Articles tagged: journalism
Saturday, 17 July, 2010. Tagged with: apple, iphone, journalism
The Angry Drunk, in a brief bout of non-swearing:
More than once in my career I’ve been in a situation where something has gone wrong, sometimes catastrophically wrong. During situations like that, when every available hand is on deck trying to fix the problem, the most enraging thing in the world is a chorus of people who have no data, no real understanding of the issue, or even an understanding of the principles involved with the issue demanding answers NOW!
That’s the role that the press has taken during this debacle. Unquestioningly repeating the claims of anyone who was willing to make a comment, speculating about technical issues that they were patently unqualified to comment on, and demanding that Apple act NOW NOW NOW to resolve the issue. And speaking of just horrible reporting; the less said of Consumer Reports embarrassing flip-flopping the better.
(via Hacker News)
My frustration is many media outlets take the easiest possible course of quoting competing experts or (ugh) industry analysts and do very little to independently and competently quantify a complex issue. And it’s not just tech journalism that exhibits this tendency. Much of our political coverage is the same quality.
Devin Coldewey writes:
The signal drop heard ’round the world was followed by many more reports of launch issues. It was rough, and because of the way the internet has set itself up to instantly propagate exactly this kind of thing, soon people were hearing about iPhone 4 issues before they even knew there was an iPhone 4. The launch problems became a bigger story than the launch. Why? Because we liked it that way.
The appetite for this kind of thing is bottomless. Reasons for interest include fanboyism, professional interest, idleness, schadenfreude, legitimate concern… there was something for everybody. Then Apple, knocked off-balance by their own unpreparedness, gave a response that simply made things worse. “Non-issue. Just avoid holding it in that way.” I can’t think of a response that could have garnered a more comprehensively varied response. Shock! Defensiveness! Rationalizing! Minimizing! The circus became a feeding frenzy. And then the official statement, in which they revealed that iPhones had been using a ridiculously inaccurate signal display for years, and that they were going to make the bars bigger? My god!
Friday, 10 July, 2009. Tagged with: budgetnc, crowdsourcing, government, journalism
North Carolina has something of a budget crisis going on. Not as severe as California’s, but one where there are a lot of tax proposals being floated as potential solutions. Here are some of the ones I’ve heard since mid-June:
These items may, or may not be in a budget passed by the legislature. I’m curious about why these particular tax proposals make sense, or do not. I’m motivated by three factors:
- I’m a business owner, and I’m very interested in what might be coming that will affect how I operate my business.
- It speaks to the part of me that got a journalism degree 10 years ago.
- I like making sense of data.
The News & Observer has an ongoing series, The Generous Assembly about how various programs and practices consume a large amount of resources. That’s a start at what I’m looking for.
I’m not approaching this with the assumption that all government spending is good or bad. I do want to know if we are getting our money’s worth. I want to know if there’s a better way to do things. I want to know what the special-interest obstacles are and the motivations behind them. I’m not interested in getting angry at anyone. I’m not interested in political gamesmanship. Talking points do not interest me. I want well-sourced information to make an informed evaluation.
Here’s an incomplete list of questions I’m interested in seeing addressed:
Is the spending we are trying to pay for effective spending?
- Are we paying for things that we shouldn’t be?
- Are there programs – Global TransPark comes to mind – that have not met their stated goals?
- Is there a possibility those programs could be fixed?
- Is there good process to determine if a program is ineffective and shut it down?
Do these tax increases make sense?
- Are these items that are convenient to tax because they’re harder to justify?
- Because some of them are purely discretionary?
- Because they’ll make a meaningful dent?
- Are there alternative tax structures to examine?
Is there an alternate way of resolving the issue?
- Could we spend less money?
- How?
- What programs would be affected? Are we talking about eliminating kindergarten to make that happen? (Yes, hyperbole, but consequences are important considerations)
Is this the best possible solution?
- Are we getting the state’s financial house on better footing or merely staving-off disaster?
- If we’re just staving-off disaster, what do we really need to do to set things right?
How is this going to affect me?
- How much are these tax increases going to cost me?
- Are these increases offset by anything?
Answering
Two late-evening tweets got a couple of responses, with one link to NC State’s Budget Central. The other is to the Sunshine Review of the NC state budget. (Thanks, @mockernut)
I don’t have comments here, but if you find information that would add to everyone’s understanding of the budget and tax situation, write-it-up and tag it with ‘budgetnc’ on your blog or with ‘#budgetnc’ on Twitter. Thanks in advance for helping me understand our state’s situation at least a little bit better.
Sunday, 01 March, 2009. Tagged with: business, journalism, social+media
There is so much cross-pollination between starting a neighborhood site and running a small business. Jeff Jarvis posted about CUNY and the New York Times beginning a partnership for a network of hyperlocal sites. Howard Owens, formerly of Gatehouse Media, is taking over The Batavian as owner and got into an interesting argument with Jarvis. He expanded on his point of view in a full post, “VCs chasing fool’s gold in funding ‘hyperlocal’ projects that ‘scale’”:
Now scale is being applied to “hyperlocal” start ups. And the meaning in this context, as I take it, is that a “hyperlocal” business needs to have the capability to expand in multiple towns and neighborhoods rapidly at a very low cost.
…
The “hyperlocal” approaches that supposedly “scale” don’t scale in one very important aspect: building new audience for community news.
Sure, they might appeal to a segment of the population that is already involved in a community, but they’re not tackling the “Bowling Alone” problem.
From the number and visibility of venture-backed, industry-supported hyperlocal flameouts, it’d be tempting to think that there isn’t money/eyeballs in being hyperlocal. Heck, the Washington Post failed to make a go of it. But it seems like all of the existing big media companies and venture capital-backed startups are trying to attack the problem the same way. Throw money at building a platform, put it in a lot of places. When it doesn’t work, it’s a failure. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a solution. Just that the way a lot of people have been trying to go about solving it isn’t working.
One of the things Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals talk about frequently is doing only those things you absolutely have to do. Trying to instantly scale the platform is premature and distracts from learning what the business needs to work and executing on it.
I was ecstatic to read David Westphal’s piece at OJR.org, talking to various local sites and how well they’re doing:
Local news sites come in all sizes and shapes. Some are non-profits. Some aren’t trying to live off the operation. But for those who are, some survivable wages are being earned.
Tracy Record and Patrick Sand, another husband/wife team who operate West Seattle Blog, are getting revenue in the high five figures. Debbie Galant, co-owner of Baristanet, earned more from the site than she did from her free-lance writing business last year. And Bob Gough, who runs Quincy News, pockets $1,000 a week in wages from his startup that serves an Illinois community of only 40,000.
Right now, there are a lot of companies predicting doom and gloom and continuing to do exactly what they’ve done. There are also entrepreneurs who “don’t know” that they’re not supposed to succeed at providing a service and earning money where others have been before. But why are these sites succeeding?
Success for these sites looks different than it does for an established media company. They’re focused on solving a smaller problem and making it the problem they’re addressing. They’re risking the business on solving it. They’re climbing Everest by climbing Everest, not thinking about how they’re going to summit then climb K2 or the Matterhorn or Denali in the exact same way with the exact same tools and the exact same resources. They’re all mountains in the way that Raleigh, Miami, Paris, Mumbai and Houston are all cities.
Within those cities, distinct areas and boundaries. I’d pursue a site covering SoMA in San Francisco differently than I would one covering North Beach or the Sunset. In Paris, the Marais is different than the 5éme arrondissement. In Raleigh, Glenwood South isn’t North Hills or Oakwood. Sure, there are similarities, but you can’t treat them as the same thing. Neighborhoods don’t scale.
I suspect beyond the stories these sites are writing, they’re solving the advertising needs of smaller businesses, the sorts of businesses that live in smaller spaces along city blocks and next to strip mall anchor stores. These are, coincidentally, the sorts of businesses that don’t tend to buy any or much advertising at the major daily. Why not? Well, drawing on my own case, buying a print or section-specific ad at a typical newspaper would be beyond budget. I’m not going to reach the right people for my business, either. A neighborhood site is a much easier way to draw and address a specific audience. Plus, it’s far more likely I can see and talk to who’s selling me the advertising. With not a whole lot of luck, they’re probably a customer, too.
Maybe there is a way to abstract a platform and aggregate neighborhood sites, but, just as mountains have their own weather, neighborhoods are unique and not taking the time to dive into them and understand them is a mistake. The large, monolithic approach is not the workable one. There’s no rule saying there must be a way to build and sustain a larger business out of “hyperlocal” content.
Tuesday, 10 February, 2009. Tagged with: journalism, twitter
Last week, I talked about flaws in how some newspapers operate on Twitter. As part of looking for counter-examples for that post, and picking up a recommendation from a coworker, I present three papers that Twitter well, in order of how well they represent how I would like a news organization to approach Twitter.
First is the Chicago Tribune’s @ColonelTribune. The Tribune apparently has what they term “unmanned feeds.” But the Colonel is where they shine. Namely, there are live people that embody the Colonel. How many, I don’t know, but that’s not important. What is important is, there’s personality. Sure, there are links to the news, but it’s in a conversational way. The Colonel feels “real.” Plus, what the Colonel chooses to link is definitely stuff people would be interested in. For instance:
A famous N. Side bakery has been closed for several health code violations. http://tr.im/fhvh
The Colonel isn’t afraid to retweet. The Colonel live tweets (as happened during President Obama’s prime-time press conference last night). The Colonel sends the reader away with links to local blogs and (as I saw today), the Sun Times.
Chase announces it will double its minimum monthly payments andcharge a $10 monthly fee for some customers. http://bit.ly/vQOX via @suntimes
Another nice thing? The Colonel will message followers with a word of thanks for a RT or via tweet of something the Colonel posted. This is supposed to be social media, and while it’s possible to get down right middle school with drama over who’s retweeting or not, it seems like news orgs default towards aloof. Right now, aloof is not the strategy to sustain the news industry. @ColonelTribune gets the balance right.
The second paper I’m highlighting is the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (disclosure applies), @startelegram. One of my coworkers, @1918, brought them to my attention a couple of days ago:
I’d like to give a shoutout to my friends @startelegram, one of the few newspapers that seems to get twitter - they don’t just dump headline [sic]
What’s to like? It’s locally focused, it leans toward things that people want to know about, like severe weather, that traditionally, newspapers seem to do their best to ignore. TV stations can go overboard with Doppler porn, but I still like knowing when and where the weather’s coming. This is ideal:
http://bit.ly/14sMt Latest on tonight’s dallas-fort worth weather: bad stuff coming between 8 and 10 pm
I also like that there’s no fear about not being “objective”:
So ARod says he did it. Does anyone in Texas really care what he says anymore? http://bit.ly/RHCr
This is what a lot of people want to see with their hometown paper, a willingness to show some emotion. Not writing about emotions in clinical terms. To have them. There’s also a tweet about some of the top stories for tomorrow. None of it’s overbearing or worked to death.
My final paper is The Oregonian, @oregonian, the first paper I recall coming across when I joined Twitter. In contrast to @ColonelTribune and @startelegram, this feed is a headline dump. But it’s smarter than your average bear. The tweets are headlines, and headlines only. They stand alone as complete tweets. @oregonian also respects followers by posting at a reasonable pace. Tweets can be separated by 20 minutes or 23 hours. That’s really a nice choice. Music wouldn’t be music without space between the notes (hat tip, Debussy).
So, I submit, when a paper wants to take Twitter seriously, these are three solid examples of what can be done.
Other reading to consider in the context of newspaper twittering:
Tuesday, 03 February, 2009. Tagged with: journalism, twitter
It was about halftime during the Super Bowl when I saw a score, via Twitter from The Sacramento Bee:
Steelers lead 3-0 in first quarter of Super Bowl http://tinyurl.com/dxp4j7
A day or so ago, I got a flood tweets from the News & Observer, like this one:
Live Nation ticketing a rough start: If you tried to buy Jimmy Buffett tickets online when they went on sale Sat.. http://tinyurl.com/a9vwuk
What frustrates me – as a reader, not an employee – about these specific tweets, is it shows some newsrooms aren’t completely grasping Twitter’s promise. I’m frustrated as a result.
First, “breaking news” needs to be breaking. Timely and relevant. If we’re not seeing the first quarter score until halftime, I’d rather do without. Twitter can simply be informative. Links are nice, but not required. If there’s not a specific story to link to, how about just tweeting the score? If a link is a must, link to a scoreboard. Either way, don’t hold information back from Twitter because the story isn’t ready yet.
Second, please drop Twitterfeed. When a large batch of stories publishes, anyone following that Twitter account gets link-bombed. Just dumping content to Twitter misses the opportunity to build interest for stories since interesting stories get buried under an avalanche of content. But it’s worse than just that. In the N&O example, the tweets are incomplete. The tweets seem like songs ending on bad notes because they’re headline and lede pulls, not something tailored for Twitter’s format.
This isn’t to say automated feeds are all bad. They aren’t. Consider, though, limiting what gets pushed to the feed, then tailor the headlines into something tweet-worthy. There’s a balance to strike that benefits both Twitter and the regular website, since some story index pages aren’t going to have the lead paragraph, just a headline.
So, “Live Nation ticketing for Jimmy Buffet concert off to rough start,” is not only a better, web-friendly headline, it’s a complete tweet. Add a URL, and it’s golden.
Still, just rewriting headlines misses the point. Get the staff involved with the twitter account. Set up section or topic accounts. Ask questions. Answer questions. Reward readers for following the Twitter account instead of passively consuming the RSS feed. See @ColonelTribune for a hint of what a paper’s social engagement via Twitter could look like.
