Web math for editors

This is another in a series of posts exploring key takeaways and tools from the Knight Digital Media Center’s Leadership Conference—”Preparing News Organizations for the Digital Now.”

Dana Chinn, a faculty member at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism set out to help newsroom leaders make sense of hits, visits, bounces, time on site, etc. Editors I have spoken with say they are looking at the numbers more and more, but often aren’t quite sure what they mean or what action they may suggest. Chinn gave editors a process for better understanding and using Web numbers.

For starters, Chinn encouraged editors to develop a Web analytics plan and gave them a road map for doing that:

1. Establish goals. These should be for specific audiences or sections, not Web site elements such as video or user-generated content. Define actions that will lead to each goal. Consider online and print together.

2. Define Key Performance Indicators (the metrics) for each goal and decide what you will do if an indicator goes up or down.

3. Benchmark. Set a starting point and set a goal for each indicator (moving it up or down) and establish a time period in which you want to reach each goal.

4. Implement.

5. Monitor.

According to Chinn, the most significant performance indicator may not be a simple number. Instead, Chinn says, a ratio between two numbers often produces the most insight. I’ll look at Chinn’s use of ratios next. You’ll find Chinn’s detailed report here.

How does your organization use Web analytics? What numbers tell you what you need to know? How have you used analytics to help you improve your site and your traffic? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Related: My earlier post about Chinn’s presentation.

Link: A new role for editors

Here’s Jeff Jarvis on the importance of editors—and how the role must change in the digital age:

“There is still a role for editors, but it changes. There is a need to add context and fill holes in understanding - by using links. As we move from an economy of scarcity in media to one of abundance, there is a need to curate: to find the best and brightest from an infinite supply of witnesses, commentators, photographers and experts. As news becomes collaborative, editors will need to assemble networks from among staff and the public; that makes them community organisers. I also believe editors should play educator, helping to improve the work of the network.

“Editors are a luxury we must afford. But as their jobs change, so will their character. Editors will become gentle coaches whose job it is to look for the good in the world of the web. They’ll have to be nicer. Based on that, some may still choose to impale themselves.”

Read the full post here (Thanks to Jay Rosen for the pointer.)

A few of my own thoughts about frontline editors here.
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Are editing roles changing in your newsroom? How? Why? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Crowding the conventions

I was astonished to read in Forbes that officials for the Democratic and Republican conventions expect 15,000 journalists will be on hand for each one. This number is about the same as for the last two convention seasons, Forbes reports, and some organizations report they are cutting back.

My initial reaction was very similar to that of Mark Potts, who writes:

“At a time when news budgets are being slashed because of declining revenue, how can a news organization possibly justify sending a raft of people to the conventions? (I suspect the numbers for the Olympics are about the same-and just as ridiculous.)

“The Los Angeles Times is sending 15 people to the conventions, Forbes says. And that doesn’t count journalists from other Tribune Co. papers that will be helping out. With what? Apparently, the Zellot cost-cutters missed this line item. Too bad. USA Today plans to send 34 reporters to each convention; Dow Jones is sending 23 to each. The New York Times and Washington Post aren’t disclosing their numbers, but you can believe they’re similarly inflated. The good news is that many organizations say they’re cutting back from previous convention coverage-but it’s still too much.

“Sorry, but in most cases, there’s really no (legitimate) excuse for a single news organization to send a large number of journalists to the convention. What stories are they going to get that the AP can’t supply? Hijinks of the local delegates? Inside info about what the candidates hope to do for the economy back home? Local color on Denver and St. Paul? It’s really hard to understand the need for this kind of bulk coverage.”

I think Potts is onto something in his mention of “bulk coverage.” As newsroom executives struggle to “do more with less,” they must increasingly focus on what they can provide that is unique to their franchise, rather than following the pack. I cannot think of a more “pack” event than a political convention whose speeches are carefully scripted, whose presidential nominee has been long decided, and whose vice presidential nominee likely will have been announced before the delegates convene. Providing coverage that is unique and relevant to a particular audience is key. 

I also am frustrated when I thinking about all the stories that thousands of reporters might be covering closer to home as the conventions unfold. With the troubled economy, mortgage foreclosures, health care, the federal budget deficit and rising energy costs, I don’t think it’s possible for journalists to be developing enough stories about the impact of these issues on their communities and the people who live in them. Not to mention creating and linking to resources for people in trouble and holding officials accountable for their share of the problem (or explaining why they have no share).

Linda Austin, editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader, offers a similar reaction: “I wish we could get the person power of 15,000 journalists focused on something that really needs investigating as opposed to two coronations.”

The Herald-Leader will rely on McClatchy’s Washington Bureau for overall coverage and is recruiting citizens to blog from the convention floor. “What we are trying to do is get a citizen blogger from our area who is going to each convention to write about the spectacle of it all from the average Joe’s vantage point. I’m trying to avoid the stars of our delegation and look for the people who are going who are not in the limelight,” Austin said.

Sherry Chisenhall, editor of The Wichita Eagle, will send one reporter to each convention and rely on McClatchy as well. Chisenhall thought the large numbers might reflect in part a desire for local coverage. “My assumption is that all of those journalists are not there to cover simply the nomination process. I would think that a significant percentage might be there for local same purposes we are - to localize coverage of a major national news event. I could be wrong, and perhaps the percentage of local news-focused reporters is small. But it strikes me that, even if it swells the ranks of the media pool covering the convention, there’s value in bringing big national news to the local level for a relatively small travel budget. Bloggers are probably another group that’s bringing the news pool so high, and again, I see value in that type of coverage.”

While Forbes focused on staffing for national news organizations, I checked by e-mail with editors of local and Metro newspapers, which are more apt to send one or two reporters, if any. A sampling:

The Seattle Times will send one reporter, as it did four years ago, to focus on the Washington delegation and local issues. “For regional papers, it’s as important as a networking and sourcing platform as it is a news event,” says Executive Editor David Boardman.

The Dayton Daily News will send two reporters to each convention in addition to staff blogs from home, a slight reduction from four years ago. Like Seattle, Dayton will focus on Ohio and delegates from the region. Says Editor Kevin Riley: “We really questioned whether we needed to go, and I’m still not sure it was the right decision. In the end, I like our local politicos to know we are there, and we are watching them.”

The Miami Herald will send two reporters, including one that does multimedia, says Manny Garcia, senior news editor. The two will focus heavily on South Florida stories—including whether the state’s delegation will be seated at the convention—and hot local issues such as immigration and health care. A third journalist based in the newsroom will focus on honing the convention Web package.

The Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., will rely on a reporter from Gannett News Service who will be covering for all New York Gannett papers and focus on that state’s delegation. Traci Bauer, Managing Editor for Multimedia/Innovation, says that’s the same practice as four years ago.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is sending a reporter and a columnist to both conventions to cover the Texas delegation, with a special focus on people from our area.  “We need to send someone because if we don’t then those local stories won’t be told - obviously we can count on the wires to provide the national coverage for us,” says Editor Jim Witt.

As you might expect, smaller news organizations were unlikely to send anyone. John Smalley, editor of the LaCrosse Tribune in Wisconsin, said his organization would not send anyone even to nearby St. Paul. Smalley called the 15,000 count “Totally insane and a massive waste of news resources.”

While traditional news organizations are cutting back, the ranks of bloggers are growing, convention organizers told Forbes. “More than 120 bloggers got passes for Denver, compared with about 30 at the 2004 Democratic convention. The GOP event will host 200 credentialed bloggers, compared with just 12 in 2004.”

Live-blogging seems like a great way to capture the mood and comments from delegates on the convention floor, while leaving the podium coverage to national organizations. I’d like to hear from news organizations that will be blogging from the convention. Is anyone planning to Twitter the convention, or, better yet, ask delegates to Twitter on their news feeds? Please share your plans and ideas in the comments.

(Thanks to Romenesko for the pointer to Forbes.)

Link: Comments on comments

Mindy McAdams offers this post on online commenting practices and points to a good treatment of the issue by Jack Lail, managing editor/multimedia at The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel.

Great line from McAdams: “Comments are messy, demanding, problematic. So are most children. That doesn’t mean the solution is to get rid of them.”

Tools for innovators

In newsrooms, often, everyone wants to be part of the decision and no one really wants to take the final step. So decision-making can be very slow (or occasionally too fast when one person decides without meaningful input). Also, decisions that reflect consensus can be so watered down that they don’t accomplish much. RAID is a process to clarify who is responsible for making a decision and who has advisory power on a given project.

Stacy Lynch, a consultant and project manager at Media Management Center, helped implement RAID as Innovations Director at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This is one in a series of posts about presentations and discussions at KDMC’s annual Leadership Conference last month (more explanation here). Lynch’s presentation on speeding decision-making gave a snapshot of this tool.

The acronym RAID stands for different roles:
- Recommend: Part of the team to weigh options and design recommendation(s)
- Agree: Have reviewed, weighed in and will implement (this one has implicit veto power).
- Inform: Offer subject expertise and information needed to make a decision
- Decide: Chooses among options, makes final decisions

In her presentation, Lynch used the example of an organization looking at adding social networking to its travel site. In virtually every key part of that decision, typically, anywhere from three to five departments believe they are the decision-maker. For example, in Lynch’s “typical” slide (top), news, IT and the executive office each thinks it is the decision-maker on a final prototype. Everyone thinks they are deciding the launch date. That’s a formula for misunderstanding, conflict and delay.

The goal of RAID, Lynch says, is to have “one D on each decision. The (project development) team should have the D as often as you feel they are capable of making that decision.”

Lynch showed a better application of RAID (bottom) to the plan for the travel site. One department alone decides a given issue (the exec office decides on a final prototype, the project team decides the launch date). This model has a lot more Agree and Inform roles—which means everyone gets to have a say without bogging down the process.

Go to Lynch’s presentation for more detail.

Don’t forget the audience

Lots of noise today on journalism blogs about The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s plans to go print-first with more of its enterprise reporting. News will still go online right away.

Here’s the internal memo, posted yesterday on Romenesko. Critics (Jarvis, Outing) say this is a move backwards. Others (Owens) take a more reasoned approach, saying any news organization needs to consider how to best differentiate its online and print products.

Of course, newspapers for too long simply dumped print content online.This discussion of the roles of print and online is an important one, and I hope the debate about Philly moves away from an either-or, good-bad frame of some of the early criticism and toward two related ideas that will be more helpful to news organizations.

One, as Howard Owens notes, is differentiation:

“ ... why is it wrong now to say ‘let print be print’ and ‘let online be online.’

Your online product should focus on:

* Frequency. Plenty of updates. Web-first publishing. Tell me what is happening in my town right now.
* When there is a big story, hammer it. Own it. Frequent updates, a flood of information, video, blogs, forums, public documents, databases, maps, graphics.

On a pure news basis, those two approaches are proven audience growth winners.

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“There are a ton of other web-centric things newspapers can and should do with their web sites, but none of them include publishing first online enterprise and investigative pieces, columnist, lengthy features, trend stories and even analysis pieces.”

Building on the idea of product differentiation, I want to underscore a second critical factor—how people use media. A lot of news organizations are still thinking about content and presentation in terms of medium and technology (or worse, in terms of tradition and comfort level) when they should be thinking about content and presentation in terms of audiences—in which I include people who read of print newspapers and people who read their news online or go there for more interactive experiences.

For an example of this, look no farther than your spiffy new iPhone and then check out what content your organization is providing to users there or on other mobile devices. The news industry’s capacity to deliver news, information and interactivity to mobile seriously lags audience adoption and use.

A number of newsrooms are pushing the audience front and center in the way they organize themselves and think about content. Examples:

- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and ajc.com. This newsroom has “pitchers,” the news and information gatherers who come up with story ideas and execute them. Then there are the “catchers,” separate online and print teams that get involved early in the story planning and tell the gatherers how they want the stories developed and packaged for the audiences who use their platforms.

- The Tampa Tribune and tbo.com. This newsroom has recently reorganized and downsized and, among other things, created several “audience editor” positions. These editors are “the advocates for the audience in daily and longer-term story choices and story development,” according to Executive Editor Janet Coats. As I wrote earlier, the audience traditionally is not at the table when editors decide what to cover and who to cover it for different platforms. I think this plan may enable Tampa to significantly better its content across platforms. See this post for more detail.

Many of the editors I’ve been talking to of late put achieving an online-print balance high on their lists of challenges. This is partly because they are forced to do more with fewer people. They know that means they need to be ever more strategic in thinking about staffing and content. If you’re one of those editors, I’d like to hear more about your efforts to prioritize based on what you know about your audiences and how they use your different platforms. Please add your thoughts in the comments.

UPDATE: Ryan Sholin posts this interview with Philly.com online editor Chris Krewson, who talks, among other things, about audience considerations:

“Since I arrived here in November ‘07, we’ve tried hard to figure out how people actually use the paper and the Web site. obviously, that’s for different reasons. And we’re just trying to make sure we’re careful about what we do—roughly 75 percent of that will not change.

“The other 25 will be us taking more care, making case-by-case decisions, armed by whatever information we have about how people use our products.”

Upwardly, outwardly mobile

Rick Edmunds has a good overview of the Pegasus News, a new mobile service in Dallas-Fort Worth. Take a look at it here. At a glance, it seems to have a lot going for it: simplicity, phone-centric information including restaurants, events, movie times and bar happy hours. Users can add content as well. Check out Your Neighborhood and The Daily You.
With the growing popularity of mobile media, Pegasus seems like one model for news organizations who want to own mobile in their local markets. What’s your mobile strategy?

Embrace ‘iteration’

Last month, Knight Digital Media Center brought together teams from 12 news organizations to learn more about digital media and make plans for moving their newsrooms forward online. Now those editors are back in their newsrooms making changes—and I will be reporting on their progress in the coming months. In the meantime, I’m preparing a report on the conference—something KDMC can put online to benefit other editors.

As I review my notes and the conference presentations, I will blog chunks of the conference materials and discussions. I hope comments from participants and other editors will enrich the final report.

Here is the report from the 2007 conference. I plan to use a similar format of lists—key takeaways, tools, quotes and questions.

I want to start with the idea of “iteration” from a presentation by Stacy Lynch, a project director with Media Management Center and former Innovations Director at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Lynch focused on decision-making and the difficulty news organizations have in making them quickly because of unproductive loops in the typical process.

“Iteration,” is one antidote. It’s a process of breaking a project into stages and launching them one at a time.

Lynch noted that it’s a model that works in other fields. “In most software development, 60-80% of work is done post ‘launch’ as new versions emerge.”

Those of us who are native to print will have a hard time imagining how that might work on the printed page. And the perfectionistic culture of newsrooms may frown on launching something that is not fully nailed down. But the process seems remarkably simple and suited to online.

Lynch used the example of building a new entertainment site to illustrate iteration:
1, Initially, launch only an events database. Fix any bugs.
2. Add a rating component.
3. Enable users to upload photos from different events.
4. Build in files associated with different performers.

“From the very beginning, say what it will have, but say it’s going to come out in different chunks,’’ Lynch advises.

The process helps prevent overspending resources at the beginning—perhaps adding features that users don’t really want. It builds in flexibility and allows you to get feedback as the project develops. Perhaps most importantly in the digital world, it speeds time to market.

Lynch presented a second tool, called RAID, to speed decision-making. I’ll write more about RAID next week.

Let’s get local

Joe H. Bullard, a former managing editor of The Denver Post, wants to see more local news in the Denver newspapers. Here’s his formula from ”Getting local coverage in gear.”

“I’d fire a third of the editors and convert another third of them to being reporters and give them a laptop. I’d send all my reporters home with a laptop. I would tell each of them his beat is now a circle with a radius of 12 blocks and the center of the circle is his house. I want to know everything that happens within those 12 blocks.

“I don’t want to see you in the newsroom, unless your editor or I summon you. I will count bylines. If you don’t submit at least one story a day, I will be unhappy. If you go a week without a byline, you will be fired. I will expect you to know how to use a digital camera and I expect you to submit at least one picture a day from your circle.

“Because all the reporters and editors are college graduates and have been making a good living for a good number of years, they all live in upscale portions of the metro area, which will limit the news that gets reported. This is a good thing because it would give me the opportunity to hire blue-collar reporters that care about what goes on in their neighborhoods.

“They would be much more concerned about why their Johnny can’t read and why his classroom has 39 kids, one teacher and no aide. Or why their street never gets swept, nor the snow removed. In short, we would start reporting news that is relevant to my readers.

“What do I do with all this news? Put it on my web site as a zone section.”

Is this an organizing principle for the future? Is your newsroom already doing something like this? Please share your experiences in comments.

(Thanks to Ryan Sholin for the pointer.)

Link: Innovation in the newsroom

Chris O’Brien is a business columnist at The San Jose Mercury News and winner of a Knight 21st Century News Challenge grant to study the newsroom of the future. From that vantage point, he offers ”Five Steps to Foster Innovation in the Newsroom.”

O’Brien says:

“No one can simply order up innovation on demand. Wish as you might, the innovation fairy won’t sprinkle pixie dust on your newsroom while you sleep. But you can encourage innovation, nurture it by lowering barriers, supporting those employees with entrepreneurial drive, and providing a fertile environment for their ideas.”

His list:
1. Make it a priority
2. Create a process
3. Foster new collaboration
4. Offer incentives
5. Evaluate and learn

I think it all flows from 1. Make it a priority. Too often, newsrooms are so wound up in getting out that next edition or that next online update that thinking about and creating for the future falls by the wayside day after day after day.

Setting aside time for the future is a choice, a discipline and an imperative.

As O’Brien says:

“If 100 percent of your newsroom’s time is devoted to just producing your current products, then you’re already doomed, even if it isn’t immediately apparent. This is true whether you’re a traditional newspaper newsroom, or an online first newsroom.”

How does your newsroom foster innovation? Please share your thoughts in comments.

Old grocery store, new marketplace

Today seems to be a day for analogies about grocery stores and the news(paper) industry.
Analogy 1. This morning, I stumbled across a comment by Vin Crosbie (thanks to Tom Pellegrene at The Journal Gazette for recording it from last month’s KDMC Leadership Conference).
Crosbie likened the traditional newspaper business to a grocery store that is trying to sell bags already full of items (not necessarily of the choosing of the consumer.) That analogy is both brilliant and scary to a traditional newspaper person like me. It goes to the heart of the challenge: The mass audience with its mass consumption of the traditionally prescribed diet is ebbing away in favor of customized news and information. (That is not the same thing as saying the appetite for good journalism is waning.)
2. This afternoon, I noticed a David Cohn post about the confusion he experienced at Safeway trying to find his two favorite cereals on a veritable wall of product:

“I was almost at a standstill. As if the overabundance of information caused my brain to shut down. Later I laughed at myself and wondered if this is how my mother feels when she is online, bombarded with colors, slogans and icons when really all she wanted was a specific piece of information, ‘what happened in West L.A. yesterday.’
“Traditionally news organizations (newspapers) were how people would find the information they wanted. If you wanted to know what happened in the world you either turned on the TV or checked the headlines in your morning newspaper. Google has them beat. It’s too late to try and become the aisle sign (the first thing people go to). But there is still room to become the helpful employee roaming the aisle. That’s where news organizations can still make their mark.”

I like the idea of the helpful employee because it reflects an ideal of traditional journalism: A mission of serving the community. So let’s extend the idea. Here’s my analogy for the future:
3. The former grocery store becomes a local specialty shop, offering unique and high quality products. The shopkeepers also provide a referral service—if they don’t have a product, they can tell the customer where to find it.
For the organization formerly known as the newspaper, this means finding out what other organizations—nonprofits, citizen sites, other online publications and (yes) even businesses —are providing, linking to it and putting it in context. More importantly, it means shaping the news and information the traditional organization produces to cover gaps in the community news fabric rather than trying to cover it all. It also means being nimble enough to shift inventory (topics covered) as the need arises.
Is there a business model in this? I’m not sure. I do know this: Right now, I live in a very small town (maybe 4,000 people) and I shop local even though prices are higher because a) I want to support local business and b) if a merchant doesn’t have something, she can almost always tell me what other shop has it. That’s value.
Please add your thoughts (more analogies always welcome) in the comments.

Link: Using Twitter

Ryan Sholin makes it easy for newsrooms to get started with Twitter with ”Five Ways to Gather and Report News with Twitter.”

Mindy McAdams offers some perspective with ”Twitter is Growing on Me.”

Think you don’t have time? Try this: Open a Twitter account and sign up to follow Sholin and McAdams (five minutes). Check the account a couple of times a day (five minutes). See where it leads (one potential window into the future of news gathering and delivery)

Are you using Twitter? Please share experiences in the comments..

Link: 10 ways to improve comments

Derek Powazek offers ”10 Ways Newspapers Can Improve Comments,” in a post worth reading in full.

Here’s the quick list:
1. Require Accounts. Make people register but don’t worry about anonymity.
2. Set and Enforce Rules. Delete bad comments and promote good ones.
3. Employ a Community Manager to monitor comments, participate in discussions and remove offensive comments.
4. Sculpt the Input. Ask for more on a comment, or less.
5. Empower the Community to help monitor comments.
6. Link Stories to Comments.
7. Enable Private Communication so people can vent.
8. Participate and get your staff to participate.
9. But Don’t Feed the Trolls, learn when and how to join the fray and who to ignore.
10. Give Up Control, expect surprises.

(Thanks to Notes from a Teacher for the pointer.)

Saddled with silos

Amy Gahran has been looking at The New York Times decision to cover the annual BlogHer conference in the Styles section rather than in the main news or technology pages. Some see a glass ceiling in a decision not to cover a major confab of a dynamic organization in the news pages. It’s a fair question, and Gahran has rounded up the details on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits here and here.

Gahran’s second post gives some insight into the Times’ decision that bears attention from anyone running a newsroom, especially a large one with departments that operate as silos. At The Times, Gahran reports, this is how the decision played out: A freelance writer pitched the story to the Styles editors because she knows them (doesn’t know news side folks). No editor in Styles thought to explore whether the story might better fit in another section. Since the story was for Styles, the writer included lots of “girly” detail, including crowded restrooms, lactation rooms and child care.

In the comments, I gave my take on what this story process says about the organization and how it can limit the best stories:

-- Organizational silos inhibit sharing and the development of the best possible ideas. The Times, like most large newsrooms, is not exempt. This is usually a failing of leadership to define the mission in a dynamic and expansive way—instead of letting it be defined by default as getting “our” section out.

-- The story destination usually sets the story frame. Every writer (and editor) has a conception (right or wrong) of what a particular newspaper section wants. So a story destined for a section that focuses on lifestyles (and beauty and fashion, etc.) is more likely to pull on details that might be interesting in a different context but end up trivializing the story at hand.

In the old, newspaper-only world, the silo mentality drove production but inhibited creativity. As traditional news organizations struggle to succeed online, structures that reinforce silos make even less sense. The Web is about networks and links rather than sections and silos. How newsrooms organize themselves will play a role in how well they adapt. If you were starting from scratch to build and online newsroom that produced a print newspaper, what would it look like?

Link: Tweeting the quake

If your news organization has not been using, or at least following, micro-blogging tools such as Twitter, Jack Lail’s ”Twitter as personal news wire” gives ample reason why news organizations need to pay attention. These are powerful tools, not only for pushing out breaking news feeds but for monitoring eyewitness accounts when news breaks.

Lail noted that the Associated Press moved a story nine minutes after the quake hit Southern California on Tuesday. “By the time AP moved a story, Twitter already had thousands of first-hand reports. Twitter has often been described as micro-blogging, but the Twitter blog says that for many people, the concept of Twitter is evolving to personal news-wire. We’ve seen this all along, but it’s growing.”

Update: Chris O’Brien, who is heading up the Next Newsroom project, posts his thoughts on Twitter, the earthquake and implications for newsrooms. It’s worth reading in full.