NYT, make me an offer!

One of may favorite acts of the day for the past decade has been to walk outside my front door and retrieve my New York Times, in its bright blue bag, from the front yard.  So it was a huge blow to find out the paper doesn't provide daily home delivery in Lawrence, KS.

For me, not having the Times when I roll out of bed , is much, much worse than not having coffee which is a pretty miserable beverage to live without. I'm just not as smart or interesting if I haven't read the Times before heading to the office. I feel less civilized and certainly less entertained. 

What puzzles me is that the paper is delivered to several newspaper boxes around town. What would it cost the delivery person to bring one to my home? Why wouldn't the paper or the independent contractor involved see if they could make a deal with me that would make it worth their while? 

This is after all a college town and given that the newspaper boxes seem to be empty by 10 a.m., I suspect I'm not the only one who would be willing to pay considerably more if asked.

 

Would netflix model for newspapers?

As an avid hold-in-your-hands newspaper reader, I'd welcome the kind of tiered pricing system for newspapers that Time Warner has unveiled for magazines. http://www.foliomag.com/2008/maghound-com-set-debut-september

Mirroring the Netflix model, magazine readers will be able to purchase a set number of titles for a set fee. Want three titles a month? Pay $3.95. Five? It'll cost you 7.95. And so on with eight or more costing a buck a title . The beauty is that you can change which magazines you order each month, choosing from more than 300 titles in their "network." 

What if newspapers did a version of the same? I know several people like me who get two newspapers delivered each day, and some three. They'd love to pay a flat fee to one company and have the option of every once in a while getting a paper for their hometown or the place they plan to visit.

It's probably not a practical idea but in a world where people want more choice, the limits to such seem glaring.

 

 

Denying the Problem Won't Solve It

Howard Weaver, McClatchy's vice president of news, says in his own blog (http://editor.blogspot.com/2008/06/time-is-fire-in-which-we-burn.html) the problem with his company's newspapers is not with journalism, it's with revenues. He said the audience for McClatchy newspapers and digital sites has gone up. It's cash flow that's gone down.

I like Weaver's optimism and the strength of his conviction that McClatchy can reinvent itself to be a handsomely profitable newspaper company. I hope he's right (I still own stock from my ME days in Minneapolis which at the time McClatchy owned.) But I don't agree there isn't a problem with journalism at his and other newspapers, right now. You simply can't remove dozens of staff members from a newsroom and do the same level of work. Ask any editor.

That's why sites like MinnPost, the Chitown Daily News and dozens of others journalism sites are taking root and gaining eyeballs. They're filling gaps, offering local news and analysis the local daily newspaper isn't. That's good news if citizens are served, especially while newspapers figure out what businesses their in.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that in the end, when it comes to public service coverage, newspapers are at least as fervently in the game as they've been in the past. But understand that there has been an erosion and that unless we get that, the problem with journalism will grow even bigger.

Sports on the front page? Naturally

My friend and former colleague Tim Wheatley, sports editor at the Baltimore Sun, is at APSE's annual convention in Minneapolis this week. He asked me for some tips for sport editors on how to develop stories for the front page. Here's my advice:

--Capitalize on the fact that sports provide social connectedness and community identity which make them natural fodder for front page stories. This is especially true at big moments involving both teams and individual athletes when even fair weather fans are paying attention. In general use those big moments to capitalize on your readers’ interest in the big game, signing, ruling, announcement. Use the news peg to tell them something they don’t already know and can’t find (at least as well) elsewhere.

--People seem to prefer personality stories over issue stories. So write about people even when you’re writing about an issue. In indiana, Bobby Knight is a perennial front page possibility. So are Peyton Manning and Danica Patrick. It’s probably an easy bet that the average American knows more about Tiger Woods than the chief justice of the United States. So when you can, combine the draw of personality with the importance of an issue. Big Brown’s failed quest for the triple crown made us care about whether steroids should be banned in horse racing. Greg Oden offered the opportunity to write about the value of a college degree versus big money in the NBA. Hank Aaron called up the lingering question of racism in America...Use the stars at all levels of sport to evoke a meaningful discussion.

--Find more stories at the intersection of beats. There’s Sports and Business and Sports and Entertainment, of course. But what about sports and education, sports and fashion, sports and philanthropy, sports and religion? Surely if you put reporters from these beats in the same room, they’d come up with at least one front page story idea. The trick is to get the sports beat reporter to ask the non sports reporter to lunch with the mission of coming up with one good story idea and a plan for getting it done.

--Use blogs and other social networks to find out what people are talking about beyond the mainstream media. What if your preps reporter created a list serve with 20 high school coaches so the coaches could talk to each other about things they’re interested in. Your reporter could monitor the site for ideas and also use the coaches as a sounding board. Beyond your own site, are there Sports blogs in your community you should be aware of, linking to, making use of?

--Important, interesting, original, unusual, agonizing, unfair, in-depth, humorous, touching...Home in on what you think would make the story special to the widest number of readers and make sure it’s well-reported and written with an active voice, with description, good quotes, context and perspective. And don’t let anyone tell you or your reporters that doing so is not as hard as rocket science.

When genes aren't enough

When Jay Leno asks people on the street simple questions about history or famous figures, it seems funny that citizens can't name the chief justice of the Supreme Court or even the first president of the United States. But it's that sick-to-the-stomach-funny, the kind you get when you feel things are essentially going to pot.
But such ignorance doesn't have to be the norm. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor hit the nail on the head in a speech this month when she said the "unintended effect" of the No Child Left Behind Act is that it has squeezed out civic education. She's supporting a program called Our Courts, an interactive educational game for students that focuses on freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
"Knowledge about our government is not handed down through the gene pool. Every generation has to learn it and we have work to do," she said.
The news media --old and new--can play a huge role in supporting civic education by building into promotional literature the value of a free press. What if every time you turned on the TV, saw a newspaper mast head or a political blog site , there was a slogan that said: "Democracy and a free press go hand in hand."
When, as O'Connor said, more people know the names of the judges on American Idol than on the Supreme Court, it's time to starting singing more loudly about the First Amendment.

You'll hear from me, in the morning

As someone who's learned by trial and lots of error, I was happy to read recently that web developers are working on more advanced content systems to help us sort and manage email. Eventually, smart systems will be able to tell who the sender is and automatically code or route email to particular files.
Today, some reporters and editors I know mark their incoming emails by color to be able to scan and determine who they want to read or respond to first.
Those systems are helpful but if you don't want emails to overtake your day, here's the best tip I ever received on handling email: spend the first hour of your workday day on "comunications." That includes responding to messages, writing letters or other missives. Do it religiously and let people know that's your system. That way they know you'll respond but not immediately. And they'll know if reaching you is realy important to call you, or in the case of co-workers, come to your office or desk. Of course, you may want to react differently if it's your boss who sent you the message.

How many bytes to make a bronze?

How many gigabytes do you use? That's what customers of Sunflower Broadband in Lawrence, KS are asked when signing up for high-speed cable.

Gold customers use the internet the most, bronze the least. So-called average users like my partner and me are apparently "silver," meaning we don't use more than 12 gigabytes of bandwidth a month. If we do use more, we'll have to pony up $2 more per gigabyte. This week, Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner said they're all considering such tiered pricing.

Now really, do you know how many gigabytes you use? 4, 12, 100? To me this is like knowing how many liters of Diet Coke I drink a month. Heck, I'm still getting used to the idea that I yak on the phone 700 minutes a month.

If phone and cable companies can charge by usage level, why can't newspapers? If the studies are right, the average newspaper reader spends 20-30 minutes a day with their paper. Let's call them "silver" readers. Bronze would then be 0-20 minutes and gold would be 30 to 50 minutes. Read over the allotted minimum and you pay extra. Ala your cable modem, the newspaper will even let you rent your reading lamp.

I'm sure there's a sound economic model in this, perhaps even the solution the newspaper industry is looking for. But sorry, I can't work the numbers. i'm running out of bandwidth.

twitter posses and other tools

The power of “we” is what the civic media movement is all about, I learned this week. It’s about empowering citizens to share news and information, much of it in an unmediated fashion.
The idea is that the more information people have access to the more they will have the capacity to act on their own behalf. That ,in turn, can help strengthen community bonds and ideally further Democracy.

Here are three of my takeaways from this week’s Future of Civic Media conference at MIT that I’ll be talking about with my students when I begin teaching at KU in August.

• “Technology was what was invented after you were born.” That line by an MIT professor drew a good laugh and reinforced how valuable it is to take the time to learn about tools and websites that can help you in your work. In three days at MIT, I learned about dozens of new websites such as manyeyes.org, icu.com and selectricty.org and about changes in computers and mobile devices that are making it easier to record and transmit sounds and images.

• Twitter Posses and other social networks can be great for getting feedback. How good is your story idea? Bounce it off your own network of sources, friends, other students to see if they like your idea and can help make it better. Share a first draft for their reaction. Ask them to help you find other people to interview. One fellow conferee called this "digital rolodex" 3.0.

• In this age of Do It Yourself publishing, when the tools allow almost anyone to create content, professional journalists who have the experience and skills to investigate deeply and report thoroughly are vital. We need less crap and more news and information of consequence. Learn what it takes to know the difference between good journalism and all the other stuff. The other stuff can be fine and fun to have but the journalism is the protein the country needs to thrive.

One percent can make a difference

NYU Media professor Jay Rosen, speaking on a panel at “The Future of Civic Media “ conference at MIT this week, said his big learning from a recent project he spearheaded is that just one percent of citizens are willing to serve as citizen journalists obtaining and pouring through documents, reporting on meetings, interviewing sources and/or asking questions and then sharing what they find.
Rosen, well known as a big thinker and citizen journalism advocate, said with shrinking newsrooms, and for the good of Democracy, the need for amateur journalists is closer to 10 percent, portending a huge challenge for the news industry to organize and cultivate citizen journalists who work like professionals.
But even the one percent figure sounds good to me right now. At many newspapers, beats and areas of town that used to be covered are going dark, not because they’re not considered important but because editors just can't fund them.
So what if a newspaper in a community of 100,000 people organized and provided basic journalism training to one percent of citizens in its market? That would mean a hundred more people with the desire and at least some ability to provide information to the rest of the community.
So why isn’t that happening?
I suspect there are several answers, from just plain old time and money issues to concerns that the information just won’t be up to standards, requiring heavy editing and involvement from already harried front-line editors. Plus in my experience as a newsroom leader, it would need to be someone's full-time job to recruit the citizens, get them trained and then manage their efforts.
Still, it seems like an idea worth trying even on a small scale, perhaps in one county served by a zoned edition of a metro newspaper or at a small daily, with active websites.

Don't eat the M&Ms

Here's one I can't help passing along. It's both funny and painful and the kind of thing that can happen to anyone on a story.
It comes to me from an editor at the Indianapolis Star:

Reporter Bobby King was interviewing the wife of a U.S. soldier in Iraq at the couple's home in Indianapolis. Sometime during the interview, the wife left Bobby alone in the living room where two champagne flutes filled with M&Ms were on the coffee table. Bobby, assuming the candies were there for the taking, popped two of them in his mouth. The woman came back into the room where they talked a little longer. Then she tells him when her husband deployed, she filled both champagne flutes with the exact number of M&Ms for each day he'll be gone and that she eats two per day. When the candies are gone, her husband will be home.