I have a new post up at MediaShift covering some of the new opportunities in on-demand magazine publishing. Here’s a favorite selection from the piece:

“I don’t think that computers and the Internet make real people’s need for real physical media go away,” said Powazek of MagCloud. “There’s content that deserves to be archived in print and some that doesn’t. For moment to moment updates about news, the web does that really well, but longer-lasting community-based niche content will still have a home in print. I hope that some magazines that have fallen on hard times will find their way to MagCloud and publish their whole back catalog there.”

So which magazines deserve to stay in print? As environmental resources become more precious and distribution channels multiply, we’ll have to determine what content deserves print status.

I also see a lot of potential in these on-demand services for student publications. Though that wasn’t a focus of this piece, it would be hugely convenient for journalism educators to use on-demand publishing to create student magazines or other collections of student work. Students could be provided copies and then order additional copies themselves to distribute to friends and family, while readers elsewhere in the world could even become fans. This seems like a cost-effective and innovative way to create student projects.

In my latest piece for PBS MediaShift, I investigated how citizen journalists are fairing in the new media era. What are the challenges local bloggers face covering city hall or the school board? Are tools like Twitter and Facebook helpful (or even being used) for citizen powered reporting?

A conversation I’ve been having a lot lately — mostly because I keep bringing it up — is over the question of journalist-programmers, specifically: do journalist of the future need to be programmers?

The short answer I keep getting is, no.

The thing is, though, that answer keeps coming from professors, not my classmates. Ask them — at least the ones with a heightened interest/awareness in online journalism and new media — and they’ll tell you, yes. YES!

And it seems to be a growing trend:

“Learning to program is yet another way journalists are becoming generalists, more like pamphleteer, typesetter, postmaster and newspaper publisher Ben Franklin and his fellow ink-stained polymaths than highly specialized publishing types like Bob Woodward, Annie Leibovitz or Mario Garcia. Your typical professional blogger might juggle tasks requiring functional knowledge of HTML, Photoshop, video recording, video editing, video capture, podcasting, and CSS, all to complete tasks that used to be other people’s problems, if they existed at all: production, design, IT, etc.

Coding is the logical next step down this road, albeit one that might only appeal to more ambitious or technically-minded journalists, the sort of people who want to launch their own websites, or attach a truly powerful and interactive feature to an existing one.”

— “Hack to Hacker: Rise of the Journalist-Programmer,” by Ryan Tate.

I think it’s shortsighted to ignore the fact that journalists, as they compete for fewer and fewer jobs and/or become entrepreneurs of their own online news sites, should know programming. The ones that do will get the jobs, I’m sure of that.

Like I said, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, which led to a discussion today, via Twitter, with Robert Hernandez (@webjournalist) about the journo-programmer hybrid:

From Robert to me: BTW, journalists having to know programming is up for debate. Have had this conversation w/ many & we tend to conclude you don’t.

From me to Robert: well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree on the journo-programmer thing. I think it’s only a matter of time

From Robert: I think we need to get a drink and discuss. Perhaps an ONA.LA meetup/debate? I think journos need to know code, but not master it. (I like that all journalists prefer to settle things over booze.)

Robert then when on to query the Twittersphere further:

Robert to David Stanton (@gotoplanb, technology Fellow at The Poynter Institute): Hey Dave, quick question. Do you think all journos should be programmers? How much code should they know?

Dave to Robert: No. Should know basic markup (HTML), style (CSS) and be able to comprehend data structure (XML and JSON).

Dave to Robert: Should have some control of structure & presentation. Also, know what is easy and hard programming for team work.

Robert to Dave: My thoughts exactly! Hey, I may have you chat with my class later this semester.

And those are my thoughts exactly, too.

The miscommunication, I think, between Robert and me is simply one of semantics. When I say journalists need to be programmers, I’m talking about a strong, fundamental knowledge of HTML and CSS, how Web sites work and just what is possible when it comes to creating a Web site (basically, what Dave Stanton said). I’m not talking about MIT-level stuff here, just enough to design your own WordPress blog and fix problems when they arise, because we all know there will be bugs in the system.

This also dovetails into why I’m a proponet of the journalist-programmer on a philosophical level. Most news orgs, in the attempt to move their newsrooms onto the Web, have simply hired an IT staff, and while technically savvy, this staff doesn’t necessarily think the way journalists do in terms of what’s newsworthy and what attracts readers. My quest to be a journalist-programmer is primarily to be able to do for myself what I see in my head — in terms of Web design, interactivity, SEO, etc — or communicate effectively with a hard-core programmer about what it is I really want.

Here a few other stories on the subject:

• “The Programmer as Journalist: A Q&A with Adrian Holovaty” from the Online Journalism Review.

• “How Programmer/Journalists Are Changing the News” from Mashable.

• “How Programmer/Journalists Craft Their Own Study Programs” from MediaShift.

Here are a few articles and blog posts that we have found that offer some keen insights, new thinking, or different ways to look at the ways we address causes and respond to disasters.

Must Reads:
David Sasaki, Global Voices Online:
Announcing the Technology for Transparency Network

Barry Rodriquez, World Next Door
Compassion Fatigue

Rachel Sterne, Ground Report:
Ideas for Using Tech to Improve Haiti Relief Efforts

Suzanne Choney, MSNBC.com:
Online vs. mobile giving: Which is better?

Eric Foley, Transformational Giving:
A Transformational response to tragedy and crisis, Part I

Christopher Csikszentmihály, MediaShift Idea Lab:
Centralizing a People Finder for Haiti, Plus an SMS 911

Courtney E. Martin, The American Prospect:
The Missing Discomfort in Mourning for Haiti

Nathaniel Whittemore, Change.org:
What Goes Wrong With Rebuilding Efforts (And How To Do Better This Time)

What Posts & Articles Did We Miss?
Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Last month, Craig Silverman posted on MediaShift a collection of “wishes” for 2010 from a selection of media people. (Interestingly, only one — a columnist for the New York Times — represented any kind of print publication.)

Of the wishes out there, the two most repeated were: for more collaboration in the industry (at the very least just linking to each other, even competitors); and to quit mulling and meeting about the future of journalism and actually doing something.

“So my wish for 2010 is that the parties that have an interest in this — news organizations, technology companies and others — just dive in and start trying everything.”
— Josh Cohen, senior business product manager for Google News

“My wish for 2010 is that it be a year of doing. I hope the larger media industry continues the ongoing conversation about the state of journalism, but not unless it means taking action. Next year should be the year we stop writing/reading the white papers and start being the change we wish to see.”
— David Cohn, founder of Spot.us.

Halleluiah!

Newspapers and other print-based news outlets that are still holding monthly meetings to talk about how to move their product into a Web-first mode are already too late. They missed the boat. At this point, they’ve just got to dive in and — because I’m on a roll with this metaphor — adopt a sink or swim attitude.

Sure, you’re going to make a mistake or two along the way (hopefully in the name of good journalism, not sensational tabloid trash). But being Web-first cannot mean three editors must approve your breaking news Web brief, Tweet or shaky cell phone video before it finally makes it onto the homepage.

Newspapers lost out to radio and TV the ability to break news. Now we have it back, people! Why is it taking so long to embrace that? So, trust your reporters. Mistakes will be made, sure, and then lessons will be learned. Repeat offenders will pay the price but not those who prove they can break news quickly and accurately.

Another interesting wish for 2010 comes from Jolie O’Dell, the community manager and writer for ReadWriteWeb:

“  … I’d like to see web applications and social media integrated into every journalism class in America. J-school kids ought to be taught SEO principles, such as metadata and tagging. They should be taught what constitutes a good Digg headline and how to get retweets. They should know about page views, clickthroughs, and conversion rates.”

I couldn’t agree more. When I took my first journalism class in 1999, we learned about “entry points,” how photos, headlines and subdecks drew in readers. SEO is the new entry point conversation and it needs to happen with all journalists.

It’s a brave new media world out there and there’s no time to look back.

Losing the Internet as we know it by Megan Tady  CLICK HERE TO FILE NOW!

TOP STORIES

Tell PBS: Don’t abandon hard-hitting journalism from FAIR

White Power USA: The rise of right-wing militias from Democracy Now!

64 new food rules for better health by Michael Pollan

Cops can arrest you for filming them & Police fight cellphone recordings

POLITICS

Obama received $20m from healthcare industry during 2008 campaign

Senator Russ Feingold wary of approaching campaign finance ruling

Lobbyists aided Alaska senator in writing EPA limits bill from McClatchy

Why ACTA negotiations are secret from Slashdot

ECONOMY

Wall Street will be back for more by Chris Hedges

Unemployment: The 2010 time bomb by John Nichols

LISTEN- Matt Taibbi and RFK Jr. on Obama’s sellout to Wall Street

There’s plenty of good news, will the US ever hear it? by David Swanson

THE MEDIA

The fundamental unreliability of America’s media by Glenn Greenwald

Study: Watching TV shortens your life span from LA Times

Your guide to cutting the cord to cable TV from MediaShift

Fox News finally signs up Sarah Palin as commentator from Indecision Forever

AT&T consultant conjures evidence Obama is soft on net neutrality by Tim Karr

Google stops hosting AP News from TechDirt

Radio royalty fight heats up in DC from Forbes

Arbitron CEO resigns after questionable testimony to Congress

Check out this list compiled by Mark Glaser at PBS MediaShift. Apparently my post on young political candiates watching out for their online footprint has received a number of visits pushing it into Glaser’s year end top post list. It’s a good list and indicative of an interesting year in the new media era.

My latest feature for PBS MediaShift went live today. The piece examines the popular simple blogging platforms Posterous and Tumblr and asks whether these relatively new technologies could foster government transparency.

on the left: Mark Glaser - MediaShift

By Mark Glaser

Not too long ago, there was an established route for promoting musical talent. The music would go into heavy rotation on the radio and MTV, the artist would play in a record store, and promotion might include an advertisement in a music magazine. But the old formula has been updated with the advent of digital distribution, social networking sites and web radio. Now bands can sell their music directly through iTunes or CDBaby, and can build their fan base directly through band havens such as MySpace.

The Arctic Monkeys are just one example of a band that parlayed early online success into a mainstream career on stages and in physical CD sales. And Wired magazine has listed a group of what it calls MySpace bands that have used online buzz to help break through to larger audiences.

But every band that creates a MySpace profile doesn’t become the Next Big Thing. Just because you can get global distribution and attention via the web doesn’t mean you will rise above every other band doing the same thing. So I decided to ask two experts in the music business to explain the new realities of online music promotion in the digital age.

Jason Feinberg is founder and president of On Target Media Group, an online marketing agency for bands and record labels. He worked in software development in Seattle, and has also worked at record labels. Scott Perry is the founder of New Music Tipsheet, and has done marketing and PR for a number of artists and labels in his career. I created the following six maxims for digital music promotion after talking to both Feinberg and Perry, and include quotes from them below taken from our phone and email conversations.

Jason Feinberg

1. Give away some of your music. This has been the most controversial element of digital promotion ever since the days of Napster, when file-sharing was blamed for damaging the music industry and musicians’ livelihoods. But savvy marketers have found that setting a few tracks free online as downloadable MP3s can lead to more awareness, a stronger fan base and even better sales over time.

In July, Prince gave away his new album, “Planet Earth,” for free with the Daily Mail in the UK, while also selling out 21 stadium shows in London. Recently, Radiohead released its new album, “In Rainbows,” allowing people to name their own price before buying it online. The average price people have paid for it so far, according to New Music Express, is about $10.

But those freebies and promos by bigger artists are much different than an up-and-coming act wanting to get attention by giving away a few tracks. Those newer bands probably won’t want to give away the whole album, and would have an easier time getting legal clearance to set a few tracks free into the online wilds.

Jason Feinberg: [Giving away tracks] is important and useful because nothing sells music better than hearing the music itself. If you’re selling ice cream, you can describe it all day, but you can also give them a spoonful and that helps sell it the most. It’s the same thing with music. If someone can download a song, and hear it in any format and they can give it to their friends, you’re giving your fans a marketing tool. You let your strongest asset do the work instead of trying to force people to want the music without having it. You don’t want to give it all away.

With established artists, it’s a different story. There are so many people that all have to agree to give something away. If a song has four or six streams of money coming out of it, then you can’t get all of them to give up those revenue streams. When we work with a major label, we understand when they can’t get all the rights to give away a song. It’s a very difficult chain to make it all the way through.

Scott Perry: Hell yeah they should [give away some music]! The music is their calling card, the live show is the product. All bands should give away an MP3 or two, but it is important to have a sales option — the music itself is ultimately what motivates someone to be a fan, and the artist should be compensated for his or her work. Bands still need to sell a full disc at their show for $10 to get some gas and food money for the road.

2. Record labels aren’t dead yet. The low cost of digital recording equipment allows anyone to record an album pretty cheaply. The ease of uploading music to websites makes it easy to get distribution. Record labels might be losing stature and income in the digital age, but they aren’t obsolete quite yet. They still help get physical CDs distributed into stores and onto radio stations, while also providing marketing muscle and support. However, the relationship between labels and artists is changing as more functions of the label are becoming automated online.

Perry: Being on a label has certain advantages if you want to reach a certain level of stardom, but by and large, bands can now do a lot of the groundwork themselves. A band has to ask if they want to be big and make less per unit by signing with a label (and risk falling by the wayside if the band falls out of favor with the label), or would they rather make more per unit by pulling out their own checkbook to hire the right publicist, sales and marketing team, radio promotions guy, online promotions person, someone to pitch music supervisors, etc.

The key these days is to cause enough of a splash on your own to where you can command better terms with a label. Hopefully, you can retain the rights to your master [recordings], yet have a bank account to draw from and a small, dedicated staff with a small roster who are going to go the mat for you every day. I see it happening right now with artists like Ingrid Michaelson and Manchester Orchestra.

Feinberg: As someone who loves the idea of raw talent writing great songs and getting exposure, I think it’s fantastic that there are so many options for [new bands]. But I still see the need for heightened exposure that artists still need. I don’t see labels dissolving as quickly as many people say they will. Talent isn’t enough. Marketing dollars and branding and pandering to the masses at times builds an artist, not raw talent. That’s not all it takes. There’s always going to be a need for centralized structure, funding, a marketing team that knows how to reach your target audience. We’re still a little ways off from the full demise of physical music product.

3. The old gatekeepers don’t hold the keys anymore. At one time, a live performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” or “Saturday Night Live” could break an artist into the mainstream. Now, there are very few one-time catalysts that help artists break through with the huge Long Tail of niche content online. As media itself splinters away from mass hits, so too does the venues for promoting musical artists. Now artists need a slower buildup through social networks, touring, targeted ads and word of mouth rather than one TV appearance.

Feinberg: In the ’80s, MTV was a gatekeeper. If you got on it, you would sell records. Now most people would be hard-pressed to name a gatekeeper. You can’t even say that for ‘Saturday Night Live.’ There have been plenty of independent artists that have played SNL without having much happen afterwards. I have 500 channels at home through cable, I have a laptop on the couch with almost infinite streams of content, along with iPods and Blackberrys. There’s too much, too many sources of content for any one of them to get my attention. I’m not going to strive to get my artist on one specific website, because there’s so many sources of content and distribution now.

Biz Markie & Scott Perry

Perry: The flood of new information and activities has definitely changed how bands and labels market their goods. We’ve gone from buying ads on targeted sites and blogs and buying into email marketing blasts to geographical ad targeting and behavioral/cookies-based advertising (matching consumers with similar products and artists based on their online activity). This will continue more as folks learn on a macro level to zero in on marketing opportunities presented by companies like iLike, MySpace, and Pandora.

4. MySpace isn’t the only game in town. Although MySpace has helped bands spread the word about their music and live shows, making “friends” with their fans and keeping them updated, it’s become so big that it’s hard for anyone to get noticed there. Other social networking sites such as Facebook or even Last.fm have gained in stature as well, and music blogs and online publications should be included in any online outreach for music promoters.

Feinberg: AOL Music has always been relevant, and Yahoo Launch and MSN Music are relevant too [for promoters]. With the social networks, you’re relying on proactive users. With AOL Music, we set up a stream with them, and we know people will log on to hear music ahead of the release date. On social networks, there’s a limit to how many networks people can actually use.

A lot of artists have only focused on MySpace. We get this all the time. A band finds us, gets in contact and sends us a link to their MySpace page. And that’s all they’ve done, that’s where they put all their effort. They have bought the automated ‘friend finder’ software to add 6,000 friends. They’ve tried to maximize the usefulness of it at the expense of doing anything else. That just doesn’t make sense. When you have a medium with unlimited options, it doesn’t make sense to just focus on one…It’s the same thing on iTunes. Just being there doesn’t mean a thing. It just means you have digital distribution at the biggest distributor. But with millions of other songs, your music is in a sea of other artists.

Perry: Obviously, iTunes, CDBaby, and MySpace [help artists the most]. But Facebook and Twitter are where things are heading. There are a ton of other sites and services that can enhance the artist-fan relationship, but labels and bands have to seriously measure what is good vs what is popular, otherwise you spend all day updating your profiles instead of doing more important things like practicing, playing, and interacting with real live human fans.

5. The music and technology businesses are like oil and water. To understand just why the music business is suffering in the age of the Internet, you only have to look at the clash of cultures between the music and technology industries. While music folks fight against piracy and music sharing online, techies look at ways of getting music into the hands of as many people as possible. It’s no wonder that a technology company, Apple Computer, was responsible for the most successful digital music playing device, the iPod, because it could play MP3s — a format loathed by the music biz and loved by fans.

Perry: The music industry is full of arrogant old men clinging to a dying paradigm, and are (rightfully so) trying to protect their cash flow. And the technology industry is full of a bunch of arrogant young men who think that technology and engineering can trump art…Hopefully one day we will find a common ground that allows every rights holder to make a penny from every single digital transaction, but all sides will have to make a lot of concessions before we ever get to that point.

Feinberg: The technology industry is about creating as many opportunities as possible, and about giving users the ability to use information in as many ways as they can. In the music industry, it’s almost the exact opposite. They’re trying to control what is being put out there and how it’s used. Many labels are still very reluctant to give up control and let people use technology to its fullest potential. That’s not the best way to endear your fans.

The labels and the artists pushing for DRM-free content, they get it. I’ve never been a big fan of DRM. There’s the technology side, the music business side and the fan’s side. The fans want as many options as possible, the tech industry wants to provide as many options as possible and the music industry wants to monetize their content. I understand the difficulty in synching that up. The labels that are giving users the most options are the ones having the most success.

6. Mobile marketing isn’t mature yet. Many bands have made money by selling ringtones to mobile companies and the iPhone has finally brought a fully realized convergence for music and cell services. But is the mobile platform a place for bands to promote themselves in the U.S.? Not yet. Until people are more comfortable buying songs through their cell phones and mobile advertising becomes acceptable, cell phones are still an experimental place for music promotion.

Feinberg: In Japan, mobiles are utilized splendidly. In America, consumers and companies haven’t met up yet. Do consumers want streaming audio on their phones? Do they want to be able to buy songs? There are so many options. But we don’t know what the consumer wants at this point. Plenty of people think they know that, but none of them agree yet. Until there’s a consensus on what people want and there’s a value to it, it’s going to be a little messy.

Perry: Mobile services are still largely the domain of superstars and urban artists. If you’ve got the goods to be big, great — some urban artists make a ton off of ringtone sales, oftentimes selling more ringtones than singles. But if you are a developing artist, then the only thing you should be using your cell phone for is to advance a date with the promoter in the next town, to stay in touch with your girlfriend back home, to Twitter all your fans, or to encourage your fans to take pictures of you and forward them to their friends.

What do you think? How do you think bands should be promoted online? Are there sites you think will help them find an audience? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

UPDATE: Multimedia journalist Michael Amedeo Tumolillo remixed this blog entry, changing it to 6 Maxims for Story Promotion in the Digital Age Instead of promoting music, he made it about journalists promoting their work in new ways. Tumolillo knows about that well as he just launched his new blog, NewsroomNext, in advance of his employer, the Albuquerque Tribune, possibly shutting down.

Original post: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/10/6-maxims-for-music-promotion-in-the-digital-age277.html

Posted by Dexter Bryant Jr. [d.BRYJ]
Powered by DbryJ Music Media Group.

My latest piece for PBS MediaShift examines a new generation of people in politics who have largely gone through college online. I profile several young political candidates with long tails on social networking sites and how it helped them in other cases and not in others.

Launched just three weeks ago, the satirical @FakeAPStylebook Twitter feed is well on its way to garnering twice as many followers as the real @APStylebook.

And the popularity is easy to understand. From the very first Tweet, each posting is a comical mashup of J-school basics with witty pop culture references that just beg to be re-Tweeted, such as:

• Use ’sick!’ in brackets as an editorial comment on something awesome. Ex: ‘Apes with flamethrowers [sick!] burned the police station.’

• Use quotation marks to express skepticism: Cher’s “Farewell Tour,” Creed’s “Best Album,” Jay Leno’s “comedy.”

• Use emoticons to let readers know exactly the type of person they are dealing with. \m/ O_O \m/

• @kingthor Yes, you should include “To Boldly Go…” in your Star Trek article’s headline if you want to be known as “That Guy.”

• Pluralizing colloquial references to the Internet is frowned upon and may adversely affect your credit rating.

So who the heck are the geniuses (disgruntled journalists, perhaps) behind the Tweets, as well as a forthcoming book?

Here’s an interview with the @FakeAPStylebook founders by MediaShift’s Mark Glaser.

by Steven Davy

In my latest piece for PBS MediaShift I explore the question: With social media technologies like Facebook and Twitter providing politicians with direct access to constituents, is the mainstream media now irrelevant?

Click on the screenshot to read.

Via PBS‘(!) MediaShift – 8 Tips to Make Sponsored Tweets Work.

Great article on how to engage in advertising via Twitter. Even includes a guide to a few Twitter Advertising Startups for reference, followed by 8 tips on how to make sponsored tweets work. I have my questions – but I’ll post a reaction once I’ve figured things out a little better. Meanwhile, enjoy the tips – caveat emptor.

1. Protect your reputation.
2. Beware of systems based on pay-per-click.
3. Clear transparency and disclosure are important.
4. Ads perform better on smaller networks.
5. Go beyond a simple product pitch.
6. Ads should be conversational.
7. Beware of fake Twitter accounts and spammers.
8. Too many sponsored tweets will turn off followers.

Full article here.

I came across this blog by Mark Glaser, the host of “Media Shift: Your Guide to the Digital Media Revolution” on PBS. In addition to it being interesting and informative (Glaser really does know what he’s talking about), I thought his 10 reasons were something to think about. We keep hearing about how newspapers are dying out, how individual journalists are becoming more important than the journalistic institution as a whole, how newsrooms are diminishing and how sites are enabling anyone to become a “journalist.” But I whole-heartly believe that journalism will never die because people still want the kind of accountable and investigate reporting that only journalists can provide. Journalism isn’t dying…it’s evolving.

Check out Glaser’s blog here. He discusses everything that we’ve been talking about in class.

Amanda Marzullo also posted an interesting video about the future the journalism, which you can view on her blog page. (Posted by Amanda on: October 6, 2009)

by Steven Davy

Click on the image for my lastest piece at PBS MediaShift. The story explores the evolving use of social media technologies on the local political level in the wake of the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

Did you like this article?

Click on the image above for my most recent piece on PBS MediaShift. The article examines a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project that conducted a survey on Internet use during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. Additionally I interview Todd Mundt of Louisville Public Media to discuss his ongoing experiment living without traditional cable television and how that has impacted his news consumption habits.

Did you like this article?

So many issues, so little time.  Hey, we’ve all got real world issues – things like families, jobs, bills, fantasy football draft preparation.  Wait, did I say that last one out loud?

But, really, with all of the daily activity that we pack in, it can be hard for anything remotely political to register anything more than soundbites into our psyches.

There is, however, one issue creeping into the political dialogue that probably deserves the attention of anyone who considers themselves a moderate or heavy user of the Internet – and that is the issue of “net neutrality”.

I do not consider myself an expert on the topic, but it did catch my attention when FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced last week that “this FCC will support net neutrality and will enforce any violation of net neutrality principles.”

David Lazarus of the Los Angeles Times brings the issue to the forefront in his column today, referring to the issue as “a debate over whether the companies that own the pipes through which data flow can dictate terms to the websites that originate the data.”

Pretty heady stuff and a discussion that appears to still be in its infancy as new policies will be formed moving forward.  Educate yourself and make your own determinations, but don’t wait until it is too late to let your voice be heard. 

For a great overview, be sure to check out the Guide to Net Neutrality published last year by PBS’s MediaShift.

Le 19 août, un billet a été publié sur le blog MediaShift (du réseau public américain de télévision, Public Broadcasting Service) : “Journalism Students Need to Develop Their Personal Brand” (traduction : “les étudiants en journalisme doivent développer leur marque personnelle”).
Depuis deux jours, les plus branchés des étudiants-journalistes se gargarisent ; ils ont relayé l’article sur les réseaux sociaux (twitter, facebook ou friendfeed), certains l’ont même commenté sur leur blog.

En fait, ce billet se veut un peu évangélisateur mais ne révolutionne rien du tout ; tout le monde doit gérer son identité en ligne. Une “marque personnelle”, c’est tout simplement avoir une vie en ligne.

Il ne faut pas prendre brand au sens premier. Ici, c’est son nom personnel qu’il faut comprendre. Certes, “avoir un site Internet qui reflète votre identité professionnelle est votre carte de visite digitale” comme l’écrit Alfred Hermida. Mais nous avons tous, qu’on le veuille ou non, déjà des traces nous concernant sur la toile. Et plutôt que de construire une marque (ex.: un pseudo), contrôlons déjà celle qui existe. Ensuite, continuons à la construire. Il convient d’abord de savoir gérer sa propre identité réelle. Commençons par utiliser notre vrai nom, et pas une marque créée de toute pièce. Un journaliste se vend auprès de ses employeurs potentiels, actuels ou futur, se construit une image, mais il doit avant tout “être lui-même”. “Il n’y a nulle part où se cacher sur le web”, pourquoi vouloir se cacher derrière une marque ?

Plus que son nom, c’est une personnalité et ce qu’elle crée qu’il faut vendre. Cette réputation/image doit se compléter en ligne comme hors-ligne. Ce que l’étudiant-journaliste a à construire et à vendre, c’est une griffe. Sa griffe.

No, this is not my attempt to billboard my face across my blog.

But this article from PBS’ Mediashift by Alfred Hermida got me thinking.

“Journalism Students Need to Develop Their Personal Brand“

Do I really have to become a “product,” as the article suggests, to become a good journalist?

I beg to differ. I think this shift towards all journalists owning a domain name represents the establishment of credentials. In a Internet-crazy and Internet-dependent world, it’s necessary to stake one’s claim and become a specialist. No longer are jack-of-all-trades, every-man or -woman types sought after. We consumers want expertise and we want it fast. If our website doesn’t have the precise information that we’re looking for, then a cursory click is all we might receive as bloggers. But no, I want people to be able to come to me to be a reliable source of _________. I guess figuring out what the underscore is is the next step.

So staciechan.com, here I come.

A mistaken matter-of-fact statement in an Associated Press story launched Chris O’Brien on an insightful blog post that had little to do with the original story.

In the same way, a statement in Chris’s post launched me on this post, which will start out in a different direction from his blog.

The AP story, about Microsoft, said, “If it doesn’t make the right calculation, the software maker could find itself in the same position as newspapers that gave online content away and now are struggling to replace print revenue.”

Chris, contributing to the MediaShift blog, wrote: “That second line is almost a throwaway, written with no attribution. That means that the notion has officially entered into conventional wisdom: Local newspapers screwed up by giving away for free the content everyone used to pay to consume.”

That launched him on one of the best explanations I have read about the paid-content issue. I’ll get back to that in a while, but first, as promised, I want to take this in a different direction.

The AP story was repeating a notion that has been gaining traction all year. Newsosaur blogger Alan Mutter called publishers’ decisions not to charge for online content their “Original Sin.”

Mutter is right that newspapers are still paying for an Original Sin committed in the early days of the Internet, but he (along with the AP story and lots of newspaper executives today) chose the wrong sin. (For one thing, many newspapers did try charging for online content, both initially and through the years, but that’s not my point here.)

The disastrous error that newspapers made early in our digital lives was treating online advertising as a throw-in or upsell for their print advertisers. Helping businesses connect with customers was always our business. We were facing new technology and new opportunities and we did next to nothing to explore how we might use this new technology to help businesses connect with customers.

We just offered businesses the same old solutions that we offered in print, but pop-up ads and web banners somehow didn’t work as well as display ads. Which was just as well, because we told our business customers the ads weren’t worth much by the way we treated them.

As Borrell Associates pointed out in the Newspaper Next 2.0 report, about 60 percent of online advertising comes from businesses who don’t advertise in print. And newspaper ad staffs barely bothered with potential new advertisers, instead calling on our usual suspects. In addition to conditioning those advertisers to think that online ads were just a throw-in of marginal value, many of them just took their online ads out of their print budget, so we weren’t really getting new revenue, just shifting what they already spent with us. And increasing our dependence on the same businesses, some of whom were also failing to innovate. So we grew increasingly vulnerable to an economic recession. But that was a boom time and our business boomed.

Meanwhile, other businesses such as Amazon, Google, eBay and craigslist were exploring the possibilities we were ignoring. We could have been developing the possibilities of search, direct sales and self-service ads.

Our Original Sin was failing to  see beyond our original business model, not failing to force more of it on the new opportunity.

Which brings me back to the paid content issue. I wrote last month that I would try to stop blogging about paywallers. As soon as I wrote it, I knew it wasn’t true, so I hedged the promise immediately (I noted that it was a promise to try to stop, not to actually stop), rather than deleting it. OK, I tried for about a month.

I was goaded back into this tireless discussion by a Twitter exchange with Tim O’Brien, editor of the Sunday Business section of the New York Times (and apparently no relation to Chris, though I haven’t asked either about that). I’ve never met Tim but we’ve followed each other on Twitter a while. While I don’t always agree with his tweets, I think of him as one of the thoughtful voices of the Twitterverse.

He took umbrage when I favorably tweeted a link to an Information Week post by Michael Hickins. What I liked most about Hickins’ post was this passage: “The problem with the newspaper industry isn’t that free online content has destroyed its business model, but rather that the Internet has exposed and exacerbated its inherent weaknesses.”

Tim tweeted that the Hickins piece was asinine, the first of 15 tweets he addressed to me over Friday, Saturday and Sunday on the subject of paid content and the views of Hickins, Chris O’Brien and me on the topic. I fired back nine tweets and Chris, a business writer and journalism innovator at the San Jose Mercury News, joined the conversation with six tweets of his own. Guy Lucas, Media General manager, also weighed in with a tweet in support of Hickins.

I won’t repeat Tim’s tweets here (though you can read all our tweets by clicking the links above), but the essence of his argument, against both Hickins and Chris, was that they didn’t cite data to back up their opinions. (I wonder how frequently you could say the same thing about columns in the New York Times.) He specifically took issue with Chris’s contention that people buy newspapers for a variety of reasons — news stories, yes, but also for the coupons, comics and crossword puzzles. Tim dismissed this as anecdotal, demanding data to support this obvious point.

I was tempted to argue the value of anecdotes (the lead story in the NYTimes.com business page starts with an anecdotal lead) and to brush off the demand for data by saying that most newspapers have years worth of Belden and/or Scarborough research reports (mostly proprietary, so Chris or I couldn’t have access to them, much less cite them) showing the variety of reasons why people buy their products. But it took me just a couple minutes to find related research from the Readership Institute (delivery is one of the most important issues to newspaper readers; news content ranks more important than ad content, but advertising is important).

(I should add here that Tim’s paper, along with the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and perhaps a few others, is far different from most metro papers, and I presume that a greater percentage of Times readers do buy solely for the content than is the case for most metro or community papers. But I am sure that they buy it for different kinds of content: some for the national news coverage, some for the sports or arts, some for the business coverage, some for a particular columnist, and most, I presume, for a combination or for the whole package.)

I also need to address Tim’s dismissal of Chris’s citation of analyst Lauren Rich Fine’s figures on where newspaper revenue comes from (only about 20 percent comes from subscriptions, she said). Tim dismissed this as unrelated to the issue of why people buy newspapers. Here’s how the two are related: They are the two sides of the business model.

It is true, I believe (sorry, I won’t cite data here), that most newspaper customers do think of themselves as paying for the content of the paper, whatever reason(s) they buy the paper. So from that standpoint, it is a change for them to receive that content online without charge (and publishers who decide to charge for content invariably mention that they are tired of subscribers saying they quit taking the paper because they could get it free online). But the business model involves more than customer motive. Fine’s figures are relevant because, whatever newspaper customers think, their subscription or single-copy price barely covers the cost of production and distribution, if that. So, regardless of why customers buy the print edition or what they thought they were paying for, they never paid for the content. They would have paid several times more than they do if that were the case. What would that do to circulation? Would that model have thrived in print in the pre-Internet days?

So here’s the bottom line: Whether I am right about paid-content being a foolish idea or the paywallers are right about it being wise and necessary, it’s going to be a new business model, not the restoration of the old model. That was the central point of Chris’s blog post and I stand by my initial tweet that it was maybe the best take I’ve seen on paywalls. (And this doesn’t even address the challenge that our industry is facing in trying to force a paid-content model into a medium where free content reigns.)

And before I could get this post finished, other tweeps called my attention to two more related posts:  

• Blogger Bill Wyman (no, not the guitarist), who says he has spent most of his career in the alternate press sniping at daily newspapers, wrote a long treatise: “Five Key Reasons Newspapers Are Failing.”
• Howard Weaver, a retired McClatchy editor and executive whose writing about the business is usually insightful, responded in his Etaoin Shrdlu blog with a post headlined, “Why are newspaper doomsayers usually so sloppy?” (exactly the kind of sweeping generalization for which he criticized Wyman). 

Like Weaver, I agree with about 80 percent of what Wyman wrote. He did paint with a broad brush and damn the whole newspaper industry for some failings that were common but far from universal. His view was far more cynical than mine. But Wyman was so much closer to the truth than most of the industry leaders now that I’ll stand up and cheer the 80 percent that he got right and let the rest slide.

Wyman’s other four points deserve attention and I hope you read them. But for the purposes of this post, I will focus just on his first point: “Consumers don’t pay for news. They have never paid for news.” He went on to elaborate: “Subscribers didn’t pay for news. Advertisers did. … Some people liked the news, sure; most thought they were paying for it. And some papers spent more money on news than they had to. But the papers weren’t selling the news. They were selling ads and charging a lot of money for them because of one thing only: They held an informal monopoly on a societal convention whereby they deposited those ads—around which they wrapped some reporting, some of it serious, some of it fluff —on subscribers’ driveways.”

With this many people sounding off this vigorously on the issue of paid content, I had to weigh in. And I probably will again. But I am looking forward to a live chat for the American Society of News Editors later this month (Aug. 27, details to come soon) about some ways to innovate beyond the paywall issue. I do wish we could get past this issue and spend more time on genuine innovation.

Take a look at my first story as a political correspondent for PBS MediaShift.

Do you like this article?

Adam Ritchie was interviewed about working with influential bloggers by the digital media division of PBS. The article covers Adam Ritchie Brand Direction’s approach to placing its clients’ news on top blogs.

…. from my last post, Mark Glaser over at MediaShift has written an interesting piece entitled “Personal Branding Becomes a Necessity in Digital Age.”

Couldn’t agree more. Note the comments from Matt Cutts.

MediaShift has 5 Ideas to Transform Newspaper Sites, at least one of which gets my full endorsement:

Instead of having a single website divided in sections which often replicate the sections in the print newspaper, we could have many different sites each focusing on a specific topic of interest to our communities.

It’s not so much the idea itself that I find intriguing as it is the idea behind the idea—to stop thinking of building a newspaper Web site and start thinking about building a good Web site.

Nothing drives me nuts like the thought that, “If we could just turn back the clock and charge for content in the first place, everything would be fine” (my words). You’re imagining a world in which a magic journalism time machine exists and that’s the best you can come up with? Jack Shephard had a better idea for fixing his life. If I could turn back the clock, I would’ve invented Facebook. It’s everything a news site should be: a tight-knit community, sharing information and content on a site that makes it almost impossible to leave and makes a ton of money. (Bonus: People want to use their real names.)

If you’re so intent on wasting your money by designing Web sites that look like newspapers and trying to charge for them—which, by the way, is about as ridiculous as putting a camcorder in front of a stage play, projecting the recording on a big wall and calling it a “movie” (and charging $10 for it)—why not throw that money into something brand new that may or may not make money? At the very least, you’re looking at a 50/50 chance of success.