Nieman Journalism Lab |
Posted: 06 Dec 2011 02:30 PM PST  In 2008, eight Ohio newspapers, upset with what they saw as high prices charged by the Associated Press, rebelled against the wire to form their own statewide news-sharing service, the Ohio News Organization. With rare exceptions, stories produced by any of the newspapers could now be published in any other members newspaper — without the AP having to serve as an intermediary. That inspired Roy Hewitt, longtime sports editor at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, to form a similar organization for sports journalists. The National Sports Content Sharing Network formalized what sports writers and editors have already been doing for years — freely sharing stories and columns with one other. There are now 55 U.S. and Canadian members. Today, the Associated Press is embracing, not shunning, the network. The NSCSN will begin using the AP’s Marketplace distribution platform to share content. Hewitt said he made the deal on three conditions: “One of those was that it would be free, which is guaranteed for at least the first year, and it’s not expected to cost after that because AP is not looking at this as a revenue stream. No. 2, that it would be open to people who are not AP members, because you do not have to be a member of AP to be part of [the exchange]. And three, that the material only be available to members of the network,” he said. The AP software already integrates nicely with most members’ existing content-management systems; it replaces an existing platform that required a lot of copying and pasting. For the NSCSN, it means a dramatically simpler workflow. “For us,” said Jim Reindl, the AP’s director of sports products, “it’s happier members.” In other words, the AP’s support engenders good will and exposes more would-be customers to its software. Two small U.S. papers that are members of NSCSN — Hewitt wouldn’t say which — do not belong to the AP. “The historic record is there of the unrest we faced in Ohio a few years back, and it’s no secret that the Cleveland Plain Dealer is one of those newspapers,” Reindl said. The agreement does not change the way NSCSN works. It is a cooperative; no money changes hands. Papers put content in and they get content out. The network carries the kinds of stories that might not make the AP wire — all of the columns, sidebars, and analyses generated by a big game. “I certainly saw how OHNO could be helpful to papers with reduced resources, but it’s not something new to us in newspapers,” Hewitt said. He left news for sports 31 years ago and has spent the last 19 at the Plain Dealer. “We’ve always shared with other sports sections around the country. It doesn’t happen for metro, it doesn’t often happen for features…but it’s never been unusual if the Browns were playing the Steelers for me to call up Jerry Micco at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and say, ‘What do you got this week that might be of interest of my readers?’ And offer him the same. We’ve done that forever.” The AP has a recent history of helping smaller papers cover sports in a time of declining resources. This spring the wire introduced “hometown leads” for Major League Baseball coverage. For news outlets that can’t staff away games, AP reporters file stories about the losing team in addition to the typical winner-focused stories. After hearing very good feedback, the AP expanded the service to NFL, college football, and college basketball this summer. Image by flickr_lisa used under a Creative Commons license. |
Posted: 06 Dec 2011 07:00 AM PST  Smartphone news apps are built on sacrifices. Few provide the full wealth of information available on the web sites news organizations have spent years building up and out; the screen size alone limits the information density an app can present to the reader. Whether it’s interactive graphics, multimedia, or entire blogs or sections, something’s usually missing. For Politico, that meant their original iPhone app exchanged some of the website’s richness and variety of content for simplicity. For an outlet built for reporting specifics at speed, that was a sacrifice worth living with. Or at least it was, Ryan Mannion, Politico’s chief technology officer told me. “The biggest thing we saw is people didn’t want their experience dumbed down,” he said. “They didn’t want an inferior experience when going to the app versus going to the website.” So they opened it up. The recent update to the Politico app is jammed with all the news and blog categories from the site, adding in new areas like video, morning tipsheets (including Mike Allen’s Playbook), Arena, and the policy channel. (The app was rebuilt based on the codebase of Politico’s iPad app, which with the tablet’s larger screen size was built with more news streams than the iPhone version.) The new app also introduces push notifications for breaking news, which were absent before — readers were expected to sign up for email alerts — and added delayed reading features, including offline reading and article saving. All the new features suggest Politico wants to create a more personally tailored news experience. Through the app, I could now choose just to keep updated on the 2012 election, Ben Smith’s new blog, and tip sheets on defense, lobbying, and technology. If I have no need for transportation policy news or Congress, the app won’t pull it in. Mannion said those updates in particular will be of value to a busy Washington readership that may find itself without a signal either in transit or a blacked out committee room. “Getting on planes, the Metro — just being able to download content in the morning and make sure it’s available throughout your commute, that was the big reason,” Mannion said. In moving towards personalization, the updated app slides away from a kind of utilitarian functionality that places a value on specifics and speed in information. If the app was “dumbed down” in anyway, it was in the service of information, the content, and getting it to readers quickly was what mattered. But Politico has built out a wealth of verticals its iPhone app debuted in February 2010, and if you’re the type of person that wants your mix of information on green energy loans and celeb spotting with presidential news, that stripped down delivery system becomes a hinderance. The tech doesn’t matter to readers, but technology in service of their content does, Mannion said. Speed and context is still what matters for Politico, but also unobtrusive technology that doesn’t constrain your journalism. “Ease of use is the biggest improvement we made to the app itself, and I think it’s very well done,” he said. “But I think we just scratched the surface. There are more things that can be implemented from a personalization standpoint. That’s something we’re looking to provide our readers with in the future.” |