Neutering Newspapers

Diego Sorbara
Neutering Newspapers
One of the biggest problems facing specifically newspapers is that the industry from within is making them obsolete. Through overemphasis on alternative media and new forms of storytelling that alienate readers from the paper product, the newspaper is becoming more and more a relic, a dinosaur blog as the comic strip Non Sequitur put it.
One of the first blows to the newspaper is the introduction of online-only content. From experience at the Missourian, crossover traffic between the online product and the paper product is minimal. Therefore, the extra content is for the most part lost on the casual paper product reader. This situation most commonly arises when content doesn’t fit in the newspaper and is shuttled off to the newspaper’s Web site. Even though most papers will tease to this content, the chance is very low that a reader will actually go to the trouble of accessing the site specific for that story unless the reader had a personal stake in it. Another common situation is to include more content online. Although the Web site is an excellent place to present full documents cited in a story (a recent example of this would be the full text of the new “Gospel of Judas” scrolls), but the problem comes when more staff-produced content is put there. By putting more stories online about one subject, the newspaper product is cheapened and seen only as a one-dimensional tool that can barely present a complete view of an issue. Overall, when the paper is used as a tool to present the barebones, rife with online refers, all it serves to show is how good the online product is and how lacking the paper product. If anything, pumping up the Web site can in turn greatly hurt the public perception of the paper.
Another issue is that efforts toward transparency in the production of the print product are moved off the print product itself. We can see this in editor blogs, where online they explain the decision-making process that occurred for the print edition. It makes sense for an online reader to read a complex story and follow a link to one of these blogs, but what’s left for the print reader? Frequently, there are no links to these blogs in the print product; furthermore, even if the paper does publish these links in pullout boxes, it will only be a matter of time before readers start realizing that they can get the same content and then some online for free.
Newspapers are even altering their writing styles in order to accommodate new, younger readers. The effort is to make stories shorter, snappier and formatted in a non-traditional sense. This seems like a 180-turn from the traditional inverted pyramid style of writing. The new writing that most editors are trying to push smacks of the blurb styles used on Web sites and teen-oriented magazines. Even in the Missourian, this is apparent in its participation with the Associated Press’ new program ASAP, which aims to interest the younger readers in the news. Stories written in ASAP fashion are made to attack the critical points quickly with an engaging writing style that gets away from the traditional AP story. However, ASAP articles tend to be extremely shallow rather than insightful because they deal with two opposing forces: the complexity of world issues and the attention span of the average teenage and twentysomething reader. These efforts, on the part of the AP, turn out to be little more than some shallow text and a blitzkrieg of media. Within the Missourian proper, the few ASAP-style stories (called Mo News) that have run don’t seem to be anything too different from an extended infoboxes. Even the writing style seems to be the same dry news format that Missourian uses for practically everything else. The underlying point here is that newspapers are trying to change their writing styles to attract people who just don’t read newspapers. Just because an article is written in a “fun” fashion or has a ton of bullet points in it doesn’t mean it’ll get that elusive young adult reader that would rather just watch CNN. There’s no evidence to the effectiveness of this strategy. Also, this alienates the readers that are just fine with the articles as they are now.
Even in the design, we start seeing more pictures and less actual news. Newspapers are shrinking in size and rapidly taking up magazine design styles. This is obvious in the redesign of the Bakersfield Californian, which changed its front page to prominently include visuals and minimize the amount of text presented out front.
There is an apparent movement to change newspapers into a product that is more pleasing to younger readers. However, this process alienates the most faithful newspaper readers, and in the end it’ll turn newspapers into glorified magazines (or worse).

Audio on demand: Here to stay?

I’m not terribly thrilled about the idea behind podcasts. For me, it was too little too late.
In high school I kept up with a variety of streaming internet shows and listened to a decent number of talking heads gab on about a variety of subjects via the internet. In more recent years, I’ve taken to listening to a variety of essays available on the web in the form of audio files. I never really got into audio books, but these interested me because it was familiar to the same sort of format you get information in during any lecture class.
So, when podcasting became big I kind of chuckled to myself. It’s nice to have a name—and a brand—to go with the concept of on-demand, digital radio, but I really think it’s just a stepping stone.
The iPod itself has even evolved behind podcasting. With the inclusion of video features, there is even a more robust lineup of content to download. Video podcasting (there has to be a better term than vodcasting) has become big, but I don’t think it has any real staying power.
These new media are nice, but they fail to go far enough. In a while, smart ink is going to start to grow and truly interactive experiences will be taking hold. Imagine being able to hold your newspaper in the morning and instead of just having it run through a portion of video or streaming audio, it could also respond to your touch. The beauty of the iPod was its simple design. That is great for listening to music, but not so great for accessing large amounts of information.
I think as flash style projects become more prevalent on internet news sites, we’re going to start to see more streamlined user interfaces for accessing the news. This, combined with cheaper technology means it’s very likely that digital, recyclable newspapers will start to appear in the next few years. But even if smart ink isn’t the press’s savior (or I suppose it would kill the press, but save the paper), look at all the other devices that could take on that same role.
PDAs, smart phones, laptops, tablet PCs, more advanced MP3 players and other fancy gadgets and gizmos all let users interact with their news and support a variety of media formats and can be updated on the fly—wirelessly. The iPod only gives users a barebones user interface and only supports videos and music. Granted, that’s leaps and bounds ahead of where we were a few years ago, but I just don’t see it being accessible enough, engaging enough and current enough to fend off other technology on the horizon.

Podcasting is an opprotunity for newspapers to find a broader audience

Jason Rosenbaum
869333


I’ve been “with it” with computer for a long time. The only problem is I’m usually behind the curve.

When I was barely 10, my dad brought home a 286 computer, which had no mouse, about 16 or 17 colors and hundred or so Atari-like games. Years later after my Bar Mitzvah, I received a new computer – a shiny IBM with an Intel Pentium 166 MHZ processor. I bought for one reason and one reason only – it was black.

Right now, I am typing this essay on a fairly decent computer – a Sony VIO desktop. When I receive the computer as a gift a few years ago, I thought I had finally found my device that wouldn’t go obsolete within a year. I was half-right: my computer is still functional and fairly up-to-date. Unfortunately, it’s only useful when I’m at my house, rather than everywhere like those folks who actually bought Macs that were “required by the J-School” (I didn’t buy one and I guess I’m still graduating.)

The story remains the same for the iPod. Even though I had earned enough money to buy it through a part-time job, I waited for a couple years. After all, it’s not necessarily something that you need to do a job or live a life. But when I went to Best Buy and bought a Mini, I was in love. But little did I know that the device that brought joy by playing hours upon hours music was the pretext for a revolutionary feature that could change the way the public receives and disseminates relevant information -- Podcasting.

To me, Podcasting is next best thing to streaming, “on the clock” radio. If anything, it is the closest audio version of a newspaper available. Instead of essentially being force to listen to commercials and uninteresting news stories, a news hound can pick and choose the information where the want to invest their time. There is also an opportunity for a person to subscribe to a Podcast that they want to listen to week after week, along with the option of creating and submitting a Podcast.

It all makes for a rather communal and interactive experience. Information gets passed to people who want to listen to it, while the provider of the message has an easy and low-cost way of disseminating information to as many people as possible. As a result, we’ve seen explosion of entities – such as television news and radio stations – offer Podcasting as a hook to draw more people into their broader pool of knowledge. There are also opportunities for politicians, entertainment companies and ninjas to find niches of people who want to listen.

The biggest problem I see with this advance in information dissemination is the same problem we’ve discussed with blogging – some Podcasts are going to less credibility than others. And with so many Podcasts available on a multitude of subject matter, is difficult for an editing/watchdog role to be effective. But also like the Blogosphere, it is very likely the marketplace will sort out the good from the bad, and people will flock to information that suits their needs and is accurate.

While my penchant for finding technology after it’s become obsolete has left me a few bucks shorter, the impact on newspaper that fail to use this trend effectively could be more serious. It would behoove newspaper to use this medium to expand their coverage of daily events. This would be a way for the newspaper to transmit their coverage to a broader audience who might not have time to read the newspaper, but will certainly have the time to listen to it while they are riding the train or walking to work.

Podcasting is one example of technology that would greatly benefit the newspaper industry, even though it seems that it would only impact radio and broadcast companies. And if newspaper companies don’t use the technology, they might end up losing a chance to gather more readers by spreading out their news coverage to a broader audience.

Podcasting: Converging into the future

Every time new technology comes around, it seems the American public stands in awe of it. From the first personal computer to wireless Internet access, digital technology has become increasingly more complex and essential in people’s daily lives. I thought it was crazy when the J-school began to require laptops for its students – but now I hear they might be including iPods to the list. Podcasting is beginning to be the next big thing: An interesting new way for news and information on specific topics to be streamed at the listener’s convenience.
When I first saw the podcast icon appear in my iTunes, I had heard of it, but really had no idea what they were. It was when I logged onto one of my favorite Web sites, visualeditors.org, that I really began listening to them. As a visual editor myself, I was keenly interested in the topics that some of the greats were talking about on their podcasts at the Web site. And so of course, I realized the potential for podcasting once I found some that peaked my particular interest.
One of the more frustrating aspects of being a journalist are limitations. Whether it be size, space or amount of news we are able to produce, there is always more we could and would like to include. Podcasts provide such incredible flexibility in how we communicate news to the public. This new kind of media also allows people to choose what they specifically want to listen to, so that they customize their own news. One of the criticisms I often hear, albeit jokingly, from friends and family is that journalists are in the business of telling people what to think. While we do have to make choices about what we do and do not cover, podcasts could perhaps begin to bridge that gap.
One of the interesting problems podcasting presents is a whole new job for newspapers to fill. It begins to lean more toward a converged newsroom, and the need for a whole new department that requires coordination, training and staff. While I think the podcast model has great promise, it does present some immediate technical concerns for news publications. Making sure that things that are podcastable are indeed prepared for that process seems like it also could be logistically difficult and expensive for newspapers to undertake.
Podcasts could also potentially alienate readers if this is the only method of learning about a specific topic. Some people are firm newspaper readers, while others don’t have the ncessary technology to enjoy the fun and possibilities of podcasting. If podcasts began to be the primary form for some of the news, it would be necessary to ensure that the consumers of that news were aware of the functions and how to access the information. It could be really frustrating to people who aren’t “plugged in” or computer savvy and do want to hear or read about a certain topic.
Podcasts are also entering other facets of our lives, as a way to help children how to learn in classrooms and for people to get their voices heard. This could a great way to get citizen journalism to function successfully and in a accesible and affordable medium. The possibilities are seemingly endless. While this new way to communicate and share information is without a doubt in its infancy, the idea of being able to share press conferences, interviews and educational programs in their entireity is an exciting possibility.