A metaphor for our new media times
By Doug Fisher
I always think of the good metaphor after I give the talk, and so I was
driving home after speaking to a press association seminar and pondering
one of the questions when, of course, the idea came to me.
The question: “How can I use the Web to drive people to the paper?”
“You probably can’t,” I replied. Washington Post focus
groups of the types of readers we’d all kill for – young,
urban professional, lots of disposable income – made clear they
want the news, but not the “paper,” even if it’s given
away. If you define your journalism by the physical product, you’ve
got problems.
That’s difficult for many of us, because we love “the newspaper,” but
we really have been using it as a metaphor for the larger meaning of a
well-staffed, multifaceted news operation.
So as I was pondering the question, it occurred to me the problem is
that newspapers still too often define their business by their production
line. They set up the presses and then tweak the product to conform. Sure,
we’ve redesigned, narrowed the web, introduced color. But it’s
all inside the restrictive framework of our press configuration.
Ford, or Procter & Gamble – or even the companies that make
the presses – do it differently. They design with features their
customers want. They monitor what their customers tell them.
Then they redesign the production line to make it.
The Internet is the new metaphor for that flexible journalism production
line. No longer as journalists – editors especially, but reporters,
too – can we just tweak inside a rigid configuration. We must continually
respond to what our users tell and show us. In our Hartsville Today citizen
journalism project, for instance, we didn’t have a place for NASCAR
stories. We had high school, college and recreational sports, but nothing
for the pros because we really hadn’t thought of it. User behavior
set us straight on that, and we need to correct it.
Newsrooms have entered an era where the Web producer and the IT person
have become as important to your journalism as the press foremen, where
editors and reporters need to know how to use RSS feeds, tags and similar
monitoring devices.
And the question needs to change from how do we drive people to the paper
to “How do I drive people to my advertising?” in whatever
form.
That doesn’t necessarily mean we need to put fins on the Cadillac.
But adding a Chevy might bring the volume that keeps us viable. And even
the Cadillac production line gets remade from time to time.
It means thinking broadly and flexibly about how the solid journalism
we already do attracts an audience that is more aggregate than homogeneous.
So how can we realize more value from those differences?
For instance, most local publications see little value in out-of-town
Internet visitors. That’s a “run of press” view that
misses an opportunity to monetize such traffic. Think flexibly, and you
realize obits are potentially of great value to out-of-town visitors.
If Aunt Mabel dies, all the relatives and friends from far-flung places
will likely check in.
But how many sites either put their obits behind a subscription wall
or fling the door open. Why not put in a low barrier that’s easy
to surmount: A short, tasteful ad (video if possible, but not necessarily)
for a florist, for instance, to get access, and then the ad becomes an “order
flowers” button up top as the person reads the obit. If you are
concerned about losing paid obit revenue, then provide the “notice” form
this way and leave the longer obit to a higher-priced tier.
You help the florist reach an audience it can’t easily otherwise
and expand its ad base as a result. You both benefit.
As I looked at newspaper Web sites to prepare for my talk, I was struck
with how rigid many are. One, for instance, wanted to sell me photo reprints.
But I had to be a subscriber to even look at the photos available. So
if I’m from out of town – or even from across town – and
not a subscriber, but I really want the photo of my sister’s kid
playing Little League? You get the idea.
The Internet is a social medium. People increasingly get their news by
referrals, so make sure there is a way to e-mail at least a link to a
story. Only about half of the almost two dozen smaller sites I looked
at had that. A comment area for each story is nice, but there are understandable
legal uncertainties. But if you have a list of agency and school links
on your site, as many sites did, and an agency name comes up in a story,
at least link back to your list of links. Too many sites still tend to
compartmentalize everything. That’s the old metaphor.
—
The Hartsville Today first-year report, a “cookbook” of the
promises and problems in setting up a small-town citizen-journalism site
in conjunction with the Hartsville Messenger, is now available at http://dfisher.url123.com/hvtd.
It is a 1 Mb PDF download.
