Flooring It at Another Crazy News Panel

Aaron Kremer, founder and editor of the website and email newsletter Richmond BizSense -- and famously against Twitter as a useful tool -- is apparently also against chairs. He originally booked his "Future of News" panel at a bar, Black Finn, then due to a surge of early registrations, moved it to another bar, Infuzion.

Except for bar seating along the walls, there were no chairs. No one thought to rent any. At least two-thirds of the attendees stood on the dance floor, drinks in hand. This is not my idea of a panel discussion venue. I sat on a cold concrete floor. Drink tickets don't do much for me; nor do salty chicken fingers and the ever-present veggie tray with a cup of ranch dressing in the middle -- so for $15, I would really like a chair. Even an uncomfortable folding chair would be nice.

And I would like some hard questions and some controversy, not a moderator throwing out soft, vague questions that can only elicit equally vague answers. Moderators need to actually listen to the answers and confront the speaker when they speak in banalities or inconsistencies. Nail somebody with something! Make somebody squirm! Challenge the panel. Demand some creativity of thought. Instead we get bland nothingness from adults in the communications business who don't know yet to hold the mic up to their mouth.

(I will refrain from commenting about having only one person checking people's names off and collecting the money at the door, creating a three-row line reminiscent of getting into Space Mountain. I will also say nothing about the name tags typed in a micro font, so as far as being readable from a distance: useless networking tool.)

So there sat Tom Silvestri, publisher of the Times-Dispatch, and an assortment of other media people helping to put him out of business.

Moderator Jim Bacon, after being schooled by the audience on speaking into the microphone instead of waving it like a magic wand, asked the first softball question, does content want to be free?

(Ooooh, let me predict: the print people will say you must pay for quality and the digital people will say with their much lower overhead, they can survive with a few web ads and not require digital subscriptions.)

Susan Winiecki of Richmond Magazine said high end journalism requires funding. Bacon doesn't ask her the follow-up question I'm thinking. Isn't advertising paying your bills? Why would you need to charge the readers, too? (Silvestri actually cops to this at the very end of the night. Subscriptions are not where the income is or should be.)

Ross Catrow of RVANews is fine with low-end, citizen journalism and gives a shout-out to John Murden and the Church Hill People's News. Anywhere else, there would be cheers for John, but I don't think this crowd has ever heard of the CHPN.

Silvestri says if there's no advertising support anymore, you need a different business model. (Okay, obvious.) Yet (!) Bacon doesn't ask the follow-up question, what would that different business model look like? Do you have any idea? Do you have a contingency plan in the works?

Lori Waran of Style says the online edition of her paper is making money.

The conversation goes pro-digital. Catrow's RVANews is doing well with internet ads, too. Kremer bragged about getting his email newsletter out by 7:30 a.m. and by 9 a.m., he has solid analytics on what stories were hits and which were misses. Restaurant news is big in Richmond. So are stories about salaries. He phases out topics that get few hits, so he's evolving into the perfect business model. Survival of the hittest.

Waran can also track popular Style stories online, the winner being Jenna Bush's engagement. (Really? Really? Shame on you, Richmond.)

Winiecki has to blame or credit her covers for selling magazines, which is why we see so many "Richmond's Top Restaurants" and "Who Makes the Most Money" covers (I am not joking.)

Silvestri agrees restaurant stories and obits sell. (Where is the niche entrepreneur who is working on an Eat Richmond weekly paper and a Who's Dead Today website? They're going to make a fortune!)

At one point, I actually think I heard Bacon ask Ross Catrow if his business model was a threat to his business model. (The question was about web news aggregators. Part of Catrow's empire, RVABlogs, is an aggregator site. And the bottom half of RVANews carries feeds from the community blogs.) Bacon asks how do people like that Murden guy you gave a shout-out to feel about you STEALING HIS WORK?

Catrow says he really feels like they're all working in tandem. (Bacon must be unaware that Catrow's sites and the community blogs, including Murden's, are all financially linked together in an ad-sharing network.) Catrow gives a shout-out to Nate's Taco Truck, a one-man business that does all its advertising on Twitter, tweeting his location and menu each day.

It doesn't get any simpler than that, and it costs him nothing to do. The hard follow-up question: how do you as an outlet dependent on advertising counteract that? Nope, that question was not asked. Bacon, an early blogger, does admit he does not understand Twitter or Facebook. He calls it just more spam.

Waran tells a touching story about reaching out for her iPhone first thing in the morning to read the overnight headlines on her Twitter feed. (I do, too.) It's faster and more convenient than sloshing outside in your bathrobe to get the paper from the lawn. But, she adds -- trying to be nice to Silvestri -- some people probably still prefer the ritual of walking outside and looking for the paper.

Bacon does not ask the hard follow-up question: isn't the news on the lawn actually yesterday's news? If Haiti was hit by a 15.7 earthquake at 2 a.m. and sunk into the sea, it's not going to be in the paper that morning. It is going to be on your Twitter feed.

Catrow admits to loving Twitter, "a useful tool."

Kremer said he felt overwhelmed by following 50 people on Twitter. I am baffled, and begin to wonder if he has speed reading issues and can't scan through a narrow column of short sentences, which is all Twitter is. I follow 185 people and can keep up in two or three 20-minute scanning spurts a day. You cannot tell me that people who go outside to smoke three or four times a day and talk about what they had for dinner with the other smokers are getting as much out of their breaks.

The still not-famous-in-this-crowd Murden ventured forth to ask the first question about the "quality of the conversation," which got Silvestri a little worked up. His stock in trade is selling depth and quality of information since newspapers haven't been able to deliver immediacy since the dawn of television. Comments to stories on the website get out of control, especially in the morning, he says. The morning brings out the crazies. No quality of conversation then! Never read any comments posted before noon. Thoughtfulness doesn't check in until lunch time. The internet is going to need moderators.

Waran speaks up that at Style they like the passion of the debate. Bring on the crazies!

Second question is from a small business owner who says he thinks the future is web advertising and branding your business online. Winiecki counters with: you need a mix of advertising. You need to talk to your reps for direction, what's best for you. (!!!!! Like my newspaper rep is really going to tell me that newspaper advertising is not for me? Like Richmond magazine's ad rep is going to say, we're too expensive for you and people turn the page too quickly. We're not right for you. Take your money to my competitor.)

A business woman said she had no idea how to get into social media marketing and needed help. (She probably thought she was going to learn how at this panel discussion…and maybe even sit in a chair.) Someone handed her their business card. That person will make more money tonight as a result of this seminar than anyone on the panel.

Someone brings up the iPad and Silvestri says with almost genuine emotion that he wants OUT of the news delivery business and into the content business. He doesn't want to think about printing presses, paper, ink, and newspaper carriers. The electronic newspaper is his dream.

Someone says "my hunch is most people are still getting their news from the Richmond Times-Dispatch." I don't think that's true. I think the television and radio reporters are still getting their news from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. 

The night ends with the stupidest question directed at Silvestri. "Do you feel like you're sitting next to pirates?"

What? WHAT?

We then have to hear pirate jokes from Silvestri, including an aaarrrgh. No one from local television or radio is even on the panel. If anyone is pirating the morning paper, it's them. Richmond magazine and Style Weekly cover different news in a different way. RVANews is covering a completely different side of Richmond -- the side where we all actually live everyday -- and aggregating nonsensical bloggers and the community blogs. The closest thing to a pirate in the room is Kremer, who builds most of his daily content with feeds from other news sources.

This panel was sponsored by a law firm and the Home Building Association of Richmond. I can't imagine what they got out of it. I go to about three of these "future of news" type affairs a year, and it's never any different. There's never any real insights. You hear about the now, but seldom is the future actually discussed. But I guess we'll keep talking about the future of news until news finally gets there.

To Sunday or Not to Sunday

A subscription renewal envelope fell out of last Sunday's paper, so it's that time again. Time to decide if I even want to keep getting the Sunday paper.

Last time the decision was made for two ridiculous reasons. My husband enjoys the sale inserts and convinced me clipping the grocery coupons more than paid for the subscription.

But now that I've reached the point where I barely read any of the paper at all, the fact that the subscription cancels out whatever savings I get from grocery coupons makes that seem less of a deal.

The more my life gets automated by electronic conveniences, the more annoying manual transactions are -- clipping and sorting coupons, pulling them out in the store and going through them by hand in every aisle. Who has the time! Besides, I scan my grocery card at a machine on the way in and it prints out a sheet of coupons for things I often buy anyway. Or I scan my card on the way out and it gives me all the sales. (Who shops without a card these days?)

I could live without the coupons. Sometimes they work against me. Sales inserts create a desire to buy items I actually don't need, like ever-changing types of household air freshener dispensers. And my husband can definitely live without the sales inserts because it only creates a desire for things we can't afford. We replaced two perfectly good TVs last fall because of store sales. Yes, we wanted them, but we didn't actually need them.

As for the rest of the paper, I only read Dilbert in the comics. I only read the fake questions and answers about celebrities in Parade. Definitely won't miss that. I don't open Sports or Celebrations. So now I'm down to what used to be called the A and B sections, Flair and Moneywise, or whatever the business section is called. I used to read the help wanted ads just to see if I could be doing better somewhere else, but now I have a problem finding wherever they are. And there's not that many of them.

Even this small pile of sections seems like a chore to get through on Sunday mornings. There's no convenient space on my table to spread out the paper and once your eyes get bifocally or trifocally challenged, reading on the sofa is impossible without a lot of folding and unfolding the paper into smaller sections. I'm not in the mood for origami on Sunday morning.

Sundays are not like they used to be: church, a big lunch that looks more like dinner, TV sports, a smaller meal, "60 Minutes," bed. Mom used to be able to relax with the paper because she had been home all week cleaning the house and doing the shopping. Well, not on this planet. I've been at work all week. The house is a disaster area. I've probably spent all Saturday cleaning and doing 10 loads of laundry, and Sunday I have to shop for groceries and other things. Who has time for a big newspaper? I don't. No time.

The paper was always something I read in the evening during commercial breaks or boring TV interludes on one of the four television channels. Now I get 300 television channels, and there's no boring interludes because I've recorded only the shows I want to watch, and I watch them straight through, fastforwarding through commercials and car chases. There's no time for any reading, and if I do find a moment, I look at my Twitter feed on my iPod Touch. The news is there in a series of headlines. The iPod fits in my hand and I can easily hold it right up to my eyes.

The first Sunday the paper is not on the lawn when my husband goes out to smoke his morning cigarette and hack and cough, he's going to whine. What about Best Buy? I don't know what's going on at Best Buy. Well, you don't need to know what's going on at Best Buy. Besides, that flyer is actually on their website every week. You can virtually turn the pages with your mouse just like it was a real paper. I'll buy you a wireless keyboard to go on your Playstation 3 and you can access it on your big TV hanging on the wall. You just can't take it into the bathroom anymore.

I don't want that to be the winning argument for spending $30 for 13 weeks of Sunday papers: so he can look at the Best Buy flyer in the bathroom. That would be sad.