Where Have All the Newspapers Gone? A song for editors

The witty woman behind the People of Wal-Mart music video has a musical take on the declining newspaper industry.

Ken Paulson‘s Freedom Sings programs are a popular feature of the First Amendment Center, where he is president and CEO. On his last evening as American Society of News Editors president last week, Ken hosted an evening program at the Newseum examining parallels between the music and news businesses, starting with Robert Levine, author of Free Ride, and then turning to musicians.

While I enjoyed the veteran songwriters on the program, original Cricket Sonny Curtis (“I Fought the Law” and the Mary Tyler Moore theme) and Jim Peterik (“Vehicle,” “Eye of the Tiger”), the highlight for me was Jessica Frech, a young musical entrepreneur who has made her name with humorous songs on YouTube. Her most famous tune is “People of Wal-Mart,” a clever music video viewed by 6 million people. She entertained the editors with the premiere of her new song, “Where Have All the Newspapers Gone?”

It’s a silly song, but a fun one, with lines like, “I don’t understand how they can get all the news from the palm of their hand.” The “Subscribe” pitch at the end could be part of her newspaper humor, but I think it’s actually a pitch to subscribe to Frech’s YouTube channel.

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Tweets from Wednesday’s ASNE convention program

I am again using CoverItLive to compile tweets from the American Society of News Editors 2012 convention. You can participate using the #asne12 hashtag.

 
ASNE 2012 Convention final day

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I’ll be leading ASNE live chat on role of newsroom ombudsmen

For the last few months, I have taken a few turns leading the #ASNEchat on Twitter for the American Society of News Editors. Starting today, we are going to alternate live-chat formats. We’ll still do a Twitter chat every other week. But on the alternating weeks, including today, we’ll do the live chat using CoverItLive at ASNE.org.

Today’s chat will discuss the role of newsroom ombudsmen with four panelists with interesting perspectives on the topic:

• Arthur S. Brisbane, public editor of the New York Times. Brisbane (a former colleague from the Kansas City Star) stirred a lot of discussion recently when he asked whether Times reporters should be “truth vigilantes.” Among those responding to Brisbane were Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson, Jack Shafer and Mathew Ingram.

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TBD or Tampa Bay Times, the name doesn’t make the brand

The St. Petersburg Times is planning to rebrand itself as the Tampa Bay Times.

Here’s the primary reason I think you shouldn’t waste time, energy, focus and money rebranding a newspaper: Print newspapers are a declining business, and news organizations should spend time, energy, focus and money on building a successful digital business for the future, not trying to rebrand the product of the past.

I’m a longtime fan of the St. Pete Times and the Poynter Institute, the non-profit organization that owns it (and depends on Times profits for its prosperity). I wish the Times well in its rebranding effort. I hope it reaps in great profits that fund growth of Poynter’s programs.

However, I think MediaNews Group (my colleagues in Digital First Media) made the right decision in reversing a move toward a regional brand, retaining the established local brands, including the Oakland Tribune, a name with a long and distinguished history.

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Why editors should be active on Twitter

Most top newsroom editors have ignored (or never heard or read) my repeated encouragement that they should be active users of Twitter.

The sorry fact is that, as many times as journalists and newsmakers have proven what an important tool Twitter is, most top editors still don’t engage on Twitter.

Prompted by Boston Globe Editor Marty Baron’s first tweet (upon which I commented on Twitter), Poynter blogger Jim Romenesko Monday checked the Twitter profiles of the editors of the 10 largest newspapers in the United States. The second or third most-active Twitter user of the group was Bill Keller of the New York Times, who has tweeted only 42 times and who famously tweeted and blogged about how stupid Twitter is (more on Keller later).

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The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors

Yesterday I criticized ASNE’s report on best practices in social media. Today I’m going to take a positive approach, suggesting alternatives. Here are my 10 best practices for social media (written for newsroom leaders; the list would vary for other journalists):

1. Smart and frequent conversations among newsroom leaders and their staff members are the best way to guide effective, ethical use of social media.

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ASNE offers good advice on social media, but too much fear and not really ‘best practices’

Update: I’ve added a response from Pam Fine, co-chair of the ASNE Ethics Committee at the end.

Editors are starting to accept social tools and understand their importance. But they remain afraid of social media. Their need to control remains an impediment to innovation.

That’s my quick take on the American Society of News Editors’ “10 Best Practices for Social Media.”

The report is a PDF, which indicates the group’s continuing print orientation. It would be much better as a blog, starting a conversation by inviting comments on each section. The structure is thoughtful, providing some discussion, a “teachable moment” and sample policies for each of the 10 points. An appendix of social media policies is helpful, even if the policies are far more fearful and restrictive than they should be.

For instance, this sentence wanders in entirely irrelevantly (it’s the first sentence in a discussion about whether to break news on Twitter):

Social media can become a gigantic time suck, distracting reporters from conducting traditional reporting or executing their job duties.

Insert “telephones,” “the Internet,” “your computer,” “your co-workers,” “your children,” “your spouse,” “your editor” or “most newsroom meetings” for “social media” and that sentence would still be true. But no editor would write it. But fear of social media is strong in newsrooms, especially among top leaders, so this document is loaded with unnecessary warnings and discouragement. The fact is that social media can also be excellent tools that help you beat journalists who are stuck in traditional reporting. And social media are essential now to executing your job duties (yes, for the top editors, too). Social media can also save you time. Someone needed to take a very traditional red pen to that sentence.

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2011 forecast for journalism organizations: mergers, collaboration, innovation (and some failure)

When the Nieman Lab tweeted yesterday that it had published my journalism predictions for 2011, I couldn’t recall what all I had predicted. I had sent my forecast a couple weeks earlier, in response to a request from Lois Beckett. I remembered predicting a few things off the top of my head, but didn’t immediately recall what I had forecast.

One of the predictions made a stronger impression with some of my tweeps:

We will see some major realignment of journalism and news-industry organizations. Most likely: the merger of ASNE and APME, mergers of some state press associations, mergers of at least two national press organizations, mergers of some reporter-beat associations. One or more journalism organizations will close.

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Mobile-first strategy questions and answers

I like it when a training program stimulates questions that continue after the program ended.

Wednesday’s Leading a Mobile-First Newsroom webinar for the American Society of News Editors was such a program. So I’ll continue the discussion with a few questions (which came as we were running out of time or in follow-up emails) and answers (acknowledging up front that I don’t have all the answers):

Q: What steps should we take to adapt websites to be more mobile friendly?

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4 ways to measure the local mobile advertising opportunity

A common lament about efforts to develop new business models for news is that digital journalism can’t generate the revenue that newspapers used to.

Let’s set aside that digital journalism doesn’t have the production and distribution costs of newspapers. Let’s set aside that news media companies have barely started to explore the revenue possibilities of direct sales, local search and other possibilities I explored in explaining the revenue approach of my Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection.

In advertising alone, opportunities loom as promising as the revenue streams that historically supported newspapers.

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Experts’ views on mobile: the opportunity of our lifetime

I’ve written a lot about my views on mobile opportunities for news organizations. Today I want to share some other people’s thoughts on the topic.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt declared in February that “mobile first” would be the new mantra of his company (I wrote in November that news organizations should pursue a mobile-first strategy). Schmidt repeated that point in April as the keynote speaker at the American Society of News Editors convention:

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Syncing social tools (especially Foursquare) requires some thought

If addiction is the second stage of Foursquare use, I am still at stage one, curiosity. But at least I’m a curious Mayor.

Blogger Dan Macsai described the Five Stages of Foursquare Use — curiosity, addiction, socialization, greed, apathy — in a blog post. While it was amusing, he didn’t really address the factor that’s been getting lots of discussion recently on Twitter, which Brian Moylan addressed in If You Use Foursquare, You Are an Annoying Jackass.

I do use Foursquare, so perhaps I am an annoying jackass (for that matter, I might have been an annoying jackass long before I started checking in digitally). But I’ve adjusted how I interact with other social media on Foursquare, in hopes of being less annoying.

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