By Michael P. Smith
Managing Director, Media Management Center
Once-feared, the Internet is becoming the newspaper's best friend
The word disintermediation once frightened editors who were told that the World Wide Web would erode readership and render ink-on-paper useless to a young generation.
Their fear may have been valid and it may come
true some day, but increasingly newspapers are
turning to the Internet as a tool for reporting,
communications and story-telling. Around the world,
the Web is helping newspapers innovate in interesting
and exciting ways that include input from readers.
| The
value of objectivity |
|
OhMyNews founder Oh Yeon Ho may irritate traditional journalists with his view of objectivity. He had been quoted saying “we put everything out there and the people judge for themselves.” He was asked about that view in an interview with the Japan Media Review. Here is his response:
We do not regard objective reporting as a source of pride. OhmyNews does not regard straight news articles as the standard. Articles including both facts and opinions are acceptable when they are good.
Thus, we not only break the concept of "who reporters are," but also break the formula of "reporters are supposed to be like blah, blah, blah." To us, every citizen is a reporter, and citizens have no practice writing straight articles, so how could they do it? They just communicate in their own ways.
If you ask a shopkeeper to communicate in the professional reporter's format, he would not be able to, would he? So we teach them to break the formula for articles because the formula for articles was made by professional reporters working for paper newspapers.
Of course, I do not mean that someone should never use the article format made by the professional reporters of paper newspapers. We also use them a lot, actually. |
One of the early movers in this trend was the
Chicago Tribune and its creation of a young commuter
newspaper called RedEye. In 1996, the Tribune
launched an entertainment portal called www.metromix.com.
Over the years the site became a very powerful
brand. In user analysis, the Tribune discovered
that the Web site was attracting 600,000 unique
users a month who were not Tribune newspaper readers.
They began to research how they could attract
that large audience to a print product. In the
research and development phase, early prototypes
were actually called MetroMix News. When RedEye
was eventually launched – and still today two
years later – the entertainment pages are branded
as MetroMix pages. In some regards, RedEye was
one of the first newspapers born of the Internet.
Today others are following that lead.
A powerful medium created by citizens
On February 22, 2000, Oh Yeon Ho, former reporter
turned media baron, launched www.OhMyNews.com.
The theory behind the Web site was citizens creating
journalism – or every citizen is a reporter. Oh's
idea was to change journalism from a few-to-many
distribution model to a many-to-many model. He
told Jack Schofield of the Guardian in London:
“In the 21 st Century, anyone can be a reporter
any time they want. Everyone can write news stories
and share them with others.”
Today, OhMyNews is a powerful media company. It has as many as 14 million readers and 35,000 citizen reporters. Of that number 17,000 have posted at least once and others have added comments or critiques to articles. The way it works is that the citizen reporter – sometimes called a netizen or a news guerrilla – agrees to abide by a code of behavior called “The Citizen Reporter's Agreement”. Then they receive access to the Web site. Once an article is posted, it is fair game for comments, criticism or advice. One article had 85,000 comments. Articles are rated by the number of views or downloads, and citizen reporters are paid based upon the popularity of the article. It isn't much. A top story may make only the equivalent of US$20.
Last month OhMyNews started a tipping service, according
to the Financial Times. This meant that its readers
could reward writers for good service, just like
a waiter or hairdresser. The result? In just two
days Kim Young-ok, a philosophy lecturer, earned
Won22.6m -- about US$22,000 and roughly the average
annual wage in South Korea.
On any given day, about 80 percent of the OhMyNews stories are written by citizen reporters. The remaining 20 percent are written by 35 staff journalists who were recruited from the ranks of the citizens and given special training. In terms of content, about 70 percent of a days reports are about everyday life; the remainder are about social issues, politics, and economic issues. The large number of eyeballs also is translated into an advertising bonanza, which accounts for about 70 percent of the OhMyNews revenue. That translates into about US$2.2 million of revenue a month.
San Jose Mercury News tech columnist Dan Gillmor wrote: “OhMyNews is transforming the 20th Century's journalism-as-lecture model – where organizations tell the audience what the news is and the audience either buys it or doesn't – into something vastly more bottom-up, interactive and democratic.” Since that report, observers have described OhMyNews as journalism-as-conversation. This approach does not auger well with traditional journalists, but Oh does not apologize that his approach does not follow the rules of objectivity (see sidebar). The production process is transparent. It is similar to the model used by most newspapers, but Web users can see and participate in the process. Story ideas are posted in discussion forums and editors and reporters comment on the merits of the idea. If it is something both parties are interested in, a citizen reporter will pick it up and run with it.
| Las
Ultimas:
Using Web sites in coverage decisions
|
|
Newspapers are establishing a growing presence on the Internet, but one South American publication uses its Web site to study readers. Chile's Las Ultimas Noticias employs a tracking system to analyze the popularity of online articles, using the data as a factor in editorial decisions for the paper's print edition.
Print editors can identify reader patterns by
examining the number of hits, or clicks,
that news items receive on the Web site.
Owned by El Mercurio, the tabloid
Las Ultimas Noticias launched its
Internet portal, www.lun.com, in 2000
and developed the system of visitor
tracking in 2001. The national
newspaper publishes the entire content
of its print edition online, in addition
to extra sections of photos and breaking
news.
Online journalist Jorge Santis explained the project. “The data serves as a reference to test the content we are publishing and to see if we're going the right way or need some follow-up of specific news items,” he said.
However, the interests of lun.com
readers may not reflect Las Ultimas
Noticias' regular reader preferences.
“The audience reading
www.lun.com is not necessarily
the same audience buying the print
edition,” he qualified. “And
those are the readers of principal
importance when one configures a newspaper.”
In both the Internet and print version,
Las Ultimas Noticias boasts growing
readership. Santis estimates
that the Web site has more than one
million hits per day, while the print
edition enters its second year of
a 30 percent circulation increase.
Though print editors do not use Web
hits alone to determine future story
ideas or story play, Santis says the
statistics influence coverage decision.
“They serve to show that readers are
very interested in a certain subject,”
he said. Currently, www.lun.com
reports that sports coverage and salacious
celebrity stories receive the most
hits.
--Heidi Koester |
|
OhMyNews has become so successful, that Oh began to look for ways to extend the brand and involve more citizens. In April 2003, he launched a print newspaper with 100,000 distribution “for readers who cannot use the Internet and for the readers who look for some unique power or charm of a paper product.” The print product is also a vehicle to sell advertisers who have not yet been sold on the power of the Internet. In addition to print, OhMyNews has begun Web casting with Citizen Anchors doing both audio and video reports. This has now grown into regularly scheduled newscasts. Next up are Web photo albums and photo essays from a legion of young Koreans who carry camera phones. Oh would like to transport the model to other countries, but Korea may be well ahead of the rest of the world. It is the most-wired country in the world and 75 percent of Koreans have access to broadband.
Rockin' and rollin' in Lawrence, Kansas
Mention Kansas, and most Americans think of the movie “The Wizard of Oz” and young Dorothy telling her dog Toto “I don't think we are in Kansas anymore.” In Lawrence, a wizard named Rob Curley has created a hugely successful Web site for young people using almost nothing but smoke and mirrors. Curley is general manager of www.Lawrence.com, an entertainment super site owned by the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper. The newspaper was named this year as one of “10 That Do It Right” by the trade magazine Editor & Publisher.
The small-town newspaper has a daily circulation of 20,000, but its Web site knows no borders. It features an extensive data base of local bars, restaurants and bands. It has live Web casting, music videos and concert promotion. Visitors have a choice of more than 14,000 MP3 files of local bands that they can download. They can register to receive SMS messages about local events. And they can read youth-oriented Web logs written by local (and distant) contributors.
The little newspaper's Web site exudes energy
and possibility. It is profitable, because Curley
operates it on a shoestring. The bloggers, for
example, have to commit to regular contributions.
Once they have submitted at least five blogs,
they are paid with high-speed Internet access.
This is possible because the Lawrence World-Journal
owns the local cable TV/broadband company. It
also helps that Lawrence is home to the 25,000-student
University of Kansas – a built-in audience for
the local music scene. And it is a desirable audience
for advertisers. The site features “Get a Job”
employment advertising and “Deals and Coupons”
services advertising, making it a full-service
Web site.
The result has been that many online managers
have followed the money – if not the Yellow Brick
Road – to Lawrence to try to benchmark the success
of the Web site. And despite that success, Lawrence.com
also sees possibilities in print. Last year they
launched a print version of the Web site, featuring
the best reviews, columns, lists and Weblogs.
Called the Deadwood Edition (because newsprint
is made from dead wood), it is distributed for
free to college students by home delivery and
on racks around campus.
Personal news in smaller towns
Several other companies have begun to use the
citizen-journalist approach to create print editions.
In Austria, Vorarlberger
Medienhaus, which owns several regional newspapers,
has become a devotee of the Northwestern Readership
Institute's Impact Study. The study found at www.Readership.org
suggests that readership can be enhanced
by focusing on a particular type of local news
– most importantly go-and-do information and news
about ordinary people. Vorarlberger uses its Internet
site to collect that information. It also uses
it to engage citizens in discussions about local
issues.
In any one of the regions, citizens can post
information about birthdays, weddings, and other
family celebrations. They are encouraged to share
photographs. In each town, a group of esteemed
citizens have been recruited to monitor the town
sites and give advice and encouragement to posters.
Each week, the best of each Web site is re-purposed
into a total-market-coverage publication bearing
the URL of the site as its logo.
| The
Web as test lab for storytelling |
The Albany Times-Union in New York 's capital wins awards that celebrate online journalism. The Times-Union reached that position with www.timesunion.com by changing its mindset about the Internet.
“We think of ourselves not as a newspaper that has a Web site, but as a media company that offers an array of information in an array of venues,” Managing Editor Mary Fran Gleason said at the IAPA Press Institute in Guatemala. Since the mid-sized newspaper (100,000 daily, 150,000 Sunday) has limited resources, it also attempts to do a few number of things very well, rather than doing a large number marginally. This approach allows the Times-Union to concentrate on major storytelling projects that go beyond print to include visuals, sound, voices and motion.
To accomplish this, the Times-Union sets internal standards for Web presentation emphasizing usability and functionality. “We decided from the beginning that we would not overburden a Web project by cluttering it with flashiness and unnecessary technology,” said Gleason. “The story budget is critical.” This is the story project process:
- Information architecture: A story board is laid out on paper as a flow chart. Every piece of the Web site has to lead the visitor back to the beginning. Every piece of the Web site has to be connected.
- Finding photo images that establish a look and feel for story design.
- Identifying type and headline fonts based upon story content.
- Incorporating audio and video.
This process helped the Web producers and journalists create a project called “ Fourth World ” about efforts to help AIDs orphans in Malawi. See: http://www.timesunion.com/fourthworld The stark simplicity of the story caught the attention of the journalism community and timesunion.com won the Scripps Howard award for Web reporting and the Online News Association award for feature journalism.
“We view our Web projects as laboratories,” said Gleason. “To every new project we add a feature or an element we hadn't done before – interactive maps, blogs, timelines, audio clips, 360-degree photo views, video streaming, bolder designs, new color palettes. Each project expands our Web repertoire and becomes a part of every day storytelling.”
--Michael P. Smith |
The Bakersfield Californian has pioneered this
approach in America. Last year, it launched www.northwestvoice.com
in a growing region of the city. Citizens
are encouraged to write about small accomplishments,
personal celebrations, trips, club and society
meetings and issues of concern. The site also features
classified advertising and calendars of events.
Readers are encouraged to “share your voice.”
At the top of the site are listed the top three
most popular stories (based upon hits) and three
more stories labeled editor's choice. Each week,
the best of the Web site is collected and edited
into a print newspaper that is distributed to
21,700 homes in the area. The print product is
supported by advertising.
The approach in Bakersfield has garnered a lot of attention from other newspapers hoping to make money off their Web site. To satisfy the interest in this participatory approach, the Californian has established a Web site for newspapers who want to start their own. It can be found at www.opensourcejournalism.org.
Not all of the reader-contributed news is personal news. Vorarlberger has found readers interested in local municipal meetings. NorthwestVoice readers are very interested in school news and the proceedings of education boards. Vorarlberger offers downloads of government meeting minutes. It also offers answers and advice for dealing with local government. In effect, it is putting the information that lawmakers have in the hands of the public.
Solving the teen problem with teens
Most newspapers face the problem of declining readership among young people. This problem is increasingly apparent with teen-agers who have grown up totally socialized in new technologies, like the Internet, interactive games and the mobile phone. Working with graduate students from the Medill School of Journalism, the Quad City Times in Davenport, Iowa, decided to start with the new technology.
The graduate journalism students conducted research with teens in the Quad Cities and talked with them about the information and entertainment habits. Many said that they were interested in news – but not in their parents' newspaper. They also talked about their interest in politics, sports, entertainment and shopping. They said that they were most interested in what other teens had to say. They said that they care about national and international news, but it has to be presented in a way that they could relate to it. Using that research, the graduate students concluded that any media trying to attract teens needed to have teen correspondents, a very young editor, concise writing and many photos, graphics and charts.
Working with the teens in focus groups and on panels, a new teen-generated Internet site was born. It is called www.yourmomonline.com. Each day, teens in the Quad Cities can read commentary by teens, post photos in albums, participate in message boards, surf classified advertising and post comments about news or entertainment. The columns are generated by a panel of teen writers recruited from local high schools. The editor was hired from the class of journalism students.
Each week, the editor selects the best columns,
comments, photos and stories for a free-distribution
print edition. Like the Web site, the print edition
features advertising relevant to young people.
It is circulated in public areas where teens congregate
– music shops, clothing stores, and teen clubs.
One message that was relevant in the research
was that smaller is better for young people. That
is, if the product created is in print, it has
to be small enough to fit into a busy teen's backpack.
So when YourMom launched in print, it was an unusually
small size: 5 inches by 8 inches, and stapled
and trimmed. The small format forces compliance
to the mandate to keep the articles short.
Connecting readers in times of disaster
The breaking news aspect of the Internet
has long intrigued editors who viewed their Web
sites as an opportunity to allow them to compete
with television and radio. Many Florida newspapers,
however, drew new and special insights from their
Internet extensions when an unprecedented number
of hurricanes hit last summer.
The Pensacola News-Journal set up message boards
that allowed readers to give advice to other readers
about where they could find gasoline for their
cars and food for their families. When Hurricane
Ivan hit there, the newspaper published dozens
of photos of streets, buildings and neighborhoods
so that readers could view the destruction. Said
Executive Editor Randy Hammer: “The first and
most important lesson I learned: photojournalism
rules. It may not rule during your typical Monday
to Friday online news cycle. But in a major news
story like a hurricane, where there's an abundance
of pictures that are indeed worth a thousand words,
photojournalism becomes the online marquee. The
Web is more of a visual medium than I previously
realized. It's not TV, and it's not print. It's
something in between.
That sounds as if I'm stating the obvious, but
most online sites have not figured this out. Our
pages primarily feature stories, calendars and
lists that are rerun from the newspaper. Then
we have our multimedia presentations. It was pure
photojournalism, however, that drove our traffic.
More than 80 percent of the traffic -- 8 million
to 12 million page views for a single day during
the first few days -- went to the photo galleries.”
When Hurricane Frances hit, Florida Today in
Cocoa Beach became indispensable through its Web
site. Executive editor Terry Eberle talked about
the lessons learned from their coverage: “Our
key lessons learned included the importance of
the unfiltered connection the Web site provides
to readers. The importance of photo galleries
and importance of breaking news have been long
recognized as key for us. But this was the first
time we really used reader-to-reader communications.
The photo galleries opened up the world to them.
Residents couldn't get out during and after the
storm. The photos let them understand what happened
to their city, county and neighborhood. Most importantly,
the photos allowed snowbirds to see whether their
homes suffered damage. It gave them an unfiltered
look at what they may face on their return.”
Ft. Myers also suffered from Hurricane Frances.
Coverage of the hurricane on the Web helped the
News-Press understand its mission. Executive Kate
Marymount explained: “Ninety percent of our community
was without power for 48 hours and residents were
desperate for information. They needed information.
They didn't (just) want it; they needed it. When
we provided that, it affirmed very, very powerfully
how important we can be to people's lives -- if
we understand what readers need. Lists of where
to get water become more important than columns
that wax on poetically. How did it change our
view of our role? We're here to help. There's
a new clarity to that concept.”
--Michael P. Smith
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