I've been to literally half a dozen seminars in the past few months about social media. Everybody is excited about it. Government and business communicators are excited about it because it's an inexpensive, often free, way to get information to their clients and citizens.
Since the elections there's been a seminar every week on how the candidates used social media.
People who are entrenched in social media are very excited about it because it's creating new ways to do their jobs, and in some cases, actually creating jobs. Bloggers, Facebook users, Tweeters are all feeling a part of a social information revolution.
Only the established press is not excited. I recently attended several lectures at the Virginia Press Association headquarters in Glen Allen. I got in through the backdoor. I maintain a membership in the Virginia Press Women and that group was invited to this VPA event to fill chairs. In the two social media tracks I attended, the presenters were excited about how newspapers can embrace this technology and make it their own.
Like: find your cities' most influential, popular bloggers and link to them on your newspaper's website.
Some of the editors and reporters from small towns across the state said they had no idea how to find such bloggers, or even if they existed. The rest were downright hostile. Bloggers traffic in rumors and untruths, according to the press. Why do they want to link to bloggers?
One presenter showed how reporters who also blog are doing amazing jobs covering sports. Sports is a weekend game. No one wants to wait until the Monday morning paper to read about the game or comment back. The sports reporters who are online are instantly reporting. This often means staying up late after the game is over to converse with readers, or writing and posting on Sunday.
On Sunday.
You can feel the room ice up with Virginia-resistance.
Some of these sports bloggers have become their own self-employed news hubs, divorcing their papers and setting up advertiser-supported websites to report on their beats.
As evidence that bloggers are liars, one Richmond rep mentioned bloggers and Tweeters had gotten the Ukrop's grocery store chain sale story all wrong, that they fanned a rumor that turned out to be false. Did it? The core of the story is true. The supermarket chain was faltering and might very well take a good offer. (It's 2012 now, and that's exactly what happened. Social media had the freedom to speculate on it first because the grocery store, a major advertiser, had cooled the story to the daily paper to not influence the sale.)
The moderator brought up several types of stories -- like how to buy and finance your own home without a realtor -- and asked how many papers were doing those kind of stories? In these perilous financial times when no newspaper wants to lose more advertising, do advertisers control the type of stories written?
There was no shouting of nay, nay or blasphemy! blasphemy! Everybody there knew it was true.
Another lecture was about how to make money from social media. It's hard to get ad salesmen excited about selling digital button ads at $100 or less. Some innovators have found ways to automate it. But here was the future of ad selling: Twitter!
The Austin Statesman will run certain types of ads -- those that offer discounts, coupons or magic word incentives -- on its Twitter feed for two Tweets a day for $150.
But what's going to keep a person with a healthy following from undercutting you? Tweeting your ad twice a day for $50? Or just doing it for free. You'll be craiglisted in weeks. In fact, I pointed out, in Richmond we already have @rvabargains doing that and @styleoffers is trying to get off the ground.
Ice.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Writing Less is More
I used to write essays/editorials. For a long spell, I sold dozens of these to three or four regular newspaper clients. I had a 1,000-word limit. This was good training. My average first draft was around 1,500 words, and telling the same story in two-thirds of the words is a great discipline. People don't want to read all your digressions. They want you to stay on topic.
As my clients went out of business, or new editors came in with different tastes, I started self-publishing myself on my various blogs. This is bad because there's no money at all in it, and fewer readers. But it's also good because there's no rejection. Everything you write gets published. But there's also no discipline. You don't have that 1,000-word limit. Out of habit I still tend to edit down, but I am seeing many, many bloggers who have never experienced writing for print publication -- or even writing under a copy editor -- who have no discipline or polish at all. A few of them even have avid followings. I just wish they were better self-editors. I had to give up reading most of the posts on rvablogs.com because it's like a Wild, Wild West of undisciplined, unedited verbal diarrhea for the most part.
So there I was, rattling along on my various blogs, writing in a silent vacuum for mostly myself when I discovered Twitter. Twitter doesn't just limit your words. It limits your characters to 140. Big words can drastically reduce how much you can say. This was a challenge, to write that small, that concisely, that to the point.
It's also a lot less work when you get the hang of it, meaning I neglect most of my blogs now for the quick, dirty, in-and-out of Twitter. I neglect reading blogs because a Twitter stream is so much more efficient. I can tell immediately, in seconds, whether you have anything worthwhile to say or not. Writing less is the future.
It's hard to pick up a newspaper after you've been in the Twitter stream, or even watch the evening news, because both news reporting disciplines still depend on time-honored but archaic ways of padding out a story. For instance, getting a man-on-the-street comment or observation, which is just ridiculous. Who is this random person? Why do I care what they think? They're actually just a stand-in for the reporter who, because of that objectivity thing, cannot react emotionally to whatever he/she is reporting.
Or the horrible, terrible how-do-you-feel question. Something terrible has happened to you or to someone you know, or someone you've heard about. How do you feel?
I feel bad. I feel sad.
No one ever says, I feel nothing. Or I don't care. Or I am precariously enjoying the suffering of this other person. No one!
We need to get past this style of reporting because people want the news fast, short, and unadorned with the unnecessary or obvious observation. Get to the point. Write like you were tweeting.
As my clients went out of business, or new editors came in with different tastes, I started self-publishing myself on my various blogs. This is bad because there's no money at all in it, and fewer readers. But it's also good because there's no rejection. Everything you write gets published. But there's also no discipline. You don't have that 1,000-word limit. Out of habit I still tend to edit down, but I am seeing many, many bloggers who have never experienced writing for print publication -- or even writing under a copy editor -- who have no discipline or polish at all. A few of them even have avid followings. I just wish they were better self-editors. I had to give up reading most of the posts on rvablogs.com because it's like a Wild, Wild West of undisciplined, unedited verbal diarrhea for the most part.
So there I was, rattling along on my various blogs, writing in a silent vacuum for mostly myself when I discovered Twitter. Twitter doesn't just limit your words. It limits your characters to 140. Big words can drastically reduce how much you can say. This was a challenge, to write that small, that concisely, that to the point.
It's also a lot less work when you get the hang of it, meaning I neglect most of my blogs now for the quick, dirty, in-and-out of Twitter. I neglect reading blogs because a Twitter stream is so much more efficient. I can tell immediately, in seconds, whether you have anything worthwhile to say or not. Writing less is the future.
It's hard to pick up a newspaper after you've been in the Twitter stream, or even watch the evening news, because both news reporting disciplines still depend on time-honored but archaic ways of padding out a story. For instance, getting a man-on-the-street comment or observation, which is just ridiculous. Who is this random person? Why do I care what they think? They're actually just a stand-in for the reporter who, because of that objectivity thing, cannot react emotionally to whatever he/she is reporting.
Or the horrible, terrible how-do-you-feel question. Something terrible has happened to you or to someone you know, or someone you've heard about. How do you feel?
I feel bad. I feel sad.
No one ever says, I feel nothing. Or I don't care. Or I am precariously enjoying the suffering of this other person. No one!
We need to get past this style of reporting because people want the news fast, short, and unadorned with the unnecessary or obvious observation. Get to the point. Write like you were tweeting.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The Business Pitch
"Reporting Local, Reaching Global" was a free panel discussion on business news hosted at Plant Zero by Aaron Kremer, founder of Richmond BizSense and notorious anti-Twitterite. (Can you be a Luddite if you operate a website?)
Panelists were freelancers Phaedra Hise and Maya Smart and former Media Generalists Robert Powell (now editing Virginia Business), Sean Ryan (now a PR flak with Hodges Partnership), and Pam Feibish, current activity unknown but former T-D business editor.
Here's what I learned.
Kremer wisely had several prepared questions to start the program. By the time they were answered, the audience was ready with their own, and if they had stiffed him and asked nothing, he still would have provided a substantial panel discussion, so that was good thinking.
Press releases, faxed or mailed, remain uselessly dead. Press releases sent as attachments to emails are on life support. Time of death will be called momentarily. Your best shot at a pitch now is in the SUBJECT LINE of an email, because most editors get so many emails, they can't open and read them anymore. Feibish said she used to get 300 a day.
Pitching your story in the subject line is shorter than an elevator pitch. It's shorter than a Tweet. It's a semi-tweet. All the more reason you should be on Twitter, learning how to say what you have to say in 140 characters or less, because less is not going to be more in this new media age. It's going to be ALL.
If you're pitching yourself or your client as a story, hang it up. Better to pitch yourself or your client as a source a la Larry Sabato who can be available to comment on any story the reporter is working on. When you call freelancers, ask only, "what are you working on?" and "what do you need now?"
As for being the story, you must have a narrative, a struggle, a trial by fire, from which you rise like the phoenix, triumphant and whole. You must be willing to divulge all your secrets and finances. You must contact reporters when you don't want anything from them and just be their friend. You must not call them on the phone because they are too busy. But you must call them when you have breaking news, especially if they are a frequent publisher.
You must never say "no comment" because it only makes them desire the words you do not want to say all the more. If you are in a scandalous mess, better to call the media yourself before they hear about it elsewhere, call all the media, and try to contain your bad news in one 24-hour news cycle. (In my opinion, confessing on Friday night is always good. The second-stringers are manning the media over the weekend and really don't want to work that hard.)
Panel discussions are always lighter learning experiences than one guy/woman with a PowerPoint and a laser light, pounding in the truths of our time, but this one wasn't bad and I went home with a new resolve to keep lobbying my workplace to give up the press release attachment. Also, the price was right and I had a Pepsi and some chips.
Panelists were freelancers Phaedra Hise and Maya Smart and former Media Generalists Robert Powell (now editing Virginia Business), Sean Ryan (now a PR flak with Hodges Partnership), and Pam Feibish, current activity unknown but former T-D business editor.
Here's what I learned.
Kremer wisely had several prepared questions to start the program. By the time they were answered, the audience was ready with their own, and if they had stiffed him and asked nothing, he still would have provided a substantial panel discussion, so that was good thinking.
Press releases, faxed or mailed, remain uselessly dead. Press releases sent as attachments to emails are on life support. Time of death will be called momentarily. Your best shot at a pitch now is in the SUBJECT LINE of an email, because most editors get so many emails, they can't open and read them anymore. Feibish said she used to get 300 a day.
Pitching your story in the subject line is shorter than an elevator pitch. It's shorter than a Tweet. It's a semi-tweet. All the more reason you should be on Twitter, learning how to say what you have to say in 140 characters or less, because less is not going to be more in this new media age. It's going to be ALL.
If you're pitching yourself or your client as a story, hang it up. Better to pitch yourself or your client as a source a la Larry Sabato who can be available to comment on any story the reporter is working on. When you call freelancers, ask only, "what are you working on?" and "what do you need now?"
As for being the story, you must have a narrative, a struggle, a trial by fire, from which you rise like the phoenix, triumphant and whole. You must be willing to divulge all your secrets and finances. You must contact reporters when you don't want anything from them and just be their friend. You must not call them on the phone because they are too busy. But you must call them when you have breaking news, especially if they are a frequent publisher.
You must never say "no comment" because it only makes them desire the words you do not want to say all the more. If you are in a scandalous mess, better to call the media yourself before they hear about it elsewhere, call all the media, and try to contain your bad news in one 24-hour news cycle. (In my opinion, confessing on Friday night is always good. The second-stringers are manning the media over the weekend and really don't want to work that hard.)
Panel discussions are always lighter learning experiences than one guy/woman with a PowerPoint and a laser light, pounding in the truths of our time, but this one wasn't bad and I went home with a new resolve to keep lobbying my workplace to give up the press release attachment. Also, the price was right and I had a Pepsi and some chips.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Some Thoughts on Free
These are quotes from Malcolm Gladwell's article on Chris Anderson's book "Free: The Future of a Radical Price" from The New Yorker.
[Anderson] Newspapers need to accept that content is never again going to be worth what they want it to be worth, and reinvent their business.
Out of the bloodbath will come a new role for professional journalists...There may be more of them, not fewer, as the ability to participate in journalism extends beyond the credentialed halls of traditional media. But they may be paid far less, and for many it won't be a full time job at all. Journalism as a profession will share the stage with journalism as an avocation. Meanwhile, others may use their skills to teach and organize amateurs to do a better job covering their own communities, becoming more editor/coach than writer. If so, leveraging the Free -- paying people to get other people to write for non-monetary rewards -- may not be the enemy of professional journalists. Instead, it may be their salvation.
Anderson's second point is that when prices hit zero, extraordinary things happen.
[Behavioral economist Dan Ariely] A group of subjects are offered a choice between two kinds of chocolate, Hershey's Kisse for 1 cent, and Lindt truffles for 15 cents. Three-quarters choose the truffles. For the next test group, the price is reduced by 1 cent. The Kisses are now free. The order of preference is reversed. Sixty-nine percent choose the Kisses. The magic word free has the power to create a consumer stampede. Amazon does the same thing with free shipping for orders more than $25. People will buy a second book to get free shipping.
[Anderson] From the consumer's perspective, there is a huge difference between free and cheap. Give a product away, and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it, and you're in an entirely different business. The truth is that zero is one market and any other price is another.
The philosophy of embracing the Free involves moving from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. Giving something away means that a lot of it will be wasted. But because it costs almost nothing to make things digitally, we can afford to be wasteful. Mechanisms we set up to monitor and judge the quality of content are artifacts of an era of scarcity. We had to worry how to allocate scarce resources like newsprint, shelf space and broadcast time.
Digital infrastructure is effectively Free.
Consumers love Free.
Free means never having to make a judgment of value.
Counter argument: [Gladwell] The Wall Street Journal has found more than a million subscribers willing to pay for reading online. Broadcast television is struggling. Premium cable is doing fine. Apple makes more money selling iPhone aps (ideas) than the iPhone (stuff). The company could give away the iPhone to boost downloads.
[Me] Fascinating stuff!
[Anderson] Newspapers need to accept that content is never again going to be worth what they want it to be worth, and reinvent their business.
Out of the bloodbath will come a new role for professional journalists...There may be more of them, not fewer, as the ability to participate in journalism extends beyond the credentialed halls of traditional media. But they may be paid far less, and for many it won't be a full time job at all. Journalism as a profession will share the stage with journalism as an avocation. Meanwhile, others may use their skills to teach and organize amateurs to do a better job covering their own communities, becoming more editor/coach than writer. If so, leveraging the Free -- paying people to get other people to write for non-monetary rewards -- may not be the enemy of professional journalists. Instead, it may be their salvation.
Anderson's second point is that when prices hit zero, extraordinary things happen.
[Behavioral economist Dan Ariely] A group of subjects are offered a choice between two kinds of chocolate, Hershey's Kisse for 1 cent, and Lindt truffles for 15 cents. Three-quarters choose the truffles. For the next test group, the price is reduced by 1 cent. The Kisses are now free. The order of preference is reversed. Sixty-nine percent choose the Kisses. The magic word free has the power to create a consumer stampede. Amazon does the same thing with free shipping for orders more than $25. People will buy a second book to get free shipping.
[Anderson] From the consumer's perspective, there is a huge difference between free and cheap. Give a product away, and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it, and you're in an entirely different business. The truth is that zero is one market and any other price is another.
The philosophy of embracing the Free involves moving from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. Giving something away means that a lot of it will be wasted. But because it costs almost nothing to make things digitally, we can afford to be wasteful. Mechanisms we set up to monitor and judge the quality of content are artifacts of an era of scarcity. We had to worry how to allocate scarce resources like newsprint, shelf space and broadcast time.
Digital infrastructure is effectively Free.
Consumers love Free.
Free means never having to make a judgment of value.
Counter argument: [Gladwell] The Wall Street Journal has found more than a million subscribers willing to pay for reading online. Broadcast television is struggling. Premium cable is doing fine. Apple makes more money selling iPhone aps (ideas) than the iPhone (stuff). The company could give away the iPhone to boost downloads.
[Me] Fascinating stuff!
Sunday, June 21, 2009
The Dinosaur on the Lawn
I am so over the format of newspapers. I still get the Sunday paper for the grocery store coupons and my husband has an addiction to the Best Buy flyer. Truly, that is the only thing he reads. He takes that, the K-Mart, Target, and OfficeMax flyers, and goes downstairs and dreams his little dreams of having all the toys.
This morning he was away on a camping trip, so I was the one at the window looking at the paper rolled up in a plastic bag on the lawn. In this day and age, this is how this product is delivered to me. Rolled up. On the lawn. In a plastic bag. I went out and got it. The paper was rubberbanded in two tight rolls. One part was the ad flyers and sections like Commentary, Flair, the ads, that were obviously printed around Friday, and the other roll was the usual paper, A section, B section, sports, business, which is now called Money?
I took off the plastic bag. A waste of plastic. I took off the rubberbands. A waste of rubberbands. Part of a page ripped off while I was pulling off rubberbands. Then I had to smooth it out on the table. It felt dirty to my hands. It wouldn't lay flat. It kept wanting to curl. I moved the big pile of papers, the ad inserts in one pile, the news in another, various other inserts falling out, to the sofa, but it was too big a pile of paper to comfortably read, not that there was anything I wanted to read anyway. I don't care about a dozen profiles of area fathers. I really don't.
What do I care about this morning?
Well, how's Iran doing?
Has North Korea fired a nuclear missile toward us?
Did Steve Jobs really get a liver transplant and is he going to survive and continue to run the greatest tech company ever?
I scan my iPod's news service aps, read those stories, and I'm done with the news this morning. I have lots of things to do. I can't spend even an hour turning these huge, dirty, newspaper pages, scanning for stories. Later on this evening, I'll scan the headlines on the iPod again and see what's happening. Meanwhile, after 15 minutes, the entire paper has already been put in the recycling. Later today, I'll clip my coupons.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Nothing Changes in Richmond
I started reading Roger Mudd's The Place to Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News this morning, and his story starts in Richmond, at the News Leader where he got his first job, replacing a reporter who was out on maternity leave. The year was 1953 and what was amazing to me (besides there being a female reporter who was going to come back after having a baby) is he talks about the same people I encountered when I arrived there 20 years later -- Charles Hamilton, John Leard, Charlie McDowell, and Guy Fridell.
All of them still had jobs at Media General decades later. McDowell and Fridell were columnists. Hamilton had been booted upstairs to the executive floor where he was put in charge of the employee newsletter, and he wasn't happy about that one bit. Because I wouldn't flirt with him or otherwise play nice, he sidelined my professional career. It took me several years to discover that he was the reference that was tripping me up. I swore I was going to show up at his funeral to glare at him, but he lived a very, very long time, and by the time the obituary appeared, I had lost my steam. There was so much sexual harassment going on back then anyway. He wasn't the only one.
But my point is, back then the newspaper was so reluctant to change, even when the person was old, retired, and completely out of it, Media General found a job they could do so they could keep writing or keep coming to the office to sit behind a desk, even if they didn't have anything to do. One old guy had his wife drive him in from Barboursville twice a week so he could sit in his little glass cubicle and turn in his column, with the date line Barboursville. He actually died in that little cubicle one Labor Day weekend.
Mudd writes that black preachers could not be called The Reverand. Only white preachers could have the capital The. The blacks were just Rev. He also reported living in Baltimore Row in the "historic district." Where is this Baltimore Row?
After his spring and summer at the News Leader, he was hired by WRNL, the sister radio station, and had several successful years there chasing the Byrd political machine with his gigantic tape recorder. He went on to jobs in Washington radio and television and eventually CBS News, coming back to Richmond to be married at the Cathedral.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Oral Sex, Organic Blueberries and Social Media
Members of the Social Media Club are an amazingly handsome group of people (and pretty much white). If they had an age contest, I could easily win Oldest Woman. And who said nerdy girls weren’t good looking? They are.
One thing I noticed was everyone used their skinny photo for their Twitter ID. If the camera adds 10 pounds, you guys were once super thin, and you’re not now. No, you are not.
Well trained by formative years at Disney World, everyone filled in the rows without leaving empty seats (keep moving, I don’t want to have to crawl over you), and precisely at 6:45 the program began and a sea of iPhones lit up across the room, Twitter screens at the ready.
Here’s what I learned:
Style Weekly, despite the downward trend for newspapers, is growing.
Richmond social media people turn out in bigger numbers than our D.C. counterparts.
Rachel DePompa’s Facebook page is private.
Social media, even if it’s the only communications avenue used, can draw people to an event like flies to….uh, watermelon. (This may be the true revenue stream it generates…the ability to direct attention to a product, event, person or idea.) @RVAMAG’s Ian Graham boasted of getting a massive crowd for the first Carytown New Year’s Eve at next to no expense, using social media.
Aaron Kremer filled the Andy Rooney role, despite his youthful appearance and past history writing for Brick. The Richmond Biz Sense curmudgeon does not Twitter, despite working for a completely online publication. The advantage of online-only is you can stay viable during the start-up phase without printing expenses or deadlines.
Everyone claimed they get story ideas from their Twitter and Facebook friends and followers, but then everyone conceded the same thing happened during the old email days, or even the old telephone days. Or for DePompa, the standing on the corner waiting for her live shot days.
DePompa crowed about being able to break exclusives even faster on Twitter, before the T-D got it online (muffled laughter at that), or even before her newscast aired. But then she remembered she really shouldn’t do that because Channel 6 then steals her story.
Jason Roop of Style Weekly said reporters and columnists for the Times-Dispatch should be tweeting to give the newspaper some personality. (Is that columnists with an “s,” Jason? Are you sure? I think there’s no “s” anymore.)
WWBT’s Ryan Nobles contributed the most quotable quote, that the Internet was making the world smaller, not bigger, because we were all falling into these little niche communities. (I looked around warmly at my niche community, such a handsome group of niches.)
By a slip of a pronoun, DePompa revealed that her secret City Hall source was a male. My list of suspects immediately narrowed.
How to monetize Twitter? Nobody knew.
Roop astutely noted that Richmond’s blogging community seems obsessed with food -- that any blog headlining food or a restaurant immediately rockets to the top of Most Clicked Open on RVA blogs. I might add, sexual references work, too. (Hmm, what should I call this post?)
Is journalism still ethical? (Uh, was it ever really?) With the 24-hour cable news cycle and the rise of conservative talk radio, we’ve gotten a rash (and rash is a good word) of commentary programs that put a clear political spin on everything. Ian Graham sought to warn us about the evils of Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, but was almost shouted down by audience members (alcohol blood levels rising) who said “we’re not stupid!” (Maybe not us, because we’re all so good lookin’, but Rush’s callers certainly do sound like they don’t get that he’s an entertainer playing a role.)
Nobles waxed wise again with his endorsement of Twitter as a medium that provides the most results with the least investment. How long does it take to twitter a few times a day? No time! “Those not on it don’t understand it.” So true. I get weary of hearing people who have never used Twitter dismiss it, although I feel the same way about scallops.
Nobles is wise again. Appointment journalism is out the window. Despite his need for employment, we soon won’t be gathering religiously around the TV at 4, 5, 6 and 11 because we will get news on our own time schedule.
Then Andy Rooney Kremer becomes bafflingly unwise. He opines that the only future is micropayments. We will go to a system where we pay to read the news online. I just don’t see that happening, except maybe for highly technical or political websites, or for people willing to pay a subscription to watch a video feed of Rush Limbaugh sitting at his microphone like a Buddha during his broadcast. Graham calls him out on that rather forcefully, the only even slighty uncivil thing all evening. Maybe he was still smarting from his O’Reilly/Limbaugh audience smackdown.
DePompa becomes momentarily unwise, thinking newspapers will always be there because in times of Huge News, like 9/11 or the Virginia Tech massacres, we will still turn to newspapers for information and to buy them as souvenirs of a disaster. (How macabre is that?) I disagree. Newspapers by their very production schedule end up being too far behind disasters and Huge News. We go to television for that, and for the souvenirs, a nice magazine special edition holds up so much better in the attic. (I still have my John F. Kennedy Jr. memorial Newsweek edition, waiting for the prices to improve on eBay.)
Prizes are awarded to those who stayed to the end. (At home later, I review the tweets from people who were also there and discover most of them tweeted about needing to pee.)
One thing I noticed was everyone used their skinny photo for their Twitter ID. If the camera adds 10 pounds, you guys were once super thin, and you’re not now. No, you are not.
Well trained by formative years at Disney World, everyone filled in the rows without leaving empty seats (keep moving, I don’t want to have to crawl over you), and precisely at 6:45 the program began and a sea of iPhones lit up across the room, Twitter screens at the ready.
Here’s what I learned:
Style Weekly, despite the downward trend for newspapers, is growing.
Richmond social media people turn out in bigger numbers than our D.C. counterparts.
Rachel DePompa’s Facebook page is private.
Social media, even if it’s the only communications avenue used, can draw people to an event like flies to….uh, watermelon. (This may be the true revenue stream it generates…the ability to direct attention to a product, event, person or idea.) @RVAMAG’s Ian Graham boasted of getting a massive crowd for the first Carytown New Year’s Eve at next to no expense, using social media.
Aaron Kremer filled the Andy Rooney role, despite his youthful appearance and past history writing for Brick. The Richmond Biz Sense curmudgeon does not Twitter, despite working for a completely online publication. The advantage of online-only is you can stay viable during the start-up phase without printing expenses or deadlines.
Everyone claimed they get story ideas from their Twitter and Facebook friends and followers, but then everyone conceded the same thing happened during the old email days, or even the old telephone days. Or for DePompa, the standing on the corner waiting for her live shot days.
DePompa crowed about being able to break exclusives even faster on Twitter, before the T-D got it online (muffled laughter at that), or even before her newscast aired. But then she remembered she really shouldn’t do that because Channel 6 then steals her story.
Jason Roop of Style Weekly said reporters and columnists for the Times-Dispatch should be tweeting to give the newspaper some personality. (Is that columnists with an “s,” Jason? Are you sure? I think there’s no “s” anymore.)
WWBT’s Ryan Nobles contributed the most quotable quote, that the Internet was making the world smaller, not bigger, because we were all falling into these little niche communities. (I looked around warmly at my niche community, such a handsome group of niches.)
By a slip of a pronoun, DePompa revealed that her secret City Hall source was a male. My list of suspects immediately narrowed.
How to monetize Twitter? Nobody knew.
Roop astutely noted that Richmond’s blogging community seems obsessed with food -- that any blog headlining food or a restaurant immediately rockets to the top of Most Clicked Open on RVA blogs. I might add, sexual references work, too. (Hmm, what should I call this post?)
Is journalism still ethical? (Uh, was it ever really?) With the 24-hour cable news cycle and the rise of conservative talk radio, we’ve gotten a rash (and rash is a good word) of commentary programs that put a clear political spin on everything. Ian Graham sought to warn us about the evils of Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, but was almost shouted down by audience members (alcohol blood levels rising) who said “we’re not stupid!” (Maybe not us, because we’re all so good lookin’, but Rush’s callers certainly do sound like they don’t get that he’s an entertainer playing a role.)
Nobles waxed wise again with his endorsement of Twitter as a medium that provides the most results with the least investment. How long does it take to twitter a few times a day? No time! “Those not on it don’t understand it.” So true. I get weary of hearing people who have never used Twitter dismiss it, although I feel the same way about scallops.
Nobles is wise again. Appointment journalism is out the window. Despite his need for employment, we soon won’t be gathering religiously around the TV at 4, 5, 6 and 11 because we will get news on our own time schedule.
Then Andy Rooney Kremer becomes bafflingly unwise. He opines that the only future is micropayments. We will go to a system where we pay to read the news online. I just don’t see that happening, except maybe for highly technical or political websites, or for people willing to pay a subscription to watch a video feed of Rush Limbaugh sitting at his microphone like a Buddha during his broadcast. Graham calls him out on that rather forcefully, the only even slighty uncivil thing all evening. Maybe he was still smarting from his O’Reilly/Limbaugh audience smackdown.
DePompa becomes momentarily unwise, thinking newspapers will always be there because in times of Huge News, like 9/11 or the Virginia Tech massacres, we will still turn to newspapers for information and to buy them as souvenirs of a disaster. (How macabre is that?) I disagree. Newspapers by their very production schedule end up being too far behind disasters and Huge News. We go to television for that, and for the souvenirs, a nice magazine special edition holds up so much better in the attic. (I still have my John F. Kennedy Jr. memorial Newsweek edition, waiting for the prices to improve on eBay.)
Prizes are awarded to those who stayed to the end. (At home later, I review the tweets from people who were also there and discover most of them tweeted about needing to pee.)
Friday, May 1, 2009
The Urban Pigeon
Every day at the bus stop downtown, I watch the pigeons. They are fearless. They don't care that cars and buses are whizzing by inches away from them. They don't care that people are sharing the sidewalk with them. They're busy looking for garbage to eat.Then they fly to a monument and crap on it.
It's sort of like my life.
Actually, I really do like pigeons. They remind me of my father. As a boy growing up in the 1930s in the tenements of Long Island City, he raised pigeons. A lot of city kids did. They kept the roosts on the roofs of their apartment buildings. You didn't need pet food as the pigeons could find things to eat while they were out flying, and they always came back.
When I was in the 7th grade, we moved to a house in Greenville, North Carolina. It was the first house we ever had to ourselves. In New York, we had lived with relatives, or at least had my grandmother living upstairs. Then we lived in an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia, and then we moved to this house in North Carolina. There was a kid in the neighborhood who had a pigeon coop and we were so enthralled with it -- I had heard my father's pigeon stories -- we decided to buy a couple of his pigeons and build our own coop.
So for a year, I had this project I shared with my dad, the pigeons. I have never had a very close relationship with my father, and this was the last chance. Before long, I'd move to permanent alienation via puberty and then distance, and then evil stepmothers.
Our two pigeons had babies (squabs are very ugly babies; I don't think there is an uglier baby in the animal kingdom), and the babies had babies, and I kept journals of which pigeons were married (they mate for life) and who their children were, and who their children married. We let them out. They flew around the house, sat on the roof, and came back to the coop. We cleaned out the coop. That was an awful job, and what eventually distanced me from the pigeon project. That and puberty.
Towards the end, it was just my dad. I'd see him out in the yard, hands in his pockets, wearing his Eisenhower jacket, watching the pigeons circle the sky around the house. And eventually it was no fun for him either and he sold our pigeons back to the boy who had gotten us started. The roost was still in the yard when we sold the house.
And that was pretty much it for me and my dad. He died a few years ago. His third wife kept us all at a distance, so I hadn't seen him in 20 years. But he wrote me one letter every month of just casual chit chat and put a $50 bill in it. I would write him back not to send cash through the mail, but then it occurred to me it was the only way he could do it without his wife knowing. And sending me money was the only way he could make up for not ever coming to see me, or being there for me.
So I watch the pigeons at the bus stop, and because of my dad, I know they're not well bred pigeons because they don't have thick crusts on top of their beaks, but they're not trashy birds either because they do have rainbow coloring on their necks. I wonder who they're married to and where they live. And I think about my dad, standing out in the yard by himself, hands in his pockets, wearing his Eisenhower jacket, and watching the pigeons we named and raised together, flying around the sky.
So, that's why I'm moving to a new blog, Urban Pigeon, where I can write stuff that isn't about the newspaper dying. I'll still come here for that, but otherwise, I'll be over there. I value your bookmark, and thanks for listening.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
I Tweet, Therefore, I Am
The social media website Twitter is like being at a cocktail party where you don’t actually know anyone, but you’ve heard of them. You stand against the wall with your drink, or you walk slowly around and listen to fragments of their conversations. You’re always coming in at the middle of a story, and you can’t stay for the end because they may look at you rudely for eavesdropping, so you keep moving. Very few people speak directly to you, but when one does, you feel very happy, as if you connected, even for a moment.Some of the people at this party do know each other, and their conversations are lively and fun. You enjoy just listening in.
And in the end, you feel like you had a good time. You were with people who ordinarily wouldn’t include you in their reindeer games. You heard interesting things. You picked up some tips about how to live a fabulous life, how to be more like them, what you have to do to have a career like they do. Maybe next time you’re at the party, more people will speak directly to you. It's like being with the King of Comedy without having to physically kidnap him.
After awhile, as you spend more time at this party where people drop in and out, you begin to notice there are people hovering near you. They think you are interesting, but they don’t know you to speak directly to you, so they’re just hanging out nearby, listening to you talk to yourself, listening to you pretend you are the center of attention and everyone is hanging on your words. You are flattered.
It’s not that peculiar a social networking model. It’s the traditional after work mixer, only ported to a virtual world and the mixer goes on night and day. The ways to get popular in the Twitterworld are the same ones as in the real world. You can be funny. Someone who is fast and culturally current with the quips gets followed by many. You can be the wagon train leader, out in front of the Internet exploration, sending back appropriate links to interesting pages and articles.
You can be a news service, either an actual news service like a blogging TV reporter or CNN, or a limited area reporter (which is probably the future of journalism). I follow people who write about the weather, several who tweet about what’s happening in their neighborhoods (crimes, accidents, fires, traffic jams, lost pets), and others who seem to be home unemployed all day breaking the news of what’s on TV.
Then there’s the people I call the cool crowd, the same group you yearned to be part of in high school. They all know each other, so you follow everyone in the crowd and you know what they’re up to, where they’re going for dinner, what’s the latest popular bar, who’s doing what this weekend.
Then there’s the salesmen and scam artists, trying to figure out how to play the room to their advantage. There’s a Twitter philosophy that says you should follow everyone who follows you, but this clutters your feed with their sales pitches. I see no point in following people I don’t know from other towns either. Where they’re going to dinner in Palm Beach or Irvine doesn’t add anything to my daily experience like a rave about a local restaurant could.
Yes, there’s fake celebrities on Twitter, but there’s also several genuine ones – actors, comedians, musicians, tech columnists – who have eliminated the Catholic Church model of communication. You don’t have to go through a priest to communicate with God. These celebrities have eliminated the entertainment reporter and the magazine editors who filter their stories back to the fans. They talk directly to their fans, but in a nice, safe way, which preserves their privacy and guarantees they’re never misquoted or misrepresented by someone with an agenda.
Newspapers should be afraid, be very afraid. I would hazard a guess many bloggers are frustrated reporters who couldn’t get hired by the almighty paper or had other careers to pursue but still wanted to write. Even if no one is reading them, they are self-fulfilling their desire to communicate. Several have amassed faithful readerships any newspaper columnist would envy. Twitter flings open the communications portal even more – to those who don’t even have the verbal wherewithal to blog, who haven’t got the skill and talent to put together an informative, tight, well-thought out 1,000-word Style Back Page. They don’t have much to say, but they have this to say, and dammit, they’re going to say it, and what do you know, a couple of hundred or more people will read it.
It’s the Mini-Me Newspaper, all about just me and what I think is interesting. Subscribers come onboard, whether you’re a celebrity, the life-of-the-party, the wagon train leader, the scummy salesman, the lonely girl, the frustrated reporter…doesn’t matter. You are the center of your universe and a galaxy of Tweeters will revolve around you in an exchange of news, ideas, jokes, secrets, sighs and lies. It’s your party within a party in an ever-expanding chain of parties where the conversation never stops except for the occasional sighting of a whale being carried by birds through an azure sky.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
T-D Only Cares about Old People
The Times--Dispatch only cares about old people, or so it seems since they've scheduled their coffee meeting with the general public for 9 a.m. on a Monday morning at McLean's on Leadbetter Road, a breakfast place out in the suburbs. Who can go to these things except retired people? And that's already the paper's core audience, so this must be a retention meeting rather than one seeking new readers or departed readers.
Well, I can tell you what the people who have nothing else to do on Monday morning are going to tell you about the paper:
Bigger font.
Bigger font.
Don't worry about the lack of tech and tech business coverage because we can barely operate push button phones, much less use a computer. We don't care about the future. We aren't going to live there.
That paper delivery guy is throwing my paper into the bushes. What are you going to do about that?
What happened to all those columnists we used to read? What happened to them? Stop moving the bridge column, and I don't understand these new fangled comics. What happened to Gasoline Alley and Henry? I liked Henry. Little bald white boy. Didn't say nothing.
Bigger font.
Especially in the obituaries. I like obituaries. I read them first, and if I don't see my name, I have a second cup of coffee. Ha, ha.
Today in History, that ought to be on the front page. I remember some of that stuff. And the horoscope. Well, you know I know they're probably just made-up, but I like to call my friend Eleanor -- she's in assisted living at Westbrook -- and read hers to her. Sort of gives her something to look forward to every day, knowing how the day might turn out.
Can the paper be delivered earlier? Because we're up at 4. We like to get to the Waffle House before the crowd, and bring our own paper. We've got things to do after that. I've got to be at the grocery store as soon as the doors open, because if you're just a few minutes late, all the marked down meat and bread is gone already. Some people must get to the parking lot at 3 a.m. and just sit there, waiting.
More people are reading the paper online? You mean on line at the grocery store? Well, sometimes I do look at the People or Us Weekly. Or Woman's Day. Now there's a good magazine. Recipes. I don't know why they have to talk about sex, though. Everything is sex. Getting your man to do stuff. I'd be happy to get him to take out the trash. If you want to see the Enquirer and those trashy papers, you have to go to the Food Lion. Clerks at the K-Mart, they don't care about helping you. Have you see the size of their fingernails? Painted all kind of colors. Some of them have jewels on them. I don't know what the world is coming to.
Bigger font.
Bigger font.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
What's the Point, Stylebook?
One casualty of the death of newspapers is the death of the AP Stylebook. I suspect most bloggers and young newsies don’t even know what it is. They learned to write by text message and have a whole different style.
So it’s ironic that by the time I finally acquired a basic grasp of the Stylebook, which had been a thorn in my side trying to break into journalism, it doesn’t matter anymore.
VCU didn’t teach the Stylebook. My professors were mostly moonlighting newspaper reporters and they didn’t want to work too hard for their side money, so I came out of school knowing how to imitate newspaper writing only because I read newspapers, and that’s about all. The Times-Dispatch and News Leader took glee in making me take Stylebook tests and I didn’t score that well and didn’t get hired, but it was just a screening tactic. When they had someone they wanted to hire, like the offspring of an existing editor or someone at random who would increase the number of minorities in the newsroom, the Stylebook test didn’t matter.
I wrote book reviews for years for the News Leader’s late Ann Lloyd Merriman and noticed what she edited. Then I did another stint writing essays for Style’s Rozanne Epps and paid attention to her changes. This was my actual college education.
It was hard to get into the good habits of the Stylebook (you learn best by repetition) until I started grinding out routine news copy regularly, and this finally happened when I became an editor/reporter at the Mechanicsville newspaper. I wrote with my Stylebook open on my lap. It made my managing editors happy, but in the long run, did it matter? Not a bit.
My next boss was a press secretary with a master’s degree in journalism, or so said his office wall, and he didn’t seem to know anything about the AP Stylebook. He routinely changed my carefully Stylebooked writing into his own anti-Stylebook and when I pointed it out, “That’s not AP Stylebook,” he’d just smile. He was making twice the salary of those beady little reporters at the T-D, so what did he care? He could hang up on them all day long and twice on Sunday.
Rolling Stone has its own set of rules, which makes it difficult for me to read their articles without mental red lights when my eyes brush across something that strikes me as wrong, and just now, while reading Time, “17%” jumped out at me, which should be a Stylebook “17 percent.” So who still cares about the AP Stylebook? Maybe the AP.
I still try to write Stylebook style, just to show my whole life of struggle with it wasn’t a waste, but what does it matter? I get submissions from people all the time for the publications and newsletters I work on, and nobody is writing Stylebook-style. And don’t get me started on two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence (it's been one space since the birth of computers!!!). Why are so many people still writing typewriter-style?
So it’s ironic that by the time I finally acquired a basic grasp of the Stylebook, which had been a thorn in my side trying to break into journalism, it doesn’t matter anymore.
VCU didn’t teach the Stylebook. My professors were mostly moonlighting newspaper reporters and they didn’t want to work too hard for their side money, so I came out of school knowing how to imitate newspaper writing only because I read newspapers, and that’s about all. The Times-Dispatch and News Leader took glee in making me take Stylebook tests and I didn’t score that well and didn’t get hired, but it was just a screening tactic. When they had someone they wanted to hire, like the offspring of an existing editor or someone at random who would increase the number of minorities in the newsroom, the Stylebook test didn’t matter.
I wrote book reviews for years for the News Leader’s late Ann Lloyd Merriman and noticed what she edited. Then I did another stint writing essays for Style’s Rozanne Epps and paid attention to her changes. This was my actual college education.
It was hard to get into the good habits of the Stylebook (you learn best by repetition) until I started grinding out routine news copy regularly, and this finally happened when I became an editor/reporter at the Mechanicsville newspaper. I wrote with my Stylebook open on my lap. It made my managing editors happy, but in the long run, did it matter? Not a bit.
My next boss was a press secretary with a master’s degree in journalism, or so said his office wall, and he didn’t seem to know anything about the AP Stylebook. He routinely changed my carefully Stylebooked writing into his own anti-Stylebook and when I pointed it out, “That’s not AP Stylebook,” he’d just smile. He was making twice the salary of those beady little reporters at the T-D, so what did he care? He could hang up on them all day long and twice on Sunday.
Rolling Stone has its own set of rules, which makes it difficult for me to read their articles without mental red lights when my eyes brush across something that strikes me as wrong, and just now, while reading Time, “17%” jumped out at me, which should be a Stylebook “17 percent.” So who still cares about the AP Stylebook? Maybe the AP.
I still try to write Stylebook style, just to show my whole life of struggle with it wasn’t a waste, but what does it matter? I get submissions from people all the time for the publications and newsletters I work on, and nobody is writing Stylebook-style. And don’t get me started on two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence (it's been one space since the birth of computers!!!). Why are so many people still writing typewriter-style?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Advertising vs. News Smackdown
The biggest commotion at the AMA Richmond panel discussion today was when Jason Roop, editor of Style, asked Scott Christino, retail and national manager of the Times-Dispatch, about where Brick drew the line between subjectivity and ads disguised as news. The audience, previously subdued, went into a low, humming buzz, whispering “What’s Brick?” We’ll get to that later.
The panel was Christino, (T-D Guy); Aaron Kremer, youthful owner of richmondbizsense.com (Web Guy); Don Richards, vp and gm of Channel 12 (TV Guy); Roop (Style Guy); and Bob Willoughby, general manager of Cox Radio (Radio Guy).
Round 1. Style Guy is thrilled to be in publishing and journalism right now. Good journalism is, like the Colbert Report, truthiness combined with fun. TV Guy yada yada. Web Guy says richmondbizsense has 3,000 daily readers. Radio Guy is all about making marketing work. T-D Guy, who wears a pencil behind his ear the whole time, reminds everyone the T-D is also three websites that offer “electronic solutions.” Advertising is like diet and exercise. Done regularly, your business will have a long and healthy life.
Round 2. Radio Guy says consumers are time-starved and radio is the only portable electronic media. (Huh? Everyone at Panera is carrying laptops and iPhones, not radios.) It has low production costs, offers websites, and client endorsements. (I assume he means all the announcers telling you how much they love their mattresses, or poor Glenn Beck shilling investing in gold. Even the mighty Limbaugh does endorsement ads.) Radio can become part of your story! Even stations with low ratings have loyal, responsive listeners. Style Guy (reading my mind) pipes in with the iPhone KO. Twitter, Facebook…all portable electronic media. Score 1, Style Guy.
TV Guy says they’re always fighting the impression that TV advertising is expensive, when they’re actually “pretty flexible.” (i.e, we’ll take what you got now). “We were wireless before wireless was cool.” Even with all the media available, TV still reaches 80 percent of homes weekly, same as always.
Web Guy says he has a niche audience, and his niche is “salivating” over his website. He gets the who’s who in Richmond business. Plus, he has low overhead. No legacy expenses or pensions. Since they only do web ads, they are the master of web ad technology.
Round 3. T-D Guy says the Richmond Chic column in the Sunday Flair section is barely disguised advertising that produces big sales after an item appears in the column. Radio Guy fesses up that the air talent have deals to promote products. (No kidding?!) They all agree it’s important to keep the news clean of advertising to maintain reader trust. Style Guy crows they have more readers than ever between the paper and online and Style strives for news purity, even though it is sad when adside co-workers lose commissions because of it. So sad. TV Guy assures us that the viewers know it when they see ad placement where it shouldn’t be.
Did we all know it when 30 Rock made the goodness of McDonald’s McFlurries a critical plot point?
Radio Guy backtracked that “people are really not coming to us for news.” T-D Guy moved forward that news is never impacted by advertising. “There’s a wall, but there’s a door on that wall…” conceding that without advertising, nobody gets paid. Style Guy steps in for the take-down. “Brick?” (Which is not above letting restaurant owners write their own reviews at times.)
The AMA audience has never heard of Brick. There is a what-is-this-thing-called-Brick buzz. Is there a magazine that will give them all the editorial support they crave and they didn’t know about it? Where is this Brick? The cornered T-D Guy flounders and turns to his reinforcements, for lo and behold, T-D Director of Product Innovation and Strategic Marketing Frazier Millner is in the audience. She is always in the audience when anyone from the T-D appears anywhere, and they always default to her. She pops up like a jack-in-the-box. “Non-core product,” she declares. (I’m going to use that excuse whenever I do anything unethical from now on. Non-core product!!) I couldn’t hear what else she said because my table was still aroused and rumbling about what-is-this-Brick? Brick should have been at the door, passing out cards. A fortune in advertising and product and story tie-ins was there for the taking!
Score 2 for Style.
Round 4. Audience member wants to know where marketeers can park their good news. Style Guy has two products, Giving and Belle, the latter soon to be a monthly, as avenues for success stories. T-D Guy says there’s not so much good news, except for the Public Squares they host. “I never saw an organization so open and engaged with the community,” he gushes.
Style Guy comes back with Style is a free publication so they know their readership wants it if they pick it up. Advertise with them and you’re “fishing in a well-stocked lake.” TV Guy says TV ads deliver with emotion. The average household has as many TVs as it has people. Everyone is watching what they want. Is TV also a well-stocked lake?
Young Web Guy said he thought his readers were going to be young, you know, with-it Web 2.0 types, but instead they’re older business people. Surprise! We oldies gotz mad web skillz! Web is the only media outlet actually growing. Radio Guy says 93 percent of everybody listens to the radio every week, and 70-something percent listen every day. (I miss the exact figure because a cell phone went off, which meant time-out for a round of cell phone jokes.) Radio advertising can be more creative. (It’s all happening in your mind!)
Cranky audience member says the mainstream media is relying too much on blogs and RSS feeds from dubious web sources for their online content and it’s confusing his clients because the blogosphere is not known for its truthiness. Style Guy says we’re not doing that. We all look at T-D Guy. (Hey, inrich.com, we're talking about you). TV Guy changes the subject. They get swamped with press releases which are useless to them. PR people need to develop a relationship with the assignment editor. Find out what they need. Give them only what they need. Not what you want. (This is the second time I've heard this. Nobody wants press releases.)
Round 5. What does the future hold? Style Guy can’t imagine newspapers will ever be completely dead. Good journalists will always be needed. TV Guy reminds us that 30 percent of people online are watching television at the same time. Web Guy channels Bette Davis. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. People will go to “where [the news] is well-written, well reported and they can trust it.”
Most of them agree that local content is the savior, and putting that local content behind a paid wall will save them. Like a peep show. Put in a quarter and turn the crank. See the local lady take off her clothes. Whoops. Show over. If you want to see more, pay another quarter. Radio Guy says local news is “more impactful to local communities.” I love being impacted. The conclusion: the media outlet that gets that and invests in the community will survive.
I would score this meeting Style: Win. TV: Place. Web: Show.
The panel was Christino, (T-D Guy); Aaron Kremer, youthful owner of richmondbizsense.com (Web Guy); Don Richards, vp and gm of Channel 12 (TV Guy); Roop (Style Guy); and Bob Willoughby, general manager of Cox Radio (Radio Guy).
Round 1. Style Guy is thrilled to be in publishing and journalism right now. Good journalism is, like the Colbert Report, truthiness combined with fun. TV Guy yada yada. Web Guy says richmondbizsense has 3,000 daily readers. Radio Guy is all about making marketing work. T-D Guy, who wears a pencil behind his ear the whole time, reminds everyone the T-D is also three websites that offer “electronic solutions.” Advertising is like diet and exercise. Done regularly, your business will have a long and healthy life.
Round 2. Radio Guy says consumers are time-starved and radio is the only portable electronic media. (Huh? Everyone at Panera is carrying laptops and iPhones, not radios.) It has low production costs, offers websites, and client endorsements. (I assume he means all the announcers telling you how much they love their mattresses, or poor Glenn Beck shilling investing in gold. Even the mighty Limbaugh does endorsement ads.) Radio can become part of your story! Even stations with low ratings have loyal, responsive listeners. Style Guy (reading my mind) pipes in with the iPhone KO. Twitter, Facebook…all portable electronic media. Score 1, Style Guy.
TV Guy says they’re always fighting the impression that TV advertising is expensive, when they’re actually “pretty flexible.” (i.e, we’ll take what you got now). “We were wireless before wireless was cool.” Even with all the media available, TV still reaches 80 percent of homes weekly, same as always.
Web Guy says he has a niche audience, and his niche is “salivating” over his website. He gets the who’s who in Richmond business. Plus, he has low overhead. No legacy expenses or pensions. Since they only do web ads, they are the master of web ad technology.
Round 3. T-D Guy says the Richmond Chic column in the Sunday Flair section is barely disguised advertising that produces big sales after an item appears in the column. Radio Guy fesses up that the air talent have deals to promote products. (No kidding?!) They all agree it’s important to keep the news clean of advertising to maintain reader trust. Style Guy crows they have more readers than ever between the paper and online and Style strives for news purity, even though it is sad when adside co-workers lose commissions because of it. So sad. TV Guy assures us that the viewers know it when they see ad placement where it shouldn’t be.
Did we all know it when 30 Rock made the goodness of McDonald’s McFlurries a critical plot point?
Radio Guy backtracked that “people are really not coming to us for news.” T-D Guy moved forward that news is never impacted by advertising. “There’s a wall, but there’s a door on that wall…” conceding that without advertising, nobody gets paid. Style Guy steps in for the take-down. “Brick?” (Which is not above letting restaurant owners write their own reviews at times.)
The AMA audience has never heard of Brick. There is a what-is-this-thing-called-Brick buzz. Is there a magazine that will give them all the editorial support they crave and they didn’t know about it? Where is this Brick? The cornered T-D Guy flounders and turns to his reinforcements, for lo and behold, T-D Director of Product Innovation and Strategic Marketing Frazier Millner is in the audience. She is always in the audience when anyone from the T-D appears anywhere, and they always default to her. She pops up like a jack-in-the-box. “Non-core product,” she declares. (I’m going to use that excuse whenever I do anything unethical from now on. Non-core product!!) I couldn’t hear what else she said because my table was still aroused and rumbling about what-is-this-Brick? Brick should have been at the door, passing out cards. A fortune in advertising and product and story tie-ins was there for the taking!
Score 2 for Style.
Round 4. Audience member wants to know where marketeers can park their good news. Style Guy has two products, Giving and Belle, the latter soon to be a monthly, as avenues for success stories. T-D Guy says there’s not so much good news, except for the Public Squares they host. “I never saw an organization so open and engaged with the community,” he gushes.
Style Guy comes back with Style is a free publication so they know their readership wants it if they pick it up. Advertise with them and you’re “fishing in a well-stocked lake.” TV Guy says TV ads deliver with emotion. The average household has as many TVs as it has people. Everyone is watching what they want. Is TV also a well-stocked lake?
Young Web Guy said he thought his readers were going to be young, you know, with-it Web 2.0 types, but instead they’re older business people. Surprise! We oldies gotz mad web skillz! Web is the only media outlet actually growing. Radio Guy says 93 percent of everybody listens to the radio every week, and 70-something percent listen every day. (I miss the exact figure because a cell phone went off, which meant time-out for a round of cell phone jokes.) Radio advertising can be more creative. (It’s all happening in your mind!)
Cranky audience member says the mainstream media is relying too much on blogs and RSS feeds from dubious web sources for their online content and it’s confusing his clients because the blogosphere is not known for its truthiness. Style Guy says we’re not doing that. We all look at T-D Guy. (Hey, inrich.com, we're talking about you). TV Guy changes the subject. They get swamped with press releases which are useless to them. PR people need to develop a relationship with the assignment editor. Find out what they need. Give them only what they need. Not what you want. (This is the second time I've heard this. Nobody wants press releases.)
Round 5. What does the future hold? Style Guy can’t imagine newspapers will ever be completely dead. Good journalists will always be needed. TV Guy reminds us that 30 percent of people online are watching television at the same time. Web Guy channels Bette Davis. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. People will go to “where [the news] is well-written, well reported and they can trust it.”
Most of them agree that local content is the savior, and putting that local content behind a paid wall will save them. Like a peep show. Put in a quarter and turn the crank. See the local lady take off her clothes. Whoops. Show over. If you want to see more, pay another quarter. Radio Guy says local news is “more impactful to local communities.” I love being impacted. The conclusion: the media outlet that gets that and invests in the community will survive.
I would score this meeting Style: Win. TV: Place. Web: Show.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Lunch with T-D Guy
I went to the PRSA luncheon today to hear T-D Executive Editor Glenn Procter, who is not a quotable guy. There wasn't a "money quote" (words worth capturing for a story) until the very end when he answered a question about whether the citizenry was taking over journalism since they are everywhere with their blogs and camera phones. "For big news events, I want trained reporters on scene. Good content still sells. Watchdog journalism still sells."
Only the blogs are often better watchdogs. He did concede that a large part of the news website of the future was going to be contributed citizen journalism. (Don't have to pay them salaries or health benefits either.)
I wanted to ask what happened to the seasoned and senior reporters who all left in a mass exodus, but never quite got my hand up since I was not in the mood to pick a fight.
Then he kind of answered my question anyway. He said reporters go out the door now with a "tool kit," a video camera, still camera, pad and pen, and an audio recorder, so they are prepared to report a story for multi-media. That's probably why the old-timers bailed. That's too much stuff to deal with. I know when I go out on a story, I can't really do justice to taking photos and taking notes at the same time. I end up doing a half-assed job when I have to multi-task with equipment. Imagine if I also had to do video and audio.
Other tidbits:
He wears ear rings.
Seventy percent of Richmond area businesses do not advertise in the paper.
"We're a media company. We're not the newspaper anymore."
Buying up all the suburban weeklies was to "get as much of the population into one of our products."
The priorities "going forward" (I hate that phrase) are 1) breaking news, 2) state government, 3) municipal governments, 4) health, 5) environmental issues, 6) education. Maybe not in that order since he came back a minute later and said state politics was No. 1.
(In retrospective, and I add this now in 2012 after Procter left, the priorities should have been 1) municipal government, 2) state government, 3) health, 4) technology. You can't do breaking news when you publish once a day the morning after the news happened.)
The most hated things about the T-D: the website and the half pages.
Since this was an audience of all public relations specialists, naturally they asked what is the best way to get their news into the paper, and Procter pretty much said no one at the paper looked at our press releases or emails. "Face to face is the way to play. Come and talk to us." He repeated it later on, too.
Now, this makes no sense because why do you need to come begging in person to have your press releases considered for story material unless....unless...
You make the appointment with the appropriate editor for the face-to-face, and when you get there, you find an ad salesman and a newspaper marketing person at the table, ready to pitch web and print ads...giving the illusion that if you buy in, your press releases will be read and considered. (Like, you don't have to buy magazines to be entered into the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes, but people still think it gives them an edge.)
When I was an editor, I didn't want to meet everyone sending in press releases. Who has time? I just looked at them and asked myself, is this a calendar item? Is this a feature story? Do my readers want to know about this? Where in the paper do I put this? Or does it go in the wastebasket? I could call them if I needed more info. I didn't need them to come for lunch.
The Richmond Voice (update 2022, long gone newspaper) is a case in point. I send them a press release about a community meeting, something my job is doing that is going to impact the community in their pocket books, something they need to know in case they want to protest or ask questions. The Voice calls me within minutes and asks if I want to buy an ad for the announcement.
No, I say, it's a public meeting. Just run it in your community calendar.
No, you need to buy an ad, they say again.
This is news. This is the sort of thing you're supposed to write about as news. (And I say that sincerely as a fellow journalist, not as a PR hack. We're not selling anything!)
No, you need to buy an ad. She even puts me on hold to talk to the editor, and still comes back and says I need to buy an ad.
So I don't send The Voice things anymore because after going through this twice, I get the message. You're not a newspaper anymore. You're a shopper. I got the same creepy vibe when Proctor told the room full of PR people they needed to come in and sit down at the table with his editors.
Which begs the question, how much can you trust the newspaper if story selection and placement might be influenced by face-to-faces?
Only the blogs are often better watchdogs. He did concede that a large part of the news website of the future was going to be contributed citizen journalism. (Don't have to pay them salaries or health benefits either.)
I wanted to ask what happened to the seasoned and senior reporters who all left in a mass exodus, but never quite got my hand up since I was not in the mood to pick a fight.
Then he kind of answered my question anyway. He said reporters go out the door now with a "tool kit," a video camera, still camera, pad and pen, and an audio recorder, so they are prepared to report a story for multi-media. That's probably why the old-timers bailed. That's too much stuff to deal with. I know when I go out on a story, I can't really do justice to taking photos and taking notes at the same time. I end up doing a half-assed job when I have to multi-task with equipment. Imagine if I also had to do video and audio.
Other tidbits:
He wears ear rings.
Seventy percent of Richmond area businesses do not advertise in the paper.
"We're a media company. We're not the newspaper anymore."
Buying up all the suburban weeklies was to "get as much of the population into one of our products."
The priorities "going forward" (I hate that phrase) are 1) breaking news, 2) state government, 3) municipal governments, 4) health, 5) environmental issues, 6) education. Maybe not in that order since he came back a minute later and said state politics was No. 1.
(In retrospective, and I add this now in 2012 after Procter left, the priorities should have been 1) municipal government, 2) state government, 3) health, 4) technology. You can't do breaking news when you publish once a day the morning after the news happened.)
The most hated things about the T-D: the website and the half pages.
Since this was an audience of all public relations specialists, naturally they asked what is the best way to get their news into the paper, and Procter pretty much said no one at the paper looked at our press releases or emails. "Face to face is the way to play. Come and talk to us." He repeated it later on, too.
Now, this makes no sense because why do you need to come begging in person to have your press releases considered for story material unless....unless...
You make the appointment with the appropriate editor for the face-to-face, and when you get there, you find an ad salesman and a newspaper marketing person at the table, ready to pitch web and print ads...giving the illusion that if you buy in, your press releases will be read and considered. (Like, you don't have to buy magazines to be entered into the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes, but people still think it gives them an edge.)
When I was an editor, I didn't want to meet everyone sending in press releases. Who has time? I just looked at them and asked myself, is this a calendar item? Is this a feature story? Do my readers want to know about this? Where in the paper do I put this? Or does it go in the wastebasket? I could call them if I needed more info. I didn't need them to come for lunch.
The Richmond Voice (update 2022, long gone newspaper) is a case in point. I send them a press release about a community meeting, something my job is doing that is going to impact the community in their pocket books, something they need to know in case they want to protest or ask questions. The Voice calls me within minutes and asks if I want to buy an ad for the announcement.
No, I say, it's a public meeting. Just run it in your community calendar.
No, you need to buy an ad, they say again.
This is news. This is the sort of thing you're supposed to write about as news. (And I say that sincerely as a fellow journalist, not as a PR hack. We're not selling anything!)
No, you need to buy an ad. She even puts me on hold to talk to the editor, and still comes back and says I need to buy an ad.
So I don't send The Voice things anymore because after going through this twice, I get the message. You're not a newspaper anymore. You're a shopper. I got the same creepy vibe when Proctor told the room full of PR people they needed to come in and sit down at the table with his editors.
Which begs the question, how much can you trust the newspaper if story selection and placement might be influenced by face-to-faces?
Monday, January 26, 2009
Death of Newspapers - Colonial Edition
The first newspaper in the Colonies was Publick Occurrences, printing in Boston in 1690.
Early American newspapers were inevitably weeklies because it took 16 hours to set in type four pages.
The first “death of newspapers” in America was 1765 as a result of the Stamp Act, which levied a tax on every printed page.
The second death of newspapers was the Sedition Act of 1798, a low point of the John Adams presidency, making it a federal crime to defame his administration. (whoa!)
Thomas Jefferson once proposed newspapers should have four sections: Truths, Probabilities, Possibilities, and Lies. (Wouldn't it be great if someone did a paper like that now?)
Objectivity in journalism is a creature of the 19th century. Prior to that (and apparently now) the whole point was to espouse a point of view.
Thanks again to The New Yorker for source material.
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