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.

Washington Post’s Masterful Failure of Online Journalism

The Washington Post has just published an important, two-part story about an unresolved local murder. It is available only online, an experiment in web journalism by one of the nation’s [still pretty much] great newsooms.

[Interest disclosed: I am a former Post editor.]

“The Robert Wone Stabbing: Anatomy of a Murder Case” is a masterful piece of reporting and storytelling by veteran staffer Paul Duggan and his editors, a work of significant public service. It explores two different versions of events, one involving an elaborate cover-up by the alleged perpetrators, the other a scenario where an unidentified murder breaks into the house and does his deed. There is a theme of peculiar, ambiguous sexuality throughout.

It’s precisely the kind of local journalism that only high-quality print-based newsrooms have [at least temporarily] the staff, budget and skills to pull off.

And yet “The Robert Wone Stabbing” is an amateurish stumble, an obvious mismatch of medium and message, a squandering of scarce newsroom resources that delivers very little benefit to the community and creates zero business value.

Why?

The story is written, edited and presented as if it were to have appeared in print. Over 8,000 words of American English.

To get through both parts you have to click through 10 long-as-your-arm screensful of text.

I tried to read it all online and found it untenable. My carpal tunnels began to burn. My attention faded. I printed the two pieces out and read them later. It was very enjoyable, like indulging one of those great New Yorker articles that you have to ignore your family to finish.

Hard, non-negotiable facts: People read 25 percent slower online than on paper and can rarely sustain even that slowed pace through multiple screens. [By my math, it would take at least 45 minutes in front of the computer to read just the text of the story.]  Online users also behave differently. They don’t read long stories from point to point. [One outlier study by a news organization contradicts this, but many others verify the reluctance to finish long stories.] They restlessly look for things to click. They get distracted by ads, which of course they must be in order for the site to generate revenue. [For more on online reader behavior, see this precis by the annoying  half-genius/usability expert Jakob Nielsen].

The Post’s Wone story proceeds in either complete ignorance or simple contempt of these realities–despite the fact that it is published only online.

The delusion that the web is “an endless newshole” where journalists “have the space to do what needs to be done regardless of length” dates to, oh, the first term of the Clinton Administration. Few people who are serious about web publishing have sustained this fervid wish for this long.

It is true that the Wone piece is dutifully enhanced with multimedia assets.

• Some are inane digital reflex: The photo gallery illuminates nothing about the case. Bios of the principals are insufficient and pop up as text windows for no good reason.
• But some are powerful: The 7-minute audio of the 911 call is emotionally potent and illuminating about the incident in a way no words on a screen can possibly be. The PDF of the police affidavit that gathers all the facts (plus the “facts”) and witness statements is invaluable.
• There is a superb graphic, masterfully reported and beautifully rendered, that illustrates how unrealistic the “outside intruder” scenario is. It also includes a timeline of events and inset photos of key items in the story line.  But it is nearly impossible to find as presented with the package, badly mislabeled and in any case a “dead” graphic [lacking interactivity]; it could easily have accompanied a print version.

Note the way the graphic is promoted as part of the package. Look for it. . .It’s the “79-minute Mystery” item, last on the list, presented with an icon that looks like cell phone signal bars.

You even had to expand this box to even see this tiny, baffling reference. The editors did not consider it among the “top items for this story.”

[Elsewhere, off a top navigation tab, it is presented, oddly, as part of the "watch" content, as in "read," "watch," "listen," "talk," etc.]

So [you say], what should the Post had done for an online-only presentation of this story?

Funny you should ask. I dropped a note to a former Post colleague answering this question about how a newsroom could approach this experiment in online story-telling differently. [To be fair, he also didn't ask the question. I like to think that answering questions nobody has asked is part of my boyish charm.]

The text of my note to my former colleague, cleaned up a bit:

Here’s the exercise I use when I coach people on this:

Imagine you have this story to tell AND MAY NOT USE A TRADITIONAL STORY FOR ANY ASPECT OF THE PIECE.

YOU MAY NOT DO THE COWARDLY, TYPICAL THING AND WRITE THE MAIN PIECE AND DECORATE IT WITH MULTIMEDIA FILIGREE.

Why?

You will suddenly create a situation where you have people who have spent their careers internalizing the important heart of the journalistic endeavor — far moreso than the often less experienced, sometimes shallow producer class — and have forced them to engage creatively with the journalism of the future.

But it’s vital that these folks–the sweating wretches who have told the stories about fires and murders, who have spent long nights verifying facts and trying to get that one last interview, who have felt the wrath of sources’ anger and the satisfactions of exposing bad actor, who have committed their lives to this hard and important work–that these people learn to tell stories in the way the web demands.

Otherwise they cede the most essential platform for public service journalism to people who have not had those experiences.

So what could Duggan’s piece be like without a “story?” [Blurbs and brief content forms are not only acceptable but essential]

• Rather than a dead graphic buried in the package, I’d make an interactive version the centerpiece: An interactive timeline presenting, the competing interpretations of the murder. You’d be able to compare the alternative scenarios, examining for plausibility and holes, etc. You’d also see which facts are undisputed.
• Each item on time line would be linked to an asset when possible. For instance, that fascinating affadavit should have been broken up into chunks for this use, with different versions of the story “told” with this information at appropriate moments in timeline. Different witnesses’ versions of identical moments could be stacked, their points of divergence visually highlighted.
• That chilling 7-minute 911 call would be linked on the timeline at the moment it occured. With a transcript as well, since [usability tests show] clicking on audio assets is a fairly rare web user behavior. That transcript would be annotated by Duggan.
• Then I’d re-sort those assets using a “geographic” navigation–the interior of the house and its location on the street, with pop-ups of what happened where under each scenario. Again, this is presented in the current package, but dead and buried.
• I’d have Duggan annotating the timelines with audio/transcripts/written comments at various points–refereeing, adding subtleties and insights the raw facts and assets could not provide and that only someone in command of the story journalistically could provide. Add snippets, in text and occasionally in audio, of his interviews.

There are many other non-story approaches, some far more sophisticated.

But I’d argue that even the product described above would be far more powerful to an online audience than the Post’s platform-ignorant, beautifully written 8,000 word narrative. It would reach more people. It would serve the public better.

And I would argue, just to play angel’s advocate, that it would be superior journalism.

p.s. Readers disliked the online presentation for different reasons–largely because it was. . .wait for it. . .published only online. See the Post ombudsman’s column.

New Media Rorschach Test for Journalists

Test Instructions

Take a few moments to stare at these inkblots:

The New York Times eliminates sections, reorganizes newsroom

The Washington Post eliminates sections, reorganizes newsroom

Diagnosis:

If these images produce feelings of doom, despair and anger, you are sentimental, nostalgic, resistant to change and are poorly engaged with reality. Rx: Retirement or an editing job for a government agency.

If these images produce feelings of excitement, curiosity and hope, you are clear-headed, forward-looking, adaptable and culturally aware. Rx: Double down on the blog, learn to use that Flip cam, and prepare for a thrill ride.

If you see a ducky being disemboweled by witch, seek medical help immediately.

NVision, the Future of Journalism, and Social Media

I’m delighted to report that I’ll be hosting a panel today at NVision 2009, a gathering of journalism editors, reporters, business leaders at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

Our panel is about — stop me if you’ve heard this before — social media. Panelists include Patrick Cooper of USA Today, Etan Horowitz of the Orlando Sentinel, Scott Karp of Publish2 and Jennifer Golbeck, a professor [computer science!] at the University of Maryland.

I’ll do a wrap-up post, including the slides and best-of Tweets. The hashtag is #nvision. In fact, Etan is Twittering as I write. I better get downtown quick.

Update, 1:07 p.m.: I’m here, and have discovered the event is live-streaming. Our panel’s on at 3:45 p.m. EST.

Update, 9:28 p.m.: Great panel.  Of course, I have to say that. But that doesn’t mean I’m not serious. These folks were great.

Read the NVision Twitter stream:

Here’s a writeup of the NVision social media panel by Mary Ellen Slater, my former Washington Post colleague and now editor of SmartBrief on Social Media. [Note: SmartBrief on Social Media is a daily e-mail newsletter that does an excellent job of vetting and summarizing social media news. Between that one e-mail newsletter and Twitter, I don't need an RSS feed for social media any more.]

Here is the slideshow, cheerfully entitled “Everybody’s Talking, No One Cares About You, and Nobody Can Hear You Scream”.

Here are my takeaways from our panel. [These should not be trusted, since I was at the podium keeping an eye on the watch, containing the unruly crowd, etc. and so couldn't take notes.]

Patrick Cooper: USA Today actually has a strategy for using social media, and it seems to be working. [Italics of surprise mine]. It’s collaborating with marketing folks to figure out what vertical niches around which the news organization can build social content. [Check out its Cruise Log, a lively microsite mashup of journalism and reader-generated content on taking cruises.]

Etan Horowitz: The key to success with social media is low expections. Use it, join in, find out what’s valuable…but don’t expect some dramatic payoff.

Scott Karp: By using social media tools to collaborate rather than compete, journalists can produce more high-quality stuff than they can working in silos–especially at a time when fewer people are working in fewer silos. See Publish2, especially if you’re a journalist.

Jen Golbeck: Using Facebook, people can filter their own news based on who they know and trust, a fact which is having all sorts of consequences for the media, users and society. One of these is the mass disappearance of cows in Texas. [You had to be there. But go here anyway.]

These four kept the crowd in their seats for the last panel of the day. Afterward, people hung around so long asking questions that the Newseum people had to kick us out.

And I came away thinking that, maybe, a few journalists and publishers in the audience will wind up diving into the world of social media, or diving in deeper.

I take no responsibility for the consequences.

5 Reasons Hearst Should Go Online-Only in Seattle

The suits at Hearst Corp. are cogitatin’ furiously about what to do with the teetering Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The deal is entangled in a web of union contracts and a joint operating agreement with the equally teetersome Seattle Times that makes the decision even messier.

One option for Hearst: To keep the P-I alive as an online-only newspaper.

Why this would be the best option if not for Hearst, then for. . .everyone. [The following points assume the Times would survive as a print newspaper--not guaranteed but perhaps more likely if Paper No. 2 disappears from the market.]

1. This would be the first case I’m aware of where a major metropolitan daily went web-only, providing at least a partial proof-of-concept case study. Get rid of the trucks, the newsprint and paper-only support staff [sorry; not all jobs can survive] and determine whether online revenues can support a vital, or at least competent, newsroom.

2. It would help answer a key question: Do competing newsrooms produce journalism that better serves the public interest than a monopoly newsroom alone? Or does the competition create a race to the bottom? A scrappy online-only competitor to the Times would test that case in the new environment.

3. It would force the paper-bound Times to compete, hard and daily, for online audience, ensuring staff develop the fast-and-sharp, multimedia-focused, link-rich journalism chops necessary to thrive in the developing news world.

4. It would therefore force the old dogs to learn new tricks or get the hell out of the way more effeciently than buyouts, firings or any of those bootless “writing for the web” or “video 101″ seminars.

5. It would preserve real jobs. In this economy, any corporate leaders who choose to responsibly preserve paychecks over habits acquire a gigantic karmic IOU. Redeemable in the next life, if not later in this.

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