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June 1, 2009 • 8:24 am 5

Orato.com turns its back on citizen journalism

Vancouver-based Orato.com used to describe itself as the “only news site in the world dedicated to First Person, citizen-authored journalism”.

Orato.com logoThe citizen journalism site is perhaps best known for assigning two former sex trade workers to cover the trial of Robert Pickton, convicted in December 2007 on six counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of six women whose remains were found on his farm.

The concept behind Orato was to allow people’s voices to emerge, with as little editorial interference as possible.

But it has now turned its back on the notion of a site filled with content from “citizen journalists”.  As part of a major editorial and design overhaul, Orato recognised that:

For the first 3 years of Orato’s existence, the previous management intentionally encouraged first-person stories rooted in an intimate and authentic perspective and deliberately offered very few editorial guidelines or oversight when it came to journalistic standards and Web 2.0 approaches to search.

Instead the focus is on “concrete and trustworthy information that is objective and under-reported”. The owner and founder of Orato, Sam Yehia, said the changes were made to “further professionalize the site, focus its newsworthy content, create and enforce a viable business model and keep pace with Web 2.0 standards”.

New editor-in-chief Joy Joy Gugeler has positioned the site as an outlet for freelance journalists seeking an additional source of income:

We will grow content and traffic to reward correspondents with both pay and profile. They post video, audio, photos and articles live; our editors review the material in 24 hours; readers learn at a glance, and our writers earn from the first ad click. We hope those in search of a value-added training will consider us a vital new client in the freelance marketplace.

This is a significant shift away from Orato’s origins as a citizen journalism website to the extent that it can no longer be considered as one.

And it does raise questions about the very viability of the phenomenon of “citizen journalism”. Similar sites have experienced problems with quality control.

There is no doubt that having more voices in the news can provide a rounder picture of the world. The problem may lie in the term “citizen journalism”.

As CEO of the participatory news network NowPublic.com, Len Brody, likes to say, “telling someone they’re going to be a citizen journalist is like telling people they’re going to be a citizen dentist.”

Filed under: citizen journalism, journalism, new media, online , ,

May 21, 2009 • 1:46 pm 3

Google won’t invest in the bundling of news in print

Eric Schmidt! WOW! Welcome Google to Argentina! =)
Image by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ via Flickr

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt encapsulated the challenge facing newspapers in an interview with the FT (only available to subscribers).

He highlighted that there was always an uncomfortable relationship between news gathering and the profitability model.  News, itself, did not produce revenue.  Profits came from the bundling of news with advertising and other services:

So the structure of newspapers that evolved, where the majority of the revenue came from classifieds and these big, untargeted print ads, the content was fascinating but they were not connected to… it was ultimately destined to be challenged by technology and that’s indeed what happened.

This great unbundling is the problem for the newspaper industry, as Nicholas Carr wrote last year:

A print newspaper provides an array of content—local stories, national and international reports, news analyses, editorials and opinion columns, photographs, sports scores, stock tables, TV listings, cartoons, and a variety of classified and display advertising—all bundled together into a single product … The publisher’s goal is to make the entire package as attractive as possible to a broad set of readers and advertisers. The newspaper as a whole is what matters, and as a product it’s worth more than the sum of its parts.

And this changes once the newspaper is on the internet:

When a newspaper moves online, the bundle falls apart. Readers don’t flip through a mix of stories, advertisements, and other bits of content. They go directly to a particular story that interests them, often ignoring everything else. In many cases, they bypass the newspaper’s “front page” altogether, using search engines, feed readers, or headline aggregators like Google News, Digg, and Daylife to leap directly to an individual story. They may not even be aware of which newspaper’s site they’ve arrived at. For the publisher, the newspaper as a whole becomes far less important. What matters are the parts. Each story becomes a separate product standing naked in the maketplace. It lives or dies on its own economic merits.

Google has worked out how to make money from the atomisation of content and the fragmentation of the audience.  And while it considered investing the beleaguered newspaper industry, it concluded that ploughing money into the physical bundle of content called a newspaper was not the way forward.

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Filed under: journalism, newspapers, online

April 18, 2009 • 7:39 am 0

Looking back at 10 years of online journalism

Journalists don’t tend to look back every often, which is why a session on 10 years of online journalism at the International Online Journalism Symposium at UT Austin in Texas is timely.

The conference is celebrating its 10th anniversary, so on day two, the first panel looks at what has happened over the past 10 years and what the next decade holds.

The panel brings together the people who were here 10 years ago.

Gerry Barker, Digital Operations Revenue Manager, The Palm Beach Post in Florida, recalled the optimism of 1999, with Belo Interactive investing $100m in the web over five years. That initial optimism evaporated around 2004.

Fast-forward to 2009, and the world is upside down, said Barker. Old enemies such as Yahoo are now friends of newspapers, the underlying economics of the news business are crumbling, localized niche sites are springing up everywhere, newspapers are going online only and mobile is finally coming into its own as a viable platform.

His advice: be a risk-taker and don’t be afraid to fail. He quoted industry analyst Ken Doctor, saying we are at the end of the beginning, rather than the beginning of the end.

The entrepreneurial journalist

Steve Sullivan, Multimedia Editor of The Baltimore Sun in Maryland recalled the early days of online, which largely involved training reporters to work across platforms.

Looking to the future, he said versatility is still necessary. But Sullivan said he was also looking for entrepreneurial journalists who can grow audiences and revenue, and look for places where established media haven’t been before.

Janine Warner, Digital Alchemist with Artesian Media described how things have changed over the past 1o years. In 1999, the big worry was the Y2K bug. Now it is bankruptcy.

In 1999, everyone wanted big portals, whereas now, said Warner, it is all about niche sites. Ten years ago, everyone wanted stock options, today everyone fears the pink slip.

Warner also pointed to the increasingly importance of entrepreneurial journalism – the importance of the personal brand, rather than the institutional brand.

Peter Zollman, Founding Principal of the AIM Group took the plinth by joking how the conference was recycling panelists and themes.

“I still believe in newsprint,” he said, but newspapers will be very different.

Looking ahead, he argued that the future lies in video. And the future is in mobile, in community and in niche audiences.

Filed under: academics, journalism, newspapers, online ,

April 17, 2009 • 12:22 pm 2

The perils of bringing together print and online newsrooms

The first afternoon panel at the International Online Journalism Symposium at UT Austin in Texas sought to answer the question: Is newsroom integration working?

The response from Anthony Moor, Deputy Managing Editor/Interactive, Dallas Morning News was a blunt “No”.

He highlighted two reasons for this. Firstly, what the newspaper is asking journalists to do is significantly different from what they are used to doing. So there is a skills gap and training has had limited success.

But there is also a huge cultural gap to overcome. Moor said journalists and editors still consider themselves as “owners” of a product – the daily newspaper – rather than as audience owners.

Since most of the revenue comes from the print, time-based product, that tends to be where people focus their attention, explained Moor.

The paper tried integrating the online team as digital evangelists to lead the conversion in the newsroom, but that didn’t work.

Instead, Moor said the newspaper is trying to shift the focus of journalists from the time-based print product to a focus on producing news throughout the day for their audiences.

One way the Dallas Morning News is trying to do this is through beat blogs. These would become the place for content and community.

The print takeover

Former Executive Editor of the WashingtonPost.com Jim Brady also gave a “No” but qualified it by saying that it depends on how the integration of newsrooms is managed.

In his view, the merger of print and digital newsrooms tend to be like the merger of Germany and Poland in 1939.

What tends to happen is a print takeover. But Brady argued that the integration of newsrooms should take place if a news outlet considers the web as a medium in its own right.

Brady said that a merger would only work if you allowed the website to maintain enough autonomy so that it can push the boundaries, with digital people in positions that can affect real change.

He admitted that he left the Post as he was concerned that the autonomy of the website would disappear under the weight of the print newsroom.

The Yes man

By contrast, Sewell Chan, Bureau Chief of City Room Blog at the New York Times, gave a “Yes”.

From a journalistic perspective, integration has worked at the Times.

But he went on to say that integration isn’t the main issue in the newsroom, but rather the talk was about business models.

Chan explained how meetings on stories focus not just on what should be done for the paper, but also discussions around the best multimedia way to cover a story.

One practical example of integration in action at the Times is the huge number of blogs.  The paper has 70, maybe too many joked Chan.

The early adopters tended to be political reporters, rather than necessarily younger journalists.

A different medium

Torry Pedersen, Chief Executive Officer, VG Group from Norway, joined the No camp. He argued that integration might make sense for a small newsroom, but not for a large, national publication.

He compared integrating newsrooms like having one Olympic skier who is a world champion in one discipline compete in another discipline. Print and the internet are different mediums, different disciplines.

Pedersen also compared online and newspapers to a waterfall and bottled water.  The net is like a waterfall – raw, unlimited, real-time, continuous flow of news.

Whereas a newspaper is like bottled water, with limited space, distilled, refined and contained.

Online is the big now, whereas the newspaper is the authoritative version of the news, he argued.

If you merge the newsrooms, warned Pedersen, the newspaper will get the upper hand and slow online development.

Rather than integration, online and print newsrooms should be best friends, but keep themselves separate.

The broadcast perspective

The final panel speaker, Jonathan Dube, Vice President at ABCNews.com offered the view from a broadcast news outlet.

For him, integration is working at ABCNews. He cited the example of Brian Ross and The Blotter, saying it is regarded as a programme, rather than just as an add-on to broadcast activities.

Filed under: journalism, newspapers, online , ,

• 7:57 am 2

The search for a business model for journalism

First panel at the International Online Journalism Symposium at UT Austin in Texas went to the heart of the problem facing the established media: business models in online journalism.

Steve Outing started off by asking if we are trying hard enough, answering the question with a resounding, “No”. But he also criticised ideas of locking up content behind pay walls.

Instead he offered some ideas for the newspaper industry – free your content online, explore subscription models such as the Kindle or offer premium content for a set subscription fee.

What the newspaper industry should not do, he argued, is follow in the footsteps of the RIAA and fight innovation, rather than embrace it.

Subscription pays

Premesh Chandran, Chief Executive Officer of Malaysiakini.com, offer a different perspective.

The site has been up for a decade and aims to offer independent, credible and balanced news, even though this “puts you in danger of ending up in jail”.

Malaysiakini can exist because while print and broadcast is tightly restricted, the internet is free of censorship due to a business decision to attract foreign tech giants.

The site has 35 editorial staff producing some 50 stories a day in English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil. It received 1.8m visitors a month.

The site charges $40 a year for the English news, contributing $600,000. Ads brought in $200,000 last year, and an additional $200,000 came from grants. As a result, the site has been breaking even since 2004.

Subscription is at the heart of the business model, said Chandran. It started charging in 2002, even though most people said they didn’t want to pay and only 1% of readers subscribed. Today only 5% pay a subscription.

“People are more willing to pay for independent medium as it will help bring about political change,” said Chandran.

The site has very limited free content in English but political unrest in Malaysia helps to geneate interest in the service.  In addition, Malayasiakini drives the message that by financially supporting the site, subscribers are supporting democracy.

Target publication

A different perspective on the role of the web and democracy came from Beth Frerking, Assistant Managing Editor for Politico.

Part of the site’s success was due to timing – arriving on the scene as interest in the US presidential elections exploded.

She described the site as “insider publication that attracts a large outsider readership”. Surprisingly, 90% of its readership comes from outside DC.

70% of its 3 million unique visitors a month are male and tend to be influential and affluent readers.

But ironically, its revenue comes primarily from its print publication.  Frerking said she didn’t think Politico’s advertising model would work outside of DC, as most of its print revenue comes from issue advocacy advertising.  It is narrowly targeted at a DC readership in a publication distributed in the nation’s capital.

Behind Brazil’s mega-portal

Márion Strecker, Content Director of the Brazilian mega-portal UOL.com.br, outlined the business strategy of the country’s number 1 portal.  It has 1.8m paying subscribers out of 17m unique visitors a month,  and almost 2 billion page views per month.

The site has been around since 1996, backed by the Folha newspaper and Portugal Telecom. It has some 1,000 content channels organised around 50 thematic portals, with 135 people in the newsroom out of 800 employees.

At the centre is mostly UOL content which is free. But the business sells a wide variety of products, such as technical support, Voip, music, anti-virus software, games, and of course, adult content.

Her advice: try everything, keep calm and think about ways of charging for other things then the journalism – “let journalists do the journalism”.

Filed under: academics, internet, journalism, online , , ,

March 15, 2009 • 4:56 pm 1

CBC looks at the trouble with newspapers

CBC News Sunday featured a piece on the future of newspapers for which I was interviewed last week.

The piece airs on CBC-TV at 10:00pm in Canada and the segment is about an hour into the two-hour show.  For those of you outside Canada, the video is already available on the CBC News Sunday website (though I wish I could embed it here).

While newspapers do much of the original reporting we rely on for our news, it is the institution of print that is in trouble, rather than the institution of journalism.

Many of the newspapers in trouble are paying the price of questionable financial decisions taken on in times of plenty.

But the key question is whether we still need a print product, published once a day, that offers a bundle of news and information that aims to appeal to as many people as possible.

Once that bundle was the most convenient way to find out about the world around us.  Now the product has been unbundled and the internet provides the convenience.

The real question is where a product printed daily on dead trees fits into our news habits today.

Coincidentally, the Globe and Mail also looks at turmoil in the print news industry, asking if democracy written in ink is disappearing.

Filed under: internet, journalism, newspapers, online , ,

March 6, 2009 • 6:01 am 2

Video: Mathew Ingram on journalism and community

In November 2008, Mathew Ingram took on the new position of communities editor at The Globe and Mail. In this interview, he talks about how he is defining his new role every day, working out how social media can build relationships between journalists and readers.

(Shot on a Nokia N95)

Filed under: journalism, newspapers, online, social media , , ,

November 14, 2008 • 3:44 pm 0

J-students showcase work on Vancouver elections

Just finished publishing a bunch of j-student work on Vancouver’s local elections at TheThunderbird.ca.

This was the final big assignment for this term for the students at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism.

There is a wealth of content on the race to be mayor of this beautiful city, the controversial $100m loan for the 2010 Winter Olympics and the debate over the future of the UBC Farm.

The students were exhausted after working on these assignments for the past few weeks, but it proved a satisfying process.

Filed under: education, journalism, online, politics , , ,

September 17, 2008 • 10:07 am 1

Annenberg revives the Online Journalism Review

Geneva OverholserThe Online Journalism Review has risen from the dead.

The new OJR was announced in a posting on the Knight Digital Media Center by Geneva Overholser, the new director of the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California.

Annenberg suspended publication of the OJR in June as the school went through a major transition. The site is now housed with the Knight Digital Media Center, and will see the return of media academic Robert Niles.

Overholser wants the resurrected OJR to focus on:

1. Reporting and writing in a conversational environment. How can, and should, we report the news when publications are now a two-way conversation, instead of a single-direction monologue?

2. Investigative reporting in the Internet era. How can news organizations, and individual journalists, harness the power of modern computing and networking (including crowdsourcing) to investigate public data?

3. Entrepreneurial journalism. The old business model for news is broken. How do we prepare journalists to develop new ones?

4. “Guerilla-marketing” the news. This builds from topics 1 and 3, and addresses how journalists ought to be thinking about making their content “viral,” optimizing for search engines and using promotional techniques to draw audience to their content, at minimal financial expense.

The OJR was an invaluable forum for news and debate around the emergent field of online journalism since its creation some 10 years ago and the archives are still accessible.

Now, there are far more sites and blogs on journalism and the media, including this one. But the return of the OJR is to be welcomed.

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Filed under: education, journalism, online , , , ,

July 22, 2008 • 11:15 am 0

US newspapers struggle to understand the web

Brookgreen Gardens in P...Image via WikipediaA major study into US newspapers by the Project for Excellence in Journalism presents a picture of an industry struggling to come to terms with the seismic changes taking place in the media.

As the report highlights:

On one hand, financial pressures sap its strength and threaten its very survival. On the other, the rise of the web boosts its competitiveness, opens up innovative new forms of journalism, builds new bridges to readers and offers enormous potential for the future. Many editors believe the industry’s future is effectively a race between these two forces.

Editors' attitude to the webEditors are clearly divided on the potential of the web, and this is to be expected. After all, some veterans may hark back to a mythical golden age of newspapers.

The make-up of newsrooms is changing, with the report finding that staff are “smaller, younger, more tech-savvy, and more oriented to serving the demands of both print and the web”. But there is a cost, with less experience and knowledge in the newsroom as the older generation take lucrative buyouts.

The section on the influence of the web provides a more detailed look at how digital is impacting newsrooms. There appears to be an acceptance that the web is not the enemy:

Although several editors voiced concerns about the web as a distraction that deflects resources from the print edition, overall, the view of the web appears to be increasingly positive.

Editors' timeAt the same time, the study suggests that print remains the primary focus for editors. This is understandable given the importance of print revenues. But it also suggests that print is still considered more important editorially to the web.

Interviews for the study showed that editors felt the growing demands of the web on newsrooms at times sapped attention and energy from the print edition, as reflects in this quote: “The demands of producing more web content are diminishing the print product.”

This suggests that editors still think of themselves as print people, rather than as leaders of a news outlet with different distribution points reaching different audiences. This is the fundamental shift that needs to take place in newsrooms.

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Filed under: journalism, news, newspapers, online ,

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Alfred Hermida
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