Nieman Journalism Lab |
- Journal Register Co. declares bankruptcy…again: Is this the industry’s first real reboot?
- Bill Grueskin: News orgs want journalists who are great at a few things, rather than good at many
- Miranda Mulligan: Want to produce hirable grads, journalism schools? Teach them to code
| Journal Register Co. declares bankruptcy…again: Is this the industry’s first real reboot? Posted: 05 Sep 2012 11:04 AM PDT It was just three years ago that the Journal Register Co. filed for bankruptcy, its collection of small local newspapers hit hard by the economic crisis and the secular decline of the newspaper industry.
Through it all, Paton emerged as the industry’s most vocal cheerleader for a digital-first culture — and that was even before “digital first” went from a mantra to the name of a new parent company that would also run the much larger MediaNews chain of newspapers. JRC reported digital revenue growth as strong or stronger than their peers and seemed to be making good progress towards a company-wide culture change. So today, JRC announced…it was declaring bankruptcy again. Here’s Paton:
Journal Register expects to emerge from bankruptcy in around 90 days; operations will continue uninterrupted during the process. Since JRC is as watched as any newspaper company outside The New York Times Co., here are three quick thoughts on today’s move, based on Paton’s post, the company’s press release, and our previous reporting. I. Room for further consolidation?JRC is owned by Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that has investments across much of the publicly traded U.S. newspaper industry. Those investments, combined with its merger-without-merging with MediaNews last year, has led some, like our own Martin Langeveld, to posit that Alden is pushing for a major consolidation of the newspaper industry. It’s easy to imagine how some of JRC’s recent moves — like its outsourcing of national business news and its chain-wide aggregation project Project Thunderdome — could scale well across a broader swath of the industry. JRC will apparently enter bankruptcy with a buyer at the ready — something called 21st CMH Acquisition Co., “an affiliate of funds managed by Alden Global Capital LLC,” which has submitted a signed stalking horse bid. So it appears that, in the end, Alden will still be in control, with Paton continuing as CEO. (I’m not sure how much to read into the creation of something called an acquisition company — is it just to acquire JRC, or is it a staging area for further acquisitions and consolidation, a sort of decades-later echo to what Gannett did buying up family-owned papers? Does 21st CMH stand for “21st Century Media Holdings”? Just a guess.) Newspaper valuations have for the most part stopped plummeting — if only because there’s only so far for a still-profit-making company to fall. (Year-to-date, some are actually up in stock price: The New York Times Co. is up 21.5 percent, Gannett’s 13.5 percent.) But it’s reasonable to think there are still any number of companies that would be happy to find an exit to scale. By re-buying, in effect, a slimmed-down JRC, Alden seems to be showing it’s still interested in that model. (Although it’s more than a little crappy that JRC’s employee FAQ says decisions about everyone’s job status will be “made by the ultimate purchaser” — when that ultimate purchaser is apparently just another arm of the current owner. It’s theoretically possible that, at a bankruptcy auction, someone could outbid Alden for JRC, but it seems highly unlikely; Alden’s one of the few folks wanting to put money into newspapers rather than pull it out.) II. A second shot at shaving debtIt’s worth noting that Paton didn’t become CEO until after the last bankruptcy was concluded. (Paton joined JRC’s board in August 2009 when the company came out of bankruptcy; he became CEO in early 2010.) Paton is arguing now that the terms of the previous bankruptcy were built on higher hopes for print than has since proven justified — that the company didn’t shave enough off its debt and contractual obligations to hack it in today’s business. We’re on the right track with digital revenue, he’s saying, but we’re still handcuffed by fiscal decisions made from a print-is-healthy mindset:
Timing is, truly, everything. The newspaper companies that made terrible-in-hindsight decisions to bet on print at peak valuations — McClatchy buying Knight Ridder, for instance — were stuck with crippling debt obligations. But if you just stuck around long enough, that major metro that cost $562 million in 2006 could be had for $55 million in 2012. Alden, as a fund, focuses on distressed assets, those available at market values below their true value. (You can see why they’d be interested in newspapers.) JRC seems to suffer from an analogous problem: It went through its bankruptcy at a time when some executives still thought the downturn was cyclical and not permanent. That left it with obligations that likely can’t be sustainable in the primarily-digital-revenue model Paton is building toward. One imagines that Paton won’t make that same mistake this go-round. (Sister company MediaNews already had its strategic, debt-trimming bankruptcy.) That’s little comfort if you’re owed a share of those pension benefits now deemed “no longer sustainable,” of course. But the reality is that most newspaper companies are still not close to a footing that’s sustainable for the long term. Anyone who’s surprised by today’s news and thought the industry’s cuts were over is going to be disappointed for, at a minimum, several more years. (Go back and re-read David Carr’s prescient July 9 article, which put it plainly: “Two highly placed newspaper executives told me last week that while the industry had already experienced a number of strategic bankruptcies, more will most likely take place to deal with pension obligations.”) III. It’s put-up-or-shut-up timePaton’s been the industry’s most effective evangelist for a digital future. (It helps that he took over a newspaper chain not known for quality or tradition beforehand; he has a free hand that Arthur Sulzberger or Don Graham don’t to do deep institutional surgery.) JRC and Digital First have been great at putting forward an innovative face, from its heavy-hitter advisory board to small demonstration projects (Ben Franklin Project) and more substantial rethinkings of workflows (Project Thunderdome). And they’ve done so in a way that is both open (they’re happy to tell you about the amazing things they’re doing) and closed (not reporting financial results, as publicly traded companies must). But it’s been harder to be certain how Paton’s optimism has translated into results. Digital revenues are growing, but from an unspectacular base. Many of the company’s initiatives seem, while interesting, unlikely to move the revenue needle much. Print revenues are a problem, just as they are at its peers. Today’s release illustrates that JRC hasn’t yet found the magic formula. But could Paton’s plan be a model for the local and regional newspaper industry as a whole, as some have dearly hoped? Paton now will have his chance to prove it. In around 90 days, he’ll have had his chance to shed the costs he wants to shed. No longer will “we were built for print” be a good excuse; if two bankruptcies can’t clear out all those cobwebs, I’m not sure what could. “Digital first” will move from a slogan to a corporate name to a foundation of the company’s business structure. The newspaper industry’s problem today is not that its leaders don’t know how to make money in media. Lots and lots of money still flows through newspaper offices every day. It’s that they can no longer make that money at the scale they could 10 years ago — but their cost structures are still tied to that old scale. That’s why the past half-decade has been a seemingly endless string of layoffs and cutbacks, shaving dollars and people to keep up with revenue declines, while still being stuck in a fundamentally print-driven structure. Meanwhile, as newspapers were busy writing press releases about layoffs, their nimble online-native competitors have been able to start from a blank sheet of paper and build for a digital scale of revenue. This bankruptcy will allow JRC to have get the closest thing the newspaper business has seen to a true reboot. Now all Paton has to do is deliver. |
| Bill Grueskin: News orgs want journalists who are great at a few things, rather than good at many Posted: 05 Sep 2012 10:30 AM PDT
Editor’s Note: It’s the start of the school year, which means students are returning to journalism programs around the country. As the media industry continues to evolve, how well is new talent being trained, and how well are schools preparing them for the real world? We asked an array of people — hiring editors, recent graduates, professors, technologists, deans — to evaluate the job j-schools are doing and to offer ideas for how they might improve. Over the coming days, we’ll be sharing their thoughts with you. Here’s Bill Grueskin, dean of academic affairs at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, talking about the need for specialization. For many years, striving journalists seeking their first jobs would consult the back pages of Editor & Publisher magazine. The Help Wanted ads went on for pages, filled with pleas from small-town newspaper editors who would often say they were seeking reporters "would could do everything." In those days, "everything" meant a day comprised of covering a town commission meeting, typing school lunch menus and, before leaving, emptying the tray of D-76 developer solution in the darkroom.
Editor & Publisher is a much smaller publication now, alas, and the stench of D-76 no longer permeates newsrooms. But this idea of the "do everything" journalist has persisted into the digital age. The phrase we hear now is the "Swiss Army knife" journalist. Meg Heckman, web editor of New Hampshire’s Concord Monitor, referred to this when quoted in an AJR article earlier this year, adding that reporters "need to know a little bit of everything." LinkedIn features a number of journalists who tout their multiple skills. One describes himself this way: "Photographer, videographer, web designer, graphic designer….I was a Swiss Army knife in the office." Where the industry leads, journalism schools usually follow, and as a result, many of us have launched programs designed to imbue our students with a buffet of digital skills. Those have included photo, video, radio, web design, search engine optimization, social media, and data visualization. Thus armed with this wheelbarrow of talents, journalism graduates could tell employers that they were as adept at Final Cut Pro as writing nut grafs, as versed in long-form video as in short-form breaking news. It's true that some newsrooms do want one-size-fits-all journalists. And the reasons are clear and understandable. Many publishers face shrinking personnel budgets, as well as escalating needs to boost traffic to websites and apps. Given that advertisers are usually willing to pay higher rates for video pre-rolls than display ads, or that photo slideshows drive far more pageviews than articles, it follows that editors want young reporters who can cover meetings with a camera as well as a laptop. But this one-size-fits-all approach demonstrates a lack of nuance about the tremendous transformations in our business. Yes, journalism is going digital. But that means many different things. Crafting web video, deploying Twitter as a reporting tool, and presenting data-driven graphics all fall within the umbrella of "digital journalism," but they have little in common with each other. Indeed, the skills barely overlap. Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism has a robust Career Services office with a career expo that regularly attracts more than 100 employers a year. Those news organizations don't often ask for "do-it-all" journalists these days, says Ernest Sotomayor, dean of students. Instead, they are chiefly focused on students who understand the value of reporting, news judgment, and writing. They often say they want students who can demonstrate proficiency in a specific digital skill or two. Having additional skills is a plus, but without strong fundamentals, they don't land top jobs. And universal digital training belies pedagogical reality as well. Students usually come with, or develop over time, an intense interest in one or two formats. Asking them to become proficient at more than a few of them sets unreasonable expectations and, more importantly, deprives them of the need to excel at something rather than everything. The Swiss Army knife is a useful tool on camping trips, but you'd be unlikely to use one in your kitchen if you have a great paring knife or corkscrew nearby. Journalism schools that send out graduates with rudimentary training in a large number of platforms are providing little value to their students, and are disserving the business that is fighting a battle for survival. |
| Miranda Mulligan: Want to produce hirable grads, journalism schools? Teach them to code Posted: 05 Sep 2012 08:39 AM PDT
Editor’s Note: It’s the start of the school year, which means students are returning to journalism programs around the country. As the media industry continues to evolve, how well is new talent being trained, and how well are schools preparing them for the real world? We asked an array of people — hiring editors, recent graduates, professors, technologists, deans — to evaluate the job j-schools are doing and to offer ideas for how they might improve. Over the coming days, we’ll be sharing their thoughts with you. Here’s Miranda Mulligan — new executive director of the Knight News Innovation Lab at Northwestern, formerly digital design director for The Boston Globe — arguing that journalists need to learn how to code if they want to become better (and employable) storytellers. Learning how to make software for storytelling and how to realize news presentations into code are currently the hottest, most pressing skillsets journalists can study. There has never before been more urgency for our industry to understand enough code to have meaningful conversations with technologists. And yet if you attend any event with a collection of jouro-nerd types, inevitably the same question will come up. Someone will ask — philosophically, of course — “How can we tell better stories on the web?” and proceed to bemoan the tedium of reading a daily newspaper and a newspaper website, likening it to Groundhog Day, the same stories presented the same way, day after day. Sooner or later others add their frustrations that “we” — in 2012 — are still writing for the front page instead of the homepage.
We’ve all had this discussion a thousand times. But now, it’s not just the visual journalists complaining about the stagnation of online storytelling and presentation. For me, there’s only one response to this: Journalists should learn more about code. Understanding our medium makes us better storytellers. For an industry that prides itself on being smart, tolerating ignorance of the Internet is just stupid. The time is now for our future journalists to learn about code. We need to innovate our curricula, really looking at what we are teaching our students. Learning, or mastering, specific software is not properly preparing our future journalists for successful, life-long careers. No one can learn digital storytelling in a semester. Mastering Dreamweaver and Flash isn’t very future-friendly, and having a single mid-level “Online Journalism” course offered as an elective does more harm than good. We should be teaching code in all of our journalism courses — each semester, each year, until graduation. The list of jobs for designers and journalists who can write code is growing — seemingly exponentially. So, let’s all grab our copies of The Art of War and attack this problem from every angle: We need to teach our students to be more technologically literate. We need to teach them how to learn and how to fail. That, my friends, is making the Internet. I am not arguing that every single writer/editor/publisher who learns some programming should end up becoming a software engineer or a refined web designer. The end goal here is not programming fluency. However, there’s a lot of value in understanding how browsers read and render our stories. Reporting and writing a story, writing some code (HTML, CSS, Javascript), and programming complex applications and services are all collections of skills. A fundamental knowledge of code allows for:
Journalism needs hirable graduates that can create sophisticated visual presentations and can realize them in code. But many students are intimidated, not excited, by the tools now fundamental to visual storytelling. In fact, the prevailing sentiment throughout journalism and communications specialties is that “we” are still intimidated. Maybe this attitude is trickling down to the universities — or maybe up from them. But “we” have all got to get over our fear of the Internet. Last September, I participated in a half-day student seminar at the Society of News Design’s annual workshop in St. Louis. To be brazen and speak for my panel-mates, we were all shocked by how apprehensive the students were toward HTML, CSS, and Javascript. In fact, after three hours of nudging them to make the time to learn some code, a female student boldly asserted that she really didn’t care about digital design and wanted advice for students hoping to break into print design. It’s our job as educators to remove fear of learning, a fear notoriously prevalent in journalists. HTML is not magic. Writing code is not wizardry; it’s just hard work. Learning to program will not save journalism and probably won’t change the way we write our stories. It is, however, a heck of a lot more fun being a journalist on the web once “how computers read and understand our content” is understood. Learning to program not only provides a practical skill — it also teaches problem solving. Students are learning more precise and nuanced thought processes, and the depth of their understanding of information and data will only grow. Also, for visual journalists, teaching code is teaching information design. Both news designers and web designers are burdened with the same responsibilities: organizing and rationally arranging content, illustrating ideas to deepen the understanding of a story, and working within the constraints of the medium. I believe the most important thing an instructor can ever do is inspire students to be open-minded about their skills. No one knows what the storytelling landscape will look like in two years, let alone a decade from now. As educators, we can make becoming a digital journalist feel accessible and attainable. Graduates should leave armed with a skillset that includes the ability to learn quickly and adapt, to be open to new ideas and solutions, and to take initiative like the self-starters they were born to become. They will never get bored, and they will always be employable. Our journalism pedagogy should inspire future digital journalists to be Internauts, to continually grow, constantly teaching themselves the newest storytelling tools and techniques, instilling processes for life-long learning. Image by Steve Rhode used under a Creative Commons license. |
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