The “borrowing” site gets lots of traffic and makes money off selling ads on their own site. The newspaper might see some uptick in traffic, but they’re sure not getting any of the “borrowing” site’s revenue.

In the biz, these types of sites are known as aggregators – the Drudge Report, Newser, Gawker and the like. They’re popular. You can visit one of these sites and get a pretty good snapshot of the biggest news of the day.

I bring all this up because reporter Ian Shapira of The Washington Post wrote about this very thing. And because it happened to him when Gawker redid one of his stories. You can check out Shapira’s column here. It’s worth reading and does a pretty good job of showing how it all works.

Shapira’s 1,500-word article involved, among other things: an hour-long phone interview and typing out 3,000 words of notes; attending a two-hour seminar conducted by the subject of the article; four hours of transcribing those notes; and then writing the article.

Quote:

After all the reporting, it took me about a day to write the 1,500-word piece. How long did it take Gawker to rewrite and republish it, cherry-pick the funniest quotes, sell ads against it and ultimately reap 9,500 (and counting) page views?  I called up Hamilton Nolan, the Gawker writer to whom I had been so grateful. “Probably took me,” he said, “you know . . . a half-hour to an hour.”

The problem is pretty basic. Shapira does all the work; another site does a quick rewrite and makes money basically off someone else’s work.

I have a problem with that.

Newspapers are in dire straits. And somehow allowing someone else to profit off a newspaper’s hard work without due compensation doesn’t sit well with me.  I’m not blaming the aggregators for becoming aggregators – they were smart.  But this whole idea that since it’s out on the Internet then it’s free-for-all is wrong.

Would you seriously not have a problem if someone else took your hard work, revamped it a little and made money off it?

Although tongue-in-cheek, or maybe not, Shapira ends his article on his article in a pretty good summation:

Quote:

After talking with Denton, Nolan and others for this article, I still want a fluid blogosphere, but one where aggregators — newspapers included — are more transparent about whom they’re heavily excerpting. They should mention the original source immediately. And if bloggers want to excerpt at length, a fee would be the nice, ethical gesture.

So, Gawker, do me a favor. At least blog this piece. I’ll even write a headline for you (free of charge). How about: “Whiny WashPost Reporter Makes His Point: Respect the Genuine Article”? Oh — one other thing. If you sell ads against your posting, can you cut The Post a check?

Copyeditors were always my bane – arguing with me over whether the word was “should” or “must.”

Two, To, Too often, they were write, right. Its, it’s enough to drive you mad. But they made me a better journalist, a better writer, simply because they demanded perfection. I always thought copyeditors were a little too anal, but one senior copyeditor set me straight.

“If readers can’t trust you with proper English and proper spelling, why should they trust you with facts?” Lesson learned.

I had a journalism professor like that. Misspell a name, you got an “F” on that assignment. No questions. No second chance.

My biggest screwup, screw-up, screw up? (copyeditor needed ASAP) in 25 years of journalism was over one word. At the time, I was a fairly new reporter.  We had a morning and afternoon paper. Every Monday was the city council meeting, and the entire afternoon paper was held solely to wait for my story.

No pressure.

During one meeting, the police chief announced he was “moving on” so to speak. That was the lede (yep, that’s a journalism word so don’t freak, basically means the most important item and “led” the story).  I filed the story by phone (no internet at the time) and the story was put in and the presses started.

When I got back,  a copyeditor – in front of the entire newsroom – says, “you said in one place the police chief retired, and in another place he resigned. Which is it?”

It was the way the copyeditor said “which is it” that hit me.  Basically, he was saying “there’s a damn world of difference and please tell me you know that and we’ve written ‘resigned’ in the headline and you’d better make sure.”

So I called the mayor and he informed me the police chief had “retired.”

Every journalist lives for one thing – having that once-in-a-lifetime story where you can actually run back to the pressroom, with papers flying off the presses, and yell “Stop The Press!” The story is that good.

Well, I had the “pleasure,” at the editor’s insistence, of running back to the pressroom and yelling “stop the press.” Because of a big fat error.

Again, lesson learned. And it never happened again.

I bring this up because of several recent stories about the continuing layoffs in newsrooms across the country. One that really got me was the layoff of John McIntyre from the Baltimore Sun.  He worked there for nearly 23 years, the last 14 as chief of the copy desk.

He’s not alone. It seems that copyeditors are taking the brunt of the layoffs now. Publishers are trying to keep as many reporters as possible, so those who man the desks, who make sure we journalists don’t make fools of ourselves, are taking the hit.

And what does that mean? It means there will be more errors, regardless of how hard, and how many times, journalists read and reread there, their copy. And more errors means readers begin to question the “facts” journalists put forward. And as errors pile up, a distrust develops and …

It’s a vicious cycle.

The most powerful support mechanism a journalist or writer has is a second, or third or fourth pear, pare, pair of eyes. One who will argue with you over “must” or “should;” one who will make you prove your facts.

I hated copyeditors.  Sorry, we don’t allow the Sons of Thunder to use that word in our family, so I shouldn’t either.  I was “not fond” as we say here, of copyeditors.  All they did was try and make my copy better. The nerve.

And so I shall say farewell, we will miss you when you are gone.

And feel free, one last time, to edit away on this.

Whether it be West Nile, Bird Flu or Fill In The Blank Flu/Pox/Influenza, it seems we’re all going to die from it.  Now it’s Swine Flu, and it’s everywhere in the news.

To date, at least one plane was “temporarily quarantined” after arriving from Mexico; and now there are calls to close the borders. Yeah, that’s worked well in the past with illegal aliens. Oops, sorry, I meant undocumented workers. Don’t want to get picketed.

Too often what’s missing is perspective.

And yet I have to give credit where it’s do, and it’s do to CNN, which too often leads the charge in Chicken Little stories.

According to this story, there are no confirmed deaths in the U.S. from Swine Flu as of its writing. However, 13,000 people already have died this year from the seasonal flu, or in English, the flu, in the U.S. alone already this year.

Worldwide, “the flu” will kill between 250,000 and 500,000 this year, or so says the CDC.

Good journalism requires not only good storytelling, but getting the facts right and putting everything into perspective. It’s paramount upon the media to present the facts so officials and the public can make rationale and informed decisions.

But soldiers handing out surgical masks and the daily “death toll” type stories and footage too oftten make for a better story. And suggesting the Black Death is headed for America and we’re all better bury our heads is not good journalism.

Yep, you are going to die. But I bet there’s a 99.9% chance it ain’t gonna be Swine Flu.

Alan Mutter over at Reflections of a Newsosaur has a guest post from the Trib’s editor, Nancy Barnes, about how it’s working out. It’s an interesting article and you should check it out.

Quote: Why are we doing this? We’ve been creating so much content just for the web and have had great success in driving traffic to the web that I just wanted to do something for our paying customers.

Honestly, I thought it would be much higher, but I guess not.

Quote:  So, U. S. daily newspapers deliver a total of 90.3 billion page impressions per month, print and online.  The online share of these page is only 3.5 percent — 96.5 percent of page impressions delivered by newspapers are in print …

So in terms of attention span, newspapers hold readers a total of 99.5 billion minutes per month, of which only 3.0 percent is online. This correlates nicely with the pageview split.

There are some interesting comments in the full article, which by themselves are just as interesting. Some may argue with the methodology, but it’s a pretty well-thought out article.

Sort of a Catch-22 here. Readers are still reading the print edition, but advertisers are leaving in droves. And why would advertisers want to advertise on a newspaper web site that’s getting less than five percent readership?

Anyway, there’s a couple of articles worth pointing out – one on newsroom/online convergence and another on online paid content.

They’re by two guys I know and respect, and you should too, as they deal/have dealt with these issues for longer than anyone.

First up is Steve Yelvington, one of the deep thinkers at Morris Communications, where I used to work.  Steve pulled together a report on newsroom/online convergence that everyone should read.

And with his expertise, he was able to solicit a lot of comments from all over the globe and from both sides of the fence.

Quote: “Culture gaps are deep, persistent, and troublesome. The union of online and print units brings together people with very different points of view about how to do journalism. Expect conflict. “We had huge respect issues, on both sides,” recalled one senior editor. “Online producers felt the newsroom had no idea what they did. And the newsroom felt online had no knowledge of journalism.” The result was suspicion and hostility. ‘There were no saints on either side.’”

Following that is a post by Neil Budde of DailyMe. He’s also the former vice president and editor of Yahoo! News, and for reasons for this post, the founding editor/publisher of The Wall Street Journal Online.

Neil includes some interesting links you should follow up on to his post on paid content and how and why they did it at the Journal.

Quote: To understand the success of the WSJ subscription model and contemplate what other information-based products might merit a fee, I think you first have to explode another “myth” about WSJ.com. I think it’s commonly assumed that we conceptualized, designed and built The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition (as we called it during development in 1994-95 and at its launch in 1996) and then decided to charge for it. Quite the opposite was true. We began with the premise that we wanted to build a “product” that would have sufficient value that people would pay for it.

Read the rest here.

And now I’ve said it. And it sucks saying it because it was my life for roughly a quarter of a century.

I’m afraid the only thing  keeping print versions alive right now  is habit. It’s what you’ve always done, what you’ve always known. It’s a comfort zone.

And you know, a habit is basically an addiction. And addictions can be expensive, but they can also be broken.  And it’s a lot easier to break an addiction if you can keep your addiction, and suddenly get it for “free.”

Damn, somehow I brought in that whole paid verses free online content thing again, didn’t I?

I love newspapers. And with that I want to point out the English language is simply lacking in adequately descriptive words. The word “love” should be reserved for, well, poems and songs and significant others, like the Little Black Dress. And yeah, newspapers, but the LBD understands that.

But adulation, affection, allegiance, amity, amorousness, amour, appreciation, ardency, ardor, attachment, crush, delight, devotedness, devotion. enchantment, enjoyment, fervor, fidelity, flame, fondness, friendship, hankering, idolatry, inclination, infatuation, involvement, like, lust, mad for, partiality, passion, piety, rapture, regard, relish, respect, sentiment, soft spot, taste, tenderness, weakness, worship, yearning and zeal don’t quite get it.

Change that. “Passion” does. So does “Zeal.”

Anyway, why do I “love” print newspapers.

1. They’re cheap.

2. Absurdly portable

3. No boot-up time

4. No crash

5. Airport Security. Nuff said.

6. Throw it down, stomp on it, dust it off and back to square one.

7. Okay yes, bird cages and puppy training and packing up Aunt Emma’s old china.  Happy?

8. Because the people who write for print newspapers have a passion, a zeal, a love, for what they do. They are underpaid, overworked (okay, that applies to everyone now), and yet they still care.

9.  It’s a one-shot deal. It’s printed, it’s done. Tomorrow’s another day. We rip the whole thing up and start all over. It’s a new day, every day.

10.  There is no No. 10. I friggin hate “Top 10″ lists.

And honestly, great print journalists have no fear. They might get nervous before a big interview, but they have no fear. They might get sick and throw up if there’s an error in their story, but they have no fear. They have a passion, a drive.

Yet that incredible product is going the way of the dinosaur, partly because it’s being given away for free, and partly because the product  is starting to lose its value.

The cost of a daily newspaper continues to go up. Yet its size continues to shrink and shrink. Not only are there fewer pages, but the width is shrinking as well.

And how about that customer service? Used to be the paper was delivered right at your doorstep. Now I have to hike all the way up my drive. Why? Heck, in some places you can’t even get a daily newspaper delivered any more – Detroit.

And what about content. By the time I read the newspaper, it’s literally old news. I’ve already read it online, or someone emailed me a story, or I got a text version, or something. Why should I pay for a newspaper I’ve already read?

We’re getting to the point where the print product is only a delivery mechanism for coupons.

Here’s how Jen of Editor and Publisher’s Fitz and Jen column summed it up: “Too many newspapers lately seemed preoccupied with getting people to pay for online content while treating those people who actually pay for the content via print subscriptions as second-class readers. How? They drop frequency. They kick home-delivery to the curb. They raise the price of subscriptions (and especially newsstand copies) and give less in return. For all the blubbering about hyper local, I’ve noticed a lack of focus in daily metros when I’m lucky enough to travel around the U.S. It’s full of AP and wire copy with a handful of “local” stories broken into digestible chunks with lots of pictures. I wouldn’t pay for that.

The print version needs to be, must be, unique. It has to have content not available elsewhere. It has to have value or it will simply become high-priced packing paper.

I ran a news service for five years, which included more than 30 papers.  During that time, I could count on two hands, okay and maybe one foot, how many times I touched a print newspaper.

Yet I was able to hold an intelligent conversation with any of those papers’ editors about what was going on in their community. That’s obviously a plug for the value of an online paper, but it doesn’t bode well for the print product.

Basically, the paper is withholding certain stories from the the web until they appear in the print edition.  Those stories focus on great features, investigative pieces and non-breaking news stories.

Breaking news and daily stories and such will remain the first domain of the web, as they should be.

It’s where we’re headed, and I think we need to move a little more aggressively toward it.

Editor Nancy Barnes, in a note to readers, said, “I’m not sure anyone knows what the right answer is for our business right now. What I do know is that good journalism, the kind an enlightened community like the Twin Cities demands and appreciates, cannot be produced for free. I also believe that we, as an industry, have to drive more value into our printed papers so long as we continue to deliver news that way. So starting last week, we began experimenting with giving some of the best of our journalism to you, our paying print customers, first.”

I think that last sentence should be one of those “duh” moments. I’m not sure why it hasn’t hit others yet.

Why should I pay for something I can get for free?

The print newspaper of the future, if it will exist that is, must focus on in-depth, well-written reporting and storytelling (not lies, but gripping reading.)

“Jen” from Editor and Publisher’s Fitz and Jen column, summed it up perfectly: “Using the print edition as a vehicle for in-depth analysis is something that newspapers should be doing more. Break news online, aggregate local content, upload video, but please don’t forget the very people, the print subscribers, who are footing the bill. They deserve something extra.”

I’ve always advocated newspaper should charge for online content.No one, myself included, knows how that will play out.

But maybe one option toward that end is to create a specialized online version that includes those “print exclusives.” If you want it all, in whatever version/form, you pay for it.

I would argue overall newspaper traffic is of secondary importance, if  even that. Or to put it another way, what’s important is quality over quantity.

Too often proponents of free newspaper sites bow before the altar of Web Traffic Numbers and pontificate about their 10% growth in on-line readership. Bonuses are tied to increasing web traffic and revenue; with revenue tied to traffic in a vicious circle.

More traffic? We can increase on-line ad rates and save the day. It’s why newspaper web sites must be free, we must have the traffic. Not quite.

We’re forgetting a fundamental rule of journalism – what does it mean to me?  Me (the local advertiser), Me (the local reader). In reality, often times those big jumps in on-line readership are completely irrelevant to those two groups.

Case in point: I was working with a mid-size newspaper in the Heartland. One day we got a massive jump in on-line readership. I mean six-digits worth. And that carried over for a couple of days. All told, those couple of days were more than our entire on-line viewership for the month.

The reason? A story we ran got linked on The Drudge Report. The story? Someone found a severed penis at a car wash. Okay, so it turns out it wasn’t a human one, but rather a bull. But it was quite the story for a couple of days until that was resolved.

My point is that huge jump in traffic was of no use to our local readers or our local advertisers. The local grocery story wasn’t going to sell more food, the local tire store wasn’t going to sell more tires and so on.

Why? Because the vast majority of those viewers were from out of state, or even out of country.

When I ran newspapers, I cared about four things: my local advertisers, my local readers, my newspaper and my employees. Take care of the first two, the third is covered. Take care of the fourth, the first two are covered. And round and round.

Hey, it’s great to consistently increase web traffic. But it needs to be traffic that matters.

Web traffic for newspapers needs to focus on quality.  And quality for those that matter – their readers, their advertisers.

Getting page views from England or Australia or even another state doesn’t help a local advertiser. Advertisers care only – and should – about traffic that will help them sell their product. And that’s where newspapers need to focus their on-line efforts. Not on some overall number.

Bill Grueskin, former managing editor of WSJ.com, said pretty much the same thing in a guest post today over at Reflections of a Newsosaur. (Smart guy).

Quote: You see this error in the way online publishers gauge their traffic. They usually cite monthly unique users, but, in fact, I’ve always thought total time spent per user, or page views per visitor, were more meaningful metrics.

If a news site gets 250,000 new unique users thanks to a link on Drudge, and that generates exactly 250,000 page views, the value of that traffic is minimal. All it shows is that those readers are engaged with Drudge, not the news site.

Newspapers need to quit worrying about the overall traffic numbers and start zeroing in on their local numbers.And I think newspapers can/should start charging for an on-line subscription IF, 1.) they provide unique content for their readers, 2.) provide local traffic for local advertisers.

People will pay for something they really want provided they see the value. Advertisers won’t care if a site is paid or free provided they get the right traffic.

If the mantra is “local, local, local” then quit focusing – or even caring – about non-local traffic. Non-local traffic might be great for the ego, but it means diddly to the newspapers’ customers.

Yep, the Wall Street Journal charges for its online subscription. God forbid.

There’s a lot of pontificating from “experts” who think all content should be free and who have  A). Never run a newspaper or been in a newsroom and B). Think the majority of “old media” don’t get “new media” and need to get out of the way. – The first point is self-explanatory. I’ll deal with the second in another post.

But Alan Mutter – Reflections of a Newsosaur - went straight to the source. He’s got a guest blog from Bill Grueskin, the former managing editor of WSJ.Com. This is what we call a guy who knows what he’s talking about and why. It’s actually two posts: first was today, second comes tomorrow. It’s very insightful. Read it.

Probably the greatest “paid content” quote ever – At the class, I turned to my co-instructor, Peter Kann, former CEO of Dow Jones and the person ultimately responsible for the paid strategy.
“I made the site paid because I was ignorant, “ Kann told the class. “I didn’t know any better. I just thought people should pay for content.”

Sometimes the simplest way is the best way.