ISOJ 2013 notes

1. ISOJ 2013
Clark Gilbert - Strengthening journalism in an era of digital disruption
- Thinks disruption is the wrong terms - says it's opportunity.
- He's doing things in Salt Lake that some say can't be adapted; not true!
- Disruption in print media - early on an industry under performs what a
market needs (example: when your computer used to be too slow for 60
words per minute.)
- Then, companies move to do MORE than what any of us need- example:
processors inside computers today are faster than anyone knows or cares
about.
- Benchmarking local media online market share --- Characteristics of high
market share sites = Separate physical location for businesses, separate sales
team, separate content, product and ethnology teams, separate management
structure
- Finding new market growth: The disruptive business starts outside the
core, established business.
- As time goes on, the disruptive business encompasses the established one
- Online will and is encompassing all other forms of media and creates new
growth, but the established businesses are blind to that
- Gilbert says journalism is on the brink of a growth opportunity, but
journalists focus on what has been lost by digital revolution.
- Before an industry "dies" it's has a "last gasp"/ a final period of increased
revenue. For example: In newspaper industry there's almost no separation of
print only and online. Both decline together as showed by Gilbert’s graph.
They can't see the line on the graph of green growth that's increasing and
totally separate
- Build your business around the "green space."
- Transformation in the face of disruption is made up of:
Transformation A: legacy organization -- dramatically lower costs in
the core, reposition core around a Post-disruption "job to be done."
Transformation B: separate disruptive organization -- create separate
P&L, management structure, hire people from the "green space"
- We want traditional journalism to thrive in this new world, we don't
want it to die. But there's fundamental physics going on in our
industry, however there is a path to survival
- What goes in the "rotator" on the main home page? It depends on

2. who you ask- web team, news editor, sports etc. all have different
opinions
- You can't ignore editorial voice, real-time interest (ChartBeat), etc. So
Gilbert says he created a temporary "exchange team" composed of members
from both "sides" to figure it out and compromise; the team figured out how
to divide the rotator spots-- first 2-3 were always news, next 2-3 stories
could come from anywhere, be things with more social "lift"
- NYT vs HuffPo unique users are nearly the same, but head count is WAY
different - HuffPo has 50-100 workers, NYT has over 1,000
Is it advertisers' job to pay for our newsrooms?
The web has forced us to focus resources and answer the question, "What do
we want to be the best in the world at?" (No one is coming to KVUE.com
for sports news, they go to ESPN.com for that)
- Gilbert's news organization noticed poll data that indicated frustration with
news on faith and family; people didn't like the NYT, but they didn't like
Sean Hannity either. So Gilbert’s team capitalized on that un-met need.
They did stories on faith and family that were well researched. Example:
Where have all the PG movies gone? Fatherless America? A third of
children now live without dad
***Have the rigor to decide what we're going to be good at, then set up a
web-only team for that content because it makes the entire journalistic
product stronger
***This isn't just theory, Gilbert is doing it and it’s working
***Find the conversation people are already having and put your content
into that flow.
***To find that conversation, you must first know what you are/want to be
good at do you know where to look for the conversation.
_________________
Disruption and Innovation - News organizations ' strategies for the new
media ecosystem
**David Skok- Director of Digital, Global News, Canada
- How do we attract and audience?
The user looks at you to fulfill a job in their life. What job are we trying to
do? Entertain? Inform?
- How do we reach sustainability?

3. Modularity vs. interdependence
- How do we change the culture? It's hard, especially in broadcast because
it’s deadline heavy.
RPP Model:
You have your resources, your processes, and your priorities -- the priorities
of the organization really do provide the precedent for what everyone else in
the organization thinks/does- for example, if management ignores a big web
piece, but praises a TV piece that wins an Emmy
- at Global News:
Every story is ongoing
Every beat is a site
They did a site redesign and revamped the content management system-
using open source WordPress. Acknowledges that's not easy if you're
company is concerned about security
GlobalNews focuses on searchable and shareable content instead of waiting
for people to come to your homepage
They:
Focus on breaking news
Focus on local news
Supper hour news??? Two different cultures: broadcast and web - they've
separated them into two different entities
**Jennifer Carroll - VP of digital outreach at Gannett
Takes innovation, disruption, "jobs to be done" to heart
They're working on moving digital out of the traditional parent- USA Today
They're a collection of developers and information architects. Their DNA is
different.
Look for the common in the uncommon. What's going on around the edges?
They're intrigued by the "three screen" phenomenon rather than just saying
TV is no longer relevant.

4. Instead of capturing the living room, capture the bedroom (people with
tablets in bed!)
Fail fast, fail cheaply. Create prototypes!!
**Jim Brady, pres of ONA, EIC at Digital First Media
Digital First Media is parent company of 75 daily newspapers
Thunderdome-- its purpose is to centralize non-local news editing and web
production for all its dailies (example: Boston bombings could be one, well-
written story for them all)
Data team, video team, curation team
Creation of new traffic and revenue- driving content channel and products
Basically, they save money by eliminating redundancy; massive teamwork.
(They were able to send extra reporters to help bolster the Boston paper's
small staff)
Create viral content (images of how Obama aged in his first term) -- a la
BuzzFeed -type content
Data-driven content, original video story-telling, photo galleries ("traffic
gold") = all important, all things they're doing
***Jim Moroney - Dallas Morning News
Problem in the newspaper industry = the hope that ad revenues will stop
dropping is NOT a strategy
Digital revenue will NOT save print - there's too many ads and not enough
demand for them so price goes down
DMN has more news because they have more reporters than all of the TV
stations combined - so they must find ways to sustain this scale so they can
sustain their competitive advantage
How do you sustain the brand and the business? - Diverse sources of

5. revenue - start or purchase new businesses
**PANEL DISCUSSION with all the above speakers:
Brady- has found ScribbleLive does well on his sites; says its similar to
Twitter as a real-time feed
Moroney says DMN is careful with branded content; doesn't do anything
that could put the credibility of his news organization in jeopardy
Brady- there's too much scolding in this industry, if you try something and it
fails, just move on!
Skok- The newsroom and the web being separate entities is great for culture
because when the web wins awards for its work, it'll get the TV people's
attention and admiration
What skills are needed for journalism students?
Moroney- need more data analysts
Rest of panel- developers needed, they help produce good journalism
(example: digging through result numbers of Boston marathon runners to
find locals)
Brady- thinks newsrooms merging with digital was somewhat of a cover-up
for cutting costs
** being separate doesn't mean being strangers to each other; news still
needs no think about where their publishing, digital first
You need someone to work as a "bridge" between the two worlds
Separation gives you the freedom to try new things; separate budgets
___________________
Paper presentations
Christian Science Monitor guy:
What is engagement?
SEO has made the CSM relevant. That's a lever you can pull. Admittedly,
they're not good at engagement.
CSM invests in international news but if you look at the numbers, no one is
reading it, they're reading national news and other areas

6. CSM is mistaking loyalty for deep engagement = they are not the same! Just
because a user comes back to your site several times a month, doesn't mean
they're talking to you, about you, spending a lot of time on site
Research panel discussion:
Tell people HOW the audience / your viewers have contributed to your
coverage or social conversation. That increases their trust in you. Shows you
see your audience as equals and important to the conversation.
Thank our viewers for re-tweeting our content
_____________
Andy Carvin – NPR – Link to his complete transcript:
http://www.andycarvin.com/?p=1773
There's a sin much worse than getting the story wrong in broadcast-- dead
air. We have to fill air time, which is a scenario in which even the best
journalists make mistakes
He's not here to throw broadcast under the bus. How often do we all post a
report without a second or third source to back it up? And social media
requires you to work even more rapidly than before.
Errors have always been a part of journalism but corrections are more recent.
Social media makes an obvious target- never before have we been able to
spread misinformation so rapidly. It's never been easier to spread rumors.
Before, you'd hear the rumors, but you could scrutinize them and leave them
out of that story. That era is over. Today everyone has a device in their
pocket that can send information.
So what should we in the media do now that the public can inform each
other? We need to get back to the core of journalism. Rethink what it means
to inform the public. To create a more informed public means to help people
understand, not telling them what to think.
Perhaps we can use social media to SLOW the news cycle, not just to send
out breaking news headlines or asking for the public's help. Actively address
rumors and challenge them. Tell the public what we do and do not know.

7. We should help the public understand what it means to confirm something.
The public doesn't understand our jargon.
We can no longer afford to underplay the public's role in helping telling a
story.
We must understand what it means to be both producers and consumers of
information.
We must do whatever we can to create a more informed public.
Minutes before he took that stage, Andy tracked down the real Twitter
account of one of the Boston Marathon suspects!!!! Talks about how he did
it – The guy’s friends were saying "I can't believe I know him ," the account
made references to Chechnya, had pictures that look like him
Twitter is 99.9999 percent noise. It's our job to sort through the .001 percent.
Do your job. We have the ability to put things in their proper context.
______________
Responsive Design panel
Vox Media
Responsive plus redesign all at once is incredibly complicated.
Responsive design is a way of making the Web work, it's not a content
strategy.
It's not about layout. Mobile has exacerbated this.
Advertising is hard and publishers and ad/sales people rarely talk with
people who are making the website. More communication needed; with
responsive sites, it only gets worse.
***Mobile is an idea, not a specific size. It's not a cell phone or an iPad. It
could be huge! We don't know how people are going to access our content.
Fixed position ads were a big problem for NYTimes' layout

8. Responsive design has been around for a while, but is an unsolved problem
Quartz - qz.com -- kept a fixed height, changed the widths
Ads are complimentary to the site. Need them to work with us, not against
us
Keep in mind people on a fast, business Internet network aren't always the
people accessing your site. Consider users' bandwidth.
Build tolerant ads- flexible width is better than heights
Ads - there's room for someone to own this space today. Like back in "Mad
Men" days when ads were essentially art.
Responsive design is table stakes.
Responsive design isn't just width. It'd includes other parts of the users'
experience- what time of day are they coming to our site? What if we had a
Day v. Night version of the site? What about location? What about what
your users have seen/interacted with on our site? What are our viewers
reading or sharing? What are they talking about/ commenting on?
When a user looks at our site at 5pm, what happens if an important story has
already fallen off the page? The site needs to adapt to what they need to see.
We should spend more time to make ad concepts as good as our content -
advertising is really our business.
------------------------
The Post-industrial Present
Emily Bell - Columbia University, former director of digital content for
The Guardian
The Industrial Age of journalism is drawing to a close.
We had been training journalists for predictable jobs but now training needs
to focus on skill sets.

9. We're seeing movement away from the packaged journalist
In the past, J-schools taught students how to join brands. Today, teach them
how to survive on their own.
NBA analogy for journalism -- The power has gone from the league to the
franchise to the individual.
A deepening of technical skills and specialized areas will be critical.
Data skills, statistical literacy, technical literacy (basic knowledge of code)
Journalists need to be transparent in how they construct their stories and
arrive at their conclusions. You need to do your work in public and interact
with citizens.
Journalists need to be self-organizing and collaborative. Competing nature
of employers stops collaborations among journalists with common interests.
Become better, faster. Real-time storytelling.
The US tends to think news has to make a profit to be good, but the rest of
the world doesn't see it that way.
_______________
Mobile Panel:
***Ivo Burum - Australia, Burum Media
Been developing a style of journalism called user-generated stories
Created the NT MoJo project- put cameras in the hands of indigenous people
and trained them how to shoot their own stories, taught them a skill set they
can now use in their own communities
Next, he went into schools doing workshops
Believes mobile is headed to TV

10. Neo Journalism
How do we take journalists and staff with us as we move online?
Listen to their fears
Need experienced leaders, experimentation requires experience
Cost of transition - shared resources
Forward scouts - change teams infiltrating traditional journalism
Real use-- not wasting their time - where is all their work going to end up?
Burum says: Web TV
***Chris Courtney - mobile product manager for Tribune Company
(Chicago Tribune)
Going Lean - failing as fast as possible in the land of mobile
Strategy is never 100% - assume you're doing it wrong
Apps are tricks, the last thing you need, you need get to the customers as
quickly as possible
The stealth build cycle - idea, meeting, wireframe it, meeting to discuss the
wireframe, mock ups, meeting again, RFP document, meeting about the fact
the vendor doesn't want to build our product because they couldn't help
collaborate, then MVP, meeting, creep - everyone wants to criticize, meeting
= this is a sad reality. Things take too long to make.
Meet: the LA Walk of Fame app - great product, but he feels bad about it
because no one wanted it. Was an ultra-niche market
Find your customers and talk to them!!! Don't build anything until you now
who that customer is!
"The suits" fear you'll hurt the brand. They want to release something that's
perfect. Then don't use your brand name. Do your research at Starbucks.
Go do things that will help people, solve problems
***David Ho - editor of mobile, tablets, and emerging technology at The
Wall Street Journal
They were the first newspaper app in the iTunes Hall of Fame
They learned from the newspaper reading experience and take those best

11. elements to create a new experience for mobile
People use their apps A LOT, they have great engagement.
Tips for mobile engagement:
Tip 1: Do not annoy - it is so easy to make people mad on a mobile device.
Be careful about the thing you think is really, really cool. It's probably only
cool once.
Tip 2: Listen to your readers.
Tip 3: Make it an experience. News apps need to sing. They need to be as
beautiful as the stories they deliver. We need to make it worth our users'
time.
Tip 4: Beware of phrases like "click here." The mouse is dead!! You now
have voice recognition and touch screens. If you see "click here" on your
touch-screen device, you're insulted
***Joey Marburger - mobile design director at Washington Post
SIMPLIFY!!! It's his mantra and also Apple's
You're competing for people's time, so you don't want anything to be taxing.
Speed leads to satisfaction. People remember if something took a lot of time.
Good apps:
- Summly - simple design, focuses on content
- FourSquare started out very simple and clean and slowly did progressive
enhancements to keep their users happy
- Rise - an alarm clock, cool, simple design. You want to wake up and be
happy. Very gesture-based (you can shake it and it snoozes)
User experience: 37 % think mobile sites are difficult to navigate
Responsive web design is not a mobile strategy.
Keynotopia- you can make a faux app on it
Mobile advertising revenue is expected to reach $11 billion this year
Think big! You have to be innovative

12. ***Allissa Richardson - Bowie State University
Teaching MoJo (mobile journalism)
The five c's:
- choice
- conversation
- curation
- creation
- collaboration
Choice - students must know how to use a mobile device to locate, vet and
select reputable news sources
Conversation - students must know how to use mobile device to start online
dialogue straight from the field
Curation - students must know how to use a mobile device for news
gathering and data aggregation
Creation -- Students must know how to use a mobile device to make a photo
sideshows, audio and video podcasts and maps
Collaboration -- students must know how to use the mobile device to report
need with global colleagues they have never met
Never lose respect for where we came from but acknowledge things are
changing.
Mobile panel Q & A
There are tools that will allow you to build apps rather than having a floor
full of developers.