In a world full of tweets and blogs, podcasts and YouTube, Tumblr and Digg, there isn’t much room left for traditional print media—or rather, let me rephrase that; there isn’t much money left for traditional print media.
Newspapers and magazines around the country have had to let a significant number of employees go, if not cease publication altogether. Be it the death of the Christian Science Monitor, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News or the folding of Domino Magazine, Country Home and Portfolio, print media everywhere is hurting.
In fact, in a recent 2009 Pew survey, newspaper earnings reportedly fell 10 percent in 2007, primarily because of advertising losses. And according to a Magazine Publishers of America study, more than 250 major magazine titles lost on average 7.4 percent in ad revenue through the second quarter of 2008 compared to the same period last year.
So what will become of our friend print media? And what can these publications be doing to increase their chance of survival?
The obvious answer is to create an online presence. But, in order to do so, newsrooms must be properly outfitted to move online. Reporters are not just required to have a pen and pad anymore. In fact, many reporters need digital and video cameras, recorders, smart phones to send updates and laptops to post to their company’s blog while they’re away from the office. But how many reporters actually have all of this?
“Most of the reporters [at the Atlanta Journal Constitution] are amply equipped to be a digital reporter,” said Bert Roughton, managing editor. “You need a laptop and a camera of some kind and the AJC provides it. You could set up a bureau in the Starbucks.”
Roughton likens today’s reporters to his years of working as a foreign correspondent. “We’re using the same techniques to cover Cobb County that I was using to cover Kosovo,” Roughton said.
Kathryn Ho, general manager of Modern Luxury Digital, has had similar experience. “My division has been fairly well-equipped with the proper technology, although it’s never the top of the line stuff,” Ho said. “We’re equipped to handle it if the site goes down at 3 am, but we mainly use a lot of open source software and freeware products and when that’s not possible we make the right business case to ask for the mandated funds.”
Not all companies are so lucky, however. According to Kristen Heptinstall, website coordinator at NBC 13 in Birmingham, Al, her company is not fully equipped the way she would like them to be.
“We’re not where we want to be with personnel, after two rounds of layoffs, or with technology,” Heptinstall said. “Something I’m pushing for now is to get all reporters blackberry’s through the company. You can post to our website through a mobile phone much more efficiently than everything having to be physically taken back to the station to be put up.”
Efficiency seems to be a common denominator when it comes to technology-heavy newsrooms.
“I think that we view technology, generally speaking, as ways to reduce our costs because of its efficiency, which ultimately allows you to cut costs quite a bit,” Roughton said. “I think we’re pretty aggressive in looking for new technologies. It’s a matter of efficiency and technology advances tend to pay for themselves.”
However, it’s important that the upper-level management feels the same way about technology. Which, not everyone does. According to the 2008 Pew Study, 48 percent of editors said they are conflicted by the trade-offs between the speed, depth and interactivity of the web and what those benefits are costing in terms of accuracy and journalistic standards.
To meet these new media challenges, some newsrooms have completely reorganized to provide simultaneously improve both the website and the paper.
Roughton said that they AJC has created an entirely new content management system. “We’ve also had a series of management teams who embrace change and are constantly looking for structural rebirth. Our newsroom has been really aggressive about not fighting the Internet and keeping it fresh.”
Keeping it fresh is of utmost importance, and also of serious conflict with old school journalists. Heptinstall said that part of what is tough to get newsrooms to understand is that online content doesn’t have to be perfect.
“Newsrooms are used to having this final product wrapped up in a bow. But that’s not how online content works,” Heptinstall said. “It has to be more continuous.”
Heptinstall said that many reporters are still in the mindset of ‘you put in your story for the day and then you go home’. “That’s just not how it works now. We’ve got to meet in the middle. It’s getting the broadcasters to slow down and the newsrooms to speed up.”
Part of the problem is understanding the new deadlines that come with online media. According to a 2008 Pew Study, fresh content must be up for periods when traffic spikes. These times include 6-7am (as people wake up), 8:30-9am (as they get to work), around 11:30am (before they go to lunch) and around 2pm (when they return from lunch), according to the study.
“We began thinking we’d just put everything online, but actually you have news cycles on the Internet that you need to adhere to,” Roughton said. “You can’t wait to start writing until 2 pm, you need to start writing right now.”
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As Kate's editor, I learned that she is generally a confident writer once she actually gets started on the writing part of a story. All the prep work can be a long and slow process, as setting up and conducting interviews is the hardest part of writing a story for Kate. She takes alot of notes during interviews, especially when she is typing, and generally only uses around 20 % of those notes. Kate doesn't spend too much time trying to perfect her lead right at the beginning, but instead continues with the rest of the story and then goes back to fix the lead if its not exactly right. Kate finds it much easier to revise a story after someone else has read it and can give their opinion.
ReplyDeleteOther than a few grammatical errors and wording issues, I only had a couple of suggested changes for Kate's story. For one, Kate felt that Heptinstall came across as having more negative views about her news organization in the story than she did in real life. I suggested some ways to rewrite that portion so that this was not conveyed. I also suggested several people that Kate could use for a 4th source. One idea was to contact executives from other types of companies to get a idea on how technologically equipped their staff is compared newsroom/magazine staffs. Another idea was to ask readers what they expect out of online media sites. Do they expect a pdf version of the publication or a more interactive website with special features?