Giving readers in¢entive$ to $ubscribe to newspapers

The echo chamber of how to save the news business is as loud as it’s ever been.

The recent Chicago Journalism Townhall brought much discussion but few answers to how news organizations in Chicago might survive in the future.

The closing of the Rocky Mountain News Friday and the clouded futures of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and San Francisco Chronicle are underscoring the dire situation in which newspapers find themselves. Broadcast is not immune either, as the closing of bankrupt Tribune Co.’s Washington television bureau shows.

Rumor of the Kansas City Star shuttering some suburban bureaus, following devastating layoffs, bring the issue close to home in that city.

Just this week, Cablevision announced its Newsday would begin charging for online content. Hearst is exploring similar measures. And a lot of people don’t think this tactic will fly.

What other options are out there? Heck if I know, but I wonder if the following would fly:

• Give newspaper subscribers another incentive to get the paper: Make subscriptions tax-deductible. This is something I know next to nothing about, but if government appreciates the place the Fourth Estate holds in our democracy, this idea might gain traction. Readers could get some sort of tax incentive from local, state or the federal government to subscribe to the newspaper.

• Charge a small annual fee to give readers the privilege of commenting online. It’s often the most passionate (take that any way you want) who comment on news stories. A lot of people get fired up when their comments are removed from sites, claiming First Amendment violations, but the fact remains, it is the news organization’s choice to allow the public to participate in a forum. It is their choice to let people browse for free – or not.

• Charge for external components: Tribune Co. is part owner of CareerBuilder, the job search Web site. Having used this site in the past, I can attest that I’ve never paid a buck to post my resume, browse jobs or apply for new gigs. (It may be that CareerBuilder charges for some services, but I can’t determine that) Why not allow people to post their resumes for free, but charge for different levels of access to jobs? This is one example of external companies that are owned by news companies.
  

• I’m a big fan of wacky marketing ideas. Case in point: The Golden Ticket. It sent the world into a frenzy when Willy Wonka announced a lucky few could visit his (creepy) chocolate factory if they found a Golden Ticket. While this idea doesn’t leverage the news so much, I think newspapers could do a lot with the idea of a Golden Ticket. Five newspapers will include Super Bowl tickets/Eagles tickets/a fabulous Hawaiian vacation, etc. The Sun-Times does this periodically, and recently gave a reader a check for $25,000. For some towns, this is a great marketing opportunity for not only the paper, but also for businesses/advertisers.
  

Could ideas like this save the Rocky? I don’t know. But we’ve got to be open-minded, even if it means appearing close-minded. Too much is at stake.

Constructive criticism for "The Printed Blog"

About two months ago, I was ruminating about the future of journalism and how I could capitalize off the industry's woes. I realized that I and many other journalists will have to keep plugging away towards something to tip the balance back in our favor, but not before I had a genius idea.

Wouldn't it be great, I thought, if you could take locally produced news and blog content from the Web and repurpose it in print to distribute for free as a commuter tabloid, relying on local advertising? You can imagine my shock and dismay when I read several weeks later about The Printed Blog, a commuter tabloid relying on local advertising that repurposes locally produced Web content for print. Naturally, I think entrepreneur Scott Karp has a good idea here, and it debuted to much fanfare from major media outlets.

I finally got my hands on a copy of the full color, glossy rag, which looks more like Rolling Stone than the Sun-Times (PDF here). I was looking forward to seeing how Karp and his team presented my brilliant idea (with a hat-tip to Karp for putting it in motion...oh, and coming up with the same idea). I am unimpressed, and here's why.

I will concede that The Printed Blog, which is also distributed in San Francisco, is in its infancy, and is still working to add contributors, and is not a final product (in searching for a tagline, its temporary tag reads "Tagline would actually be nice here").

The publication strives to be uber-local, adding advertisers that appeal to crowds at certain L stops in Chicago. That said, I was expecting similiarly local blog content. But when I read the Feb. 17 edition, given to me by a co-worker, I found only one story that even mentioned Chicago. It was written by a blogger that apparently lives in New York.

Only two stories appeared to be written by Chicagoans. One was from a blog called Second City Hockey, and talked about how the NHL should link up with Turner Sports. The other, from The Latest and Greatest, compared the live viewing experiences of Oprah vs. Bozo the Clown.

To recap: Chicago mentioned once in a publication aimed at Chicagoans. Other places mentioned include: Washington, D.C.; New York; Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota and Texas, in a story about states that have decent job markets; and Rhode Island. There's also a story written by what appears to be a British writer. A front-pager dealing with Proposition 8 was written by a New York blogger.

So this seems contrary to uber-localism. There's not one piece of content from some of the well-known local blogs, like Chicagoist or Gapers Block (which may not be signed on to contribute). Seems to me that if you're going to appeal to Chicagoans, your content should deal with issues and themes relevant to Chicago.

I also didn't like how TPB shared links to the blogs. Rather than showing readers they could visit a blog at say, www.webstainedwretch.blogspot.com, it directs to sites like tpburl.com/0rdnq3. If you go there, you'll somehow reach The Latest and Greatest. But tpburl.com is TPB's "link direction system," which I can only imagine leads to more clicks at TPB's Web site. It takes away from writers the opportunity for immediate recognition.

I don't know if it's because my 20s are waning, but I thought a lot of the content in this particular issue was lacking in substance. A rant about stupid band names (Wilco, Nirvana, the Beatles, apparently) by a guy who just discovered My Morning Jacket lacked passion. A Seattle blogger's story on foie gras is old news to Chicagoans. A lengthy detailing of a British girl's attempts at a one-night stand made me cringe. A slightly unpleasant story about kids trying anal sex would do little brighten a morning commute.

There's a lot of good blogging and reporting happening by indie outlets in Chicago. This could be a great place for them to be featured.

Lastly, I am not a big fan of the ultra-glossy paper. I was reading this issue at home and it was difficult to read, since the pages reflected the light in my apartment. I would suspect that newsprint would be easier on the eyes, easier to fold and read, and perhaps even cheaper to produce.

Now, this post is not meant as a slam on TPB, which I think has potential if it thinks more about its audience. And this is a non-scientific analysis of just one issue. If I looked through others, I might find differently. I hope so.

I wish the TPB the best of luck, but I think it needs to take a deep breath and think about how this publication can serve readers and survive.

Enough with the navel gazing: What would readers do?

To pay or not to pay? That's the question journalists have been asking themselves in an online maelstrom of theory, ideas and criticism in a broad array of think pieces (to use a term that may have reduced relevance today) have accumulated on the series of tubes lately.

The news business is suffering as it rarely has before, and news organizations missed the boat on the Internet. Now people are used to getting their news for free. But, people wonder, how can we get them to pay for our product?

While I've seen a lot of chatter from people in the business, I haven't seen the question posed to the people who have the ultimate choice: Readers. (Looks like the Times got quite a response about the idea, though)

So, readers/users/consumers, if you get your news on the Internet, can you see a way that you would ever pay for it? Would you fork over a subscription fee, as you might with a printed paper? Would you go for micropayments, a debit account for news? Do you support a non-profit model? How could/would you pay to keep your news organizations of choice sustainable?

It is a dire situation. Without adequate funding (from readers and advertisers), news organizations can't report the news in the ways that best serve the community. A lot of papers may die. Others will operate on a skeleton staff.

But the people who might actually pay for these things deserve a seat at the table. After all, if they disappear, so will we.

Word clouding President Barack Obama's inaugural speech

That might take some getting used to. Vice President Biden, too.

Google, Craiglist and others can make a difference in journalism

The Internets were aflutter with responses to Google CEO Eric Schmidt's remarks about how Google probably couldn't save newspapers.

Let's not focus so much on the "paper" aspect of newspapers, but the news part. News organizations, thanks to cutbacks and a faltering economy, are less able to serve the public by providing in-depth, across-the-board coverage.

Often other organizations step up to plug the hole. The AP and Reuters did it in the latter part of the 19th century; today Spot.us and GlobalPost (Boston Globe story here) are stepping up. I was a beneficiary, like Spot.us, of the Knight Foundation, working with MTV's Street Team '08, providing political coverage from Kansas. It showed me what an amazing thing a foundation like that can be for journalism and innovation.

Mark Hamilton and Dan Froomkin (and many others, I'm sure) ruminated on Schmidt's comments. Froomkin suggested several ways Google could help news(papers), including endowing a chair to bloggers, adopting newspapers and contribute to non-profit news organizations.

All interesting ideas, but I'm going to suggest another angle.

Create fellowships at newspapers, where news organizations hire journalists to beef up local coverage, paid for with Google's fellowship dollars. Google could denote certain topics these fellows would cover, say public education, and require an application and review process from both news organizations and potential fellows. This would allow news organizations to examine areas where coverage is lacking or has fallen victim to cutbacks while allowing them to grow staff, coverage and authority in those areas.

Perhaps this could even turn into the open-source model Froomkin writes about. Google fellows' content could be distributed for free across the country to other organizations. Of course, giving content away for free may have gotten us where we are today. But that's where we stand.

Many have criticized Google for aggregating content, but that's what it does best. We can take advantage of that, and companies like Google, Craiglist, Yahoo and others that taken us into the information age can give back to the people they serve.

Word clouding KU's j-school

I saw a cool post on Megan Taylor's blog, exploring j-schools descriptions of their programs. She was inspired to create a wordcloud about the University of Florida's program after seeing something similar on 10,000 Words, which diagrammed programs at Northwestern, CUNY, Berkley, UNC and the Asian College of Journalism.

10,000's Mark Luckie writes:

One of the biggest complaints about modern journalism schools is aren't equipping the next wave of journalists with the skills they need to compete in today's newsrooms. So what are they teaching students? The online course description for several J-schools were run through Wordle.

I decided to see what the University of Kansas' program looks like, in wordle form. Here it is, below, in all its glory. First, the grad program:

Followed by the undergraduate program description, and undergrad course descriptions:

Why I hate my cell phone

I lost my cell phone. The details of how that happened are unimportant. The bottom line is, I liked my old phone, though can't remember the model, and now Sprint doesn't offer it anymore.

I purchased a Samsung M320 to replace it, and it might be the worst phone I've ever had.

It looks nice and has a camera, so that's good. But the good ends there.

My major problems:

• A weak battery: I just went to check something on the phone, and it's dead. It's only been on for about 10 hours, having charged for about 12 yesterday. This happens all the time. How can you rely on a phone that dies more often than the Middle East peace process? My old phone could stay on for days.
• Text messaging batching: This may be part of the Gmail effect. My text messages are batched by the people with whom I communicate. That means if I want to find a text message, I have to go the list of who I've recently texted with...if it's still there. The phone has a habit of disapparating texts for no apparent reason.
• Lack of notification: One of the best things about having a cell phone is being able to talk to people when they call you. Unfortunately, this phone does not do that. I'll look at the phone at some point during the day, and see that I missed several calls and texts. I'll discover I've missed a call only when I get a notification that I have a voicemail. This is a major problem.

Soon I'll get off my rear to get a new phone. Maybe it'll be a New Year's resolution. In the meantime, I'll keep on hating this phone.