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| This Week in Review: A limp response to plagiarism, and a proposed tax to save newspapers Posted: 28 Sep 2012 07:49 AM PDT
Plagiarism and traditional media’s crisis of confidence: The parade of plagiarism scandals extended to Canada this week, when Margaret Wente, a popular columnist at The Globe and Mail, the country’s largest national newspaper, was accused by a professor named Carol Wainio of lifting content from five writers in a three-year-old column. The Globe and Mail’s public editor, Sylvia Stead, gave the accusations a very perfunctory review late last week, attributing the charges to an “anonymous blogger” (though she’s exchanged emails with Wainio in the past about her blog), not calling it plagiarism, and generally taking Wente’s explanation at face value. Several observers found that explanation woefully lacking: Colby Cosh of Maclean’s called it “frantically defensive,” former Ryerson j-prof John Gordon Miller said it had “irreparably compromised” Stead’s integrity as public editor, and the National Post’s Chris Selley said the Globe needs to “stop treating its readers like fools.” The paper responded to the outrage by dealing Wente some unnamed punishment (she’ll keep writing as usual) and reorganizing the chain of command to give the public editor more autonomy. In a memo to staff, the paper’s editor also called Wente’s actions “unacceptable,” though he also did not use the p-word. Wente wrote a column aggressively defending herself and taking several shots at her accuser in the process. Stead, the public editor, was a bit more penitent in her follow-up, acknowledging she had erred in not being thorough enough, not calling the offense unacceptable, and in referring to Wainio as anonymous. Poynter’s Craig Silverman, a former Globe columnist, covered several key questions about the scandal, calling the paper’s response inadequate and dismissing busyness and web culture (as Jesse Brown of Maclean’s posited) as reasons for the plagiarism. Likewise, Cosh still wasn’t pleased with the paper’s response, noting that it’s given no indication of how it plans to stop this from happening again. Several observers saw this as a critical moment for public confidence in Canada’s traditional media institutions. Toronto reporter Karen Ho and former Globe web editor Kenny Yum both made that point, with Yum wondering if the Globe should really choose to defend Wente rather than its own reputation. The Tyee’s Shannon Yupp called the scandal a turning point for the gatekeeping authority of Canada’s legacy media (and one that reveals the Globe to be more interested in exploiting its readers than serving them). And GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram — another former Globe reporter — said the paper needs to get used to no longer being on a pedestal. The open, factchecking nature of the web, he said, “imposes a duty on media entities that goes beyond the simple admission of error. Transparency may not be pleasant, but it is the only realistic option available.”
Leigh’s Guardian colleague Roy Greenslade said the idea’s well worth considering, though he wondered why big media would be funded instead of startups. Others made similar points, though they were much less receptive than Greenslade. Ewan Spence of Forbes raised a number of questions about the idea, concluding that having the government decide which news outlets are worth supporting is a dangerously slippery slope. Charlie Beckett of the London School of Economics’ POLIS had the most thoughtful post on the subject, including the argument that “it is vital not to equate 'journalism' with 'existing news media organisations.' Whenever an industry changes profoundly because of social and technological shifts, someone gets hurt.” Institutions are still important, Beckett said, but the ones that adapt the best won’t necessarily be the ones that are most prominent right now. Mathew Ingram of GigaOM echoed his point on the difference between saving journalism and saving newspapers. Mike Masnick of Techdirt also made this point, arguing that if certain newspapers can’t adapt and innovate, the government should let them fail, not prop them up. (He also pointed out that it would be pretty easy to game web traffic numbers if that’s what the fee was based on.) For the University of Central Lancashire’s Andy Dickinson, the most alarming part of the proposal was the idea that journalists still saw a hard separation between their journalism and the economics of the businesses they worked for. Paul Carr of PandoDaily took issue with Leigh’s assertion that newspapers are essential to properly functioning democracy, arguing that if that’s the main value of traditional journalism, the industry is doing an awful job of convincing the public of its own worth. Dominic Ponsford of the Press Gazette also ripped Leigh’s idea, but proposed an equally controversial one in its stead, arguing that publishers should block Google from indexing their material and create their own news search engine.
Quartz’s app-free, link-heavy approach: The Atlantic debuted its new business news site, Quartz, this week, and the talk around the launch wound up highlighting some long-simmering conflict around the journalistic value of linking and aggregation. The site’s editor in chief, Kevin Delaney, emphasized in his kickoff post some of Quartz’s defining qualities — mobility, simplicity, collaboration, and openness. The New York Times’ David Carr put the site in the context of The Atlantic’s larger digital strategy, which remain centered on free digital access with support through sponsorships and events, and GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram praised that strategy in a post of his own. Peter Kafka of All Things D detailed one of the most distinctive qualities about the site’s tech side — though it’s mobile-centric, it’s not creating any apps but will instead have readers access the site through their mobile browsers. Poynter’s Jeff Sonderman listed a few of the benefits of that approach — universal accessibility, simple URLs, total control — but said the design still needs some work. Here at the Lab, Joshua Benton gave the site a smart, thorough review, breaking down the context behind its design and content choices, and laying out some of its key challenges going forward. Paul Raeburn of Knight Science Journalism’s Tracker was more skeptical, especially regarding Quartz’s choice to cover “obsessions,” rather than beats. (He didn’t see much difference between the two.) PaidContent’s Jeff John Roberts focused on the business model, agreeing with Ken Doctor’s prediction that sponsorships wouldn’t be enough to fund high-quality content and Quartz would have to dip into subscriptions. The Columbia Journalism Review’s Hazel Sheffield also gave a critical review that centered on the site’s lack of commenting and “original content. That critique triggered a lively Twitter discussion about the relative merits of linking and producing content in-house, part of which was Storified by CJR’s Kira Goldenberg. Reading roundup: A few smaller stories in the media world you might have missed this week: — The Pew Research Center released two fascinating studies this week, the first examining the differences in news consumption among those who live in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Poynter’s Jeff Sonderman and the Lab’s Adrienne LaFrance both summarized the key findings, with Sonderman focusing on rural residents’ proclivity toward traditional media. Former newspaper editor John L. Robinson used the results to aid his point about the importance of gaining readers’ interest, more so than trust. The second was a meta-study looking at trends in media consumption, noting in particular the vulnerability of TV. Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon put together a good summary. — The Lab’s long look at j-school innovation continues, and USC journalism professor Robert Hernandez highlighted this week with a strong post urging students to take charge of their own journalism education. One of his former students, Kim Nowacki, gave her own tips for “hijacking” j-school. Also, John Wihbey of Journalist’s Resource called for j-schools to teach students digital research, and Arizona State’s Dan Gillmor urged them to ground students in the liberal arts. PaidContent also looked at another news org/j-school partnership, this one between MIT and the Boston Globe. — Rupert Murdoch eased up in his war against Google, the company he once called a “parasite” on news orgs, by allowing his papers the Times and Sunday Times to be indexed in Google’s search results. PaidContent looked at what might have been behind the decision, and what it might do for those papers. — Finally, a couple of useful posts for those trying to find journalism or media jobs: Bob Cohn of the Atlantic described what digital media employers are looking for, and at Poynter, Matt Thompson provided some great tips for applying and interviewing for journalism jobs. Photos by Swire and Antje used under a Creative Commons license. |
| Friday Q&A: Kevin Delaney on making Quartz an essential international brand Posted: 28 Sep 2012 07:00 AM PDT
In his letter to readers on launch day, Delaney wrote, “What is the best way to build a global news organization in 2012? With your help, we'll figure it out.” Delaney told me one of the ways to do that is through the power of the open web, not restricting access to content behind a paywall or being in an app store. This is something he has a little experience with, having previously worked as managing editor of the mostly paywalled WSJ.com. But if Quartz isn’t going to charge for its work and isn’t available in newsstands or app stores, how will they find their audience? I spoke with Delaney about the virtue of being mobile-friendly for business readers, how Quartz plans to use comments to engage readers, and how the site wants to innovate in advertising as well as editorial. Here’s a lightly edited transcript of the conversation. Justin Ellis: One of the things you guys have talked about is wanting to be essential, something your readers will want to check in on every day. How do you do that? Kevin Delaney: We’re really focused on making Quartz an essential read. Our target is global business professionals — so readers who are on the move, but also know they need to know what’s going on in the global economy. For many of these people, there’s effectively one economy that stretches around the world and affects their businesses and their lives. So what we’re doing is providing them with the essential information they need to know at a digital rhythm and on any digital device they happen to have on hand. The way we become an essential read is through smart analysis of the key macro questions affecting the global business professional, using a digital platform that is available to them, whether they’re on their mobile phone, their iPad, their desktop. Ellis: What if this global business professional speaks Chinese or Japanese? Are you guys going to be looking into translation? Delaney: Our goal was to get out in English first, but we would love to expand to other languages. I would be surprised if we didn’t do that sometime in the future. We’re looking to reach a real international readership, and at the beginning it will be readers who are international but speak English. But our ambitions extend beyond that. Ellis: What you think the voice of Quartz should be, in terms of the writing?
Delaney: It’s a really interesting question, and I think the answer to that will evolve over time. One of my colleagues here told me this morning her mother told her that what she liked about Quartz was that we respected our readers. I think that partly gets at the answer to your question. Which is to say we want to be as creative and smart as possible.We want to respect our readers, be analytical, and funny where possible. But we don’t need to be gratuitously snarky or flip. I think the voice that we’re going for is one that is smart, journalistic, and internationally-minded, but at the same time accessible and creative. Ellis: You aren’t on a print newsstand and you’re not in an app store. How are people going to find Quartz? Delaney: We very consciously constructed Quartz so that it will thrive on the free and open web. I think it’s as great a time as ever to build a new journalistic product, a new media organization. And the reason is that you make yourself open to the web. We’re a free product; we don’t have a paywall; we do not have registration walls; we don’t actually have the wall of someone having to go into an app store to download us. Our content is made to share. That, I believe is the most effective distribution you have possible. So the imperative that creates for us is one that I’m excited about, which is to create good and interesting content. And we’ve structured it so that, if we succeed with that, this will be shared, and if someones shares it and their friends like it, they’ll share it as well. The other thing is that the site is architected to work on different devices, so you don’t have to install an app on different devices — you can go and use the site on whatever you have at hand. Ellis: It’s been just a couple of days, but some folks have had trouble with the UI of Quartz, and some are wondering if there are bugs that need to be fixed. Are there things you guys are still working out, or is this a new type of experience that readers will have to get used to? Delaney: We built Quartz and view the launch as a start of what we’re going to do. We optimized it for tablet, for iPhone, and then for desktop. When you’re building an HTML5 app, you can run into compatibility issues in supporting every single browser and device in the world. We’ve put it out so that it works well on our primary platforms, and we’ve released updates to the site that make it work better on additional browsers and platforms. Our technology approach is ambitious, but we’re also working very hard now that it’s out to make sure that everyone possible can experience our site in the fullest way possible. Ellis: Any initial observations from your stats that you guys are seeing that are surprising? Are people looking at it primarily on their phones or on their tablets? What can you tell me? Delaney: One thing I’ve been really encouraged by, just in the early days, is the geographic spread of our readership. I don’t know off-hand the numbers for our total traffic breakdown by country, but there was a moment [Tuesday] in our first full morning where I looked at Chartbeat, which we’re using for real-time analytics, and 40 percent of our traffic was coming from the US and the rest was spread other places in the world. A big chunk of it was from Europe, but there also was some traffic from Asia as well. I was really encouraged by that because I thought it demonstrated some success in being really open to the web from day one and having a global readership, which was really our goal with the project. Ellis: One of the things folks have noticed is that at this point there’s no comments on stories. That’s something that’s a debate about in journalism circles. But we did notice Zach mentioned on Twitter that you guys are cooking something up for comments. Could you give me an idea what that is? Delaney: We felt that the current commenting systems on most websites weren’t especially satisfying. I know Nick Denton at Gawker and others share this view and are trying to get their heads around a solution to it. So we have designed a way for readers to effectively comment, but it’s a different interface. And we will be rolling that out sometime in the future. We’re committed to commenting but believe that there’s an opportunity to change the form — the user interface may be the best way to put it — for commenting. And I think we have something innovative to do there that we’re continuing to build and we’ll roll out over time. Ellis: Quartz already has an API. I’m wondering what opportunities you think that presents. Delaney: There are two primary advantages of having an open API. The first is it actually makes your own development easier. So if you have an open API, your own developers can use it, play with it, and you can build things on it. The second advantage is you have your content out in the broader world and allow other people to do things with it you might not have time or have thought of. A good example of how this has been done is with The New York Times API. One of my favorite applications of it is the mashup of the New York Times starred critics film reviews and the Netflix on-demand catalog. We don’t know what the specific applications could be for Quartz content that are similar to that, but our strong preference is to make that available from day one and see what happens. Ellis: Something we’ve been talking about here is how fluid your obsessions will be. They sound like something that is meant to change from time to time. Will they change every month, two months, five minutes? How do you determine that?
Delaney: The idea for obsessions stemmed from our observation that really good blogs and magazines have what we think of as defining obsessions, and these obsessions change over time. We’ve gone out with a number of things our news staff is focused on and obsessed with. Our expectation is that they change with some frequency. We haven’t explicitly noted this to the reader, but we talk about having some major obsessions and some that are more minor. So I think there are some major obsessions that will probably be more consistent over time, although they could change as well. In terms of the time frame we might obsess about something, we haven’t quite gotten there yet. But we’re active in our news meetings talking about obsessions and what candidates for obsessions are. We have a list of obsessions we haven’t developed enough to go out with them from day one. But we have a high degree of confidence that we will essentially promote these to obsessions in our navigation and in terms of reporting focus pretty quickly. We see them as important macro-judgments about what is important to our readers. Ellis: Your sponsored content didn’t seem very prominent in some places at launch, and in some places it looked like there was a banner ad on top, “Sponsored by Chevron” or something like that. How does the placement of these play into whether they are clicked on or noticed? And are display ads going to be a big part of what you’re doing? Delaney: We definitely wanted to innovate in terms of what we offer advertisers in the same way we wanted to innovate with our journalism and our product. So we have two forms of advertising. One is what the ad sales people call “engage,” and that’s a display ad that fills the bulk of the content well when you encounter it. It’s similar to a full-page ad in a newspaper, or magazine, in terms of being big and in the reading space, but it looks like a glossy advertisement. In our case its been adapted so that you can play videos and can swipe and look at photos, so that it’s touchable when you’re on your phone or iPad, and responsive to the device you are using. The other form of ads is sponsored content, and you encounter them in the list of headlines, and if you click on them you go into an article that is written and provided by a sponsor. No editorial staff ever has anything to do with that. We wanted to make it pretty clear that this was different from our editorial content. You mention that it looks like there is a banner ad. One of our decisions was there should be a sponsor logo there, and by having the sponsor logo on the content it would help make clear that this was coming from the sponsor. Our expectation is that the sponsors create quality content and they are incentivized to engage with the reader, and there are share tools and other things on the content that allow them to do that with the articles they write and the videos that they post. But no one is looking in any way to mislead the reader about what the difference is between sponsor content and Quartz’ own editorial content. Ellis: What are your thoughts about native advertising or content advertising? We’re seeing a lot more organizations that are doing it now and they try to be transparent in it. But I wonder, will people click on it? Delaney: I think the older forms of advertising are relatively broken and the right rail ads on traditional websites are not great, for the most part, for readers or for advertisers. I think that there’s an imperative to rethink how advertising is handled, and I think sponsored content is an interesting approach to it. It puts some onus on the advertiser to write things, or post videos, or do data visualizations, or whatever they do, that are compelling for readers to actually spend time with them and share them. In some ways, it makes the advertisers’ challenge similar to the challenge that an editor has — that the content be compelling. I think over time that’s probably good, that advertisers are thinking actively about the best ways to do stuff that interests readers. I think it’s still pretty early, in terms of how that’s done today. But that’s probably a positive development. |
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