Oct

31

Insert User-Generated Headline Here (When Big News Goes Small)

Written by S. Beaumont and filed under Editorial 

The N&O has relaunched their triangle.com site. You can read their launch message here.

I hardly know where to take this post, as it’s one that I’ve been trying to write since we launched RFP–a post that addresses the changing landscape of news dissemination, the battle for print pubs to grab their piece of the consumer-powered pie and how this is starting to shake out in our neck of the woods.

I most definitely don’t have the strength to push out all of these thoughts now as I struggle to keep my eyes open, so I’ll throw some observations out there and hopefully entice some input from our readers. I’d much rather discuss this in a conversation setting, as it generally causes you to consider your words much more closely and is much easier than staring at a blank canvas and trying to paint a masterpiece.

* The Independent recently ran an story titled “Stop the presses, The future of the newspaper—without the paper.” I’d highly recommend giving it a read if you’re at all interested in this topic. Regardless of your stance, the article is so full of notable pull-out quotes that to choose only a few would be an injustice–like hiding the fine print on your no-interest mortgage only to–wait, that’s a different post.

* WRAL has made their own strides into the consumer-driven arena with the inclusion of GOLO. What’s most interesting about this is that unlike the N&O, they’ve integrated this into their operations versus separating it–something that seems to work well. You can comment on a news story, but the comments are offered in such a way that they could also be easily ignored. By doing this, the comments don’t become a part of the story unless you actively choose to let them. They also allow you to create a blog, upload an avatar, share your photos–the usual, but expected social site functionality. To-date, they state a membership of over 3200 members and seem to have a pretty active community. I don’t generally get much out of the content from the user-created blogs, but I enjoy reading the comments on some of the more controversial stories. They are generally littered with an expected mix of educated insight and the occasional dumb-ass comment. Both of these add value in their own way.

As a slight aside, perhaps the best or most entertaining part of this and many other attempts to “connect with your readers” are the staff posts and interaction. They just reek of some guy (or girl) with a suit on trying to pretend like they get it much more than they actually do. I can just envision the meeting where the staff is sitting around a conference table and word “comes down from corporate” that, “We’re falling behind–we need to get with the times and take this operation 2.0!” (Insert your own voice-over here. Mine sounds like when a black comedian tries to do a white guys voice.) Everyone looks very timid and scared, instantly scanning job options in their head and convincing themselves that they’ll be better off somewhere else anyway. “I’ve always wanted to try my hand at ____.” Then, everyone tries at all costs to avoid eye contact with the boss as he/she looks for their victims–the ones given the daunting task of seeing this thing off the ground. Everyone instantly yearns for the help of their teenage kids. Kids who’ve considered listing TXTSPK as a second language on their college applications and consider etiquette not using all caps in an email unless you’re trying to yell at someone. Inevitably, the short man on the office totem pole is chosen–somebody I like to think of resembling B.J. Novak from The Office–and they set forth to walk the plank. If you’re not following me here, perhaps an example would serve better.

Returning from that daydream (at this point I’m squinting to see the screen clearly), there are so many other relevant components of this story and examples all around us (blogs for one) that there is no way I can do this post justice right now. That said, I’ll turn it over to you at this point as an unfinished product. Take it for what you will and hopefully I’ll be able to revisit it soon.

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2 Responses to “Insert User-Generated Headline Here (When Big News Goes Small)”

  1. John Morris on November 1st, 2007 9:33 pm

    I read this article in the indy a week or so ago, and I had to force myself to sit through all of it. I had planned to start my own blog of personal thoughts and commentary on new media and the future, the exact subject of this particular article.
    My teenage years were spent trolling discussion lists on Bulletin Board Systems and talking about current events with others in my area. I remember thinking, “Why would we want to watch some person reading cue cards into a video camera?” I had envisioned that by now (this prediction was made about 12 years ago) the 6 o’clock news would be replaced by videoconferenced debates and news clips from video cameras posted on every street corner. It hasn’t reached that stage yet but I’m willing to guess it isn’t far away.

    But back to the original article, I feel very little sympathy for journalists of the traditional variety any more. The fact that the author quoted notorious douchebag extradanaire Andrew Keen gives me little incentive to take his words seriously. How any sane person can criticize Wikipedia is beyond me. How any self-respecting journalist can quote such a lunatic and hold them in any sort of esteem also gives you an idea as to how deluded they are. This tired and old argument of new technologies being the “death of the expert” is one that has progressed since the invention of the printing press centuries ago.

    The lesson here is that when you refuse to adapt to change you wither on the vine and you rightly deserve to. People aren’t flocking to blogs because they are out there and it is a new technology, people flock to blogs because they fill a need. Readers don’t care that you got a master’s degree in journalism. It may arguably make you a more capable journalist, but that isn’t what matters to consumers of the printed or electronic word. What matters is that you disseminate information that they are interested in, in a way that they enjoy digesting. Let’s face it, for better or worse we have shorter attention spans. I’d rather read the guts of a multiple-paragraphed article than a multiple page rant on why things were better “in the old days”.

    The word “dinosaur” is used once in the article, used as a metaphor for being oldschool. I’d like to posit that the phrase dinosaur has a much deeper meaning–death at the resistance of change.

    I mean no harm or disrespect to the Indy, its staff, or any other print media organization. It just bothers me when they have a sour attitude that “amateurs” are getting in and beating them at their own game.

    FWIW, although exceedingly bland, I prefer the N&O’s news to WRAL’s sensational tabloid-like press. I do think the N&O are making a major mistake in trying to maintain such a distance of the N&O and triangle.com. WRAL is leaps and bounds ahead of them simply because they are integrating the mediums and will therefore reach a much wider audience more transparently.

    I hope for the N&O’s sake they quickly realize the error in this decision and integrate the community/non-staff portions of triangle.com and newsobserver.com. Trying to maintain this dichotomy just doesn’t seem like it will foster growth of either one.

  2. S. Beaumont on November 6th, 2007 12:06 am

    Great comments. Thanks for putting those thoughts together, John. I’m still not sure if I’m in any better of a mindset to capture my own thoughts in their entirety, but I certainly took a lot from reading yours.

    I certainly agree with you on many points. One being the lesson learned when not adapting to change. A line of thinking that revolves around, “This is how it was, therefore it’s wrong when it’s not that way anymore,” combined with the author’s words regarding his Master’s degree education and how “…to claim that I can be replaced by anyone with an Apple and an attitude is inherently insulting, is it not?” really makes me shake my head.

    How archaic is it to think that anyone is above having to modify their way of thinking, methods and approach - regardless of your industry. When it comes to my own humble experiences, change seems to be the only constant in any job I’ve ever encountered. Perhaps this is going off-topic, but what about the measure of your “worth” revolving around the value that you provide? Having a degree, or 10, is great — but isn’t it always going to come down to what you do with it/them that really matters? As alluded to in the Indy article and in your comments, blogs fill a need and therefore provide value. I don’t for a minute claim that because I write for RFP that I’m a writer in the sense of an accomplished journalist, but if someone decides that I provide value, and therefore chooses to read what I’ve written, than I am most certainly a writer of sorts and could in theory replace someone or something who no longer is providing a product that consumers demand. I realize that’s an extreme comparison when specifically translated, but when played out into a comparison of old-school journalism vs. a changing media landscape, I think that it’s certainly valid.

    On a related but somewhat separate thought, I hate the word blog. I think that it has become a polluted term and that to discuss it without clarification is similar to paddling upstream with a set of chopsticks — you’re just not going to get that far. In my experience, blogs have become synonymous with their content, not with the real value they provide - which is a method of dissemination. At their foundation, blogs are a publishing platform. They can be a journal of your thoughts, but they could just as easily be the code backbone of a “reputable” news source. I use the word blog reluctantly to describe this site in our somewhat crappy tagline: “Part Blog, Part Newspaper, Part Directory — All Raleigh, North Carolina.” I think that it helps people to understand what the site is about, but I hopefully refrain in most cases from dolling on about my personal life, such as I might in a diary or a “web log” as the word originated. I also use the word newspaper reluctantly and for the same reasons. When explaining to people why I’d want to start a website such as RFP, I got a lot of feedback such as: “How are you going to compete with the N&O?” On the surface that question seems absurd - of course I can’t compete with the N&O and their army of writers, their hefty financial backing, their years of experience and no doubt their numerous Master’s degrees in Journalism. But digging a little deeper, why couldn’t anybody recognize a void and attempt to create a solution to fill it? Again, I’m not trying to relate these examples on a one-to-one playing field — that is, I’m not trying to say that a 15-minute-a-day website is a suitable replacement for the mainstream news - but if the mainstream news isn’t evolving to provide content that the people want to consume then why couldn’t (and shouldn’t) they lose a share of their readership to someone who can address their needs? The fact is that they are. And it’s not one website, or even a large group of websites that are attacking their bottom lines, it’s a change in culture. A change in the way people think, they way they interact with their surroundings, their expectations of a user-experience and also a sense of empowerment as technology offers them tools that they haven’t had access to in the past.

    That’s all I got for now…I’m all blogged out and need to check Phoenix Online’s schedule of journalism classes for next semester.

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