Sabtu, 03 Maret 2012

Nieman Journalism Lab

Nieman Journalism Lab

To learn what works (quickly), Canada’s National Post dives deep into ebooks

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 08:00 AM PST

Christie Blatchford demands eyeballs. In Canadian journalism, this is an almost universal truth — the controversial columnist is often derided, but almost always read. So it makes sense that, after poaching her (back, as it happens) from the rival Globe and Mail in June 2011, The National Post would want to use her writing in an early foray into a new medium — ebooks.

The Post, one of Canada’s two national newspapers, has undertaken a unique approach to publishing and selling ebooks: sheer volume. Since December, in less then three months, the paper’s published six ebooks — at a time when even many larger news organizations are testing the waters more hesitantly. The Post is trying it all — long-form reportage, columnist best-ofs, investment advice, and even movie reviews — all in an effort to learn what works as quickly as possible.

The Post’s first ebook was The Long Road, originally a web feature exploring Canada’s role in the Afghanistan war, and an archive of articles spanning from 2001 to present. Since then, ebooks from the Post have included a collection of Terence Corcoran’s columns on Nortel’s collapse; a compilation of pieces by conservative columnist Barbara Kay; an investment guide from personal-finance columnist Jonathan Chevreau; and a bundling of positive movie reviews from Chris Knight. Their most successful book is also their most recent: Killed Because They Were Girls, written mostly by Blatchford as she covered the Shafia “honor killings” trial in Ontario.

“We think the combination of it being a newsworthy story, and it being Christie’s writing, led to it doing well,” Duncan Clark, vice president of digital media at the National Post, told me. “That’s been instructive of what we’re going to do afterward.” The Post isn’t releasing sales figures for any of their ebooks. But Clark did say that those focusing on specific stories have tended to outsell mere collections of columnists’ work.

The Post plans to keep up the pace: It aims to publish about two books per month for the foreseeable future.

Publishing on this scale and in this volume has left the Post in a unique position — they are one of the first publications in Canada to actually pump out timely, topical ebooks to readers, giving them a market advantage. Most of the titles sell for 99 cents, although Blatchford’s goes for $1.99 and The Long Road for $2.99. They’re available on all the usual ebook platforms, including for the Canadian Kobo e-reader. Kindle, Kobo, and iBooks are the three most popular formats, Clark said, but there is no clear leader between the three. Some have sold more on the Kobo, for instance, while others have seen more success on iBooks (like Killed Because They Were Girls).

Though the Post’s digital team had been considering ebook opportunities, the catalyst came through a proposal from HarperCollins Canada. They ended up partnering with the publishing house, who acts as distributor for the National Post-controlled content.

“We didn’t come into this assuming we knew anything,” says Clark. “That’s part of the reason we wanted a relationship with a distributor.” HarperCollins is in charge of merchandising, meaning they place books in the online stores and make sure they’re seen on virtual shelves. Clark says this is key to reaching new readers — for the books, and for the paper.

Marketing for the ebooks has been primarily focused around the Postmedia Network, which owns the National Post and a large number of regional and city newspapers across Canada. This includes traditional ads in the network papers and online. (Today, at least, the front page of the National Post website features a prominent ad for the Kay ebook in its top right corner.) Editors have also been plugging ebooks in relevant places like chats with the authors.

The allure of ebooks to news organizations is obvious: the potential to take work produced for one medium and — with a little repackaging — sell it in a different one, one where readers are more accustomed to paying for content. Clark admits that right now the paper is focused on experimentation, gathering data on what works and what doesn’t before focusing on a route with a financial pay-off.

“We’re conscious about not creating fatigue,” he says. “And if the data says that’s happening, we’ll re-evaluate.”

On the record with NPR chief Gary Knell: ‘Radio isn’t going away, it’s going everywhere’

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 07:00 AM PST

Gary Knell

Gary Knell, now three months on the job as CEO of NPR, made his first major leadership decision last week by promoting Kinsey Wilson, the head of digital media, to also oversee news and radio programming. It’s the clearest signal yet that NPR, formerly National Public Radio, isn’t just radio anymore.

“Radio isn’t going away,” he tweeted, “its going everywhere.” (Forgive him the missing apostrophe.)

Knell was in Boston this week to meet with NPR’s Digital Services division, local stations, and donors. I sat down with him yesterday.

A few highlights: He said Wilson’s new role as chief content officer is meant to erase the distinction between platforms in the newsroom. He said the network plans to research and develop new programs that reach beyond NPR’s core (and aging) radio audience, targeting younger and more racially, geographically, and politically diverse listeners. And he said he expects small stations would go dark were Congress to cut funding this year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In this lightly edited transcript of our conversation, I began by asking Knell about NPR’s big investment in connected cars.

Gary Knell: Look, the car is 50 percent or so, plus, of the radio audience today, just in general. And because the technology in automobiles — and maybe because Americans are living in their cars more, sometimes you wonder if we’re going to be sleeping and eating in our cars, as well, because of traffic or what have you — the digital technology, the computer technology in cars is just exponentially growing.

“If we’re not on these platforms, we’re dead.”

So now you have voice-activation systems in Fords and other car manufacturers, which are just going to get faster, smaller, and cheaper every year, and NPR’s gotta be on there. Public radio’s gotta be a player. If we’re not on these platforms, we’re dead. This isn’t a choice of whether — it’s really a choice of how. And we decided to go first with Ford and build this connected-cars platform which is now rolling out in all their 2012 vehicles, and it’s a great asset.

…[NPR] is also a membership organization that was built to promote a local set of stations which have a relevance in their local markets. And that’s part of what NPR is and needs to continue to be. So Kinsey [Wilson]‘s role is also, not just making sure that NPR’s global and national news coverage is being accessible anywhere people can find it, but also making sure that this localism is also accessible in as many places as people can find them. So if you’re in Boston, you want to know what’s going on in Boston. Maybe if I’m a Bostonian living in L.A. and I’m lonely, I want to hear what’s going on in Boston, too. And now we have the capability to make that happen.

Andrew Phelps: I wonder what you’ve heard from stations as you’ve gone around talking to them, what some of the challenges are, making sure that those relationships are happy.
Knell: Look, I come from a station background in television, and I was the guy seconded to work with all of the stations…

“Stations are needing to embrace their raison d'être locally, and I think that that's probably a good thing.”

It’s a very scary environment for media companies, for media in general right now. There is a disaggregation of media that is impacting everyone…What is an authoritative figure as individuals become brands? There’s much less loyalty.

Look, when I worked on Capitol Hill back in the ’70s, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and maybe CBS News, what they said was like — that was it! If they said something bad about you or good about you, it was all. Now, today, it absolutely doesn’t have that relevance anymore. Because people are playing much more to the echo chambers that exist politically in the news media.

So the stations are needing to embrace their raison d’être locally, and I think that that’s probably a good thing…It’s making them focus on what’s really important and providing an essentially service locally. So even though it’s a challenging time, it’s probably a time to reevaluate and rethink and improve your local service, and I think that’s a good thing.

Phelps: I want to ask you about how NPR plans to deal with its political enemies in 2012, as it looks toward getting what little funding it does from the federal government, from taxpayers. I think some of NPR’s fans have accused the network of shying away from defending itself and not stepping out in front. I wonder if you hear that criticism, if anything will change about the way that NPR presents itself to the world, to Congress, how you plan to fend off a lot of that inevitable, hateful criticism.
Knell: I think, look, we’re about creating a civic, civil dialogue for the country, and you’re going to get different people from different political persuasions who are going to agree to those definitions or not. And the whole concept of public funding comes down to a question of, Do you believe that there’s a public interest in supporting that civic, civil dialogue? Which, to me, is an educational investment in the country. And I view it as education. We’re in the education business, really.
“We’ve got to make the case for why this is essential to the American public and talk about the work that we’re actually doing.”

It’s very important for Americans to understand what’s going on in Syria, because it does affect them. And it does affect the military budget and whether we’re going to have some conflagration which they’re going to have pay for, so that we can make correct decisions and our political leaders can make correct decisions. So I think these kinds of things are important investments publicly.

I’m not naive to the fact that others may disagree with that, especially at a time when all public spending is under scrutiny, and we’re going to have to compete against Head Start and food stamps and military budgets and homeland security and all of these important things that the public funds — and schools — so we’ve got to make the case. And we’ve got to make the case for why this is essential to the American public and talk about the work that we’re actually doing.

[...]

We have an ombudsman, a terrific ombudsman, who will respond to accusations of bias. I don’t think — on the whole, I think it is pretty hard to find that bias. But I’m not unaware of the debate which is really about what is the essential nature of government, and what should the government be funding. And we’re going to have to make our case based upon the work that we do. And hopefully people will understand that and decide to agree with us, that it’s an important thing to keep funding.

[...]

We get almost nothing from the federal government, but for certain stations in the system, especially those in less populated states, where you don’t have the numbers of big companies and philanthropists and other people who could theoretically provide more resources, [it's] going to be a huge chunk out of their budgets, to the point where some of them could inevitably go dark, and you will have news deserts in the country and no one covering adequately the state capitals in certain states in this country, and I don’t think that’s a good thing. It’s not good for taxpayers, and it’s not good in general. But we’re going to have to make the case, and I’m not Pollyanna-ish about it. It’s going to be hard work, and we’ll see what happens.

Phelps: I guess that’s where the trade-association part comes in, because a lot of the people hurt by the funding cuts, like you said, would be the stations. And so by defending NPR, you’re in a way having to defend money that’s not actually really not going to NPR, it’s going to stations. I have to think that’s a challenge, if nothing else, from a marketing perspective.
Knell: Well, it’s very hard to understand, and you know, part of me wants to do like a Schoolhouse Rock video of “how a bill becomes law.”

It’s very hard to even explain to people because it’s kind of a Rube Goldberg-type system that was invented over 40 years ago. And think about how the media world has changed in the last 40 years. It’s mind-boggling. I mean there were three television networks and PBS. That was it! No cable, no Internet, no nothing.

And think about the world today. And then the question is, does public radio or public television — does it play a unique role in the media landscape that the American public should spend scarce resources to keeping that system alive? And we’ve got to make that case. So we’re working on it every day.
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