Newspaper Web sites revisited
Discussion was robust after last week's post about the shortcomings of Northwest daily newspapers online. Here's a summary, and some fresh thoughts.
My article last week about the failings of Northwest newspaper Web sites drew a lot of comments, from casual and dedicated newspaper readers and even a few editors. I'd like to call your attention to a few of them here and also plug a Seattle event about the future of the online news business.
Monday, Sept. 17, at 6:30 p.m. the Washington News Council will sponsor a panel discussion, "Today's News: A 'Webolution' in Progress," at the Central Library downtown. Merrill Brown, the founding editor of MSNBC.com who now is an advisor to NowPublic, will moderate. Panelists will include Cory Bergman, digital media director at KING-TV in Seattle; Josh Feit, news editor of The Stranger in Seattle; Robert Hernandez, senior online producer for The Seattle Times; Alex Johnson, senior producer for MSNBC.com; Joan McCarter, a Seattle-based blogger for Daily Kos; and yours truly. TVW will tape the discussion for later broadcast and streaming. I look forward to learning a few things.
Meanwhile, editors have weighed in on my article about what's wrong with Northwest newspaper Web sites. One of my complaints was about the firewall that some employ to hide some or all content from non-paying readers. I happen to think it's an annoyance that shuts out occasional readers who might otherwise become regular ones. The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, which is on the leading edge of the "Webolution," segregates some content but offers a whole lot free. Editor Steve Smith explained their policy:
I have always been somewhat puzzled by the criticism of this strategy. You wouldn't expect the newspaper to drop a free paper on your driveway seven days a week. Why should the very same product be free online?
On the other hand, the daily paper, which is stale almost the moment it comes off the press, constitutes only about 20 percent of our website's content. All breaking news sits outside the fireall. We also post stories aimed for print on the web as soon as they're done and they are free. Our blogs (which also break news), multi-media, photo slide shows, etc. are all free. Our entertainment section, calendars and so on are all free on that section's separate website.
S-R Online Director Ryan Pitts commented that the newspaper is in the middle of a major technological refurbishment and redesign that will address my complaint about poor display of still photography. I really hate the phrase "get it" with reference to the Web, but these guys in Spokane really do, and I look forward to seeing what's next.
From Tacoma, News-Tribune online Editor Mark Briggs took issue with my premise in general and a few things in particular, both in the comments on our article and in his blog, Online in the South Sound.
Working in the online newspaper world for the past seven years, I can safely state that Washington state is blessed with some of the best online newspapers in the nation.
The web sites for the Seattle Times, Spokesman-Review and News Tribune have all received national awards in the past couple years for their online presence. (A few years earlier, the Herald in Everett even picked up a few national nods for innovation.) And the P-I, in my opinion, has one of the better newspaper web sites in the country with massive offerings of photo galleries, robust reader blogs and first-rate staff blogs.
Of course, we could all do better. We make the most of our resources and technology, but there's always room to do more. Mr. Taylor, however, misses most of what makes our sites worth visiting with his rather uninformed critique published today.
Briggs says I'm wrong about the paper posting articles after I get up at 5 a.m. True enough, you can get them via RSS around 1 a.m. But I swear that until recently the home page wasn't refreshed until much later. (After Briggs posted his protest, I asked Dave Neiwert, our assistant editor who filled in for me for a couple of weeks last month, if I was imagining this late update of their home page, and he agreed that the News Tribune site was static until well after news articles moved via RSS. In any event, it's apparently not the case now.)
Briggs continues:
Additionally, he looks at this feature from a print-first view. We're not waiting for the print deadline to publish news; we post news constantly all day. Friday, we posted 16 new stories by 5 p.m. ... and last year we hosted an estimated 50,000 comments on our news stories. Our blogs feature even more robust discussion and last month accounted for almost 15% of our page views. But he doesn't give us any credit for blogging either, even though our Seahawks Insider blog has won national awards the past two years.
Briggs is correct about all of that, and I regret not including the News Tribune as an example of a site that gets a whole lot right.
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Comments:
Posted Mon, Sep 17, 8:29 a.m. inappropriate
Thanks for Caring: Good morning, Chuck. I was one of the first to do your survey, and as a mere reader, don't have a lot of tech suggestions, only praise for Crosscut's efforts so far. I think you're doing a great job and want to thank you for keeping your subscriptions free and the quality high. Your layout is very appealing and the content always holds a few intrigues. It gives me great comfort to know that people who know and love the very essence of Seattle from the inside out and from many years of participating and observing our unique culture have taken it upon yourselves to create Crosscut. Thank you and keep up the good work!
Posted Mon, Sep 17, 10:51 a.m. inappropriate
crosscut: I am trying to think of what might be the Achilles heel of Crosscut. I like the concept and the actualization of what you are doing. The articles are excellent, and some of the writers are, too. I read it, or scan it, pretty much every day. I can think of only two areas of vulnerability. One is the tendency to ride your personal hobby horses too hard. You might strive for greater breadth of subject matter. The other is in your comments section. To me it "feels" as though there is a fairly closed group or writers of comments, people who speak to each other and largely do not recognize the occasional contributor. This atmosphere seems very dangerous to me, though I don't know how it might be addressed. If Crosscut ever gets the feeling of a friendship group, though, the site will ultimately die off.
Oh, and a third quibble. You might stop attacking the newspapers as killers of trees, etc. Your readers are not abandoning the Times and the P-I, and if they do, it will be because of issues that have nothing to do with th existence of Crosscut. I quit the Times (having been a long time subscriber to both papers) when they patently lied to their readers about how much the readers wanted the Times to be a morning paper. I never met a person who wanted a morning Times.
Posted Mon, Sep 17, 11:36 a.m. inappropriate
You are correct on your other points, and we are working on those issues. More diverse contributors = fewer hobby horses. More site visitors = more commenters.
That said, we have been thrilled at the constructive and thoughtful conversations going on here. So far, no trolls.
Posted Mon, Sep 17, 11:45 a.m. inappropriate
What do you use?: > Believe it or not, just about every newspaper or newspaper chain creates, or at
> least greatly customizes, its own software to present content on the Web.
Just curious, what sort of outside-of-the-newspaper-box technology is Crosscut.com built upon?
Posted Mon, Sep 17, 12:49 p.m. inappropriate
It's written with the open-source PHP scripting language and uses the open-source MySQL database platform. All served up by open-source Apache server software. Running on the open-source Linux OS.
When we went looking for software, we considered a lot of open-source CMS apps and were close to going with Drupal when fate brought us together with the author of our current software.
Posted Mon, Sep 17, 4:28 p.m. inappropriate
Increased recycled content, anywhere from 20 to 40% (California requires 40% to be labeled "recyled"), smaller sheet size, and lower sheet basis weight all work to minimize the need for virgin fiber in groundwood (a pulping process substantially more environmentally friendly than traditional Kraft or sulfite pulping) specialty specialty paper, commonly called newsprint.
Over time, look for increased recycled content as papermakers develop new processes and refine existing ones to maximize the use of waste paper as a raw material.
But the most significant factor in the reduction of paper usage by news gathering organizations will, as just about everyone either acknowledges or sees through the data, will be the reduction in readership of traditional newspapers. See the charts (admittedly well over one-year old) and numbers here
No need to curtail printing newspapers on paper in order to save trees, esecially since those cut to make newsprint are more than likely commercially grown and harvested. All you have to do is let the marketplace do its job, and we'll see less printing of newspapers period.
In the meantime, I'm headed back under the bridge to wait for The Three Billy Goats Gruff.
The Piper
Posted Fri, Oct 12, 1:26 p.m. inappropriate
I'm posting this again...newspaper websites in general don't make money: It has been suggested that online advertising must pay the cost of production for online content (and of course make a profit beyond that).
As we look at the newspaper industry in it's online editions today the value of an online reader is said to be roughly 10% that of a print reader. Whether this is due to historical price precedent, actual advertising effectiveness, form and structure, or a combination of these matters very little. What it means is that in order to support an independent news gathering operation (one that doesn't just link to other content providers ala local blogs) that must research, confirm, layout and distribute content you need enough dollars to make it happen. The great Crosscut experiment is just that... an effort to bring an intelligent, useful, and genuine news source to the public in a completely online format.
If it can be done, David Brewster is probably the man to do it. But I have serious doubts. To paraphrase Dickens, it is the best of times and the worst of times in the Journalism business. The incredibly good things about the internet are all in place in online news sites (not all certainly but it's getting better), including social interaction, persistence of information, depth of reference, even high quality writing and photography (and coming along... video). But the sustainability of the news site is questionable precisely due to the low barrier to entry the web provides. For newspaper websites to survive I believe they must promote a high level of trust (since local news blogs are notoriously personal, mercurial, and thin...Will they be there next month if the blogger goes on vacation?)...
AND newspaper websites must develop vertically integrated, highly socially interactive sections or unique sites focused on specific topics and interests. This is already happening... watch for it to continue. Eventually these hyper-local networks, all driven by a primary local portal will have enough aggregate mass to command a reasonable advertising return. Until then... newspapers will continue to fund their websites more as an obligation than as a drive to build an eventual profit center.