I have been in digital since April 1995, when I left the sports department of The Washington Post newspaper to become sports editor of The Washington Post's "new media" company, adorably called Digital Ink. Since, I've spent more than 18 years trying push newsrooms to change: first to acknowledge digital at all, then to understand its importance and now to accelerate the transformation to our digital future. And, sometimes, I've run my mouth publicly about what I have perceived to be the too-slow pace of that transformation.
As a result, I get a lot of notes and calls from people in the journalism that either ask how to break down those mental walls or vent about the frustration of slamming their head into them.
It was the latter frustration that led a former colleague of mine to drop me a note a few weeks ago, and I thought it was a strong entry in the genre. Sure, a whole lot of people in journalism have made the transition or are well down the path. But many have still not. And some subset of that never will, most likely because of willful ignorance rather than over any real argument that the future of journalism lies anywhere else.
Anyway, this former colleague asked me whether it I thought the note was publishable. I thought it was. But, in the end, this person made the decision not to publish it, largely because of the fear of how it would be taken by the newsroom where they work. But I volunteered to publish it here, and that offer was accepted.
Note: This former colleague does not work at Digital First Media, which I assume is obvious from the phrase "former colleague" but should be stated anyway. And this person does not currently work at a company I have ever worked at.
Anyway, here it is...
Dear Legacy Print Editor,
First of all, understand that I am coming from a place of deep reverence and respect for the craft of journalism and our job as gatekeepersl of quality and editorial judgment.
But we have got issues.
I have respect for you, but you have none for me and the rest of the evolved journalists working with me to create the news organization of tomorrow -- who, by the way, range in age from 19 to 75 and beyond -- and who are placing our bets on adaptation and a future landscape that looks very different from our storied past.
What does the future look like?
That's the thing. We don't know exactly.
And how do we make money doing it? Again, not sure.
But I can tell you that the future isn't a print publication in which space is measured in finite inches and day-old news and declining subscribers. It isn't an online presence that merely republishes the print experience with a perfunctory area for adding comments that are mostly ignored.
We may revere the writer with decades of traditional newsroom experience under his belt -- but readers don't if he remains inaccessible or at a remove.
Readers want valid, exciting content that motivates them and they don't care if it was written by Grizzled Columnist or Upstart Internet Commentator. The next generation of news consumers is capable of appreciating both. That's right -- they are discerning enough to sniff out quality. They are smart and will be able to distinguish our work from, say, TMZ. If we think they can't, we are going to lose. Again and again and again.
Readers are smart enough to know that not all writers and news organizations are created equal and that everyone with access to a keyboard and a wifi connection can give the appearance of "publishing." They can spot the difference. They are not, as some of us assume, idiots waiting for us to lead them to the path of the righteous.
We also, though, need to be shrewd enough to recognize that there are lessons to be gleaned from TMZ, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post and publications like the New Yorker and the NYT who are co-opting innovations -- and even emerging as innovators in their own right in the digital space.
Readers value a variety of voices and presentations. They may get as much knowledge and satisfaction out of a 10-item Buzzfeed listicle as they do out of an inverse triangle news article with a journalistic pedigree. And we can make sure that if we are delivering content in a 10-item list, they are 10 vetted, kick-ass, need-to-know items.
It may not be comfortable, but we need to adapt.
Here's why: We are dying.
Our industry is dying a slow and painful and very public death. And every time a round of layoffs decimates even a small part of our newsrooms, we die that much more.
But instead of embracing the change that could keep us relevant, large pockets of our industry scoff at adaptation -- thinking that the readers, and those journalists who "get" the necessity of finding a new way of moving forward, are idiots. That we don't get it. That we are "less than."
But the truth is that it is you who doesn't get it. You refuse to make changes that could save the job of that copy editor who was laid off. You refuse to connect with readers in new ways -- in social media -- or to engage in a dialogue with them. You refuse to even consider the fact that there is a way to embrace change while still maintaining the standards that we all agree are vital to the survival of our craft.
It is as if you are a car maker who refuses to consider aerodynamics or unleaded gasoline, assuming that the old way of doing things is the ONLY way of doing things. Or worse, as if you don't even drive yet but think you understand the future of the industry.
And, as we know, consumers will side with innovation. Exhibit A: the writing on the wall.
Let's work together to embrace an evolved future. What have we got to lose? A hell of a lot if you opt out.
I meant to respond to
Brett
Sokol's piece in The Awl last week, but needed some time to address the writer's
numerous errors and mischaracterizations, not to mention the overall tone,
which emphasized turning a phrase over picking up a phone.
Let me start by
saying this: I don't believe everyone who writes about any company is required to
contact it for comment. But, when you don't, you put yourself under that much
more pressure to get your facts right. On that point, Sokol's piece is an
abject failure.
But let's actually start with the two parts of the story I
actually agree with. First, there's no question Paul Bass and his team are
doing outstanding work at the New
Haven Independent. Case closed. There's always room for multiple
sources of quality information in any town, and I have nothing but respect for what the
Independent has accomplished. In fact, the New
Haven Register has worked with the Independent on local issue forums, and
hopefully, we will continue to find ways to collaborate.
I also agree that the
current design of the Register site -- and, frankly, many Digital First Media
sites nationwide -- is subpar. Guilty as snarked. That's why we're redesigning
all of our web sites in the next 12 months, and have already started rolling
out beta versions of the article page in some of our markets. (Incidentally, on
Wednesday, we also launched
print redesigns of our smaller Connecticut papers -- the Register Citizen
in Torrington, and the Middletown Press. New Haven will get this new design as
well in early 2013.)
But once we get past
the quality of the Independent and of our web design, any agreement -- and, apparently,
any reporting on Sokol's part -- ends.
Sokol starts by using
the Register's design to all but dismiss the entire site. He also asserts that
DFM has pumped millions of dollars into these sites, which is ridiculous, yet
offered up as fact. The Journal Register sites have had these designs for a
long time -- too long, obviously -- and were not conceived under its new
management team. Either way, it's on us to fix them. But sites don't begin and end with their designs.
That's not to say
that Sokol doesn't go after the journalism; he does. But he offers a year-old anecdote about a mayoral election and a bunch of generic complaints about tweets,
video and blogs that contain no actual examples.
If Sokol had bothered
to call Matt DeRienzo, our
Connecticut editor, he would have found out what the Register has been up to recently. This includes:
Garnering wide praise for its second-to-none coverage
of the Connecticut 5th
District campaign, including uncovering campaign activities by former
Gov. John Rowland. These stories prompted a federal grand jury
investigation.
Rolling out the Missing
in Connecticut series, which reports on the efforts to find
adults who have disappeared in the New Haven region. The project also includes a Facebook page we started
that has been adopted by others in the community. Two months after we
began running these stories, the state police formed
a team to focus on missing persons cases.
Creating New Haven's first investigative
team in more than a decade. Recently, that team exposed
potential loopholes in laws designed to crack down on metal theft. It
also recently
exposed that most crime victims are not made aware when a convict in
their case applies for a pardon.
Winning a first-place national award from the Local
Media Association for Best Coverage of Local Education.
Sweeping the Connecticut SPJ awards category for Online
Spot News Reporting for its coverage of Hurricane Irene and the Joshua
Komisarjevsky trial, and winning first place for its online coverage of New
Haven's murder rate, which its handling via a blog that maps every murder in the city, profiles
the victims and tracks arrests updates and court
appearances.
Receiving numerous other awards in the past
year on a statewide, New England and national basis for in-depth
reporting, breaking news, editorial writing, features, arts and
entertainment, sports and photography.
This wordy-but-empty
paragraph illustrates the problem with Sokol's entire article:
For starters, daily
reporting isn’t "crowd-sourced." Bass assigns it primarily to either
himself or three other full-time paid staffers—all of whom regularly close
their laptops and hit the pavement, interviewing sources face-to-face, covering
events first-hand and writing real stories full of nuance and analysis. Not all
of these reporters share Bass’ decades of experience in digging
around New Haven’s nooks
and crannies, but the emphasis is on doing just that—learning the ins and
outs of the city and making sense of it all, not producing a sea of inane
videos, glib tweets and half-baked blog posts.
Sokol never explains
the crowdsourcing reference at all, but if he believes working with the community
somehow cheapens our work, then I'd like to get a ride on the time machine on
which he rode into the 21st century. He then implies that Register reporters don't
talk face-to-face with sources or leave the office to cover events. That's
absurd, of course, and I'm sure Sokol knows that. If Sokol doesn't approve of
the quality of the stories, videos, tweets and blogs, so be it, but based on
the tone of his article, it sounds like the real issue is Sokol's general
distaste for the new tools of journalism and the people who use or espouse them. In fact, he sounds like one
of those cranky men in newsrooms that Dean
Starkman says don't exist anymore. Note to Dean: I think I found one.
Sokol also seems to come
from the school that believes every piece of journalism should take down a public
official or have some grander ambition. The Register has done plenty of those
ambitious pieces, but local journalism also involves producing hundreds of
smaller stories that collectively keep citizens informed. Based on his piece,
I'm guessing Sokol has never worked in a local newsroom, because he sure
doesn't show any understanding of how they work.
Sokol's mayoral
race criticism was fair, but also dated. That race preceded the Register's newsroom reorganization, which
focused on three core areas: breaking news, investigative/enterprise and
community engagement. Since then, the Register's coverage of breaking news
is much improved, a fact I'm guessing even the New Haven Independent would
acknowledge.
As for the people who
really matter -- the readers -- they seem to be happy with the changes we've
made. Year over year, traffic to the Register is up 40 percent. We're proud of
the work the Register is doing, not only journalistically, but also in trying to
engage its audience in ways that go beyond Sokol's lazy and cliched reference
to message boards. Again, we could have walked Sokol through those efforts, but
pesky facts might have gotten in the way of his Ku Klux Klan joke.
But as shaky as
Sokol's reporting is when discussing the Register, it's when he goes
after our Thunderdome project that he loses all credibility. In fact, about the only
thing he gets right about Thunderdome is the name.
Let's start with the
centralization of non-local news. Sokol asserts that I am apparently unaware
that the New Haven Register already runs non-local news stories. Thanks for the tip, but
I am quite aware. The issue has never been that the Register -- or any of our
other 74 dailies -- runs these stories. It's that each produces those
non-local stories individually. That means, in some cases, we might have 50 different
editors in 50 different newsrooms producing the exact same non-local story. The
whole idea of this part of Thunderdome, in fact, is to free up local resources
by centralizing non-local production so that those stories need to be produced one time, not 50 times. Not that difficult a concept to grasp. Or so I thought.
This complete misunderstanding
of Thunderdome's core mission then leads to Sokol's next journalistic
face-plant. He asserts that the better use of the 40-plus people we're hiring
in New York would be to send them to replenish our local newsrooms. That's a great idea. In fact, Sokol managed to Inspector Clouseau his way to
solving the crime. That is exactly the purpose of Thunderdome: To
increase the number of available journalistic resources at our local properties. With
non-local news production off the plates of those newsrooms, resources will be
freed up to produce more local journalism. Had Sokol read anything about Thunderdome (or called anyone involved), he would have
understood that. Instead, he produced the embarrassing combination of extreme
snark and a complete factual whiff.
Also,
I'm sure Sokol's joke about Thunderdome having 45 SWAT team members was just
another attempt at fact-free humor. I will merely point out that there are
actually three SWAT team members, so Sokol was only off by 42. As for his
mocking of the title, that's his right. But since he doesn't even understand
what these journalists do anyway, mocking the title is just doubling down
on ignorance. In fact, the idea of that SWAT team is not to parachute in to help
with major national and world stories; it's to help any of our local properties
when they are stretched thin by a major local breaking news story or
significant enterprise or investigative effort. There's a reason we don't call
them "national correspondents," as Sokol suggests we should. Because
that's not what they do. We're kind of sticklers about that kind of thing.
My advice to Mr.
Sokol: Next time you are in New Haven, skip Louis Lunch and go visit the
Register. And next time you are in New York, come visit Thunderdome. I know
either visit would require some guts after such a sloppy and mean-spirited
piece, but it would certainly show a level of journalistic rigor that was
completely lacking in your Awl piece. There's nothing easier than Monday morning quarterbacking and taking cheap shots at a hard-working staff from a distance. Getting up close and doing reporting is what good reporters do. I can be reached at [email protected].
UPDATE (OCT. 2): As of this morning, I have yet to hear
from Brett Sokol. In the best tradition of Claude Rains, I'm shocked -- shocked -- to have to received no response. The only response to this post from The Awl
was a tweet from one of its editors, saying this post was "evasive and
fallacious." In the best tradition of The Awl, the tweet came with no specifics and no follow up.
For those interested
in what Thunderdome is actually doing, here's a summary, courtesy of Spundge:
Here's Volume 3 of The Three, highlighting some of the journalism successes at Digital First Media. I didn't get one of these out last week, so expect another edition on Monday.
1) Using social media as a source of missing person information in Connecticut
More than 275 people have "liked" The New Haven Register’s Missing in CT Facebook page, an interactive place for families, friends and the general public to discuss local missing person cases.
Connecticut Group Editor Matt DeRienzo developed the idea for the page, while NHR Investigations Editor Michelle Tuccitto is the main administrator. Managing Editor Mark Brackenbury posted missing persons photos across the top of the Facebook page and began liking similar pages to help find new audience.
Tuccitto said the page was “pretty basic at first” with merely links to stories about missing persons. Now, family members of missing persons -- such as the mother of Billy Smolinski -- post frequently. Tuccitto hopes the page eventually becomes a tool to help solve the cases. Do you have a local issue that would support a separate Facebook page that might draw in community like this one?
2) Using a high school sports blog to inform, interact
Since the first post of his On Prep Sports blog in April 2006, San Gabriel Valley Tribune prep sports editor Fred Robledo said he has tried to make his blog the home for all local high school sports. To do that, he's used all the right tactics to build a blog audience: He posts frequently. He provides real-time updates. He continually interacts with readers. He links to interesting related content on other sites. And, when appropriate, he offers his own opinions.
Robledo also embeds photos, videos, polls, CoverItLive chats, Twitter feeds and more. A moderator keeps an eye on the live chat feeds and several correspondents contribute to the blog. Robledo has nearly 1,000 Twitter followers and will soon be creating a SGVT prep sports Facebook page. His videos routinely get between 500 and 1,000 views. Some blog threads have reached 500 comments. In short, he's fulfilled the mission he set out on in 2006.
Robledo’s tip: Identify your audience and cater to it. Be active with the audience – “there is no other [prep] blog that has as much reader involvement," he said. "That's what separates us from the rest.”
3) Making ths most of a community contest at TwinCities.com / St. Paul Pioneer Press
For the past 60 years of the St. Paul Winter Carnival, the Pioneer Press has run a Treasure Hunt. By the thousands, treasure hunters tramp through public parks in search of a medallion worth up to $10,000 in cash. Day by day, cryptic clues in the newspaper and on TwinCities.com have lead people toward the medallion. Hunt traditions have been handed down through the generations and a documentary film has been produced about the hunt.
In 2011, Pioneer Press editor Mike Burbach said Treasure Hunt traffic hit a new high of 1.9 million page views, which contributed to a record-smashing 16 million page views for twincities.com for the month. This was no accident. New digital components made the difference. For example, this year saw the addition of daily videos, a Treasure Hunt Facebook page and a scrambled version of the clue that was featured exclusively online. Hunters could also participate in a UPickem contest and online forums, plus could access hunt-related content via a widget on the home page and temporary channels to mobile sites and apps.
For anyone considering starting such a contest, the Pioneer Press has the following tips:
Hide the treasure well in advance of the hunt.
Location and clue security must be taken VERY seriously.
Be sure the rules are locked down and lawyered.
Don’t be shy about covering it as a big news event
Here's this week's version of the The Three, the e-mail we sent internally to try and communicate good ideas, best practices and advice from the newsrooms at MediaNews Group and Journal Register Company.
THE THREE Vol. #2, Week of Jan. 23
1) Google+ Hangout with Michigan Governor Rick Snyder
Last Dec. 22, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder participated in a Google+ hangout hosted by The Macomb Daily and The Oakland Press. Topics discussed included updates on the governor's major initiatives, the current political climate in Michigan, the national political scene and Snyder's personal life.
Karen Workman, community engagement editor at The Oakland Press, said a reporter and editor used one computer to produce the video chat, and three Flipcams were used to shoot it. At The Oakland Press, a third staffer sat off-camera to curate the meeting. Oakland Press Online Editor Stephen Frye said the biggest stress was whether the video bandwidth would hold up, but he said there were no issues during the chat.
The end result of this experiment included a story that mixed traditional text with video from Snyder's interview, giving the reader a unique multimedia experience, one that intentionally bounced the reader between text and video. Because who says text and video always need to be viewed separately? Sometimes, the best answer is to integrate them seamlessly. The Oakland Press and Macomb Daily also produced a Storify stream that captured live Tweets and videos, and wrote articles on the news made by Snyder and on the experiment itself.
For other staffs who want to try video chats, Frye advice: “You're live on camera, so you don't want to be looking down and reading notes. So know your questions and have fun.”
2) Using ScribbleLive to cover severe weather in the Denver area
In covering a snowstorm, The Denver Post used a free trial of the live-blogging tool ScribbleLive. The idea came to Social Media Editor Dan Petty after seeing impressive live-blogging examples from other news organizations.
Petty curated tweets using the #COwx hashtag and searched for “Colorado snow,” “Denver snowstorm,” etc. He pulled content from Facebook, from other news organizations and bloggers and -- obviously -- from the Post newsroom itself. All the content was posted in a live blog that received traffic from the Post's main story. The Denver Post encouraged readers to submit photos through a Google submission form, and also featured live radars and various widgets to communicate relevant information. Six different reporters contributed to the coverage. The live blog received 5,581 page views, and received more than 300 shares on Facebook and 137 retweets on Twitter.
Petty's advice to other newsrooms experimenting with live blogging major news events: Have multiple contributors. For a breaking news blog to be effective, a significant number of people need to be feeding it. For more information, e-mail Petty or reach him on Twitter.
3) Covering a deadly manhunt with precision – on a tight deadline
At around 8:30 p.m. last Dec. 12, staffers at The Morning Journal in Lorain, OH learned to shift focus to breaking news – even while on tight deadline -- when police announced they were hunting for a man -- who would later kill himself. During the manhunt, a deputy was shot via “friendly fire.”
Veteran photographer Jim Bobel and reporter Allison Strouse rushed to the scene while reporter Rick Payerchin manned the phones. Editor-in-Chief Tom Skoch updated the website, Facebook, Twitter and sent SMS text alerts. Photos and video were posted to the web and, in follow-up coverage, TMJ live streamed press conferences.
The stories and the follow-up coverage drew 25,225 page views. Skoch blogged about the tools used to cover the story and then the user reaction to how it was covered, and a TMJ Community Media Lab blogger wrote about the shootout through the prism of mental health issues.
Skoch's advice on fast-moving breaking stories: “Just be flexible and fast. Be ready to scrap your original plans for the night and throw everything you’ve got into getting the big new story.”
As I've made my way to many of the newsrooms in the Digital First Media family, one question I'm consistently asked is: "Can you give some examples of who is doing 'Digital First' right?" Truth is, there isn't one place that's doing it all right -- not at DFM, not in the world -- but there are examples all over the company where we're using traditional and digital storytelling tools to produce journalism we can be proud of.
To make sure that information was making its way around the company in a form that was succinct but helpful, I decided to start a weekly memo called, "The Three," where we discuss three projects we're proud of and describe how it was done. The first edition went out last week, and below is an edited version. I'll be posting an edited version of each week's note on this blog as well.
THE THREE #1, Week of Jan. 16
1) Special weather coverage from the San Gabriel Valley Tribune Steve Hunt, senior editor at San Gabriel Valley Tribune, and his staff made the best of a bad situation when a dangerous wind storm ripped through their coverage area. While the main office was without power in West Covina, Calif., Hunt said the staff didn’t need a newsroom and proved “that we have not only embraced a digital-first mentality, but also that we serve our communities much better than our competitors online.” The SGVT staff worked with sister paper Pasadena Star-News in the coverage.
The online team of Erick Galindo and Daniel Tedford launched a crowdsourced community map and readers shared their stories of damage. In a four-day period, the Google Map received 170,000 page views. Traffic to the site was nearly tripled during the widespread storm coverage, with use of social media, the website, e-mail alerts and so on to promote coverage.
In addition to staff multimedia and stories, videos filed by community members were also posted. The staff used Scribd to publish documents related to the storm.
The morale in the newsroom was boosted, he also said. The staff members “were just motivated to do the best job they could covering a big local disaster that affected most of our readers,” Hunt said.
Since the windstorm, Hunt has filled an open position with a backpack journalist.
In today’s digital age, and being part of Digital First Media, a reporter doesn’t necessarily need a newsroom to provide the latest, breaking news coverage.
2) Jim Matthews scandal coverage at Norristown, Pa.-based The Times Herald The arrest of Jim Matthews, the brother of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, was and continues to be a major breaking story for the Norristown staff. The Times Herald began working on the story in 2009, and it still continues to unfold, with the recent charges filed and court documents released outlining Matthews’ alleged perjury and false swearing while testifying under oath.
The DA's investigation “was helped in part by the reporting two of our staffers had done and some editorials written along the way,” according to Online Editor John Berry.
Stan Huskey, editor-in-chief at The Times Herald, said reporters Jenny DeHuff and Keith Phucas won a Philadelphia Press Association award for public service for their reporting, and Huskey himself contributed an editorial. DeHuff also took first place in Investigative Journalism category for in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association's Keystone Awards.
One result of the articles and editorials -- which focused on the weakness of Pennsylvania's Sunshine and campaign finance laws -- was a new law that featured stiffer penalties for violating the Sunshine Law.
Because The Times Herald broke the “Breakfastgate” story in 2010, competitors and national outlets -- including The New York Times -- have cited it in their own coverage.
Lesson learned: Follow up and sticking with a big story is important in any newsroom. Investigative reporting, strong editorials and a nose for news led to an arrest and a change to an important law. That's watchdog journalism at its best.
3) A community editorial board at Northern Michigan-based The Morning Sun When Morning Sun Editor Rick Mills launched a community editorial board, he said he knew there was a “growing knowledge that a strong opinion page was just as important to the community as news coverage.” Mills said he was uncomfortable with the idea of every local editorial coming from him, an editor or even the staff.
Mills wrote a column outlining his perspective and suggested community members contribute to the opinion page on a regular basis. He created an application process and community members submitted informal introductions, answered some questions and addressed three local issues they felt deserved attention. Fifteen applicants responded. The resulting community editorial board has ranged from nine to 15 members. Regular contributors post weekly and share a community blog on the website.
“They have been extremely valuable in terms of ideas for editorials, positions and guidance, but also contribute equally to story generation. For a small staff, we more than doubled our eyes and ears by having community members looking out, talking to friends and coworkers and bringing back to us what they hear and see and think,” Mills said.
“My main advice would be to try it in some form, get media lab folks involved, teach them, and show them how important a newspaper's voice and a strong editorial page are,” Mills said. “In many communities there are many sources for news, we need to lead on more than just news and readers like and respond to strong local opinion pages.”
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