*Steve Buttry passed away on February 19, 2017. The content of this page will be maintained as an archive. Anyone seeking to follow-up with Steve’s professional work should contact the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication.*
Digital First journalism
Much of my work on this blog has focused on helping journalists and newsrooms transform from old print- or broadcast-oriented processes and thinking to digital-first journalism.
I did much of this work while I was an editor at Digital First Media. I left DFM in 2014 and don’t know what’s going to happen with the company. I think the advice remains sound for any journalist or newsroom pursuing a digital-first approach. Capitalized references to the company undoubtedly remain in many posts, but I offer them now as advice for journalists or newsrooms of any company.
Three series of blog posts summarize a lot of this my teaching and advice about achieving a digital-first transformation:
Explaining digital-first journalism
A series in 2011-12 explained several key aspects of digital-first journalism:
- How a digital-first approach guides a journalist’s work
- Digital-first journalists: What we value
- 10 ways to think like a digital-first journalist
- Leading a digital-first newsroom
- How digital-first succeeds at making money
- Digital-first blog posts (in a print format)
- Questions to guide a digital-first reporter’s work on any beat
- How a digital-first reporter should approach statehouse coverage
Leading a digital-first newsroom
Much of my work for DFM in 2013 involved hiring and mentoring new editors. My work with the editors resulted in a long series of blog posts (and incorporated some earlier series:
- Have fun and be fun
- Earn respect from elders by doing good work and showing respect
- Develop new leaders in your newsroom
- Make your important points in writing
- Foster teamwork
- Recognize and reward excellence
- Control your calendar and think big
- Ask staff about their aspirations
- Ask staff to propose ways to measure performance
- Adapt leadership style to your staff and your challenges
- Work and hire to reflect your community’s diversity
- Lead your staff in learning data skills
- Handle firings with honesty and compassion
- Tips for interviewing job candidates
- Check a job candidate’s digital profile
- Hiring is an opportunity to upgrade your newsroom
- Your newsroom is watching
- Time is precious; manage it carefully
- The digital audience values quality photos
- Rethink your mobile approach
- Lead your newsroom in pursuing mobile opportunities
- The balancing act
- Blog about your newsroom’s transformation
- You’re a role model; be a good one, like Dave Witke
- Respect personal life
- Communicate face to face
- Respect authorship
- Ask, don’t tell
- Make training a priority
- Do what you say you’ll do — by being organized
- Lead Digital First meetings
- Lead and stimulate discussions of ethics
- Stand up for your staff
- Stand for accuracy and accountability
- Admit your mistakes
- Deliver criticism with a challenge
- Praise is free but priceless
- Disrupt your newsroom culture
- Be aware of your example
- Listen
- How do your daily budgets reflect multi-platform planning needs?
- What new beats would help newsrooms cover local news better?
- Why editors should be active on Twitter
- The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors
- How the crowd can save your career
- Leading your staff into the Twitterverse
- Mentors don’t always see their seeds blossom
Culture change
My final work for Digital First Media was “Project Unbolt,” an effort to help newsrooms free themselves from their print culture and processes. That resulted in a series of blog posts, ending with an index to all the Project Unbolt posts.
I also discussed Project Unbolt and other culture change issues in 2014 posts for the INMA Culture Change blog:
- Failing to risk: More dangerous than risking failure
- 9 ways leaders can exhibit innovation
- 3 reasons to regularly praise staff members during transformation
- 4 tips for changing company culture by focusing on action over structure
- 10 steps toward a mobile-focused culture in your media organisation
- Digital First Media pilot newsroom involves whole staff in its local version of culture change
- Digital First Media slowly changes newsroom deadline culture to reflect digital realities
- Time to dismantle the newspaper factory culture
Business models
I have written extensively about new business models for the news business:
- My Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection presented a vision for a new business model for community media. While I wrote it in 2009, much of it remains relevant to news organizations.
- Newspapers don’t need new ideas; here are lots of ideas for new revenue streams
Mobile strategy
I also have written several posts about mobile strategies for the news media:
- News organizations need mobile-first strategy
- How news organizations need to change to pursue a mobile-first strategy
- News organizations need to help local businesses pursue mobile opportunities
- You can read my first three mobile-strategy posts (with comments) as a pdf with a table of contents.
- Tomi T. Ahonen’s view of the present and future of mobile
- A mobile-first project for your community on the go
- Experts’ views on mobile: the opportunity of our lifetime
- Mobile-first strategy questions and answers
- 4 ways to measure the local mobile advertising opportunity
- Even with older Americans, mobile is gaining on print
Obituaries
Several posts focused on business models for obituaries:
- Newspaper charges for reading obituaries online: double dipping on death
- LancasterOnline editor responds about charging to read online obituaries
- I respond to criticism about obits from LancasterOnline editor
- A possible new business model for obituaries
- Jobless journalists could find a business model in obituaries
- Obituaries: A chance to tell a loved one’s story
- Nearly everyone gets an obituary; if not, journalists can and should still verify deaths
Entrepreneurial journalism
I have written about entrepreneurial journalism, a topic I have taught in graduate courses at Georgetown and American Universities:
- Reading resources on entrepreneurial journalism
- A key decision for entrepreneurial journalists: What’s your content plan?
- Entrepreneurial journalists should pursue several revenue streams
- David Cohn served journalism by developing a crowdfunding model
- ‘Good enough’ and ‘value-added’ work together in entrepreneurial journalism
- Lessons from a successful journalism entrepreneur: Craig Silverman
Paywalls
I have also commented extensively on the folly of trying to support journalism by paywalls:
- Seven reasons charging for content won’t work
- Online news sources abound in most communities
- Newspapers demand: Gimme another ball!
- A peek behind the Civil Beat paywall in Honolulu
- Newspapers’ paywall announcements are misleading
- Janet Coats is right: New York Times paywall is “rear-view mirror” model
- New York Times meter (paywall) will start running soon
- Gannett’s latest paywall announcements: Would you pay for obfuscation?
- Howard Owens gives 10 reasons paywalls don’t work
- Subscriptions don’t ensure quality and free access doesn’t hinder it
- NY Times paywall successful? Not so fast …
- Don’t believe anyone who tells you paywalls (or any aspect of news-biz revenues) are a settled matter
- I am so tired of the paywall argument
- New revenues hold much greater promise than paywalls
Newspaper Next
I was involved in the Newspaper Next project at the American Press Institute. I blogged several times about that experience:
- 5 years later: Newspaper Next didn’t change the news biz, but it changed me
- I’d like to see a study of the innovative projects inspired by Newspaper Next
- Clayton Christensen (again) shares disruptive innovation insights with the news biz
- Be the Answer: My report for Newspaper Next on using interactive databases to provide answers and generate revenue
- From 2006: Newspaper Next: Important jobs to do
- From 2006: We need to re-educate our gut
- From 2006: Why aren’t they using our pay phones?
- From 2007: Embrace the beauty and opportunity beyond upheaval
- From 2007: Adapting isn’t enough; we need to transform
- From 2007: Databases help you become the source for answers
- From 2007: Why would anyone target nonconsumers?
Keynote speeches on journalism and the news biz
I have been a keynote speaker occasionally for conferences about journalism and the news business:
- Upholding and updating journalism ethics
- My Gettysburg oration: A vision for journalism that can long endure
- Embrace discomfort: my address to the Arizona Newspapers Association
- For journalists: It was the worst of times, it was the best of times
- Google’s no threat to press freedom
Government subsidies
I vigorously opposed suggestions that the solution to newspapers’ woes lies in government subsidies:
- American media need innovation, not subsidy
- Columbia’s Michael Schudson responds to criticism of “Reconstructing Journalism” report
- I respond to Michael Schudson’s defense of “Reconstructing Journalism” report
- Michael Schudson discusses government’s historic role supporting journalism
- Commentary on Downie and Schudson’s “The Reconstruction of American Journalism”
- Five reasons government shouldn’t subsidize journalism
- Five more reasons government shouldn’t subsidize journalism
- Arguments for government subsidies for journalism: weak and inconsistent
- 4 things the feds should do instead of protecting newspapers
- FTC discusses public policy toward journalism today
Newspapers’ “Original Sin”
I joined an online discussion of the “Original Sin” of newspapers in the digital age:
- Newspapers’ Original Sin: Not failing to charge but failing to innovate (an interesting debate developed in the comments)
- Chris O’Brien responds about data and readership
- Another view on newspapers’ Original Sin, from Howard Owens
Competition and collaboration
I’ve written about competition and collaboration:
- Patch is coming to my town! Thoughts on competition and collaboration
- You can compete and collaborate at the same time
- Whale-watching tours show how you can compete and collaborate
Innovation in the news biz
I’ve written about other issues relating to innovation:
- Personal news: Big news in small circles
- Clinging to the past won’t save newspapers
- The 5 W’s and How are even more important to the business of journalism
- An updated look at pay phones, power outlets, fish tacos and newspaper innovation
- Some journalists get uncomfortable with the transparency they expect from everyone else
- Students’ media use shows journalism’s future
- Robert Niles says there is no new revenue model for journalism; I disagree
- Leading your colleagues toward prosperity
- To change an organization, focus on action, not the org chart
- For journalists, it was the worst of times, it was the best of times
- Generations in the Desert: a response from one who’s wandering
- Methinks newspapers protest too much about bloggers
- To converge or “deconverge”: an interesting discussion
Journalism
Journalism ethics
I blog frequently about journalism ethics:
- Upholding and updating journalism ethics
- New SPJ Code of Ethics: an improvement but a disappointment
- Suggestions for new guiding principles for the journalist
- Bob Steele’s principles and questions have guided journalism ethics well
- From 2008: Bob Steele: a source of guidance and clarity
- #PoynterEthics discussion: Links about updating journalists’ guiding principles
- Spokespeople should be named; set the bar high for confidentiality
- Transparency changes repetition from deception into consistency
- Wall Street Journal lets cowardly sources avoid accountability in Goldman Sachs story
- A quiz to teach journalists about plagiarism and attribution
- Questions and answers about journalists’ opinions in social media
- You can quote me on that: Advice on attribution for journalists
- Our cheating culture: Plagiarism and fabrication are unacceptable in journalism
- ‘He said, she said’ stories fail to seek the truth and report it
- ‘Rules of the Road’: A conversation starter on digital journalism ethics
- Journalism ethics guidance from a great teacher, Phil Record
- Journalists’ Code of Ethics: Time for an update?
- Reporters need to stop trading silence for access
- Ethics outrage at the Washington Post
- I lifted (but attributed) most of this post on plagiarism
- Humanity is more important and honest than objectivity for journalists
Accuracy
I blog frequently about accuracy and verification:
- How to verify information from tweets: Check it out
- Verification doesn’t threaten narrative journalism
- Linking and checklists could have prevented journalists from Manti Te’o ‘girlfriend’ hoax embarrassment
- The liveblog, podcast and slides from Craig Silverma’s 2010 accuracy workshop for TBD and American University.
- My accuracy and verification tips.
- My accuracy checklist (inspired by Craig’s).
- Confessions of a teenage fact checker.
- Sharing stories with sources before publication is risky, but can improve accuracy.
Aggregation and curation
- Curation techniques, types and tips
- News curation ideas from Digital First’s new team
- Aggregation guidelines: Link, attribute, add value
- Expanding on my aggregation points
Community engagement
- What does community engagement mean?
- What does an engagement editor do? Digital First editors answer
- Engagement editors: an emerging, important job in Digital First newsrooms
Career development
- How the crowd can save your career
- Job-hunting advice for journalists selling skills in the digital market
- Making the most of your journalism internship
- Some tips on landing your next job in digital journalism
- Thoughts on redirecting and rejuvenating a career
- Your digital profile tells people a lot
- Gene Weingarten knows branding (even though he scorns it)
- Confessions (strategies) of a branded journalist (or a journalist with a reputation, if you prefer)
- Career lessons from a former ‘Twitter monkey’
- Use digital tools to showcase your career and your work
- Career lessons from Daniel Victor’s swift ascent
- Enduring lessons from being fired 20 years ago
Change in journalism
- This I believe about journalism and the future of media
- Dear Newsroom Curmudgeon …
- Lessons learned from a letter to curmudgeons
- How do you recapture the joy and excitement of journalism?
- Don’t let your bosses’ decisions control your career success or happiness
- Bitterness is like wreaking revenge on yourself
- 40 years in the news biz: I’ve seen a lot of change
- Lessons from the life and death (30 years ago) of the Des Moines Tribune
Post-Industrial Journalism
I blogged about the Post-Industrial Journalism report from Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Media:
- Size of community doesn’t determine quality of journalism
- I believe journalism is improving, not declining
- Key question for journalists and news organizations: What should we stop doing?
Journalism education
- After consulting with the curriculum committee of the Schieffer School of Journalism at Texas Christian University, I shared my views on how journalism schools need to update curriculum in the digital age.
- A journalism professor seeks advice on learning and teaching social media
- You can’t go back to the basics in journalism education; go forward with the basics
- Student media need to pursue a digital-first approach
Liveblogging & livetweeting
- Suggestions for livetweeting
- Liveblogging: Telling stories as they happen
- Tips on liveblogging for journalists
Blogging
- 13 ways a reporter should use a beat blog
- The 5 W’s (and How) of writing for the Web
- 7 keys to SEO: How to help people find your blog
- 8 basic points for beginning bloggers
Storytelling
- Digital storytelling and mobile strategy
- Tips on crowdsourcing news, feature and investigative stories
- Tips on curating the community conversation
- Why should storytelling stop evolving now?
- Q&A with Roy Peter Clark
- Lessons in narrative journalism from the rescue of the twins
- The heart: one of journalism’s best tools
- Multimedia storytelling
- Storytellers are challenged, not limited, by Twitter and other digital tools
- Dan Conover, Joel Achenbach and Deborah Potter on storytelling
- Alex Howard presents storytelling as a feast
- Katharine Hansen joins discussion of storytelling
- Lessons for journalists in tragic stories
- Czech Village project uses new storytelling techniques
- Digital media offer varied writing tools and opportunities
- Multimedia storytelling examples
- Getting personal: Learning and telling life’s intimate stories
- Make your story sing: Learn from songwriters how to tell stories in just a few words
Research on digital journalism
I criticize research that shows bias or ignorance about digital journalism:
- 5 big problems with ‘Navigating News Online’ study
- Old media find comfort in study of Baltimore media (they didn’t look very close) and related Pew doesn’t understand news ecosystem well enough to study it
- Academics measure new media (again) by old-media yardstick
Social media
#twutorial series
I have a series of how-to tweets about using Twitter that I called #twutorial:
- Step one for using Twitter as a reporter: Master advanced search
- Use lists, TweetDeck, HootSuite, saved searches, alerts to organize Twitter’s chaos
- Denver Post staffers’ #theatershooting coverage demonstrates Twitter breaking news techniques
- Hashtags help journalists find relevant tweets and reach more people
- Advice and examples on how and what journalists should tweet
- 9 ways to find helpful people and organizations to follow on Twitter
- To build Twitter followers: Join the conversation, tweet often, be yourself
- 10 ways Twitter is valuable for journalists
- Updated Twitter time management tips
- Don’t be selfish on Twitter; tweeting useful information is good business
- What’s the best way to view Twitter’s users? 16 percent or 30 million
- Twitter data shows journos’ ‘burstiness’ boosts followers
- #Twutorial guest post from Alexis Grant: A simple Twitter strategy that will dramatically grow your network
- #Twutorial guest post from Deanna Utroske: Tips for twinterviewing
- #Twutorial guest post by Menachem Wecker: How to use Twitter to find the best sources
- #Twutorial guest post by Jaclyn Schiff: How using Storify can help you find great sources
- Getting started on Twitter: #twutorial advice for a friend
- Should a journalist livetweet a funeral? If so, how?
- Use Twitter for conversation about an event, not just promotion
- How to verify information from tweets: Check it out
Other Twitter posts
- How to build local engagement on Twitter
- Updated and expanded Twitter tips for journalists
- Resources for journalists using Twitter
- How to build local engagement on Twitter
- New York Times protects its readers from reading about “tweets”
- My tweeps help with tips and examples of Twitter’s value in covering breaking news
- Posts examining Twitter’s coverage of breaking news stories, including a case study on @statesman
- Primers on Twitter for journalists, top editors, people in business, Twitter newbies and high school journalists
- Riveting Twitter narrative of robotic surgery at St. Luke’s
- Tweeting wisdom of the ages
- Quick tweets about Twitter’s usefulness
- How retweeting drives blog traffic
- Bad judgment doesn’t taint the platform
- Understand Twitter before you write about it
- Another Twitter expert who didn’t bother to learn
- Yet another anti-Twitter piece written in ignorance
- Research shows Twitter’s value in questioning rumors
- Facebook news-feed changes mean newsrooms need new engagement strategies
- Correction on AP photos: Newsrooms don’t have rights to post them on Facebook
- Jeff Edelstein’s Sandy engagement shows how to use Facebook during a big story
- Why does Bill Keller write about Facebook without trying to understand it?
- I finally add my Facebook Timeline; I think I like Intersect better
- Facebook engagement tips: Use breaking news photos and calls to action
- Engage on community Facebook pages, not just your page
- Romeo and Juliet on Facebook: great fun and community engagement
- I’m starting to like Pinterest: a digital scrapbook (but potentially a baseball card collection)
- How journalists and newsrooms can use Pinterest
- Helpful links for learning and exploring Pinterest
- Pottstown Mercury’s wanted-poster-style Pinboard is resulting in arrests
Other social media
- 10 tips on using social media for business
- Syncing social media tools (especially Foursquare) requires some thought
Social media policies
- The Buttry version of social media best practices
- ASNE offers good advice on social media, but too much fear and not really best practices
- Simple guidance on social media
- Two posts on the Washington Post’s social media policy
- Objectivity and neutrality aren’t the only ways to protect a journalist’s credibility (still commenting on the Post guidelines, but expanding to a broader issue)
- Washington Post’s social media policy didn’t prevent Mike Wise’s Twitter hoax
- Several blog posts on the Wall Street Journal social-media policy and other major papers’ policies
- Criticism of the Los Angeles Times social media policy
- A more thoughtful approach to ethics in social media (about the Roanoke Times ethics policy)
- The key to social media ethics: good judgment (on NPR’s social media ethics policy)
- The Guardian shows newsrooms how to guide digital journalists
TBD
I blogged frequently about TBD, the Washington local news site I worked for in 2010 and 2011:
- Pursuing a new opportunity in Washington
- Yes, engagement is everyone’s job — and my job
- Wanted: Vision for community engagement
- Working at TBD has been a highlight of my career
- Multiple views about changes at TBD
- TBD has made mistakes, but we understand our community(ies)
- A year after launch, lessons from the TBD experience
- Another TBD lesson: Transparency is the best approach in good times and bad
- TBD or Tampa Bay Times, the name doesn’t make the brand
- Two years after TBD launched, the #TBDiaspora are doing OK
- Belated aggregation on the life, times and death (finally) of TBD
[…] Commentary on media issues […]
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For putting paywall, the questions to answer for newspapers are:
1. Are their content really premium so the users will not go other places to see them free?
2. Second part of this question is:
Are they providing good options for users to pay:
a. Day pass
b. monthly subscription
c. yearly subscription
d. Pay per article (???)
I have seen first 3 modes of payment on several newspaper sites. But I have not come across the fourth one. As a user, it makes sense to pay for the article that is interesting.
Why is this option missing?
Is there a newspaper/magazine that is doing that? If not, why is it not done?
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As my various paywall commentaries linked above say, I think paywalls are a losing proposition. So I’m not exactly the person to say why people aren’t considering a particular option. But I would venture that the difference between a day pass and a price per article would be negligible, so any site offering a day pass essentially is offering to let you buy a single article. But the other point is that the actual price per article would be so low that the cost of handling the transaction would give you negligible proceeds. iTunes charges 99 cents for a song you might play over and over. So you can’t reasonably charge that much for an article you would read just once. If a newspaper costs 50 cents and has 50 articles, isn’t the fair-market value of a single news story just a penny?
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Thanks Steve for your reply.
You are right. One article may be 5-10 pennies.
For credit card fee, ask user to create an online wallet where they deposit $10 and use it at multiple sites.
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Alan Mutter proposed a good payment system in ViewPass and couldn’t get any support for it: http://bit.ly/aGNcWx
The truth is paywalls are mostly a waste of time, so the means of collection or the rate charged doesn’t make much difference.
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[…] Media commentary […]
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Steve, I wanted to thank you for compiling the PDF’s that you did with your posts above. I understand that can take time to do… so I appreciate it. 🙂
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[…] Media commentary […]
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This is a treasure!
I am new to blogging. I am interested in reporting/writing on social and mass media. Thank you very much for the compilation.
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[…] I thoroughly enjoyed researching guidelines on attribution and corresponding with Steve Buttry, a tremendous resource on best practices for […]
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