Sabtu, 05 Mei 2012

Nieman Journalism Lab

Nieman Journalism Lab

Nikki Usher: “Who Needs Newspapers?” It’s fewer people than publishers seem to believe

Posted: 04 May 2012 11:41 AM PDT

In the April/May issue of AJR, academics Paul Steinle and Sara Brown report on their travels to 50 newspapers in 50 states to find out what was happening in newspapers big and small, from The Seattle Times to the 12,000-circulation Daily Republic in Mitchell, S.D. Their article (and full report at whoneedsnewspapers.org) might be the most optimistic future-of-news report we’ve seen so far.

Newspapers are trying to avert economic disaster. And the steps that some are taking show signs of promise — boosts in overall circulation, jumps in digital subscribers. But my concern is that newsrooms are falsely holding on to the belief that their community members will continue to see them as their most important source of information.

This view may be leading newsrooms to false optimism. Consider what we learn from the profiles of some of these newspapers in the report.

“There are no such things as sleepy towns,” says (Grand Junction, Colo.) Daily Sentinel publisher Jay Seaton, “there are only sleepy newspapers.” Citing corruption by city officials in Bell, Calif., a town that didn’t have a newspaper, Seaton vows, “That’s never going to happen here, because we’re watching.” So Bell’s corruption was really the fault of The Los Angeles Times for not doing a better job? Where do we begin with this statement?

Or consider this statement from Andy West, managing editor of Delaware State News (circulation 18,000 weekdays): “We provide information so people can make informed decisions and space every day so people can discuss what’s on their minds.”

And this statement from the Mountain Eagle, a weekly newspaper in Whitesburg, Kentucky (circulation 6,000), referring to their former publishers: “Because Tom and Pat Gish spoke truth to power, their family was ostracized.”

This celebratory conviction of journalists doing God’s work to protect the community appears throughout every portrait of the 50 newspapers profiled. But there’s an underlying, unacknowledged fact: Local news, and in particular local news online, is not something people care about as much as local journalists might hope.

As my colleague Matt Hindman found using comScore data: Local news gets less than half of one percent of all pageviews in a local market. Hindman finds that local news sites attracted 8.3 to 17 pageviews per person per month. People spend about nine minutes a month with local news, he found. Many local news sites are still struggling, beset by problems — long load time, poor design, retention of top developers and multimedia producers — that make it hard to increase engagement in a fragmented news marked.

The Who Needs Newspapers report says the keys to success include community-service-driven reporters and ethically managed reporting. And in each of the 50 profiles, editors wax on about their commitment to covering the important public-service news that keep citizens coming back to the newspaper.

More bad news: This isn’t why people are reading newspapers.

Political scientists and communication scholars have long bemoaned the extent to which people don’t care about civic affairs. (Political scientist John Zaller has proposed a model of citizenship where people only pay attention to news that directly affects them — the so-called Burglar Alarm model of attentiveness.) And, as political scientist Markus Prior has demonstrated, citizens have comparatively little interest in political news and tend to pay more of their attention to entertainment news.

Or take this claim: “Hyperlocal Web sites are blossoming.” In fact, as Hindman found, the traffic of hyperlocal websites is generally so small that it is actually immeasurable by comScore (less than 1 percent of web traffic per market). So sure, these sites may be flourishing, but by what measure?

The report gives perhaps one of the most interesting depictions of how paywalls are being used at newspapers across America. This is important detail, and I encourage anyone interested in paywalls to take a look. But as the authors admit, there is no “single silver bullet” to solve the industry’s problems.

What might work for some newspapers who have developed a paywall in a small community may not work in a big-city metro newspaper — or vice versa. Some newspapers are using a paywall with free headlines and weather and a deeper site that features paid content. The risk is that when people find better ways to access the local weather, they may feel little need to check the local news site at all.

One finding in the report that occurs in many of the state newspapers portrayed is that circulation losses seem to stop — or at least halt, or maybe even receive a boost — when paywalls are erected. But these news organizations are still tapping into the people who still read newspapers; to really understand whether these circulation numbers are here to stay, they must conduct a robust demographic analysis of who, exactly, happens to be buying these new newspapers. Staunching the decline isn’t exactly a business model, either.

Finally, this upbeat report on the importance of journalism and the future of democracy is really is a portrait of 50 newspapers in 50 states. There’s little indication about how and why newspapers were chosen, and no real way to compare newspapers against each other. The background summaries of each newspaper have inconsistent profiles to help us figure out just how much attention and staff news organizations are spending on say, local government affairs versus entertainment reporting, making it difficult to get a true sense of just how committed these news organizations are to doing what they are saying they are doing (see here and here).

The report does offer a celebration of journalism’s “iron core” of reporting. What’s disappointing is that we hear little reflexive questioning of journalism itself. File this one under future-of-news reports that fail to give us a clear look into the future of news.

Nikki Usher is an assistant professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.

This Week in Review: Parliament hits Murdoch hard, and papers’ circulation is up (or down)

Posted: 04 May 2012 07:40 AM PDT

Parliament’s damning News Corp. report: It was a second straight week of big news in News Corp.’s phone hacking case, as a committee of the British Parliament issued its report on the scandal (PDF), in which the major statement was that Rupert Murdoch is “not a fit person” to run an international media empire like News Corp. The report also targeted three News Corp. executives in particular — former Dow Jones head Les Hinton, former News of the World editor (and current New York Daily News editor) Colin Myler, and former News International lawyer Tom Crone — for their roles in the scandal’s cover-up. The three may be forced to apologize to Parliament.

The New York Times and Guardian both offered good overviews of the report, with the Times focusing more on Murdoch and the Guardian on Hinton, Myler, and Crone. Both noted that the strong language about Murdoch was decided along political lines, with liberals voting to put it in and conservatives trying to keep it out. Capital’s Tom McGeveran wrote a helpful explanation of what it means for Parliament to call Murdoch “unfit” (he probably won’t get his broadcast licenses revoked anytime soon), and NPR’s David Folkenflik also had a good breakdown of the situation for American audiences. One of the committee’s members, Tom Watson, offered more of his own thoughts on the scandal, and the Times’ David Carr translated the report for those of us who don’t read Parliament-ese.

News Corp. responded by issuing a defiant public statement, which contrasted a bit with Murdoch’s more contrite internal memo. Other businesspeople and media barons came to Murdoch’s defense, and the British broadcaster BSkyB, of which News Corp. owns a share and recently tried to take over, distanced itself from News Corp. in an effort to hang onto its broadcast license.

There’s other trouble for News Corp., too: A Washington ethics group has called on the FCC to revoke News Corp.’s Fox broadcast licenses in the U.S., and in Britain, opponents of News Corp.’s BSkyB takeover bid said they had been blocked from meeting with the government department in charge of approving the deal. There is some good news for News Corp., though — the second half of the British government’s inquiry into the company may never happen.

As for the toll on News Corp., the Times has a solid big-picture view of the scandal’s impact so far, and Reuters’ Jack Shafer looked at the escape routes Murdoch could take. The Columbia Journalism Review’s Ryan Chittum said this report, and Murdoch’s testimony last week, have gone a long way in exposing News Corp.’s culture of corruption: “The glib denials that have served him so well for so many years aren't working anymore—not with all we now know.” And the Guardian’s Henry Porter went further, writing the (probably premature) political obit for Murdoch.

Mixed signals on newspaper circulation: The Audit Bureau of Circulations issued its twice-annual report on newspaper circulation this week — here are its top 25 papers and a database of every daily newspaper in the U.S. Overall, newspapers saw a slight gain in daily circulation, including a 63 percent gain in paid digital circulation, which, as paidContent noted, includes tablet or smartphone apps, paywalled website subscriptions, and other e-editions.

The common narrative drawn from those numbers was that, as Ad Age put it, “digital paywall strategies have helped newspapers counter years of grinding declines in paid-print circulation.” Poynter’s Steve Myers looked at some of the top circulation gainers and saw that many of them had instituted digital pay plans, while very few of the losers had.

Media analyst Alan Mutter pushed back against that conclusion, noting that when you isolate print circulation, almost everyone’s numbers were down, whether they had a paywalled site or not. The circulation increase, it turns out, came from including those digital numbers (and, as Ad Age pointed, possibly counting subscribers twice), not from successfully protecting the print product.

A few newspapers that were highlighted: DCist noted that The Washington Post’s circulation drop was the largest of any of the nation’s top papers, while Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon said the decline wasn’t as bad as it appeared. J-prof Dan Kennedy looked at the numbers for the Boston papers, and the Lab’s Justin Ellis wrote about the story behind the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s increase in circulation and revenue, and its paywall.

Is tech in another bubble?: New York Times tech writer Nick Bilton became the latest to raise the specter of a bubble in the tech industry this week, reporting on the practice of startups being encouraged by their investors not to make money so as to make it easier to come up with ungrounded, outrageously high valuations. Said one Stanford professor he talked to: “This is 1999 all over again, but this time, it's gotten worse…We're back to companies throwing around funny money. The economic values don't add up.”

This started another round of debate over whether we are, in fact, in the midst of another tech bubble. BetaBeat put together a helpful scorecard of who chimed in on which side, and you can read a smart, extended discussion among many of those people at Branch. Tech blogger Dave Winer said the true sign of whether we’re in a bubble is whether the startups being formed are good businesses that make sense and will grow (and answered that, yes, that means we’re in a bubble).

Investor and blogger Chris Dixon argued that the true measures of a bubble are actually quite nuanced, and we’re getting mixed signals in many of them, though he said no good investors engage in the “flipping” practices Bilton described, because it’s not a good business strategy anyway. Tech blogger MG Siegler agreed, calling stories like Bilton’s “a bunch of vague fear mongering.” GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram said it appears as though the inflated valuations are coming in at the small, early seed-money end, which presents less of a danger to the public. Entrepreneur Michael Mace made a similar point, arguing that until those inflated dollar amounts hit public stock offerings, this market won’t look much like the late ’90s bubble.

Twitter tries to further personalize your news: Twitter moved a bit deeper into personalized news this week with the revamp of its Discover feature, which will put a heavier weight in its algorithm on links shared by the people you follow to help you find links you’ll be interested in. (All Things D has a good description of the change.) The Next Web’s Drew Olanoff said the new format gives Twitter’s information some social context, which is a big part of what was missing before.

Mathew Ingram of GigaOM argued that while the update is an improvement, Twitter still needs to build better filters to personalize and make sense of its information, before others do it instead. YouTube’s Hunter Walk pointed out, though, that it’s extremely hard for a single product to guess at what you like, what your friends like, and what the world likes, especially in a linear format like Twitter’s.

Elsewhere in Twitter news, the Lab’s Adrienne LaFrance wrote about journalistic behavior by regular Twitter users, and news execs argued over whether social media is helping or hurting journalism.

Reading roundup: A few other interesting stories, and a couple of thoughtful viewpoints to direct you to this week.

— The FCC voted last Friday to require local TV stations to put their information about political advertising online, starting in the largest markets. Free Press applauded the decision as a victory for transparency, though ProPublica noted they won’t be searchable. Before the vote, Poynter’s Steve Myers pointed out how resistant TV stations have been to reporting on this issue.

— As The Next Web first reported this week, the Washington Post planned to buy the social news site Digg. That report was followed up with reports that the Post was hiring most of Digg’s staff, but not buying the site or its technology, leaving the remaining people there to scramble to figure out the site’s future.

— In an engaging book excerpt in New York magazine, Jeff Himmelman revealed that Watergate hero Bob Woodward’s longtime editor at the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, had misgivings about some of the details about some of the sources Woodward and Carl Bernstein contacted, including Deep Throat. Woodward disputed the book’s claims, Himmelman defended them, and the Post’s Erik Wemple said he was skeptical of the reports of Bradlee’s doubts, too. Reuters’ Jack Shafer pointed out that this conflict is only about the All the President’s Men story, not the Post’s actual reporting.

— Two great posts of tips for journalists: Poynter’s Craig Silverman with a list of resources on how to verify information on social media, and the Guardian’s advice for journalists of the future.

— Finally, Danish scholar Rasmus Kleis Nielsen wrote an insightful piece for Reuters based on some ongoing research he’s doing on what’s hindering news startups in Europe. He calls it “irrational imitation” of the dominant online model of decades past.

Photo of Murdoch by Pierre Boulle, bubble by zzub nik, and newspaper boxed by Lulu Vision all used under a Creative Commons license.

Announcing the 75th class of Nieman Fellows

Posted: 04 May 2012 06:35 AM PDT

This morning, the Nieman Foundation announced our incoming class of Nieman Fellows, which will be our 75th. (The Nieman Fellowships allow a group of accomplished journalists — half American, half international — to come to Harvard for a year of study on the subjects of their choice.) I’ve gotten to meet many of them, and they look like a great group.

Of particular Labby note: This is the first Nieman class to feature Nieman-Berkman Fellows, who will work jointly with us here at Nieman and with our friends at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. We initially expected to pick one Nieman-Berkman Fellow, but we ended up going with two: Borja Echevarria of El Pais and Laura Amico of Homicide Watch. You’ll be reading more from them and about their work here in the fall.

Here’s the full listing. We’re very excited to see these terrific journalists here in Cambridge in a few months. And if you’re interested in being a part of the 76th class of Nieman Fellows (who’ll arrive in August 2013), it’s not too early to start thinking about your application, even though the first deadlines are still half a year away.

U.S. Nieman Fellows in the class of 2013 and their areas of interest:

David Abel, a staff writer at The Boston Globe, plans to study the evolution of new media, the impact of rising income inequality on the social fabric, and the science as well as the potential effects of climate change.

Laura Norton Amico, editor and founder of Homicide Watch in Washington, D.C., will study criminal justice journalism in the digital age, focusing on best practices, useful tools and new models for crime and courts reporting. She is one of two new Nieman-Berkman Fellows in Journalism Innovation.

Brett Anderson, the restaurant critic and a features writer at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, will study the forces and people fueling the modern American food culture and their impact on the way Americans eat. He will also examine the role food and restaurants play in communities during crisis.

Chris Arnold, national correspondent, National Public Radio, will study the reshaping of the government's role in housing after the collapse of the bubble and how the crash will shape the future of homeownership and the American Dream. Arnold will also examine obstacles to technological innovation in consumer product safety. He is the 2013 Donald W. Reynolds Nieman Fellow in Business Journalism.

Alexandra Garcia, video journalist at The Washington Post, will study how news organizations can create visual experiences that engage users and will explore interactive storytelling forms.

Jeneen Interlandi, a science and health journalist based in New Jersey, will study the history of pharmaceuticals, the cultural forces that have shaped our relationship to medication and the impact that has had on our perceptions of illness and health.

Blair Kamin, architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune, will study architecture, landscape architecture and urban design, seeking to re-examine and revitalize the field of architectural criticism in print and on the Web. Kamin is the 2013 Arts and Culture Nieman Fellow.

Jennifer B. McDonald, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, will study canonical works of literature and philosophy and the historical role of the critic in culture.

Betsy O'Donovan, a freelance writer and editor for The Herald-Sun, Durham, N.C, and other publications, will study entrepreneurial models for community newsrooms, with a particular interest in establishing and protecting the value of original reporting. She is the 2013 Donald W. Reynolds Nieman Fellow in Community Journalism.

Mary Beth Sheridan, a news editor at The Washington Post, plans to study international politics and economics, with a focus on countries struggling to transition from authoritarian to democratic systems, particularly in Latin America.

Jane Spencer, international editor at large for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, will study new digital tools for narrative storytelling, with an emphasis on how emerging technologies can improve news coverage of global women's issues.

Laura Wides-Muñoz, Hispanic affairs writer for The Associated Press, will study the nexus between immigration and economics. She will examine how the global financial crisis affects the integration of immigrants into U.S. society and explore multimedia platforms for presenting the data in new and dynamic ways. She is the Louis Stark Nieman Fellow. The fellowship honors the memory of the New York Times reporter who was a pioneer in the field of labor reporting.

International Nieman Fellows in the class of 2013 and their areas of interest:

Karim Ben Khelifa (Tunisia/Belgium), a photojournalist and founder of Emphas.is, will conduct research on journalist-audience engagement, analyze the behavioral economics linked to crowdfunding and study new business models promoting the diversification of visual storytelling. He is the 2013 Carroll Binder Nieman Fellow. The Binder Fund honors 1916 Harvard graduate Carroll Binder, who expanded the Chicago Daily News Foreign Service, and his son, Carroll "Ted" Binder, a 1943 Harvard graduate.

Katrin Bennhold (Germany), a London-based reporter for the International Herald Tribune, will study the economics of gender and motherhood and explore the remaining barriers and costs of gender equality in the early 21st century. She is the William Montalbano Nieman Fellow. Montalbanowas a 1970 Nieman Fellow and a prize-winning Los Angeles Times reporter who reported from 100 countries during his 38-year career.

Ludovic Blecher (France), executive director and editor-in-chief of Liberation.fr, will study the business models of online media and explore ways to monetize high-value journalism. He is the Robert Waldo Ruhl Nieman Fellow. Ruhl, a 1903 Harvard graduate, was editor and publisher of the Medford Mail-Tribune in Oregon from 1911-1967.

Lee Chong-ae (Korea), senior reporter, Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), will study journalism related to complex trauma, focusing on people who have experienced the effects of periods of colonialism, war and military-influenced dictatorial administrations followed by rapid economic growth. Her fellowship is sponsored by The Asia Foundation.

Jin Deng (China), senior editor, Southern Weekly, will study how the democratization and fragmentation of information in the social media era will affect China's journalism, society and politics. Her fellowship is supported through Sovereign Bank and the Marco Polo Program of Banco Santander.

Borja Echevarría de la Gándara (Spain), deputy managing editor, El País, will study the structural evolution of newsrooms around the world and how disruptive innovation is altering traditional business and workflow models for news. Using data from both print and Web-based news organizations, he also will try to discern the patterns in successful newsrooms and determine if the practices of digital start-ups can be applied effectively in established newsrooms. Echevarría is one of two new Nieman-Berkman Fellows in Journalism Innovation.

Yaakov Katz (Israel/United States), military reporter, The Jerusalem Post, will study the use of censorship in the digital age to determine whether it is relevant and consistent with democratic values and if it can be applieddifferently, especially in coverage of Israel and the Middle East.

Souad Mekhennet (Germany/Morocco), a reporter and columnist for The New York Times, Der Spiegel and ZDF (German TV), will study how the uprisings in Arab countries in 2011 have influenced the long-term strategies of terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and how Shariah (Islamic law) deals with human rights, women and democracy. She is the 2013 Barry Bingham Jr. Nieman Fellow. Bingham, a 1956 Harvard graduate, was the editor and publisher of the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times.

Paula Molina (Chile), anchor and editor at Radio Cooperativa, Chile's leading radio news station, will explore the opportunities created by the digital revolution for better development, sharing and distribution of broadcast news content.

Finbarr O’Reilly (Canada/United Kingdom), Africa-based photographer for Reuters, will study psychology to better understand how the human mind and behavior is affected by personal experience, with a focus on trauma and conflict zones. He is the 2013 Ruth Cowan Nash Nieman Fellow. Nash was best known for her work as an Associated Press war correspondent during World War II.

Beauregard Lucian Tromp (South Africa), senior field producer, e-news Africa, will study the practice of countries and global corporations purchasing large tracts of land in Africa to address future food shortages and the impact of that for trade agreements, governments and local communities concerned about possible exploitation under a "new colonialism." His fellowship is supported by the Nieman Society of Southern Africa.

San Truong (Huy Duc) (Vietnam), a freelance journalist based in Ho Chi Minh City, will study public policy, American literature and the history of Vietnam, with a goal of sharpening his work and impact as a political analyst. He is the 2013 Atsuko Chiba Nieman Fellow. The Chiba fellowship honors the memory of Atsuko Chiba, a 1968 Nieman Fellow.
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