2. Today’s Presenter
Jim Brady
Current
• Editor-in-Chief, Journal Register Company
• Vice President, Online News Association
• Board Member, American Society of News Editors
Past
• Former General Manager, TBD.com
• Former Executive Editor, washingtonpost.com
• Former AOL executive
• Member of washingtonpost.com launch team
• Former reporter & sportswriter, The Washington Post
• Pulitzer Prize juror, 2010 & 2011
3. Today’s Agenda
The State of American Journalism
State of the Business
1
State of the Journalism
2
U.S. Strengths & Weaknesses
3
March 11 Coverage by US Media
4
Questions & Discussion
5
5
29. Emerging Models
NICHE MARKETS
• Newspapers are wonderful general interest publications. But the
web is all about niche.
• There’s been a rise of niche web publications that are making
money: Business Insider, WebMD, AutoTrader, Mint,
Babycenter.com, POLITICO, Epicurious, countless others…
ADVANTAGES
• Strong revenue potential, as advertisers prefer subject-focused audiences.
• Strong editorial focus keeps overall costs down.
DISADVANTAGES
• Most verticals starting to get crowded.
• Harder to expand when you’re focused on one subject.
30. Emerging Models
NON-PROFITS
• Market is currently strong for non-profits in the United States.
• Relatively new sites such as ProPublica, Texas Tribune, MinnPost,
Voice of San Diego are making waves in the industry.
• Non-profits are doing the type of journalism that for-profit
companies have struggled to support financially.
ADVANTAGES
• Lack of intense revenue pressure provides editorial freedom
• Non-profits willing to support investigative and enterprise journalism
DISADVANTAGES
• Flow of money to support non-profits unpredictable
• Non-profits have trouble building large, influential audiences
31. Emerging Models
PAY MODELS
• Many American news organizations are currently implementing --
or planning to implement – pay walls or other pay models.
• New models are emerging, i.e. the New York Times’s metered
model and CivilBeat’s membership model.
ADVANTAGES
• New revenue stream
• More loyal, focused audience to monetize
• Aids print circulation retention
DISADVANTAGES
• Negative impact on traffic and ad revenue
• Creates opportunity for free competitors
• Blocking off content works against the ways of the Web
32. Emerging Models
MOBILE
• Morgan Stanley predicts that, by 2015, use of the mobile web will
be greater than use of the desktop Web.
• Many news organizations are hiring mobile editors, developers
and product managers as new devices proliferate.
ADVANTAGES
• Consumers are already used to paying for mobile content, and will pay for things
on mobile they won’t pay for on the web
• Gives publishers the ability to reach consumers on a 24/7 basis
• Location-based services open new doors for publishers and advertisers
DISADVANTAGES
• Advertisers have not yet embraced mobile in any meaningful way
• Large number of mobile device types means business not easily scalable
• Mobile development expensive
33. Emerging Models
LOCAL DEALS
• The success of companies like Groupon and Living Social has
created a wave of local deal programs, many created and run by
newspapers.
• Needham & Co. predict the daily deals market will be more than
$10B in the U.S. by 2015.
ADVANTAGES
• Relatively low-tech and simple to launch
• Good way to reach small local advertisers, traditionally a hard group to win over
DISADVANTAGES
• Low barriers to entry for new competitors
• Significant amount of administration required
• Daily deals space already overrun, and still dominated by a few big dogs
35. Current Trends in Journalism
• Community Engagement / Crowdsourcing
• Social Media
• Curation
• Multimedia Storytelling
• Mobile Journalism
• Database Journalism
• Location-Based Services
39. Why Engage?
• Because news organizations always have…
– Used experts as sources
– Interviewed citizens for stories
– Accepted tips from the community
– Run photos & videos not taken by staffers
– Run freelance pieces by citizens & experts
• Because you need readers more than they need you
– Collectively, the community knows a lot more about each subject area
than you do
– Consumers have a lot of choices & not a lot of time
– They don’t need to come directly to you to access your content
– Without committed readers, you have no business
• Because working with consumers produces better journalism
40. • Launched in 2006
• More than 750,000 registered users
• Received the seminal video from the Virginia Tech shootings
• In 2011, held the first iReport Awards
42. SeeClickFix
• In more than 25,000 cities and 8,000 neighborhoods
• Has gathered more than 50,000 reports
• SeeClickFix has relationships with local governments
44. ProPublica: Network
• 5,000 Reporting Network members
• They’ve helped conducted spot checks on federal stimulus
spending, unraveled loan modification stories, and tracked
the oversight of a state nursing board, among other efforts
45. TBD: Complete This Story
• The audience can help you find out things you couldn’t
• It’s a tacit admission media companies can’t – and don’t – know
everything
46. Register Citizen Newsroom Cafe
• Audience invited to sit in on newsroom meeting, watch a live
stream or participate in a live chat
• Free public wi-fi access offered, as well as coffee and snacks
47. TBD Community Network
• More than 225 sites
joined
• We sold advertising for
about 75 blogs
• We linked to them
aggressively, and put
them in our geo-coded
feeds to expose them to
relevant audiences
• Provided training
sessions for network
members on blogging,
SEO, social media, etc.
48. Don’t Forget the Human Touch
• At TBD.com, we did public events with local bloggers and
other interested parties.
• We held public office hours at coffee houses in the region.
• We offered free training to community members on social
media, blogging, SEO, etc.
49. Benefits of Engagement
• Improved news gathering capacity
– On-the-spot reporting
– Geographically-specific reports
• Additional research bandwidth
• More subject-area expertise
• An expansion of your coverage area by building
contributor network
• Useful feedback & direction
• Increased on-site participation in contests, polls,
commenting, etc.
50. If You Do This Right…
• The community will view you as a partner, not a
rival. That means:
– They will come to your site more often
– They will link to you more from blogs, social media
– They will send you tips
– They will tell their friends about you
– In short, they will root for your success
• You will produce better, more relevant journalism
• More relevance = more audience = more revenue
= more jobs
52. Social Media Usage
• Facebook has over 800M active users, with half logging on daily.
• More than 2B posts are liked and commented on per day.
• More than 250M photos are posted per day.
• Twitter recently announced it had 100M users logging in once a day,
and 50M logging in daily.
• In the U.S., in a survey done by the Ponemon Group showed:
– Workers spent an average of 62 minutes each day using social media
for personal reasons, compared with 37 minutes for business purposes.
– Almost 60 percent of the organizations increased their Internet
bandwidth to accommodate employees’ use of social media in the past
12 months.
– Social media is essential or very important to meeting business
objectives for 67 percent of respondents.
54. Why Social Media?
• You need to go where your readers are
• Social networks are great for attracting new users
• Great venue for starting conversations with and getting
feedback from readers and/or viewers
• More and more business being transacted via social
networks
55. Social Media Tips
• Dedicate staff to social media
• Use a more conversational tone on social platforms
• Use social tools not just to disseminate information,
but to gather it as well
• Leverage the audience already using social media for
crowdsourcing projects
57. Curation
• If you want to be the first stop for consumers interested
in any topic, you should curate:
• TBD linked out to all members of our community network
• TBD linked out to local sites that were not part of the
community network
• We linked out to other local news organizations
• We even linked to TV stations that were competitive with us
• In short, we linked to EVERYONE
58. Why Curation?
• Some of the Web’s largest news sites are based on the
concept:
• Drudge Report
• Huffington Post
• Yahoo News
• Google News
• Readers are looking for sites to serve not just as chefs,
but maitre d’s.
• If you are a fair arbiter of the best content out there,
readers will start their day with you. If that happens,
you’ve already won.
61. Why Multimedia?
• Video usage on the web increasing dramatically
• Photography remains one of the most popular types of
content on the web
• Radio usage on the web remains high
• Interactive graphics becoming a story form all of its own
62. Why Multimedia?
• Video usage on the web increasing dramatically
• Photography remains one of the most popular types of
content on the web
• Radio usage on the web remains high
• Interactive graphics becoming a story form all of its own
• Remember, the first 15 years on TV were radio guys in
front of a camera. The first 15 of the web were print, TV
and radio guys trying to repeat their format on the web.
• The web is evolving into something all its own; you have
to evolve with it.
70. Why Mobile?
• Mobile devices are attached to consumers on a near
24/7 basis.
• In most cases, you know exactly where your mobile
users are, so you can provide geo-specific services
• Consumers are in the habit of paying for mobile content
in ways they never were on the web
• Unlike the web, mobile payment systems are built-in,
seamless and guilt-free (at least initially)
71. The Right Way to Think Mobile
• Reject the “platform agnostic” mantra
• Remember that mobile is a mindset of its own, with
unique consumer needs and revenue opportunities
• Remember that each mobile device is a product in and
of itself: The iPhone, iPad, Droid and Kindle require
different strategies
• Dedicate people to building good mobile products
• Make your mobile app and/or site complementary to
your web site, not a mini version of it
72. The Right Way to Think Mobile
• Remember what makes a mobile device unique:
portability, location tracking and 24/7 access to the
consumer.
• Remember that mobile allows you to get content from
the reader, not just send it out
• Don’t just focus on your own mobile sites. Get into the
streams of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram,
etc.
• Focus on utility: weather, stocks, alerts, traffic, public
transportation data, sports scores, etc.
76. QR Codes
• Many papers are starting to use
QR codes in newspaper or via e-
mail.
• Lots of potential for these…
• For example, why not QR codes
on all your newspaper boxes
that list places to eat, places to
show, historical landmarks near
that box?
88. Why Location-Based Services?
• In an increasingly mobile world, where you are matters
more and more every day
• Consumers only sporadically care about regional, national
or world news. They always care about what’s going on
near where they live or work.
• Being able to target location opens the door to significant
editorial and revenue possibilities.
89. Geocoding
• At TBD.com, we delivered
geographically relevant news
to users.
– We had a team of real humans
reading and adding geo-codes to
stories from TBD, our blog network
and other local news
organizations.
– TBD’s home page had a module
that delivered news to up to five
zip codes that a user signaled as
important to them
– TBD’s mobile app allowed you to
see geographically-relevant stories
90. Augmented Reality
• The combination of the phone’s GPS
with use of the camera provides a
near-virtual reality experience.
91. Foursquare / Gowalla
• Knowing where consumers are offers major reporting opportunities:
– Looking for sources
– Communicating news to location-specific audiences
– Distribution of your reviews and tips
93. The Future Journalist
Core Skills
– Reporting
– Writing
– Interviewing
New Skills
– Ability to shoot and edit video
– Ability to take and edit photography
– Willingness to engage with community
– More business knowledge, stronger entrepreneurial instinct
Career Path
– More Startups, Less Established Players
95. Strengths of U.S. Journalism
• Freedom of the press remains a core value
• Exciting new tools at our disposal
• Entrepreneurial opportunities increasing, which
means journalists are better able to pursue passions
• New business models emerging
• Stronger coverage of niche subjects
• More voices being heard, not just the elite
96. Weaknesses of U.S. Journalism
• Less accountability journalism
• Coverage of local areas getting weaker
• Too much overlapping coverage
• Public opinion of journalists is poor
• Still seeking working business models
• Consumers seeking sites that affirm their views
• The world has changed, and many news organizations
are still acting as if it hasn’t
98. March 11 Coverage Weaknesses
• The U.S. coverage was largely supplementary
• Not nearly enough U.S. journalists on the ground
• For most part, cable networks did not send top on-air talent
• Too heavy an emphasis on visuals; not enough depth
• Particularly weak explanatory reporting on Fukushima
• The U.S. coverage was largely temporary
• Cable TV talent didn’t stay long once immediate danger
passed
• Follow-up reporting – especially on Fukushima and its long-
term effects – has been poor.
99. March 11 Coverage Strengths
• Early coverage dominated all news cycles, and the
front pages of all major U.S. print publications
• U.S. media made good use of social media and other
citizen-driven sources of information
100. U.S. Foreign Coverage Issues
• High costs at time of severe budget cuts
• Sporadic interest in foreign news from U.S.
consumers
• Most U.S. news organizations trying to refocus on
coverage of local issues
• Lack of money, people and sometimes widespread
interest means sustaining focus on foreign news is
difficult
