-
Website
Http://www.techflash.com/ -
Original page
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/01/How_to_save_the_Seattle_P-I_37442339.html -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
All Comments
Andrea
And if you're talking about "vetted" bloggers, well, you'll kill any goodwill within the local blogging community. Not paying for content is one thing, but making yourself into a tastemaker? Even worse.
I'll post my vision of things on Metblogs later.
@dw, I'll look forward to reading your thoughts on Metblogs. As I explained in the post, the idea with the community bloggers would, in fact, be to offer payment based on traffic.
In terms of vetting, any news operation wants to find the best journalists and bloggers possible. That's not tastemaking, it's just good editing and editorial management. Continuing the example from the post, ZDNet does the same thing when it brings aboard people such as Mary Jo Foley or Ed Bott to blog on its site, with compensation.
As I mentioned, I don't think we have all the answers, but I'm glad the discussion about potential solutions is getting started.
Rumor has it that Hearst's intention in unloading the PI was so that they could purchase KING/KONG from BELO. Funny how KING broke the news, no??
RE #3 and #9 -
What about the Detroit Free Press model of going to print 2-3 times each week instead of daily?
People wake up in the morning and do a Google search or read Yahoo. They get their weather and stock quotes on their phones. They can easily turn on the television and use it like a radio. Get ready in the morning and when they hear something interesting, they look over at the screen.
It is OK. We don't need the P.I. I get all the working people who are there will lose their jobs and that is sad. But, shut it down now.
1) What should an online PI do? For example, do we need national and international news in it? Should it still source material from the AP, Reuters etc? Or should it be pretty much all local and regional? Answer why it exists and trim the stuff that doesn't fit that.
2) Does the PI need all of the reporters and columnists? Does it need 13 people in the sports section as salaried people? Do they cut the columnists loose but do a deal to buy their column and share the ad revenues on the columns page? It may be that some of the columnists would be as good or better off if they wrote on their own site, attracted their own readers and monetized that and also syndicated content to the PI.
Vetted bloggers are fine. Most publication makes editorial decisions and that's what this should be. I'd recommend that the PI not vet bloggers though, as much as stories, but it's easier to automate the syndication process if you know you can take in stories from a given blog with little or no review.
I'd like to see the PI online do MUCH more linking including linking to other blogs on a topic. For example, link out to the blogs dealing with specific issues in stories about that issue even if you don't use their content. Make it easy for bloggers to tell the PI that they exists and what they cover (transportation, the Mariners, West Seattle, etc).
I don't like the Detroit Free Press approach. It is a baby step to what really needs to occur, which in my view is shutting down the print product altogether.
As long as there is a print edition, editors will be motivated to serve it.
As Todd points out, a free, weekly print newspaper eventually could be introduced down the road, once the online site is viable.
Basically, it is our view that you have to start over with a new model, new leadership and a new concept of how to do journalism today.
Of course, that won't be easy.
John Cook
I can't see myself reading yet another localnews.com.
R.I.P. Seattle PI, I honestly don't see much room left for your existence.
There is a role for editorial content, even if it's just selecting bloggers. Digg never did replace the online newspaper, it became something different and also good. But when I want to know what's going on with floods in my town, I don't go to google.
John, Todd- thanks for some great ideas. The newspaper is not dead, but it needs to evolve. And as a PI reader, I hope it survives.
Let them croak quickly, before they line up for TARP money.
In Chicago straight news is terribly biased and narrow ... totally from the viewpoint of those close to Lake Michigan who only know others like themselves.
The result is that the content seems irrelevant to people in the neighborhoods, in the suburbs and downstate.
Once that is embraced by upper leadership, then the revenue doors will open. Some thoughts:
Problem 1:
90% of newspaper readership is online, yet print generates 90% of the revenues.
Solution:
1) Charge more for print product, lower production by ~40%, and invest the difference into the online product
2) Hire community bloggers. OWN local
3) Marry tech + ad sales groups, integrate AdReady
4) Form major strategic with KIRO or KOMO to provide video feeds on all news--result is the leading multimedia news network in the Seattle DMA.
5) Monetize RSS via per-call fee, no more non-monetized content. I love RSS, but until it can be monetized, it's killing the news industry.
6) Upgrade digital sales efforts and online delivery infrastructures.
It's highly likely the traditional (newspapers, local TV) local news industry converges into a single multimedia news network to continue owning the local news space for years to come.
Otherwise it's survival of the fittest and most traditional news co's are fatter than they are fit right now so it's a challenging reversal because of the 90/10 problem.
I believe in the future of newspapers. Their media brands will ultimately keep the industry alive, but not all will survive. Hopefully the P-I will.
Chris McCoy
www.yoursports.com
http://www.globalpost.com/
If newspapers (or TV news departments, for that matter) are going to survive the online tansition, the online advertising paradigm will have to change - ads will have to be worth more. I don't see that happening in time to save local news in its current forms.
I think that's the rub right there. If either paper had that, then neither would be in trouble.
The problem as much as anything is that the readership is ignorant. While columnists in particular lament the passing of better days, what they and institutions in general have failed to do is educate people on what is lost, and why it's never coming back - and why that matters.
Readers falsely believe the gap will be made up somewhere else. They judge the media by their own selfish self-interests, and base their vitriol on strictly that. "I believe this, you say that - you suck. You should die." That is the height of ignorance. Diversity of opinion? Mine is the only one that counts, and your worth is based on my opinion - or maybe that of someone on talk radio.
Everyone wants for free what 50 cents would have helped make better.
That said, how does anyone convince the populace on the whole that they should WANT to save the PI, or any other media? That's the only question worth asking here. Mechanics and content will follow when you first answer that.
Until you make people care - care enough to plunk down two-bits - this is all theory.
If people wanted to save the PI they would have done so. They still can. But I don't exactly see a groundswell of support. Blame for that on some level goes to newspapers and civic leaders who fail to make a compelling case for saving it.
Everyone agrees that the future of news is online, but so far all we've seen is secondary sources like blogs and aggregators. The New York Times has already won the race for national digital distribution, but the gates haven't even opened for the local outlets.
It's the same everywhere...newspapers and magazines are waiting for that inflection point where the advertisers pay for their online readers. It ain't gonna happen, because there are so many places to buy around any given website.
BTW (3) kill the print will have a knock-on effect of killing the Times. Was that part of the plan?
That's the trouble with subsidizing business - it's not fair on other businesses, which cannot compete against a charity case.
If media choice is something important to the public, they should be willing to take responsibility for it. I would be willing to buy a share of a local paper.
But I agree that the public can step up and decide whether it is important or not.
In this fracturing media market, I don't see the community pulling together to come to the rescue.
What is interesting to contemplate is whether an entirely new streamlined P-I could be born on top of the remains, not as a charity case but as a real online business.
Obviously, folks commenting here have different views on whether that could happen. I hold out hope that journalism as a profession will survive in some form.
Good discussion.
John Cook
I don't like to be the guy who veers off topic, but that comment should be addressed, since it ties into whether newspapers or media of any kind can be not-for-profit or non-profit.
NPR isn't more successful than ever. It grew listenship for a while and topped out in 2002 or 2003. It's hard to find figures since, because they've gone heavily into podcasting, and Internet radio and non-NPR podcasts have taken a big chunk out.
Just like newspapers, NPR is working through disruptive change with a bit of a difference. With radio listeners dropping, member stations are able to raise less money and underwriters won't pay as much for sponsoring programs. Podcasting and streaming let NPR distribute programs cheaply as downloads or Internet radio, but that doesn't produce the same revenue as radio listeners, and member stations get very peeved when national programs like Talk of the Nation aren't tuned in via a member station's broadcast signal or Internet stream.
NPR is a business and has a very detailed business plan, regularly revised, for revenue, staffing, listener targets, long-term projects, and expenses. Instead of dollars going to shareholders or executives, money goes into future projects and compensation. NPR is very salary intensive, because they don't have broadcast infrastructure like their member stations. (Execs are paid well by journalist standards, although not that well by radio exec standards.)
Also, NPR was hit hard (like everyone) by the decline in stock-market values, as their Joan Kroc bequest dropped in value, and tens of millions of dollars has disappeared from their annual budget.
I think that challenge could be overcome by the intensive local coverage that the paper would be getting from its pay-per-click bloggers in the neighborhoods.
If you look at sites like MyBallard.com as an example, and repeat that model in neighborhoods across the city, I actually think the Seattle Times and other traditional media would ultimately be the ones that would have a hard time competing.
then what?
The P-I offered its other non-HTML Internet version, the paid full E-Edition, free during the recent distribution hiatus after the snowstorm. It worked well at showcasing display ads, but didn't have good enough settings for text presentation. Even at the highest of the three available page magnifications, the text in the articles was too tiny to read on my 20 inch monitor at 1600x1200.
So the E-Edition is out the window for me in its current form. But if they could add better text sizing to make the articles more readable it should be OK, even for people with my not-so-great eyesight.
That leaves the plain old HTML version. Three cheers for HTML, the universal golden standard of interoperability and sanity.
Meanwhile, the Seattle Weekly has a nice viewer in which both ads and text are very readable. It's easy to use, needed no installation, and I didn't have to change any settings. It just worked perfectly the first time. I think that must be because it's based on DjVu or Djview, which I've had installed for years.
A Djview-based reader might be a good way to go for the P-I. At least then I could read the articles.
But sorry, no love to Hearst's clueless technical people on the reader front so far.
Secondly, if all the newspapers disappear you're going to see a lot less interesting blogging. I loves me my RSS feeds, but a ton of them aggregate, comment on, and feed off of the quality (or not) work done by the journalists at major metropolitan dailies. In fact, with few exceptions, nearly all of the long-run investigative journalism that breaks open major scandals is done by paid journalists (think Murray Waas). I wouldn't be surprised to find a lot more random commentary and speculation, because there's less focused source material to go off of - everyone will be commenting on the AP or Reuters feed.
I suppose some kind of hybrid freelance blogger/journalist/muckracker might evolve (think what Josh Marshall is doing at TPM) eventually, with a drastically reduced local scope outside of the biggest cities. Kind of sad.
Sorry, life is tough.
The West Seattle Blog has accumulated enough advertisers now to support a family of three, with its online-only news site. It has 38k unique monthly readers according to Quantcast.
The P-I has 2.7 million online readers. That's 70 times more than the WS Blog. So maybe an online-only P-I could support 70 employees. That's a big maybe, with a lot of uncertainty to it.
MyBallard has 14k readers. Possibly that means that they can support 1/3 of an employee at the moment. It also means that, like the WS Blog, they achieve a much lower density of readers in their own neighborhood than the P-I does.
The Seattle Weekly and The Stranger have 109k and 347k online readers, respectively. But the bulk of their revenue comes from print ads. The Stranger's masthead lists 56 people, not counting interns, columnists and six specialty editors who probably are part-time. Pay is lower at the weeklies. Occasionally one of them prints a news story worth reading, maybe by accident.
Web ads cost 8-12 CPM. Someone could do the math there, but I'm sure most of the weeklies' staffs work for the print editions. And if they tried to go online-only they would be smaller publications in every sense.
So should the P-I go online-only, or distribute a free paper edition with well-paying advertisers?
No one wants to keep a failing business alive. In fact, that's part of the reason we left to start TechFlash -- the ship was sinking and we were aware of no plan to at least try and save it.
It was depressing.
Now, there is an opportunity to start something entirely fresh and new without the weights of the past. Can it work?
Obviously, the answer to that question is above our pay grade. But there are a lot of smart people in this town who understand online advertsing and digital media, some of whom at least used to have the money to give something like this a try.
It is certainly an interesting playground in which to test some ideas. Not that anyone is really in "test mode" these days.
John Cook
As always, very inciteful observations.
I must, however, take offense at the following: "The P-I's real assets are the reporters, columnists, photographers and artists who give life to newspaper each day."
There are many fine EDITORS at this paper, too, including your former boss. How disrespectful of her. And me.
Having said that, need any fine copy editors at the PSBJ?
Go Storm.
That's key. For too long it's been the other way around at the P-I and other places.
If I were Hearst, I'd take it one step further. Have the Web site funnel traffic to the TV news station (assuming you could buy it) and then the print product.
Break news on the Internet, give it a bigger display on TV ... and summarize/reflect in the print product. A 1-2-3 punch.
But as far as saving the P-I, I can't see anyone buying it, for any price. All you'd be getting is the name and the globe.
Start from scratch, no need to buy anything, and use these principles. It'll take off.
I'll miss the P-I.
-- Your former co-worker and features copy editor (I hope we -- as in copy editors -- are included in the new model... )
I'm glad to see the P-I copy desk is scrutinizing this post. Feels like old times. Take care, you guys, and hang in there.
I never thought I'd see the day when the ad salesmen would be considered the extraneous staff.
I think I just saw a ray of hope for the industry start to flicker.
Great post.
I'd love to see someone develop a portable device that is bigger yet less clumsy than the Kindle that allows news organizations like the P-I to distribute their content in a branded, identifiable format. It would also create a modern platform for advertising.
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-mo... and
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum23/4496.htm (refer to markus007)
How will investigative and local news be delivered to the segment of the public who don't have computers?
Examples: some senior citizens; people who are too poor to own a computer.
Printed newspapers have served as a commons for people of most every income level. Online publications cut out lots of people.
Who realistically is going to go to the library daily to read news online?
The point remains: The digital divide is stark.
Seriously... Who really thinks a daily local paper for Seattle makes sense? What's the point?
I'd love a weekly edition that smartly gives insight into the stories developing in our city and then let the web manage the daily play by play. This is why the economist magazine is so darn good at the national level. Think 'the Stranger meets the Economist'.
And let's not even get started on all the clever ways to apply modern aggregation techniques to local content. You have the reach already... If you can't figure it out, well...
I am going to be on KUOW 94.9 tomorrow around 1 pm discussing the possibilities of the online-only P-I.
Also, here is the latest report on TechFlash. Hearst, whose executives refused to answer questions from staffers last week, is now asking for reporters of the paper to submit their best ideas for an online-only paper.
http://www.techflash.com/venture/P-I_publisher_...
John Cook
I like this list. We need papers or at least some form of reporting out there to keep things in check.
I'm blogged out and don't need to read neighborhood blogs from people who can't write complete sentences.
I want seasoned, experienced reporters whose work goes through seasoned, experienced editors. Joe in his jockey shorts can write a blog from his basement, but he can't get hired at a newspaper. There's a difference.
Also, who reads KOMO and other TV websites online. Are you kidding me? Television personalities aren't reporters and they can't write and have no b.s. detectors. Get serious.