If you were starting a news organization, where would you put your initial efforts?

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July 7, 2009, 8:25 a.m.

If you were starting a news organization, where would you put your initial efforts?

By Martin Langeveld

notebook I’m continuing my response to Phil Buckley’s excellent question: “If you were starting a news organization today, where would put your initial efforts?” (Previously)

A from-scratch news organization today would, of course, be an online-first enterprise. That doesn’t rule out print as a niche byproduct, but print would not be among the “initial efforts.”

So let’s focus on digital strategies and tactics, beginning with the easier ones:

Even if you plan a print spinoff, like a weekly newspaper (or even a daily), lead with your dot-com brand. The URL should be the biggest thing on your business cards, your sales materials, the sign on your offices — everything.
Be clear about your geography. Every day I come upon local news sites with no indication what city or state they’re based in. (Where is this site published? Where in New Jersey is this one? Where in oil country is The Derrick? What’s so hard about adding “Lewiston, Maine,” “Newton, New Jersey,” or “Oil City, Pennsylvania”?) Remember that sites all over the world may link to your content. Tell those visitors where they’ve arrived.
Make it easy for people to reach you: publish a clear, accessible directory under “Contact Us,” with everyone’s e-mail, phone extension, cell phone and Twitter handle. Amazingly enough, some sites still omit “Contact Us” entirely. Others make it damned hard to find.

Include plenty of links in posts and stories, both inbound and outbound. It’s what makes the web go round.
Strongly encourage news staff to jump into comment threads and talk with readers. We do that here at NiemanLab, and it’s what turns commenting in conversation.
Strongly encourage news staff to Tweet and blog, as well.

Not so easy, but still essential.

Once your staff is wading in the conversational waters by dropping into comment threads, set up scheduled and impromptu real-time interactive opportunities like the Washington Post does.
Stop thinking about posting stories. Instead, organize your content management as a cascade; let it flow from raw input into Tweets, social networks and blogs; distill it into a wiki; repurpose it into podcasts, print and niche products.
Have one big happy staff focused on the digital product — don’t separate digital operations from print or anything else. (Consider the Cedar Rapids system, in which a core team of journalists produces content for Web, print and broadcast.)
Make it easy for everyone — news sources, advertisers, readers — to do business with you online. Anything they can do with you by mail, over the phone, or in person, they should be able to do online, quickly and easily. This lets them do business with you on their schedule, anytime during the 168 hours there are in a week, not just in the 40 or so your office is officially staffed. Keep testing this: can a customer get an answer to a question, pay a bill, place an ad, submit a news tip, or find staff contact info anytime, day or night?

Complex or possibly expensive:

Real social networking for readers: blogs, profiles, friend linking, commenting, sharing, the works.
Start a news wiki, beginning with some segment of your local or topical content, to put your news in context.
Think outside the box: find niche topics that will attract niche audiences, who might even be willing to pay for access. (By the way, if you do charge for some of your content, understand how to price-discriminate.)
Hire some geeks to help crunch data, do math, and create visualizations: tons of government and corporate data is publicly accessible, but the English majors we generally hire to write stories are not good at pulling information out of the data or presenting it graphically. Imagine your site presenting stuff like this.

Your turn: If you were starting a news organization today, where would you put your initial efforts?

Photo by Matt Hintsa, used under Creative Commons License.

What to read next

Nikki Usher May 21, 2013

At The Miami Herald, tweeting’s about breaking news in the a.m. and conversation in the p.m.

Like other newspapers, the Herald has seen the benefits in relying on humans over bots in running social media accounts.

http://www.digitaldeliverance.com Vin Crosbie

I suggest the initial effort be formulating a business model. To do anything else initially is just journalist daydreaming.

If you expect consumers to pay something for the content you’ll produce, find consumers who you don’t know and who don’t know you, and ask them if they would pay and, if so, how much. Ask a lot of those consumers, more of them than you might want to ask.

If you expect advertisers to subsidize your operation, likewise find potential advertisers who you don’t know and who don’t know you, and ask them if they would pay for ads and, if so, how much. Ask a lot of those potential advertisers, more of them than you might want to ask. Also consider how much time you or someone else must spend constantly soliciting advertising, and what the expenses of that will be.

Don’t fall victim to the My Baby Syndrome – the latent belief among most journalists that their journalism is valuable; that people will want to see it and should be willing to pay something for it; and that advertisers will want to sponsor it.

Also, learn how to understand and create live spreadsheets (what accountants and capitalist call Integrated Financials) that take into consideration all possible expenses and expected revenues. Know that your expenses will be much more and your revenues much less than you expect.

Only if the spreadsheets showing your forecast revenues and expense over the next year show enough to live on, then you can decide what brand name or URL or Web site design to use, how many hyperlinks to embed in your stories, how to use Social Media, etc.

– Prof. Vin Crosbie, New Media Business, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University
http://newsafternewspapers.blogspot.com/ Martin Langeveld

Thanks Vin, absolutely correct, of course, even for non-profit ventures. But the daydreaming is important, as well — without a basic concept of what you want to do, including what “pain” you are addressing, and what features the “cure” requires, you can’t start the business plan. So it’s somewhat of a chicken/egg problem.
http://twitter.com/JITflorida Stacey Singer DeLoye

Hi Martin,
Not sure I agree with your first assumption.
A former colleague of mine launched a local newspaper and went print first, with great success. Long-term commitments for print ads enabled her to get cash flow to get a good web site up and running.
http://www.thecoastalstar.com/
Vin Crosbie is right. The business plan must come first. In some markets – affluent retiree communities, etc., potential advertisers still understand print better. Knowing your market is key.
http://toughloveforxerox.blogspot MichaelJ

Stacey,
Nice data point. My two cents: Web first for news. Print first for money. Hyperlocal or beat focused print with hyperlocal or beat focused print advertising.

The path to scale is beat by beat and/or hyperlocal by hyperlocal.
http://newsafternewspapers.blogspot.com/ Martin Langeveld

Stacey and Michael: one way or the other I agree that print should be part of the hyperlocal model. The only reason I recommend starting with the Web side is that it’s important to understand that in the long run, Web is going to drive your business, although for now, print can contribute nicely to the bottom line. BTW, the Village Soup model, http://www.villagesoup.com, is useful in this context.
rick

Pop up a level. WHY are you starting a venture? Is it to cover a geographic area? A topical area? A cross (Food in Seattle, dance in Minneapolis, environmental issues in Chicago)?

Next is WHY YOU? This speaks to business model a bit. Fine you’re writing about the food scene in your area – is that not being done? If it is, what do you bring to the table? Writing about local government, environment, etc? Same question – what do you bring and why will people listen to you?

Operationally, let go of the idea of a central newsroom with everyone coming ‘into work’ and realize that they can work from home or the field with a laptop and a few accessories. You might want a co-working style of office where people can come in and interact or meet but aren’t required to.

Above all, don’t simply translate the traditional news organization into 2009, update the tools, sprinkle in some social and assume you’ll succeed. Challenge yourself about why you’re doing this and why anyone should care. Then go try it.
http://toughloveforxerox.blogspot MichaelJ

Martin,
Not to get into a long back and forth, but I still think that’s not right. Start with the web because that is the way to build the network and do the reporting. We agree.

But, going forward it’s going to be web+print+TV
+Twitter + whatever comes next. It’s an evolving communication ecology and too early to bet on one technology.

It is likely that QR codes will become mainstream in the States. They were invented in Japan in 1994 and have been growing steadily since then. I think the latest numbers are about 60% usage.

Consider the market effect of a “clickable” newspaper. The news in brief with a human readable URL like a tinyURL and a QR code that is embedded with user information that supplies the feedback advertiser’s need as it takes the mobile phone to a video on YouTube or shopping site.

My personal hope is to see clickable newspapers to replace high school textbooks. But that would make for a much longer comment.
http://www.innovationsinnewspapers.com Juan Giner

Martin,

Good questions.

My five cents:

A new “online-centric” news operation needs three crucial “Trojan horses”

First: an state-of-the-art open space, walls down, fully integrated 24/7 multimedia newsroom.

Second: a reliable multimedia content management system.

Third: new working flows in order to make possible the “online first” and “always on” operations.

Plus:

1. Hire young digital native lions.

2. Don’t expend money, time and journalists tracking others breaking-news, when smart news robots can do it better and cheaper.

3. Re-invent the already dead traditional news website pages that don’t make money, are not interesting or useful, are not needed, and are not different.
Scott Thistle

Hi Martin,

You make a good point and being good listeners we are going to add some geographical info to our home page. For the record, the Sun Journal is in the process of a complete Web site overhaul. Our site is still in the process of becoming, if you will, but I suspect that the ever-evolving site is the way of the future.

The way I discovered your commentary, by the way, was our Web editor tweeted about your criticism of our site and being curious I went looking.

Following her on Twitter I learned there was an ongoing internal discussions regarding adding location info, beyond the datelines and headlines and weather reports that currently appear, to the home page banner. Your observations certainly added weight to the side that felt we needed our home location information front and center.

While stinging some for not being faster in the change we appreciate your comments and you using us as an example and will humbly take the page views that brings our way.

In the end I think you will like our new online banner better. :)
For now we have added the date and “in Lewiston, Maine” above the banner.

My kind regards,
Scott Thistle
Regional Editor,
Sun Journal
http://newsafternewspapers.blogspot.com/ Martin Langeveld

Juan: Thanks for the five cents! Big open newsrooms: I agree totally — I helped design the Berkshire Eagle newsroom back around 1990 other than the editor’s office, we had no partitions higher than 42 inches (1.07 meters). I was recently in the “new” Wall Street Journal newsroom, which seems pretty chopped up. We spent time in a small conference room in the middle of it, which had hallucinogenic tinted one-way mirror glass on all sides. Perhaps it helps squeeze information out of their interviewees. I would take those particular walls down, myself.

Scott: thanks for the feedback, and glad you’re in agreement. Now, if I could just get that “Oxford Hills” page back, I’d be all set! (The RSS feed option is nice, however.)
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Kaye Ross

There is not even a passing mention here about content. Journalism is the only industry — except, perhaps, for the American auto industry — that loses a huge hunk of market share and doesn’t get the point that the product is not something people want any longer.

As long as we spend all our time talking about platforms, we’ll continue to pump out the same “news” that readers have already rejected. Yes, of course, use new platforms, but let’s update our approach to what we write about.
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http://www.bannerprintingshop.com/ Banner Printing

I recommend to start first on the products of the business, then the capital, and lastly the staff.
http://www.salvador-trinxet-llorca.com Salvador Trinxet Llorca

I think online should be always the first option. Because young journalist only think to start a business if it is real in Internet. And because print media have, in my opinion, less future.

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