Someone tweeted this post’s headline as an alternative title during the “International Symposium for Online Journalism“, which I attended in Austin a week ago. The tweet captures it’s essence. This is a time of fear and hope from news organisations as ad revenue continues to drop and new streams don’t rise to fill the black hole. I was kindly invited to speak by Rosental Alves, who has run this conference for the last ten years
The Audience at ISOJ with Rosental Alves at the front
As part of my talk I had decided to touch on the origins of writing and reading as a way of discussing whether the “newspaper look” of the first IPad news apps are the best form. In designing the Guardian iphone app I had found that touch demands that you find more appropriate ways of getting to content by understanding the device and sidestepping the faux interaction you find in print (eg, arrows, page references, email addresses). However there are issues about maintaining familiarity of the web and print product.
With all this in my mind I was lucky to find myself seated on the plane next to a Forensic historian, who talked to me about her work – which in part involves research into late manusripsts and early newspapers and the birth of print. I was able to get some facts from her about the transition from scrolls to the codex (early books) and how early newspapers were made to LOOK LIKE hand drawn manuscripts because of the familiarity of the form. So the same issues have cropped up throughout the history of words on a page!
After I spoke on Friday morning (phew) I was calmed by watching Tom Bodkin from the New York Times talking about the NYT iPad app and using the ipad to present his slides! He said but that there will be bigger NYT apps, possibly payment models and that he hoped that some of the elements of the Times Reader make their way into it.
I liked that ISOJ was fairly small, didn’t suffer from hype and pretention but had a fascinationg series of panels which included speakers from within the industry as well as academia, and some with their feet in both places.
There were a few key themes, participation (commenting), monetisation, mobile and broadening the reach of news organisations were the ones which stick in my mind. New ideas for revenue generation combined with participation are what dominate this post.
Newspapers need to sell
Jim Moroney From Dallas Morning News said his mission is to save newsrooms in the United States, and that this a fight to defend democracy. Generating new revenue streams is a key part of this, and he argued that advertising revenue is simply not the answer, but that direct selling is. The example he gave was quite mundane: “Say you want to sell some chairs…” but the principle is quite right. Newspapers and news websites have these large audiences, who are constantly making transactions. If the news organisation can be seen by them and sellers as a trusted agent, and create a model by which they get a small fee from each transaction this is a viable prospect.
Hyperlocal in the Eastern Cape
I had a chat with Harry Dugmore about the projects he is working on in South Africa. In his talk he showed an interesting mashup of a map of Africa coloured according to degrees-of-democracy, overlayed with levels of connectivity. There is a definite correlation between the two, and mobile in Africa is such an important communications network that work done to use that for news networks is fantasitcally important for the growth of democracy and of communities. Hopefully the kind of hyperlocal project he is working on with Grahamstown Now can help. It combineds local events and commerce with news and does it very elegantly.
He also showed a very intersting content management system (CMS) for mobile called Nika (from the Xhosa word for “give”). It allows you to aggregate sms, twitter and stuff from other social media.
Nuno’s design maps
Over lunch on Friday I had met Nuno Vargas, an affable man with many friends and contacts across many parts of the media in many continents. Nuno talked on Saturday about the need for web design to take some lessons from newspaper design. He used a very effective method, replacing content on a site with colour panels denoting types of content as a very useful means to understanding the structure (or lack of it) on many a news web page. However well crafted their paper products are, too many news websites don’t take that attention to usability and pleaseure reading into their websites. I found his slides fascinating. Nice work Nuno.
News gathering and presentation
On the same panel was Mario Tascon who showed some great work done by LaInformacion.es. Here is a rare example of a news website which takes the reader seriously enough to dedicate a team to generating crafted parts of key pages every day. So it mgiht be a fantastic interactive map as we saw on one front page, or another type of news package. Websites are so huge that creating such elements, and then ensuring your reader knows how to get there are both of key importance. It seems to me that lainformacion is leading the way. His lead point was about the meshing of robots, journalists and citizens. It is also excellent to see work being done to get the balance and interaction right between these different types of news gathering and presentation.
The Tribune is what it is
Evan Smith talked about the Texas Tribune which launched about 6 months ago. He was an engaging speaker. As with many the subtext was about how to fund news, and in his case this involved people putting their money where their mouths are: The TT has a member scheme, and to beomce a member you need to donate between $50 and $5000. Smith said that the average gift has been $96.
He had a fine turn of phrase to match his sharp suit (someone tweeted that he looked like one of the “Mad Men”) and I liked his secrets of success: “Swim in the deep end of the talent pool” He has sought to attract talented writers. He talked about recognizing data and events as journalism. When people are looking for what they need they will go elsewhere if they can’t get it on your site – and data and events (a specialised type of data) are elements which are constantly updated and form the backdrop to news stories.
I particularly liked “content partner sluttiness” and the emphasis on partnerships. Of course one would have to decide where to draw the line to retain editorial integrity. This goes hand in hand with his other point about “revenue promiscuity”. Finally he talked about the “Law of Popeye”: “I yam what I yam” it’s important to be clear about your aims, and not attempt to overextend – be really good at what you do. This becomes a definite boon when moving onto digital devices like phones and tablets. Readers like clarity of purpose and well defined journeys through news.
Participatory journalism and funding
David Cohn, a young man who was cheered when he announced that it was his birthday, has set up a great site called Spot Us
In a world where the future finance for journalism is in question he provides the answer of build it yourself journalism, or as he put it: “Distributing the financial load of journalism”. How this works is that you can see stories that have been funded, and those which have been suggested. There are menus to choose whether to fund a story and to choose what you want to pay for.
He argued that freelancing has up to now been opaque, with writers pitching for stories in a 1-1 relationship with an editor. This model brings the audience into the picture, proposing a story and finding out whether readers will pay to have it written.
“You need a sense of transparency or else cannot get funding…. there can be no money for a pitch without inforamtion about what you’re pitching for.”
“It is easier to try than debate what will or won’t work.”
I think these ideas are interesting but I also think news organisations need to lead and not just be led by popular opinion. There are often stories which are not popular but nonetheless very socially important. Where does the funding come from then?
Participatory advertising
He is now beginning to experiment with tying in advertising to his site. Readers can earn credits by participating in a survey or quiz eg for Levis,. The credits can be used to fund a story. This way the site makes money from the advertisers input from users, who in turn get to further infuence what stories they want.
News models and censorship
I also met Dan Gilmour, a quiet and thoughtful man with interesting insights. We talked about Apple’s censorship tendencies on iPhone and iPad (they’ve banned certain content from the app-store including a newspaper that carried images of scantily clad women). He felt that newspapers should get together on this. I am torn between the desire to keep the app space free of stuff which teens might download without their parents knowing (porn, other questionable material) – and the desire for press freedom. Currently Steve Jobs has shown no sign of encroaching on news organisation’s ability to report, but there is no guarantee that he or someone else won’t. There need to be guidelines agreed with Apple, who in turn must make clear their comittment to a free press if the ipad is to be a serious vehicle for news. Gilmour also said that he thought the ipad is a bit big, and that a 7″ screen would be more interesting. We shall see!
There are other things to say from this fascinating conference but I will post now and edit and add more posts later.