2. Todayâs Presenter
Jim Brady
Current
⢠Editor-in-Chief, Journal Register Company
⢠Vice President, Online News Association
⢠Board Member, American Society of News Editors
Past
⢠Former General Manager, TBD.com
⢠Former Executive Editor, washingtonpost.com
⢠Former AOL executive
⢠Member of washingtonpost.com launch team
⢠Former reporter & sportswriter, The Washington Post
⢠Pulitzer Prize juror, 2010 & 2011
3. Todayâs Agenda
The State of American Journalism
State of the Business
1
State of the Journalism
2
U.S. Strengths & Weaknesses
3
March 11 Coverage by US Media
4
Questions & Discussion
5
5
29. Emerging Models
NICHE MARKETS
⢠Newspapers are wonderful general interest publications. But the
web is all about niche.
⢠Thereâs been a rise of niche web publications that are making
money: Business Insider, WebMD, AutoTrader, Mint,
Babycenter.com, POLITICO, Epicurious, countless othersâŚ
ADVANTAGES
⢠Strong revenue potential, as advertisers prefer subject-focused audiences.
⢠Strong editorial focus keeps overall costs down.
DISADVANTAGES
⢠Most verticals starting to get crowded.
⢠Harder to expand when youâre focused on one subject.
30. Emerging Models
NON-PROFITS
⢠Market is currently strong for non-profits in the United States.
⢠Relatively new sites such as ProPublica, Texas Tribune, MinnPost,
Voice of San Diego are making waves in the industry.
⢠Non-profits are doing the type of journalism that for-profit
companies have struggled to support financially.
ADVANTAGES
⢠Lack of intense revenue pressure provides editorial freedom
⢠Non-profits willing to support investigative and enterprise journalism
DISADVANTAGES
⢠Flow of money to support non-profits unpredictable
⢠Non-profits have trouble building large, influential audiences
31. Emerging Models
PAY MODELS
⢠Many American news organizations are currently implementing --
or planning to implement â pay walls or other pay models.
⢠New models are emerging, i.e. the New York Timesâs metered
model and CivilBeatâs membership model.
ADVANTAGES
⢠New revenue stream
⢠More loyal, focused audience to monetize
⢠Aids print circulation retention
DISADVANTAGES
⢠Negative impact on traffic and ad revenue
⢠Creates opportunity for free competitors
⢠Blocking off content works against the ways of the Web
32. Emerging Models
MOBILE
⢠Morgan Stanley predicts that, by 2015, use of the mobile web will
be greater than use of the desktop Web.
⢠Many news organizations are hiring mobile editors, developers
and product managers as new devices proliferate.
ADVANTAGES
⢠Consumers are already used to paying for mobile content, and will pay for things
on mobile they wonât pay for on the web
⢠Gives publishers the ability to reach consumers on a 24/7 basis
⢠Location-based services open new doors for publishers and advertisers
DISADVANTAGES
⢠Advertisers have not yet embraced mobile in any meaningful way
⢠Large number of mobile device types means business not easily scalable
⢠Mobile development expensive
33. Emerging Models
LOCAL DEALS
⢠The success of companies like Groupon and Living Social has
created a wave of local deal programs, many created and run by
newspapers.
⢠Needham & Co. predict the daily deals market will be more than
$10B in the U.S. by 2015.
ADVANTAGES
⢠Relatively low-tech and simple to launch
⢠Good way to reach small local advertisers, traditionally a hard group to win over
DISADVANTAGES
⢠Low barriers to entry for new competitors
⢠Significant amount of administration required
⢠Daily deals space already overrun, and still dominated by a few big dogs
35. Current Trends in Journalism
⢠Community Engagement / Crowdsourcing
⢠Social Media
⢠Curation
⢠Multimedia Storytelling
⢠Mobile Journalism
⢠Database Journalism
⢠Location-Based Services
39. Why Engage?
⢠Because news organizations always haveâŚ
â Used experts as sources
â Interviewed citizens for stories
â Accepted tips from the community
â Run photos & videos not taken by staffers
â Run freelance pieces by citizens & experts
⢠Because you need readers more than they need you
â Collectively, the community knows a lot more about each subject area
than you do
â Consumers have a lot of choices & not a lot of time
â They donât need to come directly to you to access your content
â Without committed readers, you have no business
⢠Because working with consumers produces better journalism
40. ⢠Launched in 2006
⢠More than 750,000 registered users
⢠Received the seminal video from the Virginia Tech shootings
⢠In 2011, held the first iReport Awards
42. SeeClickFix
⢠In more than 25,000 cities and 8,000 neighborhoods
⢠Has gathered more than 50,000 reports
⢠SeeClickFix has relationships with local governments
44. ProPublica: Network
⢠5,000 Reporting Network members
⢠Theyâve helped conducted spot checks on federal stimulus
spending, unraveled loan modification stories, and tracked
the oversight of a state nursing board, among other efforts
45. TBD: Complete This Story
⢠The audience can help you find out things you couldnât
⢠Itâs a tacit admission media companies canât â and donât â know
everything
46. Register Citizen Newsroom Cafe
⢠Audience invited to sit in on newsroom meeting, watch a live
stream or participate in a live chat
⢠Free public wi-fi access offered, as well as coffee and snacks
47. TBD Community Network
⢠More than 225 sites
joined
⢠We sold advertising for
about 75 blogs
⢠We linked to them
aggressively, and put
them in our geo-coded
feeds to expose them to
relevant audiences
⢠Provided training
sessions for network
members on blogging,
SEO, social media, etc.
48. Donât Forget the Human Touch
⢠At TBD.com, we did public events with local bloggers and
other interested parties.
⢠We held public office hours at coffee houses in the region.
⢠We offered free training to community members on social
media, blogging, SEO, etc.
49. Benefits of Engagement
⢠Improved news gathering capacity
â On-the-spot reporting
â Geographically-specific reports
⢠Additional research bandwidth
⢠More subject-area expertise
⢠An expansion of your coverage area by building
contributor network
⢠Useful feedback & direction
⢠Increased on-site participation in contests, polls,
commenting, etc.
50. If You Do This RightâŚ
⢠The community will view you as a partner, not a
rival. That means:
â They will come to your site more often
â They will link to you more from blogs, social media
â They will send you tips
â They will tell their friends about you
â In short, they will root for your success
⢠You will produce better, more relevant journalism
⢠More relevance = more audience = more revenue
= more jobs
52. Social Media Usage
⢠Facebook has over 800M active users, with half logging on daily.
⢠More than 2B posts are liked and commented on per day.
⢠More than 250M photos are posted per day.
⢠Twitter recently announced it had 100M users logging in once a day,
and 50M logging in daily.
⢠In the U.S., in a survey done by the Ponemon Group showed:
â Workers spent an average of 62 minutes each day using social media
for personal reasons, compared with 37 minutes for business purposes.
â Almost 60 percent of the organizations increased their Internet
bandwidth to accommodate employeesâ use of social media in the past
12 months.
â Social media is essential or very important to meeting business
objectives for 67 percent of respondents.
54. Why Social Media?
⢠You need to go where your readers are
⢠Social networks are great for attracting new users
⢠Great venue for starting conversations with and getting
feedback from readers and/or viewers
⢠More and more business being transacted via social
networks
55. Social Media Tips
⢠Dedicate staff to social media
⢠Use a more conversational tone on social platforms
⢠Use social tools not just to disseminate information,
but to gather it as well
⢠Leverage the audience already using social media for
crowdsourcing projects
57. Curation
⢠If you want to be the first stop for consumers interested
in any topic, you should curate:
⢠TBD linked out to all members of our community network
⢠TBD linked out to local sites that were not part of the
community network
⢠We linked out to other local news organizations
⢠We even linked to TV stations that were competitive with us
⢠In short, we linked to EVERYONE
58. Why Curation?
⢠Some of the Webâs largest news sites are based on the
concept:
⢠Drudge Report
⢠Huffington Post
⢠Yahoo News
⢠Google News
⢠Readers are looking for sites to serve not just as chefs,
but maitre dâs.
⢠If you are a fair arbiter of the best content out there,
readers will start their day with you. If that happens,
youâve already won.
61. Why Multimedia?
⢠Video usage on the web increasing dramatically
⢠Photography remains one of the most popular types of
content on the web
⢠Radio usage on the web remains high
⢠Interactive graphics becoming a story form all of its own
62. Why Multimedia?
⢠Video usage on the web increasing dramatically
⢠Photography remains one of the most popular types of
content on the web
⢠Radio usage on the web remains high
⢠Interactive graphics becoming a story form all of its own
⢠Remember, the first 15 years on TV were radio guys in
front of a camera. The first 15 of the web were print, TV
and radio guys trying to repeat their format on the web.
⢠The web is evolving into something all its own; you have
to evolve with it.
70. Why Mobile?
⢠Mobile devices are attached to consumers on a near
24/7 basis.
⢠In most cases, you know exactly where your mobile
users are, so you can provide geo-specific services
⢠Consumers are in the habit of paying for mobile content
in ways they never were on the web
⢠Unlike the web, mobile payment systems are built-in,
seamless and guilt-free (at least initially)
71. The Right Way to Think Mobile
⢠Reject the âplatform agnosticâ mantra
⢠Remember that mobile is a mindset of its own, with
unique consumer needs and revenue opportunities
⢠Remember that each mobile device is a product in and
of itself: The iPhone, iPad, Droid and Kindle require
different strategies
⢠Dedicate people to building good mobile products
⢠Make your mobile app and/or site complementary to
your web site, not a mini version of it
72. The Right Way to Think Mobile
⢠Remember what makes a mobile device unique:
portability, location tracking and 24/7 access to the
consumer.
⢠Remember that mobile allows you to get content from
the reader, not just send it out
⢠Donât just focus on your own mobile sites. Get into the
streams of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram,
etc.
⢠Focus on utility: weather, stocks, alerts, traffic, public
transportation data, sports scores, etc.
76. QR Codes
⢠Many papers are starting to use
QR codes in newspaper or via e-
mail.
⢠Lots of potential for theseâŚ
⢠For example, why not QR codes
on all your newspaper boxes
that list places to eat, places to
show, historical landmarks near
that box?
88. Why Location-Based Services?
⢠In an increasingly mobile world, where you are matters
more and more every day
⢠Consumers only sporadically care about regional, national
or world news. They always care about whatâs going on
near where they live or work.
⢠Being able to target location opens the door to significant
editorial and revenue possibilities.
89. Geocoding
⢠At TBD.com, we delivered
geographically relevant news
to users.
â We had a team of real humans
reading and adding geo-codes to
stories from TBD, our blog network
and other local news
organizations.
â TBDâs home page had a module
that delivered news to up to five
zip codes that a user signaled as
important to them
â TBDâs mobile app allowed you to
see geographically-relevant stories
90. Augmented Reality
⢠The combination of the phoneâs GPS
with use of the camera provides a
near-virtual reality experience.
91. Foursquare / Gowalla
⢠Knowing where consumers are offers major reporting opportunities:
â Looking for sources
â Communicating news to location-specific audiences
â Distribution of your reviews and tips
93. The Future Journalist
Core Skills
â Reporting
â Writing
â Interviewing
New Skills
â Ability to shoot and edit video
â Ability to take and edit photography
â Willingness to engage with community
â More business knowledge, stronger entrepreneurial instinct
Career Path
â More Startups, Less Established Players
95. Strengths of U.S. Journalism
⢠Freedom of the press remains a core value
⢠Exciting new tools at our disposal
⢠Entrepreneurial opportunities increasing, which
means journalists are better able to pursue passions
⢠New business models emerging
⢠Stronger coverage of niche subjects
⢠More voices being heard, not just the elite
96. Weaknesses of U.S. Journalism
⢠Less accountability journalism
⢠Coverage of local areas getting weaker
⢠Too much overlapping coverage
⢠Public opinion of journalists is poor
⢠Still seeking working business models
⢠Consumers seeking sites that affirm their views
⢠The world has changed, and many news organizations
are still acting as if it hasnât
98. March 11 Coverage Weaknesses
⢠The U.S. coverage was largely supplementary
⢠Not nearly enough U.S. journalists on the ground
⢠For most part, cable networks did not send top on-air talent
⢠Too heavy an emphasis on visuals; not enough depth
⢠Particularly weak explanatory reporting on Fukushima
⢠The U.S. coverage was largely temporary
⢠Cable TV talent didnât stay long once immediate danger
passed
⢠Follow-up reporting â especially on Fukushima and its long-
term effects â has been poor.
99. March 11 Coverage Strengths
⢠Early coverage dominated all news cycles, and the
front pages of all major U.S. print publications
⢠U.S. media made good use of social media and other
citizen-driven sources of information
100. U.S. Foreign Coverage Issues
⢠High costs at time of severe budget cuts
⢠Sporadic interest in foreign news from U.S.
consumers
⢠Most U.S. news organizations trying to refocus on
coverage of local issues
⢠Lack of money, people and sometimes widespread
interest means sustaining focus on foreign news is
difficult