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.
3 comments:
Mariane, first thanks for attending your third panel of the year. Why didn't you raise your hand? Several others did.
For the record (and I know it was hard to hear), I singled out John Murden, CHPN and the terrific work he's doing. And I think more than a few people in the crowd knew about CHPN.
I did say advertisers need a mix, and good ad and marketing reps know this. I don't think anyone is foolish enough to believe that every dime of one's marketing budget should be spent in one place and not cross at times into digital. The question is what does the client want: is it people at an event, is it image ads, is it make-me-want-to-buy-it ads?
I mentioned Richmond mag cover art to exemplify how we must create an immediate response, since newsstand buyers often are making a decision to buy while standing in a line. There, we have 12 shots a year, not 52, not 365. And since newsstand distribution is a monopoly, we need to sell there to keep our spot. We have put news/newsmakers as the main cover art, knowing full well they may tank (and did).
Also, we did talk a great deal about dining -- how we cover it and how folks gravitate to it on our site online and in print. But it's one part of our mix, which includes local voices such as Anne Soffee and Pete Humes, in-depth news (why crack sentences in our federal court were so severe, the renderings and the launching pains related to the proposed slavery museum, a look inside the new City Hall and at the Jones' administration, how our recycled electronics were going to a company that broke EPA rules), vetted reader-service stories that take months to complete, profiles not seen elsewhere, not to mention the daily content on the Web.
We were there to answer any question you may have had and all of us stayed afterward. All you had to do was ask. It's late. Good night.
The article isn't about my questions not being asked, but why the moderator didn't seem to be on top of the discussion, to direct it or challenge it. Too often they aren't actually listening, but just studying their next question and waiting for the background noise of talk to stop so they can ask it.
As an advertising buyer, I have yet to have a rep from one media outlet recommend I not spend money with them or steer me to someone else. Not once. Seriously, not once.
My third panel on this very same topic, you mean. Not my third panel of the year.
I perfectly understood your comparison of sales triggered by cover art to web page hits, and was amazed that the identical trend was tracked both ways: Richmond likes to read about restaurants and salaries. No surprise this would become recurring covers for you. You didn't notice you're getting the same reader feedback as Kremer, just in a different way?
My blog post actually was not finding fault with any of the vehicles on the panel (except maybe the T-D's clinging to their old business model still). My post was fussing about the venue, and the less than original or even different Q&As, and the lack of discussion about the FUTURE, as in "The Future of News," the title of the panel discussion.
I go to these to report what happened for those who didn't attend and are curious, not to become a player in the drama. As a former reporter, I'm sure you remember that you don't insert yourself into the story you're covering. I didn't personally require comfort, answers or counseling afterward, so I did not need to stay for it.
And also for the record, I've been to SMCRVA meetings where the mere mention of a blogger such as Murden or someone else would result in loud cheering and applause. I was comparing his reception at this event to those. To me, he is a true hero of local journalism, if not the actual FUTURE of News. If you haven't been to many SMCRVAs, you would not have understood the comparison, and most of my blog readers are SMCRVA types.
Sorry, but anything with Jim Bacon on it is a nightmare, and honestly a worthless waste of time. For him to SERIOUSLY moderate an event immediately tells me MOST of the people there are at least 10 years behind the time.
Seriously, having him included discredits much of it.
The guys behind Richmond BizSense (and their sense of social media) are pretty much the Jim Bacon way of doing it.
Thank goodness for people like Ross and those at RVANews to ACTUALLY do something in this town.
Thanks for your great recap. And lets all hope for a day where Jim Bacon doesn't try to jump into everything.
PS - the RTD included in a talk about the future of news? you have to be kidding...
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