I’m late to this party, but if you haven’t seen the comment system on Jack Slocum’s blog, you gotta. I’m not sure it lends itself to news, since it requires that click to view, but this is still explosive stuff.
tips
...now browsing by category
Next gen of online comments: in-line comments
Sunday, December 31st, 2006Let readers see (and edit) their own data
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006Work’s been heavy lately. Tomorrow, a post on triaging limited programming resources. (As if there’s some other kind…) Today, a quick suggestion for winning trust: let readers access their own usage data.
Job one, of course, is to start collecting readers’ usage data. Seriously. Let readers know about it, tell them how they’ll benefit, let them opt in or out, but start it right away and do it any way you can.
Job two is inspired by this Fredshouse brainstorm (courtesy Lifehacker): Google should create a digital privacy tool for all its users that would let them view, delete and set expiration dates for all data that’s collected about them.
We should do that, too.
Newspapers should be classifieds clearinghouses
Sunday, October 1st, 2006Everybody and his brother’s startup has a free classified service these days. Even if you’re ignoring all but the bigger players — Craigslist, Base, Edgeio, eBay — who can keep track?
Hint: they’re black and white and read in large but ever-decreasing quantities.
For the moment, newspapers in the smallest markets should probably still be trying to minimize the content that leaks onto competitors’ sites. But in mid-size markets (and, before long, in the smaller ones) papers can keep offering value to classified advertisers by offering a service the big boys don’t: syndication of your ad throughout the Internet. Anybody who pays for a classified should get it listed on all the free sites in addition to the print edition and the newspaper’s Web site.
Three startups called Mpire, vFlyer and Postlets are trying to make this service into an entire business, the
New York Times reports today. (While they’re at it, they check your spelling and suggest an effective layout.)
It’s not clear whether these guys are going to make money for such a relatively simple service. But if newspapers can seed their ads into both the Web-savvy and Web-illiterate markets, they’ll be saving their clients a lot of time.
No time for the staff to do all these postings, you say? Well, I happen to know of three fledgling Web sites who might make great partners for your classified department…
A subscription model that won't compete with print: the blindspot
Saturday, June 17th, 2006Tear down the wall? At the Times, too early to say. But in the next few years, small papers should build their subscription strategy around this question: what on the Web is a substitute for print, and what’s not?
A model I like, but have never seen, is actually the inverse of the most common one. Instead of a permanent archive wall, it’s an ever-advancing blindspot.
For the next ten-to-15 years or so — until computers become almost as portable/cheap/comfortable as newspapers, that is — small newspapers should prioritize new editorial Web features with the following checklist:
1) Can it be done with information we already collect?
2) If not, can it be done with information whose collection is easily automated? (either through user contribution or computer algorithm)
3) Can it be presented in a way that is only possible or convenient online, so as to avoid substituting for the print product?
From this angle, charging for archives looks like the dumbest possible formula. We’ve all got colossal electronic archives. All we need to make them useful is a good search feature. And here’s the thing: archives don’t substitute for print at all. What subscriber saves two-week old newspapers for use as reference material? Online archives only add value. A free, well-ordered archive for a local newspaper would take it a long way toward its eventual goal: becoming the primary information site for its community.
Yesterday’s news is different. In most cities, you can get yesterday for 50 cents in the newspaper, or on the Web for free. Print and Web become substitute products — and get moreso with every redesign.
Okay, what about today’s news? I lean toward the Spokane model — breaking news and comment should be free. They’re dynamic. They can’t be done in print. They’re dealing with radio and TV competitors.
You can see by now what this all means: the sensible place for a subscription requirement is content from, say, the last three days. Farther back than that, it should all be free again.
I’ve never seen it done. I’d love to hear why not.
(Also: Yes, yes, I know, I should be preparing and posting my own archive of three-quarters-written entries instead of making a new one. Sorry, chum.)
Tips from Poynter, day two
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006Four neat things I learned today:
1) The Roanoke Times has a kick-ass javascript bug above every story, popping up options to email the story or post it to various aggregators. Geek cred for including ma.gnolia.com. Just one problem: to the reader, del.icio.us and ma.gnolia aren’t “sharing” services. They’re storing services. Sharing is how we dream of using them, but that isn’t their primary value to readers.
2) Online purchasing correlates to wealth and broadband; not so much to age.
3) Guidelines for user-content submissions should be written aspirationally: “we will do our best to.” Laying this out may actually help us in libel cases, since their very existence helps verify our regard for the truth, etc.
4) Soundslides is apparently everybody’s favorite $40 slideshow editing app. Two problems: it outputs in Flash and only runs on Macs.
Tips from Poynter: Day One
Tuesday, May 16th, 2006Three short things I learned in my first evening at Poynter’s seminar for Online News Managers.
1) Boston.com’s forum moderators have a “bozo button” at their disposal. Once they hit it, a forum troll who they’ve marked as a “bozo” continues to see his posts appearing on the site — but nobody else sees them. Mitigates the threat of re-registration by banned users. Dirty. Genius.
2) Local TV sites get a big traffic jump at lunchtime, because people at work can get away with (or justify) watching video over the lunch hour.
3) Generally, the percentage breakdown of technology adopters is as follows (not cumulative): 2.5 percent innovators (e.g. RSS); 13.5 percent early adopters (e.g. blog readers); 34 percent early majority (i.e. broadband subscribers); 34 percent late majority (i.e. Internet users); 16 percent laggards (i.e. your aunt Susan). But: let’s not forget the wealth that drives all these differences, eh? Nobody who cares about universal access to technology drives onward on the assumption that everybody will eventually follow.
Practical advice from APME
Monday, April 17th, 2006The other day, the Associated Press Managing Editors put out a practical, accessible cluster of pieces about newspaper Web sites. I especially like the ones about putting your Web site on the offensive and the strong competition to come. More below the fold.
The first advises that newspaper sites:
1) Radically simplify their front-door pages. “Count the links. You probably have 200 or more. It’s insane, stupid and lazy. On the web, simplicity sells.”
2) Load the site with photos and videos.
3) Let visitors customize.
4) Allow user contributions, but use a heavy-ish hand in editing them.
5) Sometimes, be unpredictable and funny. Change the front-door layout to reflect the news.
I do have qualms with some of these (customization of news content should be done only with a reader’s permission; changing home-page layouts should only be done by people who really know what they’re doing, usability-wise).
The second lists five sorts of competitors that local papers will face for the first time in the next few years, thanks to users’ migration onto the Web:
1) Local broadcast outlets.
2) Big national portals, scaling down to our level.
3) Hyperlocal, user-generated startups, such as Backfence. “They are getting big venture money and we are their prime targets. … Imagine what will happen when they partner up with cable networks or local weeklies or phone directories or someone else.”
4) Local chambers of commerce and the like, creating free, functional search sites. (Good call, man, good call.)
5) Just about anybody with a server, a keyboard, and a lack of caution about libel suits.
The second list, really, is the driving force for the first. Big-city editors are still trying to get used to the end of their monopoly. Small papers need to prepare for competition faster than the big ones did.
(Hat tip: cyberjournalist.net.)
The general-interest breaking news blog
Thursday, April 6th, 2006Thursday, I argued that a blog’s fundamental features lend itself to two main things: news and speed. Comments, opinions and the rest are just gravy — they’re not unique to the form. Today, I’ll build on this, suggesting small newspapers should throw away their preconceptions that blogs must cover niches like local TV listings or the state legislature. In fact, for the hundreds of little U.S. papers who think they can’t afford to update their sites midday, a general-interest news blog could be the cheapest, easiest road to the holy grail of Web traffic: dynamic content.
It’s true, the notion of a general-interest blog might have offended me until I ran into two examples: the Racine Journal-Times’s Racine Report and USA Today’s On Deadline.
Look past the RJT’s NASCAR aesthetic and USA Today’s national scope. What are these guys doing? They’re simply delivering news in blog format: latest stuff at the top, older stuff sliding down. The approaches are different — Racine posts full-length stories as they come in throughout the day, while On Deadline is Web-only content. But the innovation — that blogs can be nothing more than a quick way to get midday news — is sound as a bell.
And they’re hits. I’ve talked with the folks who oversee both blogs, and both have been big traffic magnets. How many of the Racine Report’s thousands of readers know they’re getting their breaking news from a blog? Surely lots don’t. What they know is that their news always appears in reverse chronological order — why, how convenient!
On Deadline’s format will be a bit more alien to traditional news readers, but it has its advantages, too: since its writers don’t waste time crafting full-length articles, they’ve built the best place on the Internet to know right away if a big story has broken in the U.S. media. Rather than sift through the fourth rewrite of an AP piece, the heavy Web user can see what’s new right away.
Both blogs have downsides, too. The Racine Report is difficult to scan for topics of interest. With 30 posts a day, On Deadline is practical for only the heaviest of users — and small markets don’t have many of those.
Local papers should consider combining the best of these two approaches. Racine has embraced blogs because when they’re built on simple, free software like WordPress, they become a quick-and-dirty way to change a Web site. For papers smaller than the RJT (30,000 or so), quick is even more important.
So why not put a breaking news blog front and center on your Web site? Why not ask reporters to post two- to three-sentence summaries of news as it comes in? (Or assign a single staffer to gather tidbits from reporters as they write.) News won’t break more than a few times a day in a small market, so you won’t be overwhelming your audience of bored office drones. But when each new tidbit comes in, throw that up. Give readers a taste of the adrenaline in a developing story.
Worried about competitors swiping your scoop? Baloney. Save the investigative projects for the morning paper, but when local news breaks, you want readers to know you’re the place to go, no matter what. (Just don’t be afraid to link to the radio station when it actually beats you.)
And here’s an added bonus: you can assure your publisher that the Web content doesn’t endanger the print product, because it serves a totally different purpose — getting the basics out right away — and therefore a different audience. Indeed, it’s not hard to imagine one of those bored office drones lingering over your print article the next morning, seeing how that story they were following at work finally played out.
Thinking abstractly about blogs
Thursday, April 6th, 2006So the news that staff-written blogs can be useful has seeped into most small-town newsrooms. It’s just as important, though, for those small newsrooms to know what a blog really is, not just have a vague idea of the ways others seem to use blogs. Understanding the abstract features of a blog — and the reasons those features have led to the style and content of today’s blogosphere — can help small papers find innovative ways to tweak their blogs for small markets.
(I shudder to think how many times some blogger has taken it upon himself to explain “Just what is a blog?” Dauntless, I plunge on. This time, I’m answering it for small papers, and that’s different, see?)
A blog is a Web site where the new stuff appears at the top and the old stuff remains below. That’s it; that’s all. Other things touted as features of blogs — user comments, niche content, offsite links — are features of the World Wide Web, not the blogosphere.
So simple a definition that it’s meaningless? No! It’s liberating! Don’t want to moderate comments? Don’t allow them. Don’t like hyperlinking to unreliable offsite content? I’d say today’s readers understand the risks of the Web, but if you really feel that way, there’s no reason not to go it alone on your blog. Can’t think of a niche-y topic unique to your area? Hate to break it to you, but you’ve already got one. By Web standards, local papers are already niche media. If any Web site has useful, unique local news and information, readers will like it. (Just give people a way to find it without having to click on the word “blog,” for heaven’s sake.)
So should blogs be used for anything you want? No. Blogs do two things very well:
1) Because they’re organized simply, they let the reader quickly find the latest entry.
2) Because they uncouple content production and technical expertise, they give a Web site to anybody who can type.
Item 1 lends itself to news, because the latest stuff is important, and to distribution over RSS, because it’s easy to aggregate something that updates predictably. Item 2 lends itself to speed, because the update process takes so little footwork.
Wait a minute. Timely news? Isn’t that the most important thing newspapers are supposed to be doing already?
In tomorrow’s post, I’ll discuss an underused idea that would make blogging central to a small newspaper’s site without driving away a single reader: a general-interest breaking news blog.
Reinventing news for a search-based world
Sunday, February 26th, 2006On OJR, Robert Niles has a fascinating suggestion for completely rethinking online news: replace inverted-pyramid newspaper articles with staff-written wikis. (For which he suggests the delightful nickname “stikis.” You heard it here first, dear reader.) Why? To attract search-engine traffic.
I’m suggesting that — instead of distinct daily takes — news stories could be covered with encyclopedia-style articles that staffers would update with new information whenever available. How many more inbound links would such an approach get?
Inbound links, of course, being the current currency of the search-driven Web.
I see two obvious problems with the suggestion:
1) the writing required would be so different from that used in the print product that editorial resources would be taxed, and
2) the lede would be perpetually buried; that is, readers would have trouble figuring out what parts of the news are new.
Though the second problem might be avoided with constant rewriting and clever formatting, my hunch is that self-contained news stories will remain the dominant delivery device for news. They’re simply easier to pluck relevant details out of. This isn’t to say that local papers couldn’t launch parallel stiki or wiki services for their coverage area. But I doubt extensive stikis are likely to be worth their while.
