Interactive Journalism. What is it?

The go-to phrase for anyone talking about news sites is “interactive”. But what the heck does that mean when it comes to journalism?

First, let me define what I mean by journalism because not enough people do. My definition is “borrowed” from David Nordfors: he defines journalism broadly as content created to meet the needs/demands of the public. This is in stark contrast to PR or activism which is created to meet the needs of the company, author or cause. As Pultizer said:

“Our repuplic and its press will rise or fall together… day after day, the existence of the newspaper is dependent on the approval of the public”.

News Doesn’t Pay

Mathew Ingram wrote a post today about the need for newspapers to “engage”. He includes a very interesting study by Hal Varian who points out that people spend on average only 70 seconds on online news a day. As Ingram is quick to point out, Varian is Google’s Chief Economist so the study is big on the economics and light on anything resembling a solution – and he may have an inherent bias given his employer. What is clear is that news companies have never made money on news, they’ve made money on the things that were adjacent to the news: classifieds, travel, car sales, etc. Those are gone and not surprisingly the news business is in a well publicized death spiral – well, traditional news as in newspapers and their digital equivalents. The solution: engagement. Get them to people to spend more than 70 seconds on the site.

Will We Ever Get Beyond Comments?

Those are pretty words and the panacea for all things Internet. But does it have any relevance to journalism? As usual there is the must-have reference to “comments”. People read commented stuff more and they come back more. OK. That can pass for interaction… in 1999. Google itself has gone back and forth on allowing comments on their news section, so it’s funny coming from them. Ingram points out that more important than just comments is whether the journalist participates in the comments thread. When that happens, things improve significantly – no statistics on this are provided, but I certainly have witnessed it and experienced it. Bottom line: comments help, author participation makes all the difference, but comments really aren’t going to cut it.

The News Raises More Questions Than It Answers

Although the news is meant to inform, it typically raises more questions than it answers. Even a simple story about a car accident can raise questions: is that a dangerous intersection? how many accidents have there been at that spot? is anything being done to make it less dangerous? Most of this kind of data is readily available and has the potential to turn a tedious snippet into something interesting. Imagine if the story was about health care or a supreme court decision rather than a car accident?

Journalist Know A Lot More Then They Are Telling

Most journalists write a story that includes about a zillionth of what they actually know about the topic. When a journalist does a story on health care, or reports the latest congressional silliness, he/she actually knows a great deal more about the subject then is included in the piece being written. Many journalists could, and do, write books about the subjects they cover. In the news story they have some small number of words in which to cover “the news”.

Why Don’t We Capitalize On That Knowledge?

Since the news raises a lot of questions and the journalist knows a lot, why not let the readers ask the journalist some questions? Why doesn’t every news story end with something like: “If you have questions about this story then ask the journalist”. The community could then get answers to the questions raised by the news. When the Supreme Court rules on campaign finance I expect the journalist will cover the obvious implications. But I’d have a lot of questions as I imagine most people would.

Questions Are At The Heart Of Real Interaction

Ever sit around a dinner table or a conference table and have people tell you what they did that day or give you the departmental summary? If you have then you have also wished you were somewhere else. The thing that makes things interesting is when someone asks a question. The great thing about a question is that it implies interest on the part of the person asking and it gives the person answering a chance to express an opinion while being helpful. The questions asked invariably teach you something about the community and the answers, well they do too.

Journalists Know People

Let’s up the ante one step further. In the course of writing an article or covering a story, the journalist interviews sources. These people are either experts on the subject or people whose opinions are relevant because of their position (e.g. they are a politician). Why not let them answer questions too! Invite them to participate. Highlight their presence, invite the community to ask them questions, highlight their answers. The journalist already has their contact information and most people think they are not well represented by the media, so why not let them have a shot at it themselves and see how easy it is(n’t).

Should Everyone Be Allowed To Answer?

I could make a radical suggestion and even contemplate letting the community answer each others questions. I wouldn’t go overboard with this, not everyone in the community is an expert. But many of them are. So the solution is pretty simple. Yes. Let the community ask questions as well as answer them, but make sure the journalists answers come first.

Can You Make Money Doing This?

Well, first let’s agree that it’s likely to actually engage people and keep them on your site longer. In fact they will have a sense of membership on your site, especially if you give them a basic profile and aggregate their contributions on the profile – they’re now a contributor to your site! They have their own column/byline in the shape of a profile. They are community, they are engaged, they are then likely to come back. Good start.

Time is Money – Ask Facebook

Once you have an engaged community there are many more ways to make money. Look, if Facebook can make (a rumored) 1-2 billion dollars a year on their site then you have to believe that time is money. Facebook focused on getting them there and keeping them there and then… well they might make billions. So get ’em there, keep ’em there.

oh… and feel free to comment or better still ask me a question.

Is the Washington Post adopting the Murdoch Model?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Murdoch model (based on Hearst’s model) was basically to lose money on the newspaper and make it up in other businesses (although Hearst actually made money eventually). What was most important to these megalomaniacs was the power that newspapers brought them.

Kaplan & The Washington Post

There have been several mentions recently that the Washington Post is a good model for newspapers of the future because they have diversified their businesses and can, essentially, run The Washington Post on the profits of their education division:

“The Post’s education business, anchored by the Kaplan for-profit college and test-prep businesses, contributed 58% of 2009’s revenue and all of its $195 million of operating income.” Barron’s.

Some are now actually arguing that this is a good model for the future of newspapers. That’s absurd. Stockholder will eventually demand a spin-off of the bad businesses or the good ones to maximize shareholder returns. When Murdoch cedes control of his company (only in death it would seem) I would bet that the newspapers are sold of wholesale.

Things we’ve learned about Q&A

We’ve been working with great people on their Q&A sites for a while now and we’ve learned a lot in the process. I won’t try and cover a tenth of it here, but I will start building a list of it all on our Wiki soon. These are just a few things that keep coming up or are more recent insights:

Experts Increase Membership

YouSaidIt is good for community Q&A, but what makes it exceptional is the way it handles experts. Experts can be people in positions of authority (politicians for e.g.) or subject matter experts. They can be regular contributors or special guests. Experts can appear on their own or they can be grouped into panels to discuss a subject. Whatever approach you take, experts will have a huge impact on your membership (i.e people who have signed up/contributed).

Capitalize on Your Staff Experts

Your staff has a huge amount of expertise. It may be in an area that they cover regularly (food, books, theater, etc) or it may be in a hobby or in a subject they have recently researched exhaustively. Bring them into the site either as a regular contributor (book recommendations, weekend plans) or as a special guest on a subjectthey have been writing about (bed bugs, second life, health care). Make use of all that information they gathered but never included in their article.

Q&A Should Be Part of Your Content/Design

Q&A content can be amazingly good. The best Q&A content should be featured in other sections of your site. If there was a great Q&A about pizza places in your city, it should be in the food section, not just in the Q&A. And your food section should always include a link to the Q&A: “Wondering where to get the best brunch? Ask”. Even more important is linking your copy to the person who wrote it and the people who were interviewed into the Q&A. Most articles include quotes and interviews with people whose opinions are relevant or interesting. Invite them to participate in the Q&A and link from your article directly to the Q&A: “Have more questions about training your dog? Ask Doggy Man directly”.

I could go on, and should, but I’ll continue in the wiki and link to it in a future post. If you have learned things that have helped please share them in the comments. I’ll include them in the wiki with a link back to you.

Tired of Sex? Read a Good Book

Algorithms are all very nice, but you can’t tell them what you don’t like and they don’t expand your horizons. Worst of all, they have no clue what you feel like reading right now. I’ve confused Amazon to the point of it’s being useless because I buy all kinds of books, some of them for work, pleasure, friends, some of them for my friends kids. If anyone even thinks that I should spend time teaching Amazon what I like then let me say that you haven’t tried it or you have too much time on your hands.

Helping You Find the Right Book at the Right Time

The Stranger has one of the best book editors around. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of books. Here’s what you do: tell him what you feel like reading next, tell him what you like and what you dislike and tell him if you want to read something in a different genre or format. He recommended I read a graphic novel that was in the style of the things I liked. It was great.

Tired of Sex?

Most “advice columns” are focused on manners, relationships and sex. At last there’s one that focuses on more intellectual pursuits. Reading through his past recommendations is a treat in itself, no need to even ask a question, you’ll get all kinds of ideas of what to read. And if you’re not tired of sex, then go read Savage Love. You won’t have to go far, it’s in the same place.

5 Things You Can Learn from Pulitzer

Christmas Issue 1899 Featuring a story by Mark Twain

That headline alone is a modern version of the Pulitzer legacy. It’s a formula for selling, hence the “10 ways to flatten your abs” and “20 ways to lose 20 lbs in 20 days” headlines that are plastered on every magazine. This is a subtle form of yellow journalism.

Pultizer is famous for his founding role in the creation of yellow journalism and his relentless competition with Hearst. But he is better known for the founding of the Columbia School of Journalism and the Pulitzer Prize after his death.

Pultizer’s New Found Relevance

David Schneiderman put it succintly in a recent post on Techflash:

This new media world may sound eerily similar to the old media world—the very old media world of early 20th century newspapers. Tabloid journalism; opinion mixing with news; intense competition; a premium on speed—Hearst and Pulitzer would have been very comfortable and successful practicing web journalism.

There are more than five things to be learned from Pultizer, but here are five that I think are worthwhile:

1. Give ‘Em What They Want

David Nordfors recently distinguished journalism from PR by saying that journalism takes it’s mandate from the people while PR takes it’s mandate from the corporation.  Pulitzer reported on neighborhood news, the kind of news that people gossiped about, news considered scandalous at the time. He knew his community and he gave them what they wanted. He knew what was happening locally and reported on it.

2. If You Want To Stand Tall, Build a Pedestal

Pulitzer was an immigrant, selling to immigrants. When France gave the Statue of Liberty to the US, there was one problem: there was nothing to put it on. While the government fiddled around doing nothing, Pulitzer asked his readers to send him there spare change (pennies, nickels, dimes) and he would put it aside to fund the building of the foundation. They did (and many others did too) and it was built. He was the community.

3. Try Everything

In the New York World, Pulitzer provided full color pictures (in 1896!), he included games, sheet music, even dress patterns. Our modern equivalent is video, interactive graphics, podcasts and an endless number of designs and platforms. There is no silver bullet, get out the Gatling gun

4. Don’t Phone It In

In the end, Pulitzer tried to control his newspapers from his home and his boat rather than being on the scene. He literally tried to phone it in, although he used inferior communication technologies. It ended in the destruction of the New York World as he fought with editors on the scene.

5. Think About Your Legacy

Fast thinking is great, short-term thinking will kill you. If it does kill you, you won’t have left anything behind that will have made a difference. If you care about that, and hopefully if you have children you do, then be like Pulitzer and change the profession entirely. A man who was known for scandalous tabloids was critical in the founding of two schools of journalism and created the prize that is most coveted in journalism and beyond.

Finally, what was the Pulitzer Prize that was most important to Pulitzer himself?  The award for Public Service. What’s your verdict, was Pulitzer the beginning of the end of professional journalism or just the beginning of professional journalism?

If you’re interested in reading about Pulitzer, there’s a new book:  Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James Mcgrath Morris.

Murdoch’s Business Model

Rupert Murdoch is most recently known for leading the charge to create paywalls. Given his massive ownership of newpsparers, including most of the Newspapers in Australia, the The Times UK and the WSJ amongst many others, this is a serious proposition and a dangerous one in my opinion. Murdoch’s business model can best be summed up by this excerpt from Citizen Kane.

Despite his questionable practices as a newspaperman, he may be responsible for keeping newspapers alive for a while longer. As his newspaper empire continues to bleed, his other properties (fox news, fox studios, Internet properties, etc) have provided the profits for him to continue to lose money in newsprint. He could continue to do so for quite some time to come. But he’s 79 and it’s unlikely that his heirs or successors will have the same passion for losing money. So the Murdoch model of making money elsewhere to pay for the losses in newspapers may not have an indefinite lifespan. Maybe that’s why he’s getting desperate and trying paywalls.

If you’re interested in an inside look at Mr. Murdoch you could read:  The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch by Michael Wolff. Wolff is a reporter who had permission from Murdoch to get an inside look at his operation, but in the process he seems to have become a little to taken with his subject.

Ennui & Uncertainty in Journalism: If you have 2 watches do you know the time?

David Nordfors (Ctr of Innovation Journalism) summarized one of my biggest problems in dealing with the overabundance of media sources these days. He said: “If you have a watch you know what time it is but if you have two your are uncertain”. This was a little snippet in a Future Talk discussion he had with Tony Deifell (author of The Big Thaw).

Modern technology has put a clock on everything, my computer, my microwave, my tv, my iphone, my oven, my phone, not to mention my actual alarm clock (never use it) and my watch. A temporary loss of power is a nightmare. But all these clocks pale in comparison to the onslaught of news and opinion I get through TV, Phone, RSS, Twitter, forget it, the list is too long.

This barrage creates 2 huge problems: Ennui & Uncertainty

1. Ennui. By the end of the day I feel as if I have been through 365 news cycles. So, I’m numb to them. I was talking to Paul Boutin last week (pitching him my story – he is a very patient man) and he was talking about the fact that Haiti needs to continue to be a news story. While most of the media has moved on, he pointed out that CNN has dedicated huge resources to keeping it a story. I said that I understood how people might feel they have to move on (as wrong as that is) because I had heard Haiti stories non-stop for days. In another time it would have taken weeks or months for me to get all that.

2. Uncertainty. Everything is enormously inter-related and complex. It is impossible to tell the whole story (if there is one) and it’s easy just to tell the part of the story that is most controversial, titillating or serves to make your point. Health care is the best illustration of this recently (perhaps ever). Recently I heard that half the people who are not covered by insurance can easily afford it and just choose not to get it. This was followed by the statement that half the other half (25%) are illegal immigrants. I was skeptical. But I have no idea whether it’s true.

One of the most interesting parts of the very interesting discussion between these two guys is the distinctions between journalism, activism and PR. They then go on to espouse declarative, transparent journalism having acknowledged that their is no such thing as objectivity. In declarative journalism the journalist makes clear their position, bias, interests, etc. I can just see Fox News jumping on that, NOT.

Are you overwhelmed, uncertain, do you have a strategy for getting through it? Any help would be much appreciated.

Paywalls are the Maginot Line

Going Around The Maginot Line Through Belgium

Jim Spanfeller wrote an exceptional post on PaidContent yesterday. His argument is that technology is not nearly as important as content. That technology is really only of importance in radical transition phases: movable type, radio, television, and of course the web. Once the technology “settles down” it’s importance fades into the background to be replaced purely by content.

Content Is The Stuff We Mold

How can anyone disagree with the idea that content is king? Of course it is. But what has changed radically with this latest technological leap is that we no longer just consume content. In previous media we were simply consumers: we read, we listened, we watched. But now we interact. In fact, we have barely begun the phase of interaction. As things progress, content will increasingly become something we act upon, we mold, we shape and twist and regurgitate in different forms until we think we understand it.

Content Is NOT King. It is Clay.

What Spanfeller refers to as content, is really a rapidly aging idea of content. It is content as researched, digested, filtered and packaged by a journalist. Well, thanks, but that’s not what content is anymore. Content is the stuff from which we can make new things. It is raw government data, longitudes and latitudes of people and things at specific times, multitudes of opinions mashed up, raw video footage. It is the stuff from which we make other stuff and from which other stuff is then made. Content is not a dead-end. Content is something that can be intermixed with other content to create new content. It is NOT king. It does not sit on a throne and declare the truth. It is lives a thousand lives in a thousand guises.

Paywalls Are The Maginot Line

The French thought they could prevent future German invasions by building a fortress-style, fixed defense. What happened? Well mobile war happened. The Germans invaded France in a matter of days simply by driving around it through neighboring countries. Do paywalls mean the end of sharing of content altogether? Will a paywalled site only share with other paywall sites? There are only two likely results, death by starvation or a breach which was unanticipated (something as simple as a paid user posting content from the walled site openly).

Admissions of Guilt

Spanfeller actually knows what his community wants and admits that they haven’t been as good at providing it as they should be:

Users want multi-media, they want non-linear navigation, and, most importantly, they want interactivity—but in most cases, they’re not getting it. As people change how they consume and interact with content, publishers have to create some new rules.

But his new rules seem to be predicated on the protection of content. That is a losing game. If you want to succeed the new rules have to be around the creation of content, the re-creation of content, and providing your users with the ability to interact with and recreate content.

The Content Food Chain

Content is the food of our minds. Everyone will have to decide where they want sit in that food chain. It seems like Spanfeller wants to be the great French chef whose dishes are served to adoring and wealthy acolytes. If that’s what he wants, he’ll have a small group of people who are interested. Meanwhile companies like Google will be the content farmers giving millions of chefs the ingredients they need to create new dishes for billions of people to feast on according to their tastes.

Final note: forgive the mixed metaphors. I like clay and food.

The People Formerly Known as the Audience = The Community

Way back in 2006 Jay Rosen wrote about The People Formerly Known as the Audience. It was, and is, an important statement about the new role of the audience as contributor, producer, critic, etc. It built on ideas that were around for a while and coalesced them into a clean definition.

Now We Know “Them” As The Community

At the time Rosen wrote the piece,  roles were in transition and required definition. But today I think the whole “formerly known as the audience” thing, is probably just as easily described as a community. The idea of community encompasses their importance as participants, creators, critics and in some cases even leaders. The community label is distinct from the earlier roles as audience, or reader. While most still do not participate, they are changed by the fact that they can. As Jeff Jarvis pointed out in a post today, we can’ even expect people to come to us anymore, we need to deliver things directly to them. His post shows the evolution of interaction with… what? He refers to them, once again, as TPFKATA, but what he describes is the interaction of a community.

You Read Differently if You are an Editor

When I give someone something to read, I often tell them: “don’t read it like you are an editor“. I know they will read it differently depending on what role I put them in. If I tell them to “proofread” they may not even pay much attention to the ideas. We are all changed by our ability to comment on, blog or tweet about, what we are reading. We are changed by the role and the capabilities that come along with it. We are no longer passive readers.

Community: Members and Non-Members

The simple idea of community also comes with idea of membership. The very existence of a community means that I have to define myself as having membership in the community or being outside of it. It’s a powerful concept. If I’m a member then I have certain rights and responsibilities. If I’m not, it doesn’t preclude my ability to comment or contribute (necessarily) but it will change the way I do. The “formerly known” idea doesn’t communicate this.

Occam’s Razor

I think we can now do away with the idea of “the people formerly known as the audience” and simply refer to them as “the community”.  The community includes people with varying roles who interact in different ways. The people who are still just “readers” are part of the community (although changed by it as I noted above); the unpaid contributors are community; the paid journalists are community; the editors are community. Of course when we refer to the community, we typically are referring to the people who have influence rather than direct control. In real life, when we say community, we mean the people who vote, the community organizers, but not the people who are directly in control i.e. the politicians and the bureaucrats. But we can easily extend the terms to include them as necessary.

Communities are interactive, social, cohesive, have shared beliefs or shared interests. They communicate, they have roles, responsibilities and rights. Communities intersect and overlap. In short, they better describe what were once “the readers” or “the audience”. Why use “the people formerly known as the audience” when “community” is more descriptive and is one word?

Q&A sites “worse than Wikipedia”?

In a recent survey by Media Interactive, users of Japanese Q&A sites were asked how reliable they felt the answers were. Almost 90% felt they were somewhat or sufficiently reliable. Most of these people were users of the Japanese equivalent of Yahoo Answers.

Yahoo?

Personally, I have no experience with the Japanese version of Yahoo but if it’s anything like the American version, I’d say the best thing about it was not the quality of the answers so much as the speed.

Worse than Wikipedia!

So I’m not a big fan of Yahoo Answers despite it’s runaway popularity. But one of the people who blogged about the result of the Japanese survey and his personal experience with the American version, said that he thought it was even “worse than Wikipedia for reliability”

What’s the opposite of “damned with faint praise”? I’m fainting with the damned praise. I think most sites would be glad to be considered even worse than a site that has held it’s own against the Encyclopedia Britannica.