On your site or in your paper?

Yeah, I am with the group who says break news on the web if the timing isn't there for the paper, and use the web as a vehicle to tease some kind of angle or depth that you'll have and others won't in your next print edition. That has worked for me, especially at a weekly.

Features or enterprise, though, I'd try to save that sort of work for the print version first and make hay on them while I can.

 

You've obviously thought a lot about it, so please answer my question ... why should I be putting my entire product up on the Web site when it's not pulling in AD REVENUE??

 

OK, here's my rant.

I have no problem with publishing stuff on the web before the paper. Problem is, in this business, we have people who have no clue how to use the web as a delivery system. Most people answer, "we need to put it on the web," not because they actually have a viable business model in which publishing content on the web behooves the company, but because that is viewed as the correct answer.

Seriously. Think about it. Why should content be published on the web first? "Because it's the 21st century and the web is the future" is not a good answer.

Same thing with this fascination with blogs. Every newspaper needs blogs now. Why? Just because. Because they are blogs. Blogs! Nobody's actually thought about how to use the blog as an effective content-delivery system that will help bolster the overall product. We create blogs because, well, everyone else is, and they are the wave of the future.

Here's my point: The web is the future of our business. But the frustrating thing is this: the advantage that we have over every company in the information business is that our content is top-notch. We have more resources devoted to, pour more time into, and produce higher quality content than anyone else.

But our delivery system fucking sucks.

Think about it. Like shotglass said, it makes absolutely no sense to dump all of your content on the web five hours before it appears in the paper. It's fucking stupid.

The web needs to complement and supplement the printed product, not replicate it.

Break news on the web, by all means. Put the hard news story up there. Put a quick opinion piece up there to accompany it. But use the next day's paper to delve deep into the topic, to analyze it, to provide readers with a look at the news that they did not get, and could not get, on the web site.

What else should go on the web?

Everything, and I mean everything, that doesn't fit in the paper. Problem is, we think we are doing our jobs if we create a blog and tell our writers: "Go blog." Fuck that. Write a 300-word web-exclusive sidebar on the Bears' struggles on third down. Write a 500-word analysis of each one of Morten Andersen's kicks on Sunday. All shit that would be relegated to a graf in the newspaper. Throw it on the web.

Make our readers turn to the web site as another viable source of information, not as another way to read the paper. Train readers to look to the web for information, and you can start using the web to tease to the printed product, to encourage readers to pick up the paper the next day for an in-depth analysis of X, to tell them that they can't miss Writer X's profile of Daunte Culpepper that is running on 1C.

The lack of a coherent vision on content delivery is the thing that frustrates me most about this business.

 

Or to sum it up: With all of the manpower and resources we have devoted to the beats that we cover, readers should not be satisfied with a 15-inch main bar and a 15-inch notes package each day. And they are not satisfied with that. Which is why they are not buying our newspaper, and why they are not turning to our web site for anything other than an alternative form in which to view the printed product.

 

I'm giving you a standing ovation, daemon. You just can't see it online.

Another answer which is just not good enough: "Because the competition is doing it."

 

Here's something to ponder on topic:

By Greg Bowers

COLUMBIA, Mo. (July 20, 2006) — It was 6:30 p.m. on a Saturday. I was talking to my wife on the telephone and trying to figure out how the next morning’s sports section at my paper should look. By all accounts, it had been a big sports day.

Barry Bonds had hit home run No. 714, tying him with Babe Ruth for second place on the all-time list. Even though Major League Baseball had chosen not to commemorate the achievement, it was a big story — possibly made even bigger because of the steroid allegations swirling around Bonds. Love him or hate him, people paid attention when he came to the plate. And, truthfully, it was hard not to, with sports television networks breaking into scheduled coverage for every Bonds at bat.

If that wasn’t enough, there was the heart-breaking story of the Preakness. Barbaro, the Kentucky Derby winner, came up lame in the opening dash of the second race of the Triple Crown. Not only, did the racing industry take a loss instead of what could’ve been the bonanza of the first Triple Crown winner in years, there was the drama that took place right in front of the grandstand in Baltimore.

“A lot going on today,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

“You know?” I said.

“Yeah, Bonds hit No. 714 and Barbaro broke down in the Preakness. It was terrible,” she said.

“You know?” I said.

She knew.

The realization came just seconds later. If my wife, who is not a huge sports fan, already knew the big sports news of the day, then real sports readers, I could assume, knew that and more.

And we wonder why nobody wants to buy newspapers anymore? And if sports readers out there knew that and more, what should I put in the Sunday morning sports section, scheduled to hit their driveways 12 hours from now?

It’s like this: In one dream, I am a magician with dove feathers dropping out of his tuxedo sleeve. The audience is laughing, the trick ruined. In another dream, I am a sports editor breathlessly telling readers what they already know.

They are the same dream.

Sports journalism, actually journalism in general, is in a state of paralysis. Two things that have been constant companions in journalism through the years, have split apart.

The first thing is reporting, getting out the news. The second is telling good stories, interpreting the news. They once went hand in hand — news and writing. Now the first one is out and about before the second one can get its coat off.

Getting information to consumers has become a race. And it’s a race that newspapers, by definition, are losing. Newspapers need production time. Newspapers have to be written, sometimes crafted, and designed. They have to be printed and delivered. Tomorrow morning, once so close, now seems so far away.

 

(continued)

And newspapers, once essential, are now low on the information food chain. In sports, this has become particularly problematic. Sports on the Internet, it seems, is second only to pornography. Scores scroll across the bottom of the TV screens on a handful of channels on my cable. I live in Columbia, Missouri , and if there is a night that I go to bed without knowing exactly how my hometown Baltimore Orioles did, it’s because I didn’t try at all.

Gamecasts and MLB-TV are things that students watch while they’re laying out pages here at the Missouri School of Journalism. There is no such thing as not knowing. There’s just not caring.

Even local news, local sports, is covered by local television and radio. The University of Missouri scores are readily available in any number of places on the web.

So again, what do you put in the newspaper?

“So what do you want to know?” I asked my wife.

“I have a lot of questions about Barbaro.”

She wanted to know how often this type of injury happened. What could have caused it? Could it have been prevented? What was the horse’s full prognosis? How many places in the country could deal with an injury of this kind?

So I went back into the newsroom and starting searching for stories. The “news” was already out there. Now I needed “stories.” I needed not only narratives, good storytelling. I also needed depth. Perception. Interpretation. It was the only way to go.

The truth is, newspapers are in a particularly good position to play this new game. They just haven’t realized it yet.

Newspaper staffs continue to be the largest newsgathering organizations in their communities. But they also have another unique feature: They have real writers, writers who can tell the stories, interpret the stories and put the stories into context. They have the columnists who can cajole and entertain.

Sports departments have to do both. Instead of waiting until the next day and dumping all content to the web, sports staffs have to re-purpose.

In other words, now we’ll tell you the news. Tomorrow morning, we’ll tell you the stories.

This will take re-structuring. Perhaps sports departments have to be split in two. One group of tech-savvy reporters whose job it is to get the news out, win the race with cell phone text-casting, webpage shorts, even blogs. Then another group of writers and columnists who will use their extra time wisely, providing the depth and entertainment that bring readers to the next day’s paper.

The same people doing both would split the focus that is required to do either one very well.

Promote the print product with the on-line, immediate product. And, even more importantly, provide exclusive print product: the next-morning stories.

Two products. Each approached in radically different ways. And both valuable to readers. The on-line product is for news. The print product is for stories, depth, interpretation, and narrative.

The problem is larger than sports. A similar scenario played out in entertainment a few days after that Bonds/Barbaro day, when the “American Idol” television show held its finale. An estimate 36.4 million people watched Taylor Hicks become the fifth American Idol.

Some newspapers led the next day’s editions with Hicks. But why? Everyone who wanted to know, and even most who didn’t, already knew. The news was out. Where were the stories?

The reality? Telling people news they already know is not a good business model.

（Greg Bowers (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is also the sports editor of the Columbia Missourian, a six-day a week community newspaper managed by professionals with writing, editing and photography by students at the Missouri School of Journalism.）

 

Nice find, Jeffrey.

Greg Bowers is a pretty astute person, and I love his take on this.

 

I hold Greg in the highest regard. Have for a long time.

Agreed.

A failure to make money on your product is not a good business model, either.

 

OK, first of all, understand we're talking about a transitional time. Shottie, I understand that right now, you might not want to give them everything on the Web. But someday, that's what will be done.

It won't be done because the "competition is doing it." It will be done because a large piece of newspapers' potential readers don't buy a print paper, and the Web is the way to get to them. And newspaper Websites WILL generate revenue as people accesss them more and more through cell phones or portable devices or whatever.

From a strictly competitive standpoint, if you don't put breaking news on your website as soon as you have it, you're going to be way behind. And not just a little blurb to get them to buy the whole paper the next day. By the time the whole paper is delivered, national sports websites, local competitors, whatever, will have done in-depth on whatever that breaking news is. People won't need your paper.

You give them the story and update it whenever you have an update.

And you put everything else out there, too -- and more, things you couldnt' fit in the print edition.

That's my take, and if you don't agree with me now, that's cool. But I'll bet you agree in five years.

 

I might, SF. But again, I would hope that in five years, it's a better business model than what we have now.

And actually, I think it's more like 20 years than five. Things don't change as quickly as we sometimes believe.

 

Boy, as somebody who's been watching the world from the Web side for nine years now, a whole lot seems to have changed in quite a hurry.