in mind.
(Yes, Washingtonpost.com has added del.icio.us links to all its stories. Yes, this is a terrific promotional move for a national paper. No, it's doesn't add as much to local papers, because they aren't looking for national readers. But yes, local papers ought to consider offering it merely as a service to readers.)
But here's something more important that small papers could easily do with minimal staff effort: make a list of a couple dozen possible "tags" for stories. When any story is sent to the Web, a staffer can glance over the list of tags and check any that apply.
A newspaper in North Carolina might write frequently about the pork industry. Does the print edition have a section entirely for the pork industry? Of course not. And as a result, the paper's Web site doesn't, either. But it should! A small set of staff-written tags are easy ways to build topical archives -- whose index pages (available in RSS, of course) can then be used to cluster non-news content for the target audience, such as topical blogs, off-site links, and of course targeted ads.
What's more, a tag system, unlike a print-style tree categorization, lets stories fall into multiple categories. And it can be used to easily locate similar articles, which have similar combinations of tags.
Readers should be able to navigate newspaper Web sites in various ways: search, vertical brosing (feature section->movies page->Brokeback Mountain review), and horizontal browsing (Brokeback Mountain review->Oscar preview). A staff-maintained tag system is one way to facilitate that.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
It's not too late to prevent Wal-Martization of the Web
Local newspapers shouldn't yet be running up white flags in the battle for local mindshare.
Responding thoughfully to my recent argument that local newspaper sites must do more than merely gather news, Chris Tolles of Topix.net comments:One word --WAL*MART. The idea that a set of local monopolies are going to be maintained in the long run, with the audience increasing its rate of online adoption (where there is little or no brand for a loot of local papers) is a bit of a stretch. ... How often does the average 25 year old start looking for a restaurant review on the home page of the local paper, vs. Google?
Chris makes a great point about long-run consolidation. (Hence, by the way, the modest title of this blog.) But I think he overestimates the adoption rate -- and the Google loyalty -- of "the average 25 year old." If a newspaper can provide a better restaurant directory than Google, it's certainly not too late to notify the neighborhood. This goes double in small markets, which are less mobile -- and therefore potentially more loyal -- than the big one that I assume Chris lives in.
Most local papers have cash flowing out their armpits. Rapid reinvention as local information sites could head off the encroaching Wal-Martization of local content. (This might be engineered at the corporate level.) And that would go a long way toward keeping newspaper brands alive -- and their news operations viable -- for many years to come.
Chris's original post closed with the following vision for newspapers (my emphasis):[N]ewspapers need to build the products their audiences and advertisers want, rather than basing their strategy on a capacity for great journalism and printing pages of classifieds. ... The successful newspaper business of 2010 might look a lot like the successful newspaper business of 1910 – and the connection to Pultizer won’t be his prize, but rather his business methods.
I've got no problem with changing the business methods. But maybe the difference between Chris and I is that I'm not ready to give up those prizes. And I'm not convinced we have to.
Not yet.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Saving the suburbs from bowling alone
The Web gives local newspapers a chance to fill a social vacuum that's arisen in small towns and suburbs across the United States. One Illinois paper is setting out to do it.
The (Arlington Heights, Ill.) Daily Herald is the quintessential suburban newspaper. Penetration is weak, but they make up for it on volume, distributing more than 20 zoned editions to a sprawling footprint across Chicago's wealthy west and northwest suburbs.
Character? Some. Soul? Um.
Beep, the family-owned paper's new publication for 18-34s, wants to give the suburbs a soul. Not only does it aim to introduce local folks to one other online -- log in to see the pleasantly quirky user profile page -- it wants to become a social resource for hundreds of thousands of young suburbanites who feel alienated or lonely in the atomized modern world. It wans to let them know that they aren't alone, that things are happening near them. And it knows that -- unlike in the big city -- the perfect distribution model for the car-addicted, shrub-encrusted suburbs is the Web.
This is not a trivial service to readers, or to society.
Though the who-attended-whose-party "community pages" of newspapers across the country are treated like vestigal organs, just waiting for their elderly readers to go blind, local papers shouldn't turn up their noses at the past. Those were -- remember? -- the glory days, for newspapers as well as American society. The social institutions of the 20th Century have crumbled, but human thirst for physical interaction hasn't. As the prime clearinghouses for local information, newspapers can use the distribution power of the Web to help people find each other again, and build institutions for the next hundred years.
Beep and its peers have an inspiring vision for the Web, and though I'm not affiliated with Beep, I'm proud to say I played a part in its creation.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Yahoo says "no thanks" to local news
Newspapers shouldn't celebrate the news that Yahoo doesn't want to compete with their newsgathering service. They should treat it as a warning.
As the Local Onliner reported the other day, Yahoo News boss Neil Budde told the Software Information Industry Association that he's happy to rely on local providers for local news:"We’re not getting into the local news business," said Budde. ... "[O]riginal content will be a small part of what we do." Mostly, Yahoo just wants to be a "remixer," like a dance club DJ, he said.
Unfortunately, the local newspaper business is not the dance music business. As I've argued, merely reporting the news doesn't make money. Financially speaking, the crucial service newspapers provide today is connecting advertisers with the proper audiences. Yahoo would love to take that job itself by becoming the portal through which everyone encounters news.
Big profits for Yahoo. Long, slow decline for newspapers.
The better solution is for local papers to devote themselves to remaining the premier portals for information on their local area. They've done this in print for years. Now they just need to do it online. And, as Yahoo knows, news content alone won't be enough.
(By the way: I know blaming a missed update on a PC malfunction is so 1.0, but that is indeed the reason I was absent last weekend. As a result, I'll be playing catch-up with extra posts over the next few days.)
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
WSJ's excellent adventure in Bismarck
Not a moment too soon, the Wall Street Journal jumped in its time machine today and headed to North Dakota, concluding in a profile of the Bismarck Tribune that papers with less than 100,000 circulation exist in this country, and they're doing pretty well. "One of the reasons that the newspapers out here hung on longer than most is that the people out here, because of our rural nature, were more reluctant to adapt to the Internet," says Steve Scheel, chairman and chief executive of Scheels All Sports Inc. That is changing. Scheels, a family-run business based in Fargo with 22 sporting-goods stores, has about 3,000 employees, a little more than half of whom are 40 years old or younger. The company took a poll recently, Mr. Scheel says, and almost no one in that age range got the local paper at home. At the same time, the response rate to the company's newspaper ads is half of what it was 10 years ago, he says. So increasingly, Mr. Scheel is skipping newspaper ads and reaching out to customers directly through email."Mass media still is 'mass' in rural America," says Pat Finken, president of Odney Advertising.
Note the rumblings of trouble, though:
I hope this coverage helps clear the fog between both parties: media commentators, many of whom seem nearly blind to the different economics of smaller markets, and small publishers, many of whom seem in denial that the metro dailies are a window to their future.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
A vertical search for national news
The Associated Press's CEO "can't imagine" why national news outlets haven't teamed up to wall off their news content within their own search engine. I'm skeptical about such a plan, but it's related to my earlier post about walling off local news content.
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