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Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog (10 unread)

Sleeping with the enemy: blending resources to cover the news

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 6:16pm CST by Terry

That it hasn’t happened sooner is the only thing surprising about the news this week that NBC and Fox are entering into a joint operation to cover certain types of news in Philadelphia. The plan, according to Broadcasting & Cable, is to roll it out in Philly in January and later spread it to other big markets where the two groups each have stations. B&C called the move a “blockbuster local news partnership,” and it certainly should make people sit up and take notice.

Tentatively called “Local News Service, or LNS,” the idea is to create a separate newsgathering entity that serves both stations.

The Philadelphia venture will be comprised of 20-25 staffers culled from WCAU and WTXF. An LNS crew would be dispatched to the scene of breaking news. Both stations would receive content from LNS, would edit and package the material in the manner they see fit, and have the option of sending additional resources. LNS will also make the content available to other local media outlets, be it print, radio, websites or even rival stations, for a fee.

B&C calls the idea “similar to the role that the AP plays for newspapers. The leaders of both NBC and Fox local stations acknowledge the uniqueness of the concept, but are quick to point out that there are no real hurdles to making it happen. For the affiliates, however, it might be a bit more problematic.

Affiliates appeared curious to hear more about the project. “We’re in an era where any idea that helps us be more efficient in our newsgathering is worth considering,” says KING/KONG Seattle President/General Manager Ray Heacox (KING is a Belo-owned NBC affiliate), who pointed out that he wasn’t entirely familiar with the project. “But I would have lots of questions about how it balances the competitive needs in local markets.”

This kind of joint operating agreement was inevitable given the advance of technology and the current economic crisis for local media. The way this thing is being set up, it could easily evolve to its own separate business entity and function to serve the basic news needs of multiple media outlets in the market, including the newspaper(s). I made this prediction over 10 years ago, and I still believe it makes smart business sense. I think we’ll also see a rise of independent video journalists who will work as independent contractors, and many of them won’t have come through the local news farm system. It’s an obvious fruit of the personal media revolution.

For sure, a separate entity covering the nuts and bolts of local news for all media companies will mean a significant cost saving, and it ought to concern newsroom employees everywhere. “Efficiency,” after all, often means the loss of jobs. But I believe that people employed at the street level by television stations should examine this for its potential upside on their futures. If you want to stay in the community where you currently live, for example, a separate newsgathering entity offers a pretty secure cocoon in these troubled times.

One of the big raps against local TV news has always been the revolving door brought about by people jumping markets to get ahead, and these kinds of separate business entities will put a dent in that. After all, for a “Local News Service” to be successful, it’ll be all about the coverage, not the personalities delivering it.

Of course, the next logical step is a joint presentation arrangement between all parties online, a single portal where members of the community can access everybody’s content. That will take a level of cooperation, however, far beyond this deal between NBC and Fox, but we must always have in the backs of our minds the fact that our competition online isn’t necessarily our competition off-line.

While we duke it out in the open air, the pureplay companies are having their way with the local online ad market. In the end, they are a much bigger enemy than traditional media competitors.

(Originally published in AR&D’s Media 2.0 Intel newsletter)
Full-feed RSS is a jewel that media companies refuse to explore

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 5:51pm CST by Terry

The UK’s The Guardian shocked many people two weeks ago when it became the first major newspaper in the world to offer full text RSS feeds, something I’ve been wondering about for years. It’s is a significant milestone, and it is absolutely inevitable that every media company will go this route sooner or later.

The depth and potential of the subscription (RSS) Web — in which people can bring content to themselves rather than “visiting” websites — has been held back by companies who heretofore have only used RSS to “tease” people. The hope is that they will click through to the company’s portal website, where the eyeballs can be counted for advertising. This has been traditional media’s downfall in the use of RSS, because the technology has advanced to the point where it’s possible to serve and count ads in feeds.

Tech media and bloggers have been providing full feed RSS for years, having gone through the pro and con arguments long ago. Media companies didn’t participate in this, because RSS for media has always been restricted to a marketing tool. I subscribe to 40 RSS feeds, and very few are partial text. I keep those in my reader only because I have to, but I very rarely click through to read the full text. I’ve long thought it was an insult to provide only partial text, but I’ve grown to believe it’s much more than that. Those companies who provide only partial text feeds are shooting themselves in the foot, because on the Web, authority and relevance go to those who play the game the Media 2.0 way.

Broadcasting and Cable, for example, provides many feeds, but they are useless in terms of communicating information, which is what RSS was created to do. RSS isn’t a manipulative marketing tool. It’s an end unto itself, and until we start using it as such, we’re going to miss the opportunities it offers.

The Guardian has opened the door, although only partially. It’s not including images, and has decided that it will only offer full text on stories the paper feels it can legally distribute. The paper has also announced that it will begin running ads in the full text stories, which will be the big differentiator. Sooner or later, the paper will discover that it can also offer ads “as items” in the feeds, and then the real business model will be established.

The place-based distribution available through RSS is the future, folks. The mobile Web forces the issue, because browsing on a portable device offers virtually no business model, and the only question is who will get there first at the local level. This is another reason why we so strongly advocate a blog-based, continuous news model for local media. Its output is an RSS “river of news,” that plays well in the place-based distribution model.

Let me repeat: RSS is not a tool for driving traffic to your portal; it’s a valuable way of communicating your products and services to an increasingly networked culture. Ignore it at your own peril.

(Originally posted in AR&D’s Media 2.0 Intel newsletter)
This is why transparency is should be a new value for journalism

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 11:04am CST by Terry

Look, I have no problem with reporters having opinions. I just wish they were up front about it.

Witness a veteran NPR political reporter telling a crowd at a radio event in Grand Rapids, Michigan (my home town, BTW) that Barack Obama “doesn’t have that thing in him that needs to be loved.” This, Don Gonyea said, is what sets President-elect Barack Obama apart from other politicians.

“He ran a remarkable and disciplined campaign. It was a wonder to behold,” Gonyea said.

Obama’s speeches in Iowa were like hymns, he said.

Obama “never got rattled by anything,” Gonyea said.

Gosh, I wonder if his worship of the candidate impacted his reporting. Nah, he’s a professional.

Right.

(tip via Romenesko)
Doing it because you can

Posted: November 17th, 2008, 10:01am CST by Terry

I got an interesting phone call over the weekend. It was about my Kohl’s credit card. My next billing date is changing from the 9th of December to 25th of November. Huh? The guy explained that Kohl’s is “going to a 25-day cycle” for billing. How convenient for them. So instead of one more billing cycle with them this year, I get two.

It reminds me of what happened when one of the stations I worked for went from current paydays — where you’re paid on Friday for the work you did that week — to paying in arrears. What it meant was that everybody gave up one week’s pay that year, which really helped boost the bottom line of the company.

Companies do these kinds of things, because they can. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Journalism’s New Values

Posted: November 14th, 2008, 5:22pm CST by Terry

Here is the latest in my ongoing essay series, Local Media in a Postmodern World. Two in one week!

Positive efforts to reinvent journalism are underway in many quarters, and this is a good thing. The economic crisis is pushing already weak traditional media companies to the brink, and there is much debate as to the cause of the decline. The idea that professional journalism itself may be a part of the cause is relatively new, and it has spawned an online war between those who believe journalists are merely victims and those who believe journalists are at least partially to blame. I don’t attempt to answer that question here, because the more important matter, it seems to me, is what’s happening to the practice of professional journalism itself.

Meet Journalism’s New Values: Speed. Transparency. Authenticity.
Note to Nick Denton

Posted: November 13th, 2008, 12:45pm CST by Terry

When you use blogging to create a traditional media model, you are bound by the economics of that model. Your Gawker empire, while beautifully built and managed, was never really about personal media; it was always about using the tools of personal media to compete with traditional media. The online ad model is the same. Your warning is well taken, and it applies equally to your competitors, for the 20th century model of reach/frequency through scarce content isn’t unique to Gawker (or any of the other former bloggers who decided the Web was a road to new media riches using old media tactics).
Okay, this is getting weird

Posted: November 11th, 2008, 1:01pm CST by Terry

Yesterday, it was “Smart” ads; today’s it’s tracking your mouse movements. That’s right. We have yet another attempt to provide THE solution for online advertising, from a company with a name culled from the words “local, target and message” = Lotame. Online Media Daily provides the details:

Only Lotame focuses on social media sites, and builds audience networks based on how much time they spend on a site, and specifically, with advertising on that site. The tools are so sophisticated that they utilize biometric techniques that can determine whether a user’s mouse is active or inactive on a screen and whether their screen scrolls on or off a page showing an ad, or even partially obscuring it.

In effect, (Lotame CEO Andy) Monfried says the system does for the social media marketplace, what Google’s AdWords system did for keyword search buys, or what Advertising.com did for the first generation of display advertising across advertising networks: allow marketers to efficiently scale their messages to a relevant audience and to strip away extraneous impressions.

Geeze Louise, doesn’t anybody in advertising realize that we’re talking about people here? Every new concept and application just walks past that and assumes that the only thing that matters is “scaling messages to a relevant audience.”

When I read about this kind of stuff, I always go back to pop-up ads. They were pretty effective for advertisers, but what happened? The technology that was used to deliver the ads was blocked at the browser level by people who didn’t want to go along with Madison Avenue. At some point, we’re going to have to talk to people about what they will accept before launching into the same old formulas that have driven people into the escape mode of today.

As Doc says, “Improving a pain in the ass doesn’t make it a kiss.”
The music in my head

Posted: November 11th, 2008, 9:10am CST by Terry

I was watching one of those “music of yesteryear” specials on PBS the other night, when I heard a song that hadn’t been in my head in almost 50 years. “Little Jimmy Brown” by The Browns was a hit during my parents’ time, and I remember hearing it on the radio in the kitchen many, many times. It’s a catchy, memorable tune, and it had been sitting there in my mind for all those years.

Rock-n-roll had just come on the music scene, and this song competed with the likes of The Everly Brothers, Elvis and other early pop performers.

Music is one of those things that frames a person’s life. We all have a sound track, because music helps us mark passages. It also is a connecting influence for culture, a bonding experience for communities of interest.

Today, at age 62, I find that the radio station I listen to most frequently is the one in my own head, for I prefer silence over adding new layers to the sound track of my life. Maybe it’s the music of today, but I doubt it (speaking of which, have you seen Britney’s “Womanizer” video? Good Lord, she’s NAKED!). I think I’m just happy with the music that’s already there, for it defines me. In the winter of one’s life, we tend to give a lot more weight to nostalgia than we do while passing through life’s other seasons.

A few years ago, I discovered the band Great Big Sea from Newfoundland, young men with a unique style of rock, folk, Irish and sea chanteys that wrapped its way around my mind so tightly that I couldn’t let go. While the music was “new” to me, there was a mystical familiarity that, I think, goes back to my deep roots. “The boys” are now a part of my sound track, but I’m really not interested in adding anything else.

I was very fortunate, I think, to grow up during the birth of rock-n-roll, for I’ve always related to sources of original thinking, and that includes pop culture. I wouldn’t trade the music of my generation for anybody else’s.
Well, here’s the dumbest idea I’ve heard in years

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 11:28am CST by Terry

Start-up Keystream is unleashing a new technology (SmartAds) that places overlay ads in “blank” spaces in online videos, things like a grassy field, bare walls or the sky. According to Online Media Daily, Keystream believes these ads “will prove superior to pre-rolls and overlay ads placed at the bottom of the screen.”

Instead of covering the lower portion of the screen like the current crop of overlays, Keystream’s SmartAds are intended to pop up anywhere that won’t block the action.

The ads, which typically play for 10 seconds every one to two minutes, can be targeted contextually and by audience demographics. Web publishers also have the ability to limit how often and where ads appear within content.

In testing across 6,000 videos of varying lengths and types of content, the SmartAds have generated click-through rates in the high single digits and overall interaction rates of better than 20%, according to company executives.

Keystream CEO Schuyler Cullen noted that “We have not had any negative comment or feedback,” to which I would add a major YET!

TechCrunch writer Robin Wauters is aghast at the thought, and winces at the company calling the ads “smart.”

Sounds more like a DumbAd to me. If a video stream includes a scene featuring a big blue sky, a white wall or a grass field in the background, the maker probably put it in there for a reason. Who in their right mind would want to see ads placed right on top of those, even if that’s not where the ‘action’ is taking place? Annoying people with ad overlays that cover vital scenes or parts of a video stream is even worse, but not that much.

The company’s press release reads: “blank spaces are found on average once every two minutes, providing an ad insertion opportunity that increases video ad monetization.” So that means you can expect to be bothered about 15 times if you’re watching a 30-minute video stream.

And they still have the nerve to say SmartAd “offers dramatic improvement in user experience” and that the ads are “non-obstructive” and “increase audience engagement”. I’d say they have a good chance to increase gagging and uncontrolled outbursts of anger by people who are tired of being fed irrelevant advertising without the ability to turn it off, but maybe I’m missing something.

There are a lot of companies developing creative ways to bring the TV ad experience (interruption) and the print ad experience (display) to the Web, and you almost always read how these new innovations increase ROI for advertisers. But the advertisers (and their money) aren’t in charge; users are in charge, so I think the ultimate online solution for advertisers is going to be based on some form of COI — Cost Of Interaction — rather than entirely how it benefits the advertiser.

As I’ve tried to teach my kids, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. That’s the way I view this.
The Back End’s the Thing

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 9:47am CST by Terry

Here is the latest in my ongoing series of essays about reinventing local media, The Back End’s the Thing.

Media companies are all about how and where our products and services interact with people. For TV stations, it’s what’s on the air that matters. For newspapers, it’s what’s on the printed page. This is the world we know, for our industries touch people through our finished products.

In the post-media world (Jeff Jarvis term), however, this idea is turned on its head, because the “touching” that matters is hidden. The back end, where what we do connects with the Web, is what’s most important in a networked world. Wired’s Kevin Kelly wrote years ago that “We Are The Web,” and this is a complex and vastly important axiom. It’s one that media companies struggle with, because in the old world, we were judged by what was up front. We can play in both worlds, if we wish, but without significant attention to this hidden connection, we’ll slowly (perhaps quickly) lose relevance in the world that has come upon us.