Philip Meyer on digital journalism

Philip Meyer -- the guru of precision journalism -- gave a talk in October to an Austrian conference that I just got around to reading. I was derelict in my duty. Not only should I have read it last fall, I should have made it required reading for my classes. It's published by Nieman Reports, and you should read it.

Meyer links two major strands of journalism, the precision journalism field in which he was so important and narrative journalism, the field of Gay Talese and Truman Capote and Mike Royko and Jim Stingl. And, I would add, so many digital storytellers today.

Journalism feeds on facts, and the Internet culture makes facts available to us in such a stream that the need for journalism -- for mediation -- is more important than ever. As Meyer said, "Instead of replacing journalism, the Internet is creating a new market need: for synthesis and interpretation of the ever-increasing stream of facts."

We need structure to see “the truth about the facts,” as he quoted from the 1947 report of the Commission on Freedom of the Press led by Robert M. Hutchins.

One takeaway from the talk: "Precision journalism borrowed the tools of science. Narrative journalism was based on art. In their early stages, these two approaches seemed to be in conflict. My argument today is that, in the 21st century, we should consider the possibility that we need both." He couldn't be more correct.

The Internet gives us the capability of offering any story in any fashion. The facts are there, but we sometimes lose track of the need for organization, context, telling a story. What the two strands of journalism have in common is recognition that raw data require structure to be made coherent.

There's more, much more, but this single point makes the case for journalism and journalism education.

A thoughtful look at paywalls

And for a balanced and thoughtful look at paywalls, look no farther than Ken Doctor's essay on the Nieman site.

He takes on the myths about what he says really is charging for digital access, which is a more inclusive term than paywall, which is only one form of charging. His conclusions:

Paywalls will cost digital advertising. Not happened yet.

Paywalls will reduce churn, the number of readers leaving print. It might be working, at least for Sunday sales.

Paywalls will bring in new money. Seems to be happening.

Speaking of the New York Times . . .

. . . a financial institution, Barklays Capital, says the Times' paywall could bring in $100 million a year, and has a number of other good attributes, including lower subscriber churn. I believe the latter is one of the key reasons for newspaper paywalls -- protecting print subscriber bases. Will it be enough? Who knows? But doing nothing definitely doesn't work.

What did I learn here?

My first thought when I saw a story was on Huffington Post about New York Times editor Jill Abrahamson speaking at the South by Southwest conference was that this should be good. Old media talking directly to new media. The Time's new editor connecting with a much-needed audience. Then I read the story. Frankly, it didn't tell me much.

I thought, she did have to actually say something, right? So I read another story, this was on the Poynter site. Again, it didn't tell me much, but did say I could learn more on Twitter using the hashtag #FutureNYT.

I read three or four more stories, and realised something I've long known -- people often don't really say anything at these conferences. Oh, there are always a few facts, but nothing substantive -- despite the thousands of cites Abrahamson's appearance garnered.

Is Twitter financially sound?

Twitter is getting a good press lately with Bloomberg Businessweek declaring the company has turned its financial world around. Gawker, however, offers a different story -- one of a company that is losing far more money than it makes, and doesn't seem close to turning it around.

Why do we care? If a company doesn't make make money, it merges with one who does or goes out of business. Twitter's huge user base indicates that we like it. So, presumably, we don't want it to go away. It'll be worth watching for those who look at Twitter as a means of publishing news.

Higher resolution iPad offers a file size challenge

With every good thing that comes along in the digital world, it seems there is an equal bad thing. The new iPad offers great resolution -- which poses a major problem for digital publishers. Great resolution = great file size.

Minonline.com asks "Will the new iPad put display mags on a crash diet?" in its headline. The story explores the issue of resolution and file size (thus download time and storage space on your tablet). Some publishers are embracing the challenge. Others seem a little more reserved.

It's going to be interesting to watch what happens. My hope is that I'll be watching more than that stupid downloading icon.

Rush Limbaugh and new media

Distasteful as it is to get into the mess created by Rush Limbaugh's slanderous attack on a college student (granting that Limbaugh's not a journalist but there are some basic human ethics involved), it's instructive to follow the role being played by social media in putting pressure on advertisers. Several stories go into detail about it. Bloomberg here; Business Week here; ranther.com here.

The third link listed may be the most interesting. It's a crowdsourced listing of nothing but messages, in this case under the title "Why Limbaugh Lost the Slut War." The first message is instructive. Containing the errors and inaccurate information we've unfortunately come to expect from such messages and reflecting a conservative bias, it still offers the most cogent argument about Limbaugh's error in a message from "Freedomfighter: "Limbaugh's message control depended on a mass media monopoly that no longer exists. In the bad old days Rush, by carefully screening callers, cutting off anyone who went off message, and being under the radar of his critics who rarely listened to his program (Al Franken's otherwise tedious book on Rush opens hilariously with Franken barely able to endure Rush's long winded self promotion of his stupid neckties) could run his show as he pleased with very little pushback. Only when he ventured into a medium like television, where he wasn't as skilled or where he wasn't the producer (Monday Night Football) did he suffer major humiliations." It cuts to the heart of Limbaugh's current problem: He can't control the message in new media and social media.

I suspect this will become another good case study of media and message.

Alternative media looks to the past for the future

In yet another case of where traditional journalism is being recreated in a new media world, the Association of Alternate Newsmedia, which you've probably never heard of, is creating a kind of exchange papers/early Associated Press-style system of sharing content. It has the promise of improving content among alternative media while spreading their messages inexpensively.

Early newspapers subsisted on exchanging their content, often reprinted stories from other papers made up the bulk of their content, enriching their experience by multiplying efforts of their small staffs. That's exactly what is likely to happen with the new association. It's a good thing because content is king, and this will add content to yet another form of American media.

And, you know, this system worked pretty well in establishing our newspaper history. It may work as well in building a new model of media.

When class discussions spil over into real life

During an interesting class discussion on crowdsourcing today, one of the students asked "But how would we know the story was true?" when talking about non-journalists posting stories. I was thinking of that tonight when I looked at an interesting essay on a website I'd never heard of until finding it tonight in a discussion of Pew Research's new survey that suggests in its headline: "Newspapers; It's not a revenue problem, it's a culture problem."

The essay was by Matthew Ingram of Gigaom.com. Building on the new report, which you should read, Ingram offers some perspective and analysis of the numbers and findings. Frankly, this is what non-traditional and new sites can offer to build our confidence. Well-reasoned analysis is part of that value-added material that journalists can bring to their offerings to bring readers.

Ingram is pushing newspapers to make major changes and the "culture" is that of established news management that is afraid to disrupt its traditional culture. "But for too many newspapers, disrupting their own culture is something that just doesn't come naturally, and But for too many newspapers, disrupting their own culture is something that just doesn't come naturally, and that could literally mean the difference between life and death.

Newspaper glass half-full (or half-empty)

There's a wonderful example of viewing the media glass as half-full or half-empty in the above chart from Mark Perry at the University of Michigan showing newspaper advertising revenues are at the levels of newspapers in the 1950s. A story by Steve Myers on the Poynter site lashes it up with ASNE's newspaper employment numbers showing employment at 1970s' levels.

Glass half empty version: Newspapers are virtually dead since ad revenues are so low, and they're working their staff way too much since newsrooms have 1970s' staff numbers and 1950s' ad revenues.

Glass half full version: There are still lots of newspaper jobs, although much tighter resources due to low ad revenues. Newspapers are leaner, more-efficient operations with much more flexibility than ever before -- and there are all sorts of new opportunities. Myers reports that circulation revenues are up due to higher prices, while digital revenues are also way up.

I hate Firefox now

Rhetorical question (but maybe all the intrusive spyware will catch it and pass it on to Mozilla management), but does anyone actually like the new Firefox design? I spend hours clicking the ALT button so the stupid browser will display the very important tabs that are hidden in normal view. And the window tabs at the top of the page are too small and hard to read.

Since I won't use Internet Explorer, I'm shifting everything to Safari, which I also don't like, but I dislike is less than I dislike the new Firefox.

OK, I feel better now.

Do paywalls work out?

Excellent story by Russell Adams in the Wall Street Journal asks whether paywalls are successful. He points out that most newspapers aren't showing huge numbers of new digital subscribers, but correctly observes that isn't the point. Retaining print readers is.

Adams says, "Executives say these efforts are less about adding digital subscribers than they are about eliminating readers' incentive to ditch their print subscription for free alternatives online." He then points to cable TV that are opening online operations to paid cable subscribers.

It's an excellent refuting of the argument that low numbers of digital-only subscriptions indicates that they're a failure. It is convergence, folks.