Link This, Gawker: A Print ‘n’ Read Article

As both regular readers of this blog know, I regularly choose an article that, due to length or some other characteristic, is worth actually printing out and reading off line.

The latest: The Washington Post’s “The Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition),” an Outlook section essay by Post staff reporter Ian Shapira.

True, it’s shorter than my usual Print ‘n’ Read picks, only 1,918 words [11,317 characters, or 81 Tweets]. But it’s worth reading away from the link-spattered madness of the computer screen anyhow, for reasons that will become clear below. 

In the piece, Shapira writes about an article of his that was summarized, linked to and quoted by Gawker, the well-trafficked pop culture/gossip/media blog. He uses this incident as an object lesson in how new media  may be ripping off–perhaps killing–traditional journalism by essentially rewriting it for its own audience.

Shapira argues that the Gawker entry quotes his piece at too much length and with insufficiently prominent attribution. He may have a point on both counts.

“Fair use”–the exceptions to copyright law that allow writers to quote from or summarize a copyrighted work–has no specific legal definition. In the age of the Internet it’s a moving target, and clearly some news aggregation sites and blogs habitually cross over the fat grey blur separating fair comment from appropriation.

But even if Gawker had been more circumspect in its work, the broader issue Shapira raises–that the economics of legacy media are threatened by linking and derivative re-reporting of work done by costly professional news operations–misses a crucial point.

A mainstream news site like the Post’s derives A MAJORITY of its traffic from “the side door,” which is to say via search engines, news aggregators, Twitter, big portals like Yahoo or MSN, and other sites, like Gawker, that link to its content. Not a little of its traffic, or a supplement. MOST of its traffic. *

The idea that meaningful numbers of people wake up in the morning, snap on the ‘ol PC, crack their knuckles and “read” washingtonpost.com from its home page inward and linger there until sated is a fond memory dating from the days of the dial up connection and 13-inch monitors.

Today, news users start in other places and wind up at reading online news at CNN, USA Today, New York Times or other big media sites via links pointing to them elsewhere.

Today’s news consumers are browsers and nibblers of ecumenical tastes and little loyalty to anything other than what appeals to and appears to them at a particular mouseable moment in time. Sorry, Ye Big Media Brands with Finely Tended Gardens. Those gardens have not had walls for many years. The emperor hath no box hedges.

So: If a news site like the Post’s gets most of its traffic from links appearing on other sites, it already is generating meaningful revenue from those links. The thought that it monetizes traffic that comes only from the Post site itself is. . .kind of weird thinking. A page view that comes via Gawker, or this humble blog, or a Twittered short url is worth exactly as much as a page view from washingtonpost.com’s “Opinion” site.

[Whether the Post has learned to maximize the revenue it derives from those page views enough to cover salaries, benefits and nice downtown offices [it hasn't] is beside the point. It has no serious options other than to try.]

If it tries to require those who link to its stories to pay a fee, the links will go away. It will have far less traffic to monetize. And it will hardly slow erosion of its print subscription base, which used to be the anchor of its business but increasingly is becoming, well, the anchor of its business, in the sense that it is pulling it deeper underwater with irresistible weight to certain death.

Rebuild the walls around your content by charging people to visit or link to it and you risk becoming the North Korea of Media–isolated and backward, depriving your citizens of nourishment and the benefits of global connection. You become a digital Kim Jong Il, but without the crazy hair and nuclear weapons.

But back to my original point, about recommending this article as a Print ‘n’ Read. When you print out Shapira’s article, there is no advertisement on the printed page that hums out of your printer.

What a missed chance! A perfect opportunity to sell a bona-fide print advertisement! Now that’s a quality ad impression, as they say in the biz.

I propose a partnership: When I recommend Washington Post articles as Print ‘n’ Reads, we can do a revenue share.

But I’m not going to pay for the privilege of linking to it.

[Interest revealed: I'm a former Post editor, but I have no access to current site metrics. Until 2006 I did participate in several formal and informal discussions where these "side door" numbers were discussed by people with knowledge of them. If traffic patterns have changed, someone please drop me a quiet note. Same for other mainstream news sites.]

The Article of the Future

Scientific publishers Elsevier and Cell Press have released a long-in-development prototype of what they call the “Article of the Future.”

It represents a thorough re-thinking of what an “article” is.

The press release details key features:

• A hierarchical presentation of text and figures - readers can elect to drill down through the layers based on their current task in the scientific workflow and their level of expertise and interest.
• Bulleted article highlights and graphical abstract - readers can quickly gain an understanding of the paper’s main message and navigate directly to specific sub-sections of the results and figures.
• The graphical abstract encourages browsing, promotes interdisciplinary scholarship and helps readers identify more quickly which papers are most relevant to their research interests.

What’s significant here is the way the developers essentially started from scratch, with the needs of an online user in mind.

Yes, the core is essentially an old-school journal article.

But from the bulleted list of key findings on top, to the multiple points of entry based on different use cases and learning styles, to the hyperlinks galore, the developers have identified ways to make it work better in the form a vast majority of readers now encounter journal articles–online.

An irresistible question for students of mainstream media’s reluctant, stumbling transition to the web: [Please forgive my intemperate language and use of capital letters]

WHY IN HOT SCREAMING HELL HAVE MAINSTREAM NEWS PUBLISHERS NOT DEVELOPED AN “ARTICLE OF THE FUTURE” BASED ON USE WEB CASES LIKE THIS OVER, OH, I DON’T KNOW, THE LAST 15 YEARS OR SO?

Ahem. Thank you. I feel better now.

A video walkthrough of the Article of the Future, voiced in a wonderfully British manner, can be found on the press release page.

What Was the Post Thinking with Its “Salon”? This:

Among the many questions being asked about the Washington Post’s disastrous plan to charge lobbyists and executives for a private “salon” among “the powerful few”:

WTF were they thinking?

Thanks to the Post’s “Shoptalk” employee newsletter [posted on an employee alumni website not affiliated with the Post] we now have some idea. In the June 16 edition, Charles Pelman, the staffer who organized the salons, was interviewed by Shoptalk staff about his new job.

This interview came long before the Post had to backtrack and aver they had no idea what was being said about the salons. If only we’d known. . ..

The “money” quote from the interview, as it were:

What goals have you set?

We’re thinking of doing eight to eleven salons, five to six day-long briefings and one major leadership summit per year. The salons are two-hour dinners with reporters, editors, policy makers, politicians, advocacy groups and other people who have a stake in a particular topic.

How will you measure success?

Profits. We want to drop some money to the bottom line. We want to be one of the engines of growth.

Well, there you have it. WTF?

Here’s TF.

Health Journalists on Twitter: Not Entirely Well, Thank You

I’m going to be hosting a webinar on how health journalists use social media soon.

So I thought I’d check out the health reporters on Muckrack.com, a website that aggregates Tweets of our nation’s journalistic corps.

It can be fascinating to see what sort of brain-lint the media produce minute-by-minute on the world’s tiniest news platform.

As I began writing this entry, for instance, there were dozens of Tweets not so much reporting, but wondering aloud what was up with, the “fact” that Gov. Sarah Palin seemed to be resigning, or at least not running for re-election, or something.

It was an enlightening moment in journalistic pop anthropology. You could see the complex thoughts of inside-the-Beltway sophisticates taking shape right before your  eyes.

Tweeted Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post: “Something must be up, I guess. Kind of weird.“

Talk about your first rough draft of history.

The Health Journalist Twitterers

But anyway, I was there to check out the Health niche. The health reporting corps has not for the most part discovered Muckrack yet: Only 10 health reporters’ Tweetstreams were aggregated on the Muckrack’s Health page.

They comprised three Baltimore Sun reporters, two from the Chicago Tribune, and one from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. [All Tribune Co. properties]. Then there is one each from CNBC, CBS News, the Montreal Gazette, and the New York Times.

And how were they using social media? The mixed bag you might expect.

Journalists on Twitter: Seeking Sources, Thinking Out Loud, Promoting Self, Getting Personal

Julie Deardorff of the Chicago Tribune, for instance, used Twitter to conduct some of source-fishing, cogitate about topics in her notebook, promote her own articles and, like all public-spirited Tweeters, reveal some personal information.

In Deardorff’s case, at least, the personal was professional.

• On Thursday June 25 she reported that she “injured my intercostal muscles by coughing for a week straight.”
• Two days later she reported she’d been diagnosed with pneumonia.
• And two days later she was back on the beat, trolling for sources to discuss the Nuval nutrition rating system.

Best-of-Class: Mike Huckman of CNBC

The most prolific health Twitterer on Muckrack–and, with over 3,000 followers, the most watched–is Mike Huckman, the pharma reporter for CNBC. Anybody interested in the bloodsport in the drug trade should follow Huckman’s sluice of reports, rulings, research and rumors about the companies that make America’s meds.

There is also insight into the life of a business journalist, such as this ripe observation about dealing with flacks. [Note the #prfail hashtag]:

mhuckman #prfail Just got call from PR person.I pick up phone,as always,”This is Mike.”They say,”Mike Huffman?”Pitching pvte co anyway,so 0 interest
a day ago by Mike Huckman, Pharmaceuticals Reporter, CNBC

Doctor!!!! Doctor!!!!!

CBS medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton Tweets about her comings and goings conducting interviews. Fairly routine stuff for journalistic Tweetle.

But for someone who is both a journalist and an M.D., she can be unusually enthusiastic. Within the stretch of 5 Tweets she managed to use 10 exclamation points. That may be a record of some sort.

New York Times and Twitter: Not a Healthy Situation

The smart set says that it’s poor form to use Twitter simply as a “push” device, as a tool to inflict yourself on the world. Everybody who participates in Twitter [it is said], even journalists, should expect to give more than they take, share tidbits with people who may appreciate them, develop relationships, etc. This is the spirit of the social web, it is said.

The biggest violator of this principle among the health reporting set on Muckrack is the estimable Tara Parker Pope, author of the New York Times’ Well health blog.

Her Tweetery consists almost entirely of two things: Links to her own blog entries and acolytic admirations of the fine work of her fellow Timesfolk. [i.e., "Interesting slide show on NyTimes Lens blog of homeless transgendered teens. http://bit.ly/14POwF"]

It’s true that Pope also gets personal; she Tweets about her preparation for the New York City Marathon.

taraparkerpope My 5.4 mi run tonight spent 630 calories according to http://www.gmap-pedometer.com . But now I’m 800 calories worth of hungry.
Tara Parker Pope, Well Columnist, New York Times

But that’s professional self-promotion too: Pope is the proprietor of RunWell, an online community for distance runners the Times launched recently.

Clearly Pope hasn’t gotten the Tweet about social media ethos. Another Twitter profile bears Pope’s name and likeness. nytimeswell is nothing but a botstream that’s triggered every time her blog updates.

Actually it’s triggered more often than that. Check out the series of simuTweets on celiac disease.

I found it peculiar that the New York Times was using Twitter is such a graceless manner compared to its peers.

The Times, after all, recently hired Jen Preston as its first Social Media Editor. Her task, presumably, would be to help staff make enlightened use of social web tools like Twitter.

So I clicked over to Preston’s feed in Muckrack to see how she is faring.

Not all that well, it turns out.

The Times’ social media doyenne hadn’t updated in about 3 weeks, and only three times since this one:

Working on response to 1,000 replies to last week’s question, how can @nytimes better use Twitter. MediaBistro conference later.
12:15 PM Jun 3rd from web

#Neda, Still Outside the Mainstream

It may appear that #Neda–the young woman whose death on the streets of Tehran was captured on a staggering amateur video–has “gone mainstream.”

Which is to say, that Big Media has recognized the role the image may be playing in driving political opinion, and is exploring it as a way to interpret the continuing protests and political activities. [I blogged on this topic yesterday.]

But no.

Where credit is due: Last night CNN repeatedly ran a version of the 37-second video, with proper warnings about its graphic content. The hosts and guests talked about the video’s potential–and apparent–role in galvanizing the protest movement both inside and outside Iran.

The fact that it has done so is beyond dispute.

But CNN stands nearly alone among U.S. mainstream media in its acknowledgment of the role the Neda video is playing in Tehran.

To check this out, I did on-site searches of three major print-heritage MSM news sites. Here’s what I found, as of 3:30 Monday, June 22 [links below are to stored searches]:

WashingtonPost.com

Stories from AP, Reuters and a single homegrown reference: An online discussion by a non-staffer

NYTimes.com

Three references in The Lede news blog, and reference deep in one print article, which says that the authenticity of the video cannot be verified [of which more in a moment]

USAToday.com

Two blog entries, plus wire stories

Let’s open up the search. Here’s what Google News tosses up on a search for “Neda”: 332 results!

But wait, there’s less.

Dig into those results and you’ll see:

• The New York Daily News appears to be alone among U.S. newspapers in offering original Neda reporting in print by its staff. The Kansas City Star and the L.A. Times have blogged on it.
• Among non-daily MSM, Time’s Robin Wright features a print article that uses Neda as a jumping off point to put the current events in historical context
• Otherwise the content comes mostly from ABC news, CNN and FoxNews, which for the most part used the Neda video as a compelling “actuality” to show over the latest news updates.
• Around the world, big media is paying more attention: the BBC and other UK outlets, some local TV stations’ websites, and wire stories from AP, Reuters and AFP.

The journalists most actively discussing the Neda phenomenon? Indie bloggers.

So why the mainstream media prudery?

It could be that, yes, the video is a fraud. I think this a very remote possibility, almost paranoid in its nature. One look at the video makes this quite clear. [One commenter on my blog entry yesterday makes this case--he suspects a "blood packet" has been applied to Neda's face--and many others are doing so around the web.]

The world is a strange and terrible place, and [as a former Washington Post newsroom employee] I am enough of a trained skeptic to see that it’s foolish to rule out the possibility entirely.

It can also be argued that the MSM should exercise its often-valuable caution and care in its reports–especially as new details about Neda’s life and images of her beautiful face emerge from obscure,  unfamiliar sources and are being used to serve the protesters’ political ends. In this view, the MSM is the prudent counterweight to the flighty speculations of the social web, refusing to fall into the hands of the revolutionaries’ spinning.

But as I argued yesterday, I suspect it’s less about that than it is about the MSM’s unwillingness to acknowledge [accept? understand?] its increasingly marginalized role in a fast-moving news environment where real-time global information sharing without MSM approval is the rule, not the exception.

I believe that a lot of the media’s “Well, we’re really not sure” chin-pulling is an affected, self-infatuated dodge–a way to avoid of the larger, paralyzing question:

What, exactly, should the mainstream media should do when a story develops so far beyond its control–or understanding?

n.b. Over at the journalism site Poynter.org, Bill Mitchell explains some of the challenges the Neda video creates for traditionally trained journalists.

Digital News Innovation from. . .the Washington Post!

Enthusiasts of innovative ways to present news in web-native formats should check out the Innovations in News blog from…The Washington Post.

Regular readers of this blog [both of you!] may be surprised to hear this. I’m a regular reader myself, and nobody is more surprised than I.

Having issued a blistering broadside against the Post‘s [my former employer's] inept lunge at web-native storytelling last week, I had no idea that the Post was quietly accumulating some good digital news projects and aggregating them in a blog. It’s been published since mid-April.

Here’s the most news-oriented project of the items of the bunch, a wonderful D.C. Budget Game. It’s an interactive response to the old “You don’t like the budget cuts? You give it a try” dare.

In truth, aside from this, there’s little groundbreaking work here yet–most of the five features on the blog are soft efforts, of the cool-stuff-apropos-of-nothing variety, not journalistic responses to the news. The Post still badly trails the New York Times in innovative use of digital media to commit acts of journalism.

Still, it’s a sign of digital  life. And worth keeping an eye on.

n.b. Nobody at the Post turned me on to this. It’s not a “make-good” blog entry to try to curry favor with my former employer. It’s safe to say that that favor is beyond curry.

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