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Gene Foreman worth listening to on journalism ethics. My experience taught me that it's most critical to talk before acting.
Gene Foreman is one of the good guys. A seasoned journalist worth listening to. He's got a new book, The Ethical Journalist: Making Responsible Decisions in the Pursuit of News (Wiley-Blackwell, $59.95), described in a Philadelphia Inquirer article as "a practical guide to ethics for novice newsies and veterans alike - and for anyone interested in the media."
I agree that case studies are a great way to go in training journalists. But the most important thing to teach may be the value of talking about our work, not just rushing headlong into things. That especially applies to ethical questions. It's one thing to recognize an ethical question; of course, it's absolutely critical. But it's another to know how to talk about such decisions. It's so important to have an environment where people feel comfortable challenging the consensus view in an organization or the views of the leaders of an organization. I hated it when I was an editor and learned we hadn't discussed an ethical issue before taking action. If we had had a good discussion without me, even if I didn't agree with the result, at least I knew that we had followed a process for approaching our work. (I also came to believe that it was very important that editors share their thinking with the public about the tough decisions they made. That's a benefit of an editor's blog. It allows journalists to talk about their work in real time.) Journalists are generally by nature very independent. But when it comes to ethics, they're not just acting for themselves. They're acting as representatives of an organization. So if they're not talking about these things, they could get themselves and their employer in trouble. Yet it's not as easy as it might seem to get people talking.
Posted by John Temple at 12:28 PM 212 comments:
Labels: Case study, Editing, Ethics, Gene Foreman, Journalist, Mass media, media, Philadelphia Inquirer
Tim McGuire right about the need to rally behind the Medill Innocence Project and against Cook County prosecutors
Tim McGuire, former editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, has written a call to arms over the decision by Cook County prosecutors to go after the Medill Innocence Project. His words are definitely worth reading. I'm with him. This is a case where the "mainstream media" needs to stand behind the students at Northwestern and their professor, David Protess, whom I was privileged to get to know when I was a graduate student there in the early '80s.
Posted by John Temple at 7:54 AM 144 comments:
Labels: Cook County prosecutors, David Protess, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, Tim McGuire
Chicago News Cooperative an encouraging development, but raises questions
I'm excited to see the flurry of initiatives on the local news front, especially the latest news from Chicago.
Who knows how the Chicago News Cooperative will turn out, but it's great to see this kind of experimentation.
On the other hand, such efforts raise some questions for me:
Why don't existing newspapers go into partnership with The New York Times the way these start-ups are doing? Sure, they might worry about losing circulation to the Times, but couldn't the future look like some form of amalgam news product, in print and online?
Do we really want non-profits benefiting one for profit newspaper, in this case The Times, instead of making its material available for all comers? (Disclosure: I'm on the advisory board of the Texas Tribune, which will do the latter.) Sure, the Times is going to pay for the content it receives, but will it continue the relationship if the print material isn't exclusive. Essentially, the Times is being subsidized because the cooperative will be able to operate at a lower cost because of its non profit status.
I'm delighted to see the multi platform approach of the Chicago effort, but doesn't it seem like visuals - photo in particular - are being given short shrift in these efforts? Photo is such a central part of reflecting a community and involving a community.
Why aren't we seeing the same kind of creativity on the business side? Have people given up on the prospect of making local news/information efforts profitable? I hope not. I believe it would be better if the experimentation extended to how to make money, something beyond charitable contributions, etc.
I'm sure there are other questions, but these are some of mine. I'd be interested in hearing what others think.
Labels: Chicago News Cooperative, newspapers, Texas Tribune, The New York Times
Did the Internet kill the Rocky Mountain News? And, if it did, what can we learn from its death?
One of the perils of being the last editor of a deceased publication is that people want your help understanding why a 150-year-old civic institution could die. It's not always pleasant sifting around in the ashes. But the loss of the Rocky Mountain News has also given me a platform to talk to a larger audience about journalism issues that I think are important.
This is the talk I gave at Webcom 2009 in Montreal on Oct. 22, 2009. I hope the talk reflects a more refined and perhaps expansive view than an earlier presentation I gave at the UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit at Google in Silicon Valley.
Here's a link to a Quicktime movie of the presentation on Vimeo. There you can see all the keynote slides I used and hear me reading my remarks. You can also find the slides separately on Slideshare.com. The text is below.
While the talk contains the same lessons as my speech to Google, this version contains more and broader perspective on why the Rocky couldn't survive in the Internet era. It attempts to place what happened in a larger context.
Did the Internet kill the Rocky Mountain News?
And, if it did, what can we learn from its death?
Montreal, Oct. 22, 2009
"Bonjour. C'est un honneur d'etre ici avec vous aujourd'hui. Je suis desole que je ne pourrai pas donner cette presentation en Francais."
The title of my talk is, "Did the Internet kill the Rocky Mountain News? And, if it did, what can we learn from its death?" To give the twitter answer, for those of you who want to get to the bottom line right away, here's my talk in 140 characters:
"YES and no. Internet the fundamental cause of death. Economic collapse the final blow. Denver could not support two general interest papers."
The lessons from the Rocky's death will take a little longer to explain, and will be the focus of my presentation.
As we're at the time of year when Halloween is approaching, perhaps a ghost analogy for my appearance today would be appropriate. I'd ask you to think of me as sort of like the ghost of Marley in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I'm here from the Other Side to remind you about some principles I think are worth holding fast to in your professional life, principles I've had time to distill after the death of a publication with which I was so closely identified.
In the end, this talk isn't about the death of a newspaper or how the Internet killed it. It's about life, about business lessons for the Internet era. I come to you not as someone focused on the past, but as someone who's looking to the future, someone who believes there's never been a more exciting time to be a journalist. My hope is that our time together will give you perspective that will help you as you build the future, and not just at newspapers. While this will be a newspaper-centric talk, because that's the core of my experience, I believe you'll find that the lessons I've learned apply broadly across radio, TV, magazines and other media, too.
Before I subject the past to scrutiny, you need to know I don't exempt myself from criticism for what happened. I was the top editorial person for the Rocky's final 11 years and part of the business leadership team. I bear my own share of responsibility. I also must tell you that it's a lot easier when looking back to see things that seem obvious to us today, but were a lot more difficult to see when we were in the thick of the fight, and most of the revenue growth and almost the total revenue pie came from the main print product.
I think it's important to establish a common understanding of what we're going to talk about. So let me start with a brief history. The Rocky Mountain News was Colorado's oldest newspaper, founded in 1859 when Denver was little more than a hamlet of log cabins. The paper went on to cover the news in three centuries, from the Civil War to the War on Terror. It became so much a part of the fabric of Colorado that many readers called it "My Rocky," a term of endearment rare for any newspaper. It was owned for more than 80 years by a deep-pocketed company, E.W. Scripps, that still today is controlled by the founding family.
Scripps started as a newspaper company, but navigated through the advent of radio, TV and cable - starting successful new media businesses each time. In the '90s, after going public, Scripps innovated with its free cash flow and hit a home run building lifestyle cable networks, including HGTV and the Food Network, now worth roughly $6 billion.
So some pretty smart people were at the top of the company that owned the Rocky Mountain News. Yet none of that was enough for the Rocky to survive in the Internet era. The Rocky published its final edition on Feb. 27 of this year, the first major paper to shut its doors after the economic crash of the fall of 2008.
On the day the closure was announced, Scripps CEO Rich Boehne told the staff assembled in the newsroom:
"You are the model of what a great newspaper should be. It's a tragedy for the industry that you disappear." He was talking to a staff that since 2000 had won four Pulitzer Prizes, a total topped by just six other newspapers in the same period. And the staff knew that from a circulation standpoint, when the Denver papers competed for readers head to head on weekdays, the Rocky came out on top.
So, why did the Rocky disappear? Looking back now on that difficult day, the word that stands out in Boehne's statement is "newspaper."
As one former Scripps executive told me in talking about what has happened to the newspaper industry, "We had all the advantages and let it slip away. We couldn't give up the idea that we were newspaper companies."
The first lesson I hope people who care about the future of local news take from the Rocky's experience is this: Being a "great newspaper" isn't enough in the Internet era. You have to know what business you're in. We thought we were in the newspaper business. We were right and at the same time deeply mistaken.
At a newspaper, people largely think about tomorrow. In the Web era, you need to think of now and forever. Thinking about tomorrow isn't enough anymore. Consumers today want services when, where and how they want them, and they want to be able to participate, not just receive. That means that thinking like a newspaper is not enough.
It's understandable that we thought we were in the newspaper business. In the 1990s, Denver was the site of what was sometimes called America's last great newspaper war. The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News had competed for 100 years and each saw the grand prize close at hand. Each wanted to become the only newspaper in town - something we thought of as "owning the Denver market." We thought winning would guarantee a stable and profitable future. We misunderstood the competitive landscape.
The problem was we were fighting the last war. We didn't understand what was happening to the playing field. Media companies used to think they were in control. That they could "own" a market. What we didn't take into account is that in this new era, consumers were going to be in control. This reversal is the product of the Internet revolution and one of the reasons I believe it's true that the Internet, and the change it represents, is the single biggest reason the Rocky Mountain News can be no more.
I believe that if we had spent more time trying to build the depth of our connection with the community using online tools from the very start, the fate of the Rocky might have been different. Which is why I think lesson #2 is so important. You must know your competition. Of course our competition was another newspaper. But that was the obvious competition. Much bigger competition - for people's attention - was occurring elsewhere. We needed to experiment more, and yes, fail more, too. If we had, perhaps we would have been better able to build a range of publications, in print and online, that would have served our more diverse and demanding audience.
Of course, it's important to note that the Internet revolution - this is the first Web page - parallels other major changes in our society that also impacted the Rocky's fate. One is demographic. As a society, we are far more diverse today. While at one time a single general interest publication might have been able to connect with a huge audience, that is much more difficult in an era of fragmentation, not just media fragmentation, but societal fragmentation. It's also important to note that the decline of the daily newspaper also reflects that more and more people are questioning the value of the basic institutional building blocks of our society. It's not just newspapers or media that are looked upon skeptically by the public. The distrust extends to the courts, to Congress or parliament, and other institutions.
Why then do I say the Web killed the Rocky? Because the paper was the victim of a wave that kept building until it felt like we were being swept away by a tidal wave. It wasn't a wave of technology alone; it was a wave of shifting attention, away from old media to new tools that gave people more pleasure, more power and more insight. Consider...The Web only went public in 1992, not 20 years ago. By 1999, just seven years later, more than half of Americans used it on a regular basis. In 2000, Craigslist started expanding to other cities from its San Francisco base, landing in Denver the next year. In 2001 Wikipedia went live. The next year it was Google News' turn. In 2003, iTunes opened its online doors. Skype and Myspace launched the same year. 2004 gave us Yelp. 2005 YouTube and Facebook. 2006 Twitter. 2007 the iPhone. Fifteen years after that totally simple first Web page I showed you in the previous slide, we arrived at the iPhone. Talk about fast. Talk about a wave.
The result of the surge that became a tidal wave is that people have so much media and information coming at them that it's a problem, something Google calls "attention management." People have fast portable tools. Better computers. That means more competition for newspapers. The coffee shop shifted from a place where people read papers to a place where people find wireless connections to work on their laptops. Advertising follows eyeballs and the eyeballs were moving to the Web. So the money did, too.
A good example of this trend comes from my own paper. At staff meetings in 2006, I handed out a survey of media usage at the start of the meetings and gave back the collated results at the end of the meeting. At every meeting, the result was the same: People paid to be newspaper journalists spent more of their time reading news online than they did in print. And when you added in all the other things they did online, the contrast was overwhelming. They were living in a digital world and producing an analog product. A recipe for trouble.
The Rocky's first foray onto the Web came in 1995, the year Netscape, Windows 95 and Amazon all launched. The newsroom partnered with another major newspaper company in a site called Fastball, providing Colorado Rockies stories and data. To give you some perspective, that same year Colorado's leading television station put up a Web site, but all it had was a picture of the station's building, its address and phone number. No links or news at all. At that time, believe it or not, much of the talk about "new media" at many newspapers was about things like AudioText, where users could call in and select different categories of news, and fax on demand.
The Rocky had been burned in the new media world before. In 1990, it made what it considered at the time a major play, launching an electronic service called the A LA CARTE EDITION. The paper sent software to a few thousand users who requested it, many of whom had 300 baud modems.
You can see from this introduction to our first electronic service that we couldn't help thinking of ourselves as a newspaper company right from the start. We wrote that the goal of the new edition, was "ultimately to strengthen and preserve the printed daily newspaper."
The service was shut down after about 9 months, I was told, because "we just couldn't show that it was having any measurable impact on retention of print subscribers and it wasn't producing revenue."
Right from the start, new offerings were measured by what they did for the core product, not on their own merits. A big mistake.
The Rocky's first Web site, this is the home page on the very first day, grew out of the newsroom's night copy desk crew, a few of whom had learned some HTML. It was a bottom up effort. There was no advertising involvement. Under the direction of the senior night editor, a small team built a Web site that went live on March 1, 1996. The Post had put up a site late the previous year so we knew we needed to do it, if only because we couldn't let them have a leg up on us anywhere.
The launch of the site was a perfect example of how the attention of the paper's leadership was on print, not on new possibilities. We were wrestling with a decision to pull back print distribution to 13 counties adjacent to Denver, a money-saving move to match the $5 million in savings we believed the Post had achieved by narrowing its printed page. We cut about 30,000 circulation, or 10% of our total, in one day. The Post kept delivering to all 64 Colorado counties.
On the day before the Rocky opened its doors to the world online, the page 2 column by the editor began: "I have never been much good at saying goodbye. But that is my task today for many loyal readers of the Rocky Mountain News." It wasn't until the fourth paragraph that he introduced the Web site. He wrote: "Nonetheless, some of our key stories, features and photographs will still be available outside our new service area. This will be possible through our two new electronic ventures." It would have been so easy to say something like "I have good news and bad news." But no, the attention was on the subscribers we were losing instead of the new services we were offering.
The message to the newsroom at that time regarding the Web site: "Do not let it interfere with the print edition." And as managing editor, I made sure that we kept our focus on the print competition.
We knew the Web was a place we needed to be. But we didn't have a clear strategy. Mission. Or objective. It was a "complement to the paper," as we said in our initial "About us" page.
Which brings me to Lesson 3: You have to have a strategy and you have to be committed to pursuing it. We perceived the Web site as a newspaper online, as a complement to the paper, not as its own thing. That's not a strategy for success.
Senior management's focus in the 1990s was on keeping the newspaper alive. Again, to be clear, that's understandable, at least to a point. We were fighting for our lives and the money then lay in print. We didn't understand the Web or new technology and didn't have the time to learn much about it. We weren't a consumer-driven company, except that we knew our priority was to get papers on the porch on time in the morning. Otherwise, we feared our subscribers would switch to our competitor.
Without clear objectives, an organization stumbles from one priority to the next. The 4th lesson: You must know your goal. On the print side, we had a clear objective. But our online objective kept changing. Of course again this is somewhat understandable; the online world was also changing rapidly.
Because the Rocky's newsroom was unionized, management felt it had to quickly make a decision about where to house the new service, if it wanted to avoid union rules governing the new enterprise. We moved it out of the newsroom almost right away, and it wouldn't come back until "the war" was over, five years later.
Which brings me to lesson#5. Legacy labor/management relations and organizational structures cannot be allowed to dictate how a new operation works. Keep new ventures free from the rules of the old.
Even without a clear goal or strategy, the Web team - and the company - did go on to do some interesting things.
Scripps partnered with another newspaper company to produce an outdoor recreation site called "Go West," another short-lived effort because costs so exceeded revenues. The Rocky bought an online real estate service. It built web sites for customers. It became an internet service provider.
But the Web leadership kept changing, which meant new marching orders; there was tension between corporate and local leadership about direction on the Web; and staff turnover was heavy. Indicative of the struggle to find a strategy was how the name of the site kept changing. It started as Denver-RMN.com. (A really catchy url.)
This was a typical story page.
You probably noticed that it appears we had little interest in advertising. But we already knew that the classifieds might be an important franchise online.
Then we changed the site's name to InsideDenver.com. We thought the Web was going to be more about what to do than about news. (The story is that Denver.com was available but the $50,000 price tag was considered too steep.)
Finally, we chose to go to our newspaper name, RockyMountainNews.com, despite how unwieldy it was as a url.
We generally saw the web as a few advertising boxes we could sell. We didn't see the value of audience. Scripps bought sophisticated software to run its cable and newspaper Web sites. Although it tried to put the focus on readers, in the end it let technical people develop a culture based on how they wanted technology to work - stable and secure - rather than putting the priority on remaining nimble in a rapidly changing world. We kept trying to build perfect systems, slowing our progress, instead of working iteratively.
And in Denver, we thought we needed to reinvent everything for our market instead of accepting solutions that would work across the company.
What did we discover? That the people running a new business need to be free to do what's best for that business, regardless of the potential impact on the old. That's lesson #6. Why couldn't newspapers have invented something like Yelp? Probably because editors would have gone ballistic over reader reviews with misspelled words and would have felt uneasy with reader contributions being given priority. The Rocky's Web team producing InsideDenver.com used the slogan, "Before you go out, go InsideDenver.com," that could have led in that direction. But the mission was changed because InsideDenver didn't sound like a newspaper and didn't encompass the idea of our all-important classifieds.
A pivotal moment - perhaps the most telling about the paper's approach to the Web - came on the morning of April 20, 1999 when two students opened fire at Columbine High School. The world was watching.
At that time, we had one content producer whose job was essentially to shovel the newspaper onto the Web. The Web team was on the first floor of our building. The newsroom on the third. After news of the shooting broke, the producer came to the newsroom and asked the city editor for any news he could give him. "I'm not giving you anything for the Web site," he remembers being told. "They'll steal it." They, in this case, was The Denver Post. The culture of the newsroom at this point was still to save any possible scoops for the morning paper to keep the Post a day behind us. The Rocky's Web team ended up relying on our TV news partner for its reports. Even with that, the traffic numbers that day weren't matched for two years. Neither the Rocky nor the Post won an Eppy Award for coverage of Columbine. That was taken by the Boulder Daily Camera, which didn't have anywhere near the resources of the two Denver papers to cover the story. But both papers won Pulitzer Prizes for their print coverage.
But on the same day we blew it online, we learned the most important online lesson for a newsroom: It pays to share your content in real time. We decided to give all our best photographs from the high school to the Associated Press as soon as we had them in our computer system. The result, the Rocky pictures you've just seen appeared on front pages around the world the next morning. The staff saw the tangible benefits of sharing in real time. The quality of their work captured the attention of the world and raised the paper's profile. That day was a turning point for how the newsroom worked with the web, although the results wouldn't become fully visible until a few years later.
In 2000, the owners of the Denver papers called a truce. The Rocky was bleeding money and the Post was heading the same direction. So they asked the Justice Department to approve what's known as a joint operating agreement, which allows newspapers to merge business operations while maintaining separate and independent newsrooms.
The agreement, written in 2000 under the direction of two seasoned newspaper executives - William Burleigh and Dean Singleton - didn't even mention the Web. Even though by that time more than 104 million Americans had internet access and spent an average of 4.2 hours a week online, the Web wasn't perceived as central to the success of the new business. It was believed that savings from combining the business operations of the two papers plus the ability to raise advertising rates would produce very healthy returns for both owners. Instead, what happened was that classified revenues dropped by more than $100 million a year from the start of the JOA to the end, and national and display categories tanked, too.
The JOA did offer one significant benefit to our Web efforts. It gave the papers enough economic cushion to make them feel comfortable enough to negotiate new flexible contracts with the Newspaper Guild to move the Web editorial team and programmers back into the newsroom - this time at the very center of the room, not in a dark corner on the 1st floor, a symbolic move to try to indicate the site's importance to our future.
This was critical to the multimedia and database creativity that followed on the Web. And I think it was critical to our growth in traffic, from roughly 600,000 uniques a month in 2001 to 2.2 million a month when the paper was put up for sale.
But again, the focus in Denver when the agreement went into effect in early 2001 and for the next few years was on print. The Web in many ways became even more problematic. The papers had two basically similar Web sites using different content management systems and supported by a third advertising system. Instead of focusing on new media and new ways to serve audiences with niche print, online and mobile products, the owners spent $130 million to upgrade their printing plant (they knew they would achieve savings by doing so) and $100 million to build a new headquarters on a prominent site in downtown Denver. The Web was essentially in limbo for a long time, with the Web leadership on the business side continuing to turn over, making it hard to gain any traction except in the newsroom.
Still, we produced some work of national - even global - caliber such as Final Salute, which won two Pulitzer Prizes.
A related story in our coverage of the war at home was called Wake for an Indian Warrior. The slide show that was part of the story of the first Sioux to die in Iraq had somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 million page views.
Despite the many such successes on newspaper Web sites, it's not clear that the newspaper industry understands the Web today, after all these years. Clearly, it hasn't figured out the business model. And I think it's safe to say that it's only partially figured out how to serve readers online. That's partly because you need to get the right people into an organization, people who can see and seize new opportunities. Which brings me to Lesson #7: If you want to compete in a medium, you have to understand it.
A good example of our lack of understanding of the Web came in 2005 when Denver took its first big leap online under the JOA. This was the same year YouTube went live. Executives in Denver perceived a need for a vehicle to compete with weekly newspapers, which they thought were taking local ad share. In response, the Rocky launched YourHub.com, a network of more than 40 "citizen-journalism" web sites serving the Denver metropolitan area. All content appeared online first. Most came from readers. The best content of the week - again, almost all from readers - was published in 18 weekly zoned print sections. The first site went live that spring. But guess what? Google couldn't find it.
The company that built the site was a key contractor for a major newspaper company and worked for other large companies, but it didn't adequately understand search engine optimization and built the site in such a way that it didn't show up in Google searches, although Yahoo and MSN did find it. We weren't smart enough as a company to know that needed to be a basic requirement of the project and didn't know how to evaluate programming to make sure it was. (I don't have to tell you that if Google doesn't find a site, its opportunities are very limited.) Ultimately, it was Scripps employees at Shopzilla who studied the architecture of the site and advised us how to rebuild it so it would show up in Google search rankings. See what I mean about the importance of having people who understand the medium they're working in?
Another example from that effort. Craigslist had come to Denver four years earlier, but we still couldn't get the classified advertising leadership to agree to compete with Craigslist by offering free classifieds on these community sites, even private party under a certain dollar amount. The argument went on for almost a year, a year we sent the message to users that we didn't understand how they wanted to use the web or that advertising content was valuable to them.
One of the things that was new to newspaper people on the Web was the ability to track users in real time. For the first time, we could actually understand what our readers were doing. My lesson from that, the 8th in my list, is that any online operation needs to "Measure, measure, measure." While newspaper companies had experts managing circulation accounts to make sure they met the requirements of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, they were less committed to an intense focus on web data. I think newsrooms and entire news organizations have to use data more to guide their allocation of resources.
By the end, Scripps' former Web VP felt we were cooking on all cylinders as a news Web site. But that's probably too generous a view. I think we had far to go.
This, for example, is our section for the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
And this is a guide to the city from that same period.
This brings me to Lesson #9: Ask yourself: Without R&D, how are local news companies going to get out on the edge and develop new offerings? Now that newspaper companies are filling the bankruptcy courts, they're scrambling to find ways to survive on the Web. But their efforts seem mostly about making money off their current offerings. You don't see them developing Yelp, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. I think they still could develop successful new services. But it would require something they haven't historically done, research and development.
So, as you can see, there are many reasons to say that the Web killed the Rocky Mountain News. But it's not quite that simple. Let me explain why I also said, "No," in answer to the question whether the Web killed the Rocky Mountain News.
While the digital revolution is the fundamental force reshaping our media, I don't believe it means that Denver can't have a significant multi-platform local news organization that continues to put ink onto paper. However, the city clearly can't support two papers of essentially the same size with essentially the same mission, and that was what the owners were trying to do.
It could have just as easily been the Denver Post that folded. The main reason it was the Rocky that closed was that its owner had a very different view of the short-term future, say the next five years, for newspapers in metropolitan markets. They saw nothing but losses and risk in the future. Scripps is a public company. The Post is privately held and its owner has a great deal personally invested in the paper, not just financially but emotionally. He was ready to stay the course and try to make it work.
So when the market collapsed and the specter of another Great Depression raised its head in the fall of 2008, Scripps decided it needed to get out. That's why the economic collapse was the final blow.
I believe one newspaper with an owner who can make decisions quickly can build a future in Denver, despite the opportunities both papers missed over the years. But there are no guarantees. The digital wave is powerful and the fixed costs of daily newspapers are a burden that could sink many more or make them mere shadows of themselves.
To conclude, I'm concerned that many newspaper companies are making the same mistake in this decade that the Rocky made in its final decade and a half.
Newspaper companies have to look for ways to answer the needs of the people in their communities. They have to know what business they're in. We thought we were in the newspaper business. It seems like that's what too many still think. They're not. They're in the news, information, knowledge and connection business. And when I say connection, I don't just mean connecting readers with their community. I mean connecting buyers and sellers.
Which brings me to the final lesson: Know your customers. If newspapers would spend more time trying to understand their customers instead of focused on their own internal issues - such as which newspaper department should get credit for Web revenue - they would be more likely to be successful. That's a hard switch for traditional manufacturing operations like newspapers to make. But I don't think I need to explain why it's essential. The following quote explains the dilemma newspapers found - and may still find - themselves in.
"We were not used to the market telling us how things should be. We were used to telling people what we thought they needed and how they needed it," is how a Scripps marketing exec put it. That has to change.
So, given my experience at the Rocky, what are some things I think local media companies should do if they want to thrive in the Internet era?
They should think bigger at the same time as they think smaller. They should look for opportunities to scale. They're still too focused on unique, market by market solutions. Newspapers can't think anymore of building or selling one monolithic audience. They need to build many niches and many audiences. Interests align across geographies, so there's no reason that everything they do need be limited to their "markets."
To do what I just described, I think local news organizations are going to have to be open to new kinds of partnerships, to working with others instead of trying to do everything themselves, to sharing revenue and content. The I-phone APP model is something newspapers should explore. Apple built a platform and lets others use it. Couldn't newspapers work together and build community platforms that others would want to develop?
Local news organizations need to grow revenue rather than fighting to protect the piece of the pie they already have. They need tools to serve readers relevant advertising and they need to be able to deliver targeted audiences to advertisers.
Local news organizations should give consumers more control. They're still thinking too much about themselves and not enough about what the consumer wants.
They should stop looking longingly in the rear view mirror at 30% margins. It's certainly arguable that those margins came at the expense of the future of the franchise. What happened was that the publisher became a chief revenue officer instead of a chief product officer, the way Steve Jobs or other successful tech business leaders might see themselves or that newspaper pioneers like Hearst and Scripps saw themselves.
And, finally, the most difficult recommendation of all, local news organizations should stop making decisions about new business opportunities based on how they'll affect their legacy business. The main newspaper cannot dictate the shape of the future.
Now that you've heard from the ghost of a dead newspaper, I hope you feel that the lessons I've gleaned from my experience at the Rocky Mountain News are helpful in thinking about your own situation. I don't come to you to attack the Internet for killing something I loved. I come to you to praise the possibilities of the digital world and to encourage you to experiment without fear. I don't want others to succumb to the same fate as the Rocky Mountain News. I want to see others thrive. I'd be happy to take any questions.
As a reminder, here are the 10 lessons I've discussed today. I'll keep them up during our conversation.
Labels: Journalism, media, Rocky Mountain News, The Denver Post, web, Webcom2009
Newspaper companies say they must be paid for their content online, then I get print subscription for $1.15 a week
I stopped subscribing to The Denver Post a few months ago, in part to experiment with reading it online through iGoogle and in part because I was getting so much more satisfaction from reading The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
The online experiment was scary, at least for a person who still loves newspapers. I discovered that it was pretty easy to live without the print edition and that although the iGoogle version wasn't the best experience, it gave me enough connection to Colorado news that I didn't feel like I needed more. I could read my favorite columnists on Google Reader, and I could pick up a lot of headlines on the radio or TV. I wasn't missing the satisfying reads that you occasionally find in the Post, because I still was getting other good magazines and newspapers.
But I just signed up to become a regular subscriber again. Why? Because I got a call offering me a subscription for $5 a month, or as the vendor told me, $1.15 a week. I was promised this fee would hold for a year, and that I could pay month by month, canceling at any time.
$1.15 a week. This from an industry that is shouting about how it needs to be paid for online content. I'm not sure what's driving the paper's decision to discount so heavily. But it tells me that an industry that regularly touts how valuable its content is still can't get over the need for high volume circulation and will go to great lengths to get it, even if it means sending the message that its content isn't anywhere near as valuable as it says it is. A conundrum that the industry is going to have to figure out.
Either its content is valuable or it isn't. And my latest subscription price tells me the latter is true, no matter what industry leaders say when they're trying to take it to the chins of Web competitors.
Posted by John Temple at 6:43 PM 340 comments:
Labels: circulation, newspapers, The Denver Post
I wish Len Downie and Michael Schudson had called on journalists to fix their own house, instead of urging "collective" action
"The reconstruction of American Journalism" by journalist Leonard Downie and scholar Michael Schudson provides a valuable service. Their overview of the current state of local reporting is perhaps the best available for anybody interested in the subject.
Yet it concerns me that their perspective skews too far toward government solutions at a time of incredible dynamism - and, yes, destruction - in the marketplace. They argue that American society must now take "collective responsibility for supporting independent news reporting." The result, I fear, is that too many will now focus on societal solutions rather than on what news organizations - both fledgling and established - can do on their own to improve their financial footing. Instead of subjecting their own practices and traditions to scrutiny, journalists may now be too eager to knock on the doors of Congress. Or they'll place their hopes in other benevolent institutions that might make it possible for them to continue the work they love.
Downie, with whom I serve on a media and governance working group for the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, and Schudson, whose work was part of my studies when I went to graduate school at Northwestern, are deservedly influential figures in the profession. Yet I wish Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, had invited a third person with a stronger business background to team up with them in their investigation of what might be done to help American journalism. They're too quick to despair about future business prospects. Why, for example, do Downie and Schudson seem to believe that Internet advertising is inherently "low-cost?" They argue that it is "unlikely" that online revenue can be the primary support for most news organizations. And that, they say, is "why we will be exploring a variety and mixture of ways to support news reporting, which must include non market sources like philanthropy and government." Must include? Really? (Disclosure: I support nonprofit journalism efforts and am on the advisory board of one, The Texas Tribune.)
Their fundamental economic belief is flatly stated deep in the document, on page 75: "Many newspapers can and will find ways to survive in print and online, with new combinations of reduced resources. But they will no longer produce the kinds of revenues or profits that had subsidized large reporting staffs, regardless of what new business models they evolve."
How they know that I do not know. Yet it is the basis for their argument for further efforts to enroll the government and philanthropic organizations in supporting news reporting. Am I missing something or isn't the most successful Internet business of recent years, Google, a huge advertising-based economic engine, generating what anybody would characterize as significant profits? Is there really no way that newspapers and other news organizations could do something similar or better? Downie and Schudson give a nod to efforts to improve the economics of online news, but it almost seems like they've given up on the possibility that the news they, and I, so value - independent, original and credible - could actually be highly valued by readers and advertisers in the future.
They seem to bemoan the fact that the number of journalists today is the same as in the early 1970s. I understand that. But what they don't say is that a journalist today is so much more productive than a journalist in the early 1970s that a body for body comparison isn't relevant. I started as a reporter at a time when we still had typewriters, took messages on pink pads, didn't have voice mail or fax machines, let alone cell phones, laptops and all the other marvelous tools of our time. Journalists are far more efficient today than ever was possible before. That's one of the reasons I believe journalism today is in many respects so much better.
Downie and Schudson do a great job of pointing out how some of the new online organizations focus on matters of public importance. But they don't probe whether traditional news organizations could reposition themselves and do the same. I see possibilities in mega brands like The New York Times or CNN teaming up with local journalism organizations, with each focusing on what it does best. But not necessarily in a nonprofit structure. Maybe each could strengthen the other, working together, in a new kind of business network.
Ultimately, I am hopeful that we will see solutions that dramatically increase online revenue when we figure out how to deliver relevant advertising to the right audience and when we figure out how to charge for content in a way that doesn't seem punitive, but rather provides additional value for the user. There's no question that the current business model of newspapers is broken. But that doesn't mean a new one can't - or won't - be found, even without government help.
Labels: "The Reconstruction of American Journalism." newspapers, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Leonard Downie, media, Michael Schudson, Nicholas Leman
A surprising stat - to me - reveals what the Web can do to spread a talk or an idea
When I spoke at the UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit at Google headquarters in Silicon Valley at the end of September, I decided I would try to share my presentation immediately afterward on the Web. It was the first time I'd done anything like that. It required recording my talk as a video beforehand and posting it to Vimeo, scheduling a blog post on this blog with the text of my talk and using Slideshare to post copies of the Keynote slides I used for the presentation.
Well, in 15 days, the half-hour video on Vimeo has been played 5,716 times. Now, of course I understand that doesn't mean everybody made it to the end. But still, the number amazes me. On Slideshare, 861 people have viewed the presentation. And the page on my blog with the text of the speech has been viewed 8,146 times. It's hard to imagine how difficult it would have been to reach an audience of that size with such a talk only a decade ago, but my guess is I would have had to go on the lecture circuit for a year to reach a similar number of people. And I kind of doubt I would have wanted to do that or that many groups would have invited me. Now, people can grab what I did and use it for their own means. I think this development represents such an improvement. Access. Access. Access.
I'm going to do the same thing when I speak on Oct. 22 at the Webcom 2009 conference in Montreal. My title for that talk is, "Did the Internet kill the Rocky Mountain News? And, if it did, what can we learn from its death.?"
The Twitter answer in 140 characters to those questions is the following: YES and no. Internet the fundamental cause of death. Economic collapse the final blow. Denver could not support two general interest papers.
Labels: slideshare, UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit, Vimeo, Webcom 2009
Newsosaur a dinosaur on editorial endorsements and the AJC
The usually astute Alan Mutter is way off base in his criticism of the Atlanta Journal Constitution's decision to quit endorsing candidates.
Mutter is stellar when it comes to media economics. But his comments on endorsements seem to reflect how long he's been out of a newsroom and seem kind of strange given how smart he is about how the Internet has changed the role of newspapers.
I've written extensively on this topic and below have pasted my own column from the Rocky Mountain News prior to last year's presidential election. Bottom line: Just because a paper gives up endorsements doesn't mean it will stop doing exactly what Mutter thinks a newspaper should be doing: "vigorously vetting candidates and forthrightly informing readers of the findings." It just means that it won't take the extra step in most cases and actually tell readers how to vote. I think that makes sense.
The following is my column published on Oct. 18, 2008, under the headline, "Input, not endorsements."
I'm asked quite often these days when we'll publish our endorsements for president and other federal offices.
There seems to remain a fascination among some about what a major newspaper like the Rocky Mountain News will do. Perhaps it's because they believe the opinion of our editorial page could make a difference. Or perhaps just that they look forward to us stirring up political debate.
I've struggled to respond this year because I've been wrestling with how to handle endorsements in a media landscape dramatically altered by the Internet.
At the start of this decade you would have found me making an impassioned argument about the importance of a newspaper taking a clear position as a leader in its community. But as I indicated in a column at the time of Colorado's presidential caucuses, I feel differently today. And so, it seems, do many of you, based on the reaction to that column.
Today I have come to believe that rather than recommending how you should vote on partisan races, we better serve you by providing perspective that may help you shape your own opinion. After all, our motto is, "Give light and the people will find their own way."
When E.W. Scripps, the founder of the company for which I work, created the first chain of newspapers more than 125 years ago, he encouraged Americans to vote the way he thought they should.
Newspapers were far more partisan then. What's more, he actually did have more access to candidates and information about them than almost anyone. There was no radio. TV. Or Internet.
Going back farther to the time of the Founding Fathers, we know, of course, that newspapers were political; there was no attempt to separate opinion from news. Readers understood that. They bought newspapers in part because they agreed with their point of view. Readers didn't need endorsements. The opinion of the paper was clear in its news coverage.
But we live in a different world today, a world where citizens have a wealth of information available to them. If anything, what they need is a trusted source to help them evaluate that information and come to their own conclusions. As a result, I think it's time to change how we operate on the editorial page.
That's why, from here on out, it will be the exception for you to read an editorial endorsing a candidate in the Rocky.
This decision is based in part on an exercise I often undertake when I try to determine the right direction for the paper. I ask myself what I would do if I were to start a news organization today, one unburdened by the history of my own company and industry.
It seems you have two basic choices: Establish a clearly opinionated publication or Web site, a la HuffingtonPost.com on the left or Free Republic.com on the right, or try to give readers something they can trust because of its clear commitment to fair-minded and incisive reporting.
I believe the latter is the best course for the Rocky. But what about the editorials and opinion columns, you are probably wondering. How do they fit into this vision of mine? Well, I don't think fair-minded readers resent opinion per se. In fact, it's clear that they value opinion writing a great deal. What they do resent is evidence that their newspaper is in the tank for one political party or the other. And too many readers tend to confuse endorsements - particularly if a majority happens to be for one party - as evidence that a newspaper is partisan as opposed to principled.
Endorsements are probably the decisive factor contributing to confusion about this distinction. I think the better way is to focus on critiquing issues and actions in real time.
You may have noticed that our editorial page has been more aggressive this year in running commentary on the major races. Since the start of the Democratic National Convention we've written nearly 20 editorials involving John McCain and Sarah Palin, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. We've tried to contribute to the discussion by probing issues or the candidates' conduct without ever urging you to vote a certain way in the polling booth.
Just last week, for example, we strongly criticized McCain's bailout plan for "failing" mortgages. I think knowing that we weren't likely to endorse either candidate may have made it easier for us to hit him hard for abandoning his fiscal conservatism when we thought he deserved it.
I suspect some of you were surprised by that editorial because you expected us to endorse McCain and refrain from criticizing him. That's not how we have ever operated, but that's how endorsements color some readers' perceptions. Our editorial board does lean center right and might be expected to be more sympathetic to McCain's views. But while some of the principles that our editorial page values might be more closely linked to the Republican Party, we pride ourselves on being nonpartisan. I don't just mean that we endorse candidates from both parties - Sens. Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar, for example. But also that we don't care where good ideas come from.
Now you may ask if I feel this way why did we take a formal position on all the Colorado ballot issues. I think ballot issues are different from candidates. Some of them are difficult to decipher without the aid of political observers - such as our editorial writers - who have followed closely their history and are familiar with the motives and goals of the proponents. But most important, they're more like bills in a legislature. They're specific and limited in scope. Ultimately the question is yes or no. If you're confused, you can always vote, "No," to preserve the status quo.
But when it comes to candidates, you don't really have that option. Nor do we when making an endorsement. Even though that might be our first choice.
That's not a commentary on this presidential election. Personally, I think there's much to admire about both candidates. And we'll give their advocates plenty of room to explain why you should support them.
In the end we'll leave it to you to come to your own conclusion, trusting that's what you want and believing this newspaper's editorial page can be most valuable to you if it helps you reach an informed decision, with an emphasis on informed. After all, ultimately that's our job. It's not to pick presidents, senators or representatives.
Labels: Alan Mutter, Atlanta Journal Constitution, editorial endorsements, reflections of a newsosaur
Random thoughts on recent journalism stories, columns and speeches
I hope you saw The New York Times story today about former Rocky Mountain News Washington reporter M.E. Sprengelmeyer. Good story about a guy deserving of coverage. I shared M.E.'s story first here, when he wrote about his new adventure running the paper in Santa Rosa, N.M. His story, based on the reaction it received on my blog, inspired many other journalists.
Good column by L. Gordon Crovitz in The Wall Street Journal today. The headline is "Media Moguls and Creative Destruction," spinning off a new book entitled "The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies." The column's conclusion about what any media organization should do: "Focus on what makes each brand different and more valuable than the ever-increasing number of alternatives that technology makes inevitable." Good advice, I think. But probably not enough, even if I'm not sure there's anything more that news organizations can do. The reason I say it may not be enough is that in most cases, achieving scale seems so critical. Easier said than done. At the same time, scale may not be enough. Look at the big newspapers and how they tout the fact that their total audience is growing at the same time as their print circulation is declining. While that's true, in the digital world, total audience isn't the key, or at least it doesn't seem to be to me. What's key is knowing who the audience is and where they are. What good does it do an advertiser in Denver if most of the readers on a local Web site are from distant cities or have no interest in their product because they're the wrong demographic for the advertiser.
Chicago Tribune Editor Gerald Kern gave a stirring speech at the Medill School of Journalism last week. I thought it especially interesting how he defined the mission/brand of his news organization.
We stand up for our community and citizens.
We capture the Chicago experience.
We move people emotionally and intellectually.
We help people navigate their daily lives.
We fuel conversation - the Tribune is a social medium
We break news - we don't just report it.
I wish Medill or Kern would post the speech on the Web. I think it would be interesting to know whether these brand qualities are how the paper's readers and the rest of the community would describe the company. While the troubles of the Tribune company are legendary, it is clear that the Chicago Tribune itself is trying all kinds of things to remain relevant in this era, from RedEye to its hyper-local initiative, TribLocal, and that without the burdensome debt of the parent company the Tribune alone would be a viable business, as would The Los Angeles Times. The question is for how much longer. Nobody knows the answer. Kern's ending, "One thing is clear - We're here to stay," is the weakest part of the speech. Clearly they want to be there to stay. And I hope that's possible. But we've seen enough wreckage in media and other industries to know that there's no guarantee that the Tribune or any other paper is here to stay. Nobody knows what's going to happen. Predicting the future isn't a strength of journalists. Better to stick with what we do know. That the company is doing a lot of good things and is committed to trying to figure out how to be there to stay. And that its efforts are worth following.
Posted by John Temple at 6:33 AM 82 comments:
Labels: Chicago Tribune, Gerry Kern, Gordon Crovitz, M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Medill School of Journalism, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal
The video of Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit and the meaning of newspapers
The release of the video of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in a strange way provides insight into the meaning of newspapers. Shalit was abducted by Hamas in a cross-border raid in Israeli territory outside Gaza more than three years ago. It's an outrageous aspect of international relations that he is still in the custody of Hamas.
My purpose in writing today, though, is not to condemn Hamas for using him as a pawn, although I think the group's conduct is abhorrent and immoral. My purpose is to reflect on how his kidnappers used a newspaper to establish the authenticity of the tape they released in exchange for 20 female prisoners.
It makes one ask what else could they have used to establish that a video was produced at a certain place and time. Clearly the paper is also used to hide that he's reading from a prepared text, approved or even written by his kidnappers. But it's hard to imagine what else they could have used to establish that the tape is real. Perhaps they could have used a laptop screen facing the camera, showing the news of a certain day. But would it have been the same? I don't think so.
What does that say about newspapers? I think it's a reminder of the unique role they can play, even in a digital era. It gives a different meaning to the term "newspaper of record." The newspaper establishes the authenticity not just of a video, but also in a broader sense the people and places it covers. That's why editors should remember the historic aspect of each edition, the fact that the newspaper can reflect a community in both a timely and a timeless way, and in fact should do both every day. In an era when news is instant, the paper itself should be something different. It should reflect the day, but it should also memorialize it in such a way that its readers understand what makes it special, different from all other days. That takes a different mindset than the mindset at many newspapers, which, sadly, is still to fill the holes around the ads with what happened yesterday.
Here's to the day when Gilad Shalit will be free to read a paper of his own choosing in his own country, free at last. That will be a paper worth keeping, a front page worth remembering in a video of his return home.
Posted by John Temple at 10:25 AM 80 comments:
Labels: Gilad Shalit, hamas, hostages, Israel, Journalism, kidnapping, newspapers
Google must think I'm really religious
I decided to add advertising to my blog, largely, frankly, to learn more about how Google adsense works and how people respond to it. I thought it was fascinating that somehow Google figured I or my readers must be really religious, because the site was immediately populated with Bible ads, including one for the Gospel of John. Well, at least that's my name, but I know the readers of this blog know it doesn't have anything to do with gospel. Wandering the desert maybe...
Labels: adsense, advertising, google, John Temple
Lessons from the Rocky Mountain News is the most tweeted presentation on Slideshare
I got this message today from Slideshare.
"Lessons from the Rocky Mountain News" is being tweeted more than any other document on SlideShare right now. So we've put it on the homepage of SlideShare.net (in the "Hot on Twitter" section).
This is interesting to me because it's indicative of how much things have changed for a writer. A person's work is spread across the Web in different ways that would never have been possible in the print era. I have a slideshare page, but the traffic to it doesn't show up on the stats for the blog I actually own and control. I also have seen my talk summarized and discussed on many other Web sites and blogs. While they generally include a link to the original text, I doubt most people bother to spend the time to read it. The summary is enough. Again, the traffic doesn't come to my blog, so it doesn't show up in my own accounting. Is that bad? I know there are those who believe so. I don't. What I see is a conversation spreading, just the way it might among friends. The easier it is for that to happen, the better.
Posted by John Temple at 11:19 AM 159 comments:
Labels: Rocky Mountain News, slideshare, twitter, UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit
John Marshall on what happens to journalists after newspapers?
An interesting article by John Marshall on IndieReader.com gives a big picture view of what journalists are doing post-newspaper work. Marshall interviewed me for the piece and includes some Rocky Mountain News examples. But it's especially interesting about journalists who worked on the arts side of newspapers, from books to food. Marshall was the longtime book critic of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which shut down its paper edition this year.
Labels: IndieReader.com, John Marshall, Journalism, newspapers
Reflections on Day 2 of the UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit at Google
A few new terms and ideas stand out from the final day of the UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit at Google headquarters.
First, Hilary Schneider, executive vice president of Yahoo, stressed the importance of two key words: relevance and simplify. Amen. Those two words are great touchstones for anyone working on the Web
Economics Professor Marshall Van Allstyne of Boston University introduced a term new to me to explain how to make money in a "free" world: proprietary complementarity. He gave hope that it's possible to make money in a "free" world. Industries can succeed by giving away things for free, he argued. And he cited a number of examples to support his case, including Adobe giving away Acrobat for free but selling Distiller software and Microsoft selling software but giving away the system development tool kit. He said news "needs a complement." You can't own facts, but...
And finally, Jeffrey Ulin, a lawyer with the Haas School of Business at Berkeley, argued why the long tail theory won't work. The conclusion from his talk is that the cost of content is going to have to come down because "windows" for making money from content (at least in the film, TV world) are compressing in time. I think it would have been hard to come away from the conference not thinking that the need to continue reducing the cost of producing content isn't going to go away even if the economy comes back.
The final day was packed with good speakers, not all of whom I can do justice to here. But I'm told that presentations will be posted on this slideshare page. Also, you can read the twitter feed of participants from the first full day here on coveritlive.com. The feed from the second day is here. You can read my presentation from the first day here and see my slide deck here.
Alan Mutter of Newsosaur organized a very rich conference, certainly unlike anything I've attended that catered to the newspaper industry. We need more such collaboration across the traditional divide between newspapers and technologists. My only suggestions for others trying to do something similar are that it should become a standard that all such meetings stream live on the Internet and that all presentation slide decks go live immediately on the Web. The meeting was on the record, with reporters in the room, except for the evening conversation with former News Corp. COO Peter Chermin. So why not stream it live, especially when it comes from as sophisticated a technical location as Googleplex? Then instead of the Twitter feed being essentially reportage of the event, it could become more commentary and conversation during the talks. It would have been cool to have the twitter feed projected behind the speakers or beside their slides, for example. And the same could be done on the Web, where the twitter feed could run next to the live video.
A few other thoughts:
It came through loud and clear that readers/users are still looking for somebody to help cut through the tangled Web and make it easier to use.
The growth curve for Web advertising still seems huge, but the ineffectiveness and dismal quality of a lot of Web advertising also seems obvious. Much to be done on that front. This is also scary for newspapers, because that money shifting to the Web is going to have to come from somewhere.
In news organizations, it seems like newsrooms are perceived to be "getting the web" more than advertising departments.
It's unbelievable that no newspaper company has a simple, easy-to-use self-serve advertising vehicle. I'm talking display. Although classified in many cases is also so bad that I had one accomplished journalist tell me he gave up trying to place a classified online at a newspaper that was once a Web pioneer.
NPR is a great success story of the last few decades, and Ellen Weiss, its vice president for news, demonstrated why. Smart. Funny. But she also offered a word of caution for those who think nonprofit status is easy or a panacea. Even NPR is seeing its model being disrupted because it gets almost 40% of its $166 million budget from member stations (those annoying fund drives) and in the Internet era people no longer have to listen to NPR through their member station. I'm a big believer that newspapers should shift to a membership model along the NPR line. But she explained why membership is so difficult for start-ups. It takes time to build the loyalty NPR has built.
Chi-Town Daily News is another example of how while non-profit is a welcome addition to the mix, it's not "the solution." Geoff Dougherty, founder and CEO, spoke and I couldn't help but admire his commitment. He's switching from non-profit to a for-profit to try to make the effort work. What happened there would be a good case study for a serious, in-depth article.
On the other hand, it's clear that there's tremendous energy on the non-profit front and good things are happening. California Watch is an exciting development, for example.
Labels: Alan Mutter, Ellen Weiss, google, Hilary Schneider, Jeffrey Ulin, Journalism, Marshall Van Allstyne, NPR, UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit, Yahoo
Gene Foreman worth listening to on journalism ethi...
Tim McGuire right about the need to rally behind t...
Chicago News Cooperative an encouraging developmen...
Did the Internet kill the Rocky Mountain News? And...
Newspaper companies say they must be paid for thei...
I wish Len Downie and Michael Schudson had called ...
A surprising stat - to me - reveals what the Web c...
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Random thoughts on recent journalism stories, colu...
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Reflections on Day 2 of the UC Berkeley Media Tech...


Earlier this week Hadley and I dyed some Easter eggs. I had seen this shaving cream and food coloring technique on Pinterest a few weeks back and knew I wanted to try it. So on Tuesday, I grabbed my girl, gathered the materials and we got to work!
They were really fairly simple… a little messy (but isn't anything with a 2-year-old?) so much fun and look absolutely egg-celent!! If you agree, here is how YOU could make your very own marbled eggs.
OH! AND DON'T FORGET YOUR GLOVES!!!!
Once you have your materials, give your eggs a quick soak in some vinegar. This will make the colors brighter.
While your eggs are soaking, spray the shaving cream into your shallow dish.
Then, smooth the surface with a spoon.
Next, add drops of food coloring.
Take an egg and place it in the shaving cream.
Make sure the entire egg is covered in the shaving cream.
When it's awesome enough, place it in your drying rack.
AS SOON AS your hands get the tiniest bit of color on them, make sure you touch your nose.
Once your nose is colored, finish the rest of your eggs.
Let them sit in the refrigerator for a few hours so the color can set. Then, wipe them with a paper towel and rinse.
Sit back and inspect each egg.
Then hit them around the table, if you'd like.
When you are sure each egg is acceptable arrange them for a photo.
Then place them in a bowl to pretty up your table.
I lOVE this technique , they turned out great!! Excellent tutorial as well!!!
This is a EGG-cellent tutorial!! and seriously, can Hadley get any cuter?? I love the nose shot and her inspecting each egg.
Thanks girls! We really had a blast. Shaving cream is like Disneyland in a can for kids!


text:
Growtopia How to Make Wooden Platform
Written by Md Meraj in Wood
Wooden platforms are one of the basic building blocks in Growtopia. They are essential for creating many different structures and can be used to create a variety of aesthetic effects. This guide will show you how to make wooden platforms in Growtopia.
To make a wooden platform, you will need the following:
-A hammer -A saw
In Growtopia, wooden platforms are a fundamental building block that can create all sorts of structures. Here's a quick guide on how to make them:
1. First, gather some wood from trees using an axe.
You'll need at least four pieces of wood to make one platform.
2. Place the wood in your crafting menu and select the "Platform" option.
You've now made a wooden platform that can be placed worldwide. Use it to build whatever you like!
Credit: www.reddit.com
How Do I Make a Wooden Platform in Growtopia
Are you looking to add a wooden platform to your Growtopia world? If so, there are a few things you'll need to do. First, you'll need to gather some wood.
You can get wood by chopping down trees or buying them from the store. Once you have enough wood, you'll need to use a saw to cut it into your platform's desired shape and size. Once your wood is cut out, it's time to start assembling your platform.
You'll need to use nails and a hammer to secure the pieces of wood together. Make sure that your platform is sturdy and level before moving on. Once your platform is built, you can add whatever decorations you like!
You can paint it, add carpets or rugs, or even put furniture on it. Make sure that everything is securely fastened so that nothing falls off and hurts someone. Making a wooden platform in Growtopia is a great way to add something new and different to your world.
You can create something unique that everyone will enjoy with a little effort!
What Materials Do I Need to Make a Wooden Platform in Growtopia
When it comes to creating a wooden platform in Growtopia, there are only a few materials you will need. Firstly, you will need some wood blocks. These can be easily obtained by chopping down trees with an axe.
Once you have enough wood blocks, place them down in the desired area and then use a hammer to nail them together. You can use metal plates instead of nails to make your platform more sturdy. Another important material you will need is rope.
Rope can be found by looting chests or destroying spider webs with a sword. Once you have some yarn, attach it to the edges of your wooden platform using nails or metal plates. This will help keep your platform from falling apart if someone happens to walk on it.
Last but not least, you will need some dirt blocks. Dirt blocks can be obtained by digging up the soil with a shovel. Place the dirt blocks around the edge of your platform and then use a water bucket to wet them down.
This will create a firm foundation for your platform that will help prevent it from sinking into the ground over time.
How Many Blocks of Wood Do I Need to Make a Wooden Platform in Growtopia
Assuming you would like to know how to make a 3×3 wooden platform in Growtopia: You will need nine blocks of wood.
Growtopia Splice Wooden Platform
Wooden Platforms are a type of block that was introduced in Growtopia. They can be obtained by splicing a Wood Block with a Stone Block. Wooden Platforms have the same properties as Wood Blocks but are slightly larger and have a different texture.
When placed side-by-side, Wooden Platforms create a seamless surface.
Growtopia Wooden Platform Price
Growtopia is a 2D MMO sandbox video game developed and published by Ubisoft. It was released on November 5, 2013, for Microsoft Windows, iOS, and Android. The game features a virtual world in which players can interact with each other to build structures and objects from textured cubes.
In Growtopia, players can use many different types of blocks to create their unique worlds. One of the most popular blocks is the Wooden Platform. Wooden Platforms can be used to create paths or floors in player-created worlds.
They are also commonly used as a base for other structures, such as houses or castles. The price of a Wooden Platform depends on the size and type of wood used to make it. For example, a small Oak Wooden Platform may cost around 3 Growtokens, while a large Spruce Wooden Platform could cost up to 10 Growtokens.
Growtopia Platforms
Growtopia is a cross-platform multiplayer game with a focus on creativity and collaboration. It was released on November 27, 2012, for iOS and Android devices and later ported to Windows, macOS, Linux, and web browsers. The game was developed by Robinson Technologies and published by Ubisoft.
In Growtopia, players can create their worlds or explore others. There is no set goal or objective; players can use the game's tools to build whatever they want. Players can also cooperate to build larger structures or trade items.
The game features several in-game items that can be used for building, decoration, or utility purposes. Growtopia has generally received positive reviews from critics. Reviewers praised the game's openness and freedom and its encouragement of player cooperation.
However, some criticized the game's graphics and lack of depth. As of October 2018, Growtopia has over 30 million registered accounts and is one of the most popular games on Steam.
Growtopia Platform Price
Growtopia is a 2D sandbox platformer with crafting and building elements developed by Ubisoft. It was released on November 5, 2019, for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. The game has received mixed reviews from critics.
The game's premise revolves around the player collecting items and using them to build structures to progress. There are over 100 items that can be ordered in the game. The player can also grow crops and sell them for profit.
Ubisoft Reflections developed the game under the direction of David Dedeine and Paulina Bozek. The team consisted of 15 people who worked on the game for two years. The art style is based on 16-bit games such as Super Mario World and Zelda: A Link to the Past.
The music in Growtopia was composed by Kenny Young and Mikko Tamia.
Assuming the goal is to create a wooden platform in Growtopia: The first step is to find a tree. Once you have found a tree, use your axe to chop it down and collect the wood.
Next, use your hammer to turn the wood into planks. Once you have enough planks, go to your crafting menu and select the 'Platforms' tab. Here, you can craft a wooden platform using the planks you collected.
link to How to Dry Green Wood Bowls
How to Dry Green Wood Bowls
When drying green wood bowls, the most important thing is to be patient. It can take weeks or even months for the wood to dry out properly. During this time, it's essential to keep an eye on the bowl...
link to Where to Buy Mdo Plywood in Canada
Where to Buy Mdo Plywood in Canada
There are many places to buy MDO plywood in Canada, but the best place to believe it is at a lumber yard. Lumberyards typically have a wide selection of MDO plywood, and they can usually custom order...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


This I shows you How Do I Make My Photos Private On Facebook. You could make pictures private on both the site version as well as the mobile version of Facebook Bear in mind that you can not modify the personal privacy alternatives for images, videos, and also albums that you really did not upload to your account.
1. Open up Facebook. Go to https://www.facebook.com/ in your browser. This will certainly open your News Feed if you're logged right into Facebook.
5. Select a photo. Click a photo that you wish to make private. This will certainly open up the picture.
- The image must be one that you uploaded, not just one of you that someone else uploaded.
6. Click the "Privacy" icon. This icon generally appears like a silhouette of a person (or more people) that you'll discover below as well as to the right of your name in the upper-right side of the image. A drop-down menu will certainly show up.
- If clicking this symbol results in a menu that claims Edit Post Privacy, click Edit Post Privacy to head to the post, then click the privacy symbol at the top of the post before proceeding.
8. Click Only Me. This alternative is in the expanded drop-down menu. Doing so will right away alter your photo's personal privacy to make sure that just you can see it.
4. Hover your computer mouse cursor over the symbol to the right of the album's name. Text shows up stating the album's current personal privacy setting. As an example, the album may have a globe icon and the setup "Public".
Suggestion: When the appropriate time comes, open each photo in the concealed album. Click the "Share Image" switch in the lower appropriate corner of the photo and pick "On Your Web page" from the drop-down menu that appears at the top of the sharing window.


Chachahuantla is a growing Nahua town right on the border with Hidalgo. There blouses are sold to a number of other villages in the vicinity.
In the first picture we have the "new" version of the quechquemitl, in my mind it is nicer and will be easier to sell to the Mexican consumers since it can be worn with just about any type of clothing. Translating the village embroidery into a commercial product is a continuing problem, compounded by the diversity and competition from other indigenous groups and villages. Above there are three examples of the blouses from the town. The last blouse is embroidered in the old style. In the future, I will be returning to this area to do an in-depth study of the techniques and styles with the help of this collective. Right now it is difficult to tell which village is which when it comes to the style of blouse. It may turnout be a personal choice based on economic factors, which blouse a person buys. That assumes they are not the embroiderer.
The Saturday market in Huauchinango is a great place to visit and enjoy the diversity of textiles from the region.


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Q: XML DOM Namespaces If I'm having an in-memory DOM of:
<root xmlns="NS1" xmlns:a="NSA">
    <outer>
        <a:inner>Text</a:inner>
    </outer>
</root>

and have a reference to the outer node.
After I call outer.setAttributeNS(XMLConstants.XMLNS_ATTRIBUTE_NS_URI, "xmlns:a", "NSB") and traverse to inner it looks like the DOM specs say that inner.getNamespaceURI() still returns NSA.
Somebody knows how to get from inner to NSB?

A: Hmm, sometimes it hits you just after pressing the "Ask Question" button ...
inner.lookupNamespaceURI(inner.getPrefix()) looks to be the way to go.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text: Q: Proving positive definiteness of inner product If M is a real, invertible n x n matrix, how do I show that ${\langle a,b\rangle}=a^TM^TMb$ defines an inner product ($a$ and $b$ are column vectors in $\mathbb{R}^n$). I've proven that it satisfies the linearity and symmetry axioms, but I'm struggling to prove the positive definiteness axiom, where I need to prove that ${\langle a,a\rangle} > 0\ {\text{ if }}a\neq \mathbf {0}$.


Saint Lucian who will travel to Bahrain can now get their visa via internet. If you are not from a visa-exempt country, you'd need such a document to cross the border, but getting one no longer requires you to go to Bahrain's embassy. You can just use iVisa and have your visa delivered via e-mail in as fast as three business days.
You'd need to check your eligibility prior to applying online. To do so, you may use the Visa Checker, a useful tool that will let you know whether or not you qualify for a Bahrain evisa. You just need to enter Saint Lucian in the nationality field, and then put Bahrain as your destination. Then, you'll get the result in immediately.
Valid passport – a passport for Saint Lucian is a pretty common document nowadays. Getting one is easy, but if you already have one, make sure that it is valid and remains to be as such for at least another six months from your date of departure.
Valid e-mail address – iVisa uses the internet to send you the Bahrain evisa, which means that you need a valid e-mail address. Make sure that you check the spelling. The information must be as accurate as possible, or you cannot receive your visa.
Return flight ticket – since the Bahrain evisa for Saint Lucian allows you to stay inside the country for a total of 14 days, you need to prove that you will return to your country until your visa expires. A return flight ticket provides some assurance.
Means to support yourself during your stay – means of subsistence is a commonly requested thing at the immigration offices all over the world. You may be required to provide a bank statement or anything else that proves you have the means to support yourself during your trip. This removes suspicion of becoming an illegal worker.
Means of payment – before submitting your application, you will be required to make the payment. You need to pay for your visa, as well as for the services provided by iVisa. You can use a credit/debit card or a Paypal account.
Standard processing – this is the cheapest option you have although it is the slowest. Your visa will arrive within 10 business days, and you have to pay $114 for it. Even so, it is an excellent solution if you like to plan ahead.
Rush processing time – this time, the waiting time is cut in half. Your application will be processed within 5 business days, but the cost is $144.
Super Rush processing time – if you are in a hurry, you can opt for this processing time. It is the fastest available. Your visa for Saint Lucian will be ready within only 3 business days. As you can probably expect, the cost is higher as well. The total amount you will be charged is $179.
While delays almost never happen, you should stay on the safe side and apply for your Bahrain evisa ahead of time. For example, if you select the Rush processing time, it is best if you apply 7 days before your date of departure. You will be notified if ever there will be a delay.
As you can see, you do not need much for a Saint Lucian evisa. The process is quite simple, but if you need any help with your application, iVisa has an amazing customer service that is available 24/7. You will receive a visa in PDF format. You will need to print it even if it is linked to your passport electronically. You are allowed to stay for 14 days in Bahrain, but if you are Irish or British, the max stay is up to 90 days.


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New York|Federal Inquiry of Fox News Moves to a Grand Jury, but Without Preet Bharara
Federal Inquiry of Fox News Moves to a Grand Jury, but Without Preet Bharara
Preet Bharara was fired by the Trump administration on Saturday after refusing to resign. Whoever Mr. Trump nominates to replace Mr. Bharara as the United States attorney in Manhattan will inherit an ongoing investigation of Fox News.CreditCreditDrew Angerer/Getty Images North America
By Jim Dwyer and William K. Rashbaum
The political drama around the federal courthouse in Manhattan did not end with the sudden, unexplained turnabout of President Trump in firing Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.
While that prominent post always gets attention, one candidate frequently mentioned as a possible successor to Mr. Bharara could sharpen the scrutiny to new levels: Marc L. Mukasey, a former prosecutor who now works in white-collar criminal defense.
As it happens, Mr. Mukasey has represented Roger E. Ailes, the former chairman of Fox News, who has long had a mogul-to-mogul relationship with Mr. Trump.
Whomever Mr. Trump nominates to replace Mr. Bharara will inherit an investigation of Fox News.
A federal grand jury sitting in Manhattan is expected to soon hear testimony from at least two witnesses about business practices at Fox News when it was led by Mr. Ailes, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Mr. Ailes, who was forced out in July amid revelations of multiple accusations of sexual harassment, has denied those charges.
The current inquiry, which began in September and appears to be in an early stage, may be focused, at least in part, on settlement payments, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
Marc L. Mukasey leaving Manhattan federal court last month. Mr. Mukasey, who has represented Roger E. Ailes, the former Fox News chairman, has been named as a possible successor to Mr. Bharara.CreditNate Raymond/Reuters
One of those subpoenaed, according to the two people, is Mark Kranz, the former chief financial officer for Fox News who oversaw the network's finances when it paid millions of dollars in settlements. Mr. Kranz was appointed to his position by Mr. Ailes in 2004, and resigned last year, a week after Mr. Ailes had done so.
Mr. Ailes helped prepare Mr. Trump ahead of debates in last year's campaign. In 2014, Mr. Trump intervened in a dispute between Mr. Ailes and a former aide who said he had damaging information about Mr. Ailes and the network.
Mr. Trump negotiated a settlement on behalf of Mr. Ailes, and later boasted of his work, telling the journalist Gabriel Sherman, "When Roger was having problems, he didn't call 97 people, he called me."
The existence of the grand jury investigation of Fox News was disclosed in a state court proceeding last month by Judd Burstein, a Manhattan lawyer representing a former daytime host for Fox, Andrea Tantaros, who said her career suffered after spurning advances from Mr. Ailes. She charged that the network operated like a "sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult."
The second witness subpoenaed by the grand jury is not Ms. Tantaros, Mr. Burstein said, but another client he had previously represented and refused to name.
Fox News did not have any comment on Monday. In February, the network said in a statement that it had been in communication with federal prosecutors for months, and would cooperate with the inquiry, the first known criminal investigation associated with the Fox harassment claims.
The former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes leaving News Corp in Manhattan last July.CreditDrew Angerer/Getty Images
It is customary for presidents to replace the United States attorneys, but it appeared that Mr. Bharara would stay on: He met with Mr. Trump after the election and said he was asked to remain as the head of the office. But on Friday, the Trump administration instructed nearly all federal prosecutors appointed by President Obama, including Mr. Bharara, to resign.
Mr. Bharara refused. He said in a Twitter post that he was fired on Saturday, and did not resign.
Mr. Burstein said he was perplexed by the shifts at the United States attorney's office in Manhattan.
"The firing of Preet, who did an extraordinarily evenhanded job is not remarkable — it's just more the way it happened after he was told that he would stay on," Mr. Burstein said. "The timing with respect to the Ailes stuff is troubling. Stopping this investigation would destroy the credibility of the U.S. attorney's office, which has always been the crown jewel of federal prosecutors' offices."
He said that if Mr. Mukasey were to be appointed to replace Mr. Bharara, he would certainly have to recuse himself from any involvement in a case that touched a former client.
In an email, Mr. Mukasey, a former federal prosecutor who is a partner in Greenberg Traurig, said he would have no comment.
Mr. Mukasey's firm has handled real estate development matters for the family of Jared Kushner, who is married to Mr. Trump's daughter Ivanka. Among his partners is Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and vigorous advocate for Mr. Trump during the campaign.
Mr. Mukasey is the son of Michael Mukasey, a former federal judge and former attorney general under President George W. Bush, and longtime friend of Mr. Giuliani's. Asked last month about the possibility of stepping into the United States attorney's office, Mr. Mukasey told the New York Law Journal that he loved his job, but, "If asked to serve my country, that is something I take very seriously."
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: Fox Inquiry Could Create Conflict for Possible Successor to Bharara. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe
Preet Bharara Shunned Politics. His End Was Tinged by Them.
Fox News's Harassment Payments Are Under Investigation, Lawyer Says
Fox Is Said to Settle With Former Contributor Over Sexual Assault Claims


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Tag: government of india
Book Review "I Do What I Do" – Does a green card make you less Indian?
Does a green card make you less Indian?
Names like Raghuram Rajan, Arvind Pangariya et al. are role models for the global Indian diaspora. They also happen to be globalized intellectuals with impeccable credentials, stellar education backed by real world experience.
Former Governor of the Indian Reserve bank, Raghuram Rajan (wikipedia) has decided to speak out his legacy of 3 years in India with the launch of his recent book "I Do What I Do." One aspect that continues to resurface in the media is the question of his "Indianness," which is attributable to the fact that he has spent much of his working life abroad.
Questions on his "Indianness," sometimes puts the an otherwise articulate intellectual, Mr. Rajan on the defensive. This continues to be a part of the rhetoric despite his impeccable educational credentials that include a bachelors degree from the prestigious IIT Delhi and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. Having a global background like these also means they are unencumbered by trivialities like visas and immigration restriction that may apply to rest of the junta.
The book has received a lot of media hype in India though the global Amazon.com website has a couple of reviews. Extract of the Amazon Review from our editor:
Former Governor of the Indian Reserve bank, Raghuram Rajan has decided to speak out about his legacy of 3 years in India with the launch of his recent book "I Do What I Do."
After browsing through the book, I am left wondering about the media hype the book launch received in India. The book is a compilation of his public speeches with a preface and notes added to clarify and explain his thinking during the period. Mr. Ranaj received a superstar welcome on his recent homecoming for the book-launch and has received sufficient media airtime that he has leveraged craftily.
You should consider buying a copy of the book only if you need a handy reference to Mr Rajan's speeches; else you are better off referencing these speeches from the public domain on the web.
Other book reviews and media references:
I am Raghuram Rajan…I do what I do: RBI Governor after rate cut – Indian Express
My name is Raghuram Rajan, I do what I do: Top quotes by RBI guv – Hindustan Times
Reading Raghuram Rajan: 'I Do What I Do' – Times of India
I Do What I Do: Raghuram Rajan endorses an idea that is spoken in hushed tones – India Today
Raghuram Rajan is back with I Do What I Do – Rediff
How and why do top intellectuals go back to teaching jobs? – Blog post on Raghuram Rajan going back to academia
Author garamchaicomPosted on September 17, 2017 September 17, 2017 Categories bookreview, indian americanTags book, book review, government of india, governor, raghuramLeave a comment on Book Review "I Do What I Do" – Does a green card make you less Indian?
Want to be part of India's development? Know more about Joy of Giving!
"Although, the Indian Diaspora is a very heterogeneous group, there is a common factor which binds them- their desire to maintain their connection with their homeland and to contribute to the social and development efforts in India. We are seeking to strengthen and deepen our relationship through IDF-OI." Smt. Sushma Swaraj, Minister of External Affairs & Chairperson, IDF-OI
Check out the Government Of India's India's development Fund
Author garamchaicomPosted on July 19, 2017 July 19, 2017 Categories culture, InNews, UncategorizedTags external affairs, government of india, idf, India's development Fund, nri, sushma SwarajLeave a comment on Want to be part of India's development? Know more about Joy of Giving!