@ jeffreyrbunch

Jayhawk from lobby of Lawrence Journal-World

I just returned from a  conference that brought some things into sharper focus for me about the future of journalism, particularly digital publishing.

Last week’s event was an invitation-only conference hosted by Mediaphormedia, the interactive division of the World Company in Lawrence, Kansas. The World is the publisher of the Lawrence Journal-World (LJWorld.com) and owner of several successful spin-off sites, including Lawrence.com and KUsports.com.

The World Company and some of its former employees (such as Adrian Holovaty, @adrianholovaty, who later founded EveryBlock.com) are also creators of the wonderful open-source platform Django. Another creator of the platform, Jacob Kaplan-Moss (@jacobian), still hangs out in Lawrence and was part of a World Company team that created a commercial version of the platform known as Ellington CMS.

It was my role as an implementer and user of Ellington that brought me to a “Summit” in Lawrence, a town that doesn’t know it’s small (which has also been said about the World company). The event was first-class and attracted a broad spectrum of publishers, Web editors, advertising managers, and Web developers. The room represented the types of stakeholders in the publishing industry who will have a big say in how journalism survives and thrives in a digital world.

The Summit was inspiring on a lot of fronts, but the financial success stories of several digital publishing efforts were most encouraging. In geographically diverse markets of all shapes and sizes, publishing companies are pushing innovation on both the content and revenue fronts. Their efforts are paying off with returns on investment that (in some cases) are well into seven figures of new revenue.  That’s impressive when one considers the relatively small size of some of those markets.

It should go without saying that great journalism (not just “news”) underlies those efforts in every successful market. Those companies succeeding on the revenue side are also the most connected with their communities on the content side. The best have also broken down the internal walls that have traditionally held back “newspaper companies” from making the transition to digital.  The old paradigms have shifted, rapidly, to new ones and these companies “get it.”

Some of the ideas are uncomfortable for those who are more traditional about “newspaper” operations. The digital world forces publishing companies to reinvent themselves in a more strategic way: advertising, IT, and the newsroom need to make plans cooperatively but execute in a way that maintains journalistic integrity.  Those in the room were encouraged to push forward.

One speaker at the event addressed those in the audience who might be risk-averse to being cutting edge or “bleeding edge,” as it’s sometimes called, saying: “That’s okay; you want to be in front of everything!”

One needs only look to the LJWorld model to find living proof of the idea. The company restructured its chain of command to reflect its digital focus: newsrooms were reshaped; advertising strategies refined; IT infrastructure was funded to support it all. The result has been continual growth of its offerings without a significant erosion in its print circulation.

Lawrence is an isolated market in the middle of the U.S. and the World has a daily circulation of just 16,889, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, yet its family of sites generate millions of pageviews every month.  Quantcast.com reveals LJWorld has demographics much broader than those of traditional “newspaper” sites. Its audience is equally split between the demographic age groups of 18-34, 35-49, and 50-plus. Quantcast ranks it in the top 7,500 Web sites (for audience size) in the United States.

The hallmarks of all the efforts by LJWorld and Mediaphormedia are innovation and dedication to quality.  Mediaphormedia is also highly customer-centric, continually asking for feedback on how they can improve their Ellington CMS and Marketplace products. They are never content and never bound by conventional thinking; qualities for all of us to emulate.

The new game is about audience and revenue development of all kinds: It’s about print readers and online viewers; display ads in print and online; on-site and Web search; and interactive products that deliver relevant information to customers where they spend time (especially on mobile and social media). It’s about niche content and niche revenues, the sum of which will equal a new, sustainable model for digital publishing.

Matt Mullenweg, WordPress founder - Wikimedia Commons image

I wanted put up a quick post to reflect on a recent round of inspiration that has hit me, thanks in large part to people in my industry, my geographic community, and circle of friends who are “killing it.”

I am so blessed to be surrounded by such positive and inspiring entrepreneurs in my life (a few examples):

- Kent J. Lewis (@kentjlewis), owner of Anvil Media and Formic Media – SEO/SEM and social media marketing

- Steve Woodward (@nozzlsteve), CEO of Nozzl Media – real-time Web data streams;

- Orest Pilskalns, Founder & CEO of Geomonkey Inc. – social and geolocation mapping (@Streetbrew); and

- Ryan Buchanan (@ryanbuch), Founder & CEO of eROI (@eroi) – e-mail, digital marketing.

These are just some of the sources for my inspiration; others come from professional relationships with top-tier vendors, colleagues in my industry, as well as innovative people in the public sector and private businesses of all sizes.

I plan to highlight some of these individuals over the next few posts and a pattern will hopefully emerge: Sincere, smart, passionate, hard-working people are doggedly pursuing their goals until they succeed while staying true to their core values. They come from all walks of life and from all levels of organizations.

Yet what I’ve found is that all of us trying to make a difference – for ourselves, for the benefit of our organizations, or both – need to stay connected to each other and encourage each other. It’s not easy to stay on the path of innovation and leadership; all the more reason why those of us who have chosen that way need to stick together.

This post wouldn’t be possible without the incredible idea (and execution) of Matt Mullenweg (@photoMatt), founder of WordPress and the creator of the awesome anti-spam tool akismet. I had the pleasure of meeting Matt last year at WordCamp Portland and the pre-conference Beer & Blog event (post here). He has changed Web publishing indelibly, for the better.

On the day of another notable Beer and Blog event (Old Spice ad campaign gurus Wieden+Kennedy are hosting), I can only hope to do my part to inspire others in the same way they have done it for me.

tbd.com logo

There has been a lot of talk lately about who is going to “save journalism.” There is a clear consensus developing that it will be saved (i.e. transformed) by journalists, not news aggregators or legacy publishing company print-centric executives.

I was in the front row, almost literally, two weeks ago today when I heard speaker after speaker make the argument for front-line journalists and allied executives as saviors of the profession.  I attended a smallish, but significant, publishing industry event in Las Vegas put on by Editor & Publisher dubbed the “Interactive Media Conference.” Prior quick blog post here.

The two keynotes for the conference were delivered by John Paton, CEO of the Journal Register Company, and Josh Cohen of Google News. They each delivered key messages with a common theme about the future of journalism and how it might be “saved.” Both said that journalism can be preserved by its practitioners (and their bosses) transforming how it is done.

Paton’s presentation was titled “Digital First, Print Last.” He made a compelling argument that a fundamental mindset shift hasn’t occurred in the industry that will be key to its survival. Paton said the “print people” have been in charge of the industry for the last 100 years and in charge of digital news for the last 10 years. It isn’t working, he said, and the time has come to “put the digital people in charge.” It is what he has done in his company as he transforms it into a multiplatform entity.

Cohen’s speech was anticipated because there has been a perception that Google News is the nemesis of the online news industry. It has been the target of various campaigns by publishers to stop Google’s bots from crawling its news sites. Cohen pointed out that every publisher has the option to stop their sites from being  indexed. However, Google and the publishers have found mutual benefits to the traffic Google aggregates, then directs back to news sites.  He said it is the job of the industry, not companies such as Google, to “save journalism.”  Journalism doesn’t need to be “saved” just “transformed,” said Cohen.

In listening to the rest of the conference’s other panels, it is clear that working journalists will be the ones to do the transforming. There were examples of hyperlocal efforts not yet tackled, social media strategies for news organizations, and collaborative online investigative journalism projects.  The message was made clearer the following day at the Editor & Publisher online awards, known as the EPpy’s. The best in online journalism was honored, from sites such as NPR.org and LasVegasSun.com. As one of the judges, I was blown away by the work being done.

NPR sent one of its top reporters to accept; she was clearly humbled by the industry’s recognition of its outstanding (nonprofit) pursuit of journalism. LasVegasSun’s Rob Curley was emotional in collecting one of his team’s awards in honor of the laid-off multimedia producers who did the work. Afterward, his publisher spoke of the struggle to monetize award-winning journalism.

Saving the publishing industry or saving journalism?

Coincidental to the E&P Interactive Media Conference was the publication – and follow-up discussions – of The Atlantic’s article, “How to Save the News.” Article author James Fallows tried to put his piece in further perspective in a post on colleague Andrew Sullivan’s blog on the magazine’s site titled, “Will Google Help Save Journalism? Ctd:”

“If there is a point that, above all the others, I wanted most to convey in this article, it is not “everything is going to be OK” or “Google is our friend” or even “here comes a torrent of new advertising money!” Rather it is a cultural/attitudinal argument about the press and everyone who cares about it. Far from being autumnal and despairing and mournful about a supposed golden age that has passed and fatalistic about the doomed state of public information and the resulting lapsed state of society, people who care about the media should (according to me) recognize that technological upheaval, and the resulting business shifts and forced individual innovations, have been the norm rather than the exception in our enterprise. Clever and ambitious people, especially but not only young people, will find new ways to do the work a society needs of them — and to make a living while doing so. …” http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/05/will-google-help-save-journalism-c.html

There are many former journalists who are making a living as one-person Web publishing entities or smaller start-ups with teams of journalists who took buyouts or were laid off from more traditional legacy publishing companies. They are tackling the “news” in more energetic, brighter ways. One shining example is Nozzl Media of Portland, Ore., where a group of former old-school journalists are re-inventing themselves by creating real-time news stream Web applications.

Innovation is the key at start-ups such as TBD.com

It will be interesting to watch how much of the current cutting-edge thinking comes together at TBD.com, a start-up venture in Washington, D.C., funded by the people who started Politico.com. TBD has brought some of the brightest and most innovative journalists and journalism executives to their site, which was featured recently on Techcocktail.com and described in this way:

“By aggregating heavily, utilizing geocoding for personalization and applying “the Politico mentality” (an urgency and willingness to publish incrementally) to local news, TBD intends to be a one-stop news shop for the District, Maryland, and Virginia…

While they plan to be a news hub for the area, the folks at TBD.com don’t plan to do it alone and are enlisting the help of partners who will supplement and enhance their news coverage…

For TBD.com, transparency is a big priority.  Recognizing they may not have all the answers and details about the news stories users care about, they say they’ll be counting on readers to fill in the blanks and help construct the most complete history of the news happening in our region.   Stories at TBD will always be developing, and TBD will “belong to everyone.” http://techcocktail.com/home/2010/06/12/tbd-com-aiming-to-be-dc%E2%80%99s-one-stop-news-shop/

There are some key concepts that stand out about the site’s approach: aggregation, geocoding, personalization, urgency, incremental publishing, partnership, transparency. These are trademarks of many innovative organizations, including Google. Half of the work one must do in being “saved” is admitting things aren’t working and then changing things up. Publishing companies which do that will likely continue to publish; those which don’t may perish. Journalists and journalism will survive.

Related links

John Paton’s Ben Franklin Project: http://jrcbenfranklinproject.wordpress.com/

Google News official blog: http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/

Nozzl Media site: http://nozzlmedia.com/

TBD.com: http://tbd.com/

TBD’s Steve Buttry: http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/

Editor & Publisher Interactive Media Conference logo

Here are a couple of quick thoughts on the two keynotes – from John Paton and Josh Cohen – at Editor & Publisher’s Interactive Media Conference in Las Vegas this week that are generating some buzz in the online journalism world:

E&P: John Paton kicked off E&P’s Interactive Media Conference with a wake-up call

Mr. Paton was named Editor of the Year in 2009 by E&P, but it will most likely be his keynote at the conference that will generate a buzz for him around the Web. Paton, CEO of the Journal Register Company, had a direct message for the conference’s attendees: “Digital First, Print Second”. He talked in a frank manner about the “new news economy” and how publishing companies have largely failed to adapt but need to find ways to do so. He also detailed various measures his company has taken which have left “blood on the floor” but were necessary to cut legacy costs and allow the company to transform into a multi-platform entity. His group is also now a minority investor in Canada’s Canwest media company, so Mr. Paton will continue to be an important voice in journalism.

E&P: In Vegas, Google’s Cohen Details Experiments with Newspapers

I thought Mr. Cohen, Business Product Manager for Google News, was very measured yet direct in his comments: Journalism doesn’t need to be saved because it will survive, but it needs to be transformed. He also made it clear that it is the job of the industry, not Google, to figure out how to best reinvent itself. Yet Google’s efforts to partner with news media organizations show it understands the value of the industry’s contributions to its business model. He also pointed out how Google itself has to continually fight off challenges in its industry as the leader, much like publishers are now facing. Google stays on top by constantly innovating and improving. The publishing industry will need to do the same; its very survival depends on it.

Jess Walter, Wikipedia image

There is great news for Jess Walter and fans of his writing. It appears that the movie production of his book “The Zero” has been given new life, according to an exclusive blog post out of Cannes by Steven Zeitchik (@ZeitchikLAT) on LATimes.com.

I think the style of “The Zero” will make a great movie; it’s unique voice is very visual and should adapt well to the screen. The analogy to Charlie Kaufman in the Los Angeles Times piece is fitting. I could definitely see it in the genre of Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” which was one of the most edgy and mind-expanding movies I’ve seen in years.

The LATimes.com post says the screenplay for “The Zero” was written by Brandon Boyce. Boyce adapted Steven King’s “Apt Pupil” for the screen and also wrote the screenplay for “Wicker Park”. He would seem to be a good candidate to tackle Jess Walter’s strobe-like creative style in the book set against the backdrop of 9/11. Zeitchik says Derrick Borte (“The Joneses“) will direct.

Jess Walter’s most recent book (which I wrote about earlier), “The Financial Lives of the Poets” would also make a great movie. That manages to weave an unpredictable, compelling story of redemption while skewering a few architects of the fall of the financial markets (and newspapers) at the same time.

Let’s hope Jess Walter’s “Citizen Vince” also gets produced. I hear a Richard Russo (“Empire Falls”) screenplay has been ready to go for that book for some time. Walter has a great command of the language, a laugh-out-loud sarcastic wit, and a keen insight into the follies of our modern humanity. Here is an excerpt from the LATimes.com piece:

“The Zero” is about a policeman named Brian Remy who, suffering from head trauma in the wake of 9/11, leads tours of ground zero while also beginning a Kafkaesque search for a mysterious character named March Selios. Sept. 11 is never mentioned specifically, but it’s clear what Walter is referencing, and in addition to a general tone of subversive and oddball wit, Walter’s book weighs in with some sly commentary about the marketing of tragedy.

There is also a post up today on HuffingtonPost.com with Calvert Morgan, Walter’s editor, about Harper Perennial’s Role in the Current Resurgence in American Fiction. In the interview, Morgan says about Walter’s latest book, “Jess’s novel The Financial Lives of the Poets is the most current and moving snapshot of our culture right now that I’ve read in the past couple of years.”

Intel on Facebook

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Intel’s Ekaterina Walter (@ekaterinawalter), Social Media Strategist, about the company’s social media strategy, including its Intel on Facebook presence.

Intel generated quite the buzz last month at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2010) in Las Vegas for several reasons:

• The launch of its new Core® processors;
• Its crowd-pleasing interactive cube display; and
• Its new Interactive Directory for Facebook.

Intel has been a leader in social media through its Social Media Center of Excellence, based in the Portland, Oregon area. The small but powerful group helps the company to develop and execute on its worldwide social media strategy. The group’s long-term work was recently featured on the Harvard Business Review blog. See Intel’s Social Media Training – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review

Walter is part of a team which also includes Kelly Feller and Bryan Rhoads, among others. The unit works in conjunction with other Intel divisions, such as marketing and legal, on both internal and external efforts. Intel has worked closely with Facebook and outside developers to create a one-of-a-kind presence which is as innovative as anything else that Intel does.

Intel’s thought-leading approach to social media

The Interactive Directory on Facebook is just the latest in a long line of innovation by the company in the area of social media.

Intel was one of the first major companies to recognize the need to provide guidance to its employees, in the form of company policies, on the proper use of social media and its tools. The company took it one step further, developing a curriculum and certification program for employees: Digital IQ. See Technology@Intel · Intel’s Social Media Story… by Bryan Rhoads.

The goal is to provide guidance, policies, and company-wide tools to help Intel employees interact on the Social Web. Like most companies, it started out as a grass roots project when social media appeared on the scene and there were no guidelines in place. That scenario can create chaos and risk for a company, but now one like Intel has a resource.

Walter puts the team’s mission this way, “We help teams bring social media into their strategy and look overall at our presence everywhere: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube … Where are we and how should we represent our brand?”

The trick is not to be controlling, but to give guidance (including legal review) so that interactions by Intel in social media are authentic, but with structure.

“It’s a very fine balance,” said Walter. “You don’t want to kill the passion, take it over and say, ‘Now we’re in charge.’ … Education is a huge part: talking about risk, branding, trademark, privacy, HR issues. Educating without pushing.”

The training spreads social media “IQ” throughout the company. The nimble team does a lot with limited resources for a global company the size of Intel, developing playbooks for social media efforts that teams can execute.

“We’re extremely passionate about all things and creative,” Walter says about the Intel social media team. “When you put us all together, it’s amazing what you can do.”

The process employed by Intel is one many companies can emulate.

“Start with objectives and do it right. Why are you on that platform? Then figure out how to execute on each platform,” says Walter. Then, just as important, adapt and evolve. “You learn every day by engaging with your audience on each platform,” she added.

Intel’s new Interactive Facebook Directory

The Interactive Facebook Directory represents cumulative learning by the company since it has been on the platform. It has four portal entries for diverse topics: “Developers, Products and Technology, Students and Educators, and Discover Intel.”

“It says, here’s our presence (on Facebook),” says Walter. “It’s the first one ever designed that’s interactive. It guides you to what you’re looking for or you can browse on you own. It’s really basic but really helps folks to understand where they can go. It helps people to understand Intel has a bunch of pages but these are being maintained.”

Walter says the goal isn’t to simply create a large community, but to foster an engaged community and provide customer service, sales, and marketing support. The Facebook portal is another way for a B2B or B2C user to get information about the company as a complement to www.intel.com.

The company worked with an outside developer to build the application for the specialized Facebook platform. It is also designed to take advantage of the strengths of Facebook and not play into its weaknesses.

“Facebook is not a broadcasting tool,” says Walter. “What it is, is it allows you to build relationships; I don’t care if it’s in your personal life, professional life, or a company strategy.”

Walter notes most brands are perceived as monolithic and cold, so these types of presences “add a little color to your voice, more authenticity to it.

“It’s a myriad of things,” says Walter. “The community might answer its own questions. It’s a self-supporting community, but they can reach out to us and know they are going to be heard. (The response) is ‘they are actually interested and listening.’ It gives you a sense of knowing your voice and trusting your voice.”

Whatever strategies companies want to employ on Facebook and other social media platforms, Walter has some advice on how to approach it: don’t automate systems (if you can avoid it), be sincere, and don’t be fearful.

“If you’re afraid, fear will hold you back. If you’re afraid, you’re never going to go anywhere,” says Walter. “We do work with PR to post key topics, but we’re not bombarding people with stuff. A little bit of attention goes a long way; the passionate will bring along people who are neutral. If a huge percent of your audience is neutral, convert them to loyalists. It’s all about the relationships. Relationships take time, take resources, but you need to do it right.”

Related media

• Intel’s Social Media guidelines: http://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm
• Intel’s Interactive cube at CES 2010 (@Scobleizer)

This is a post without all the answers about how to “save journalism.” There are no right ones. There are lots of relative truths.

Legacy media executives would tell you journalism-for-profit needs to be saved for people like them to continue to employ the teams of journalists who fill an important role in our society.

Independent and freelance journalists, many of them former newspaper standouts, would tell you there is a need to create a network of content producers which can distribute their work.

Entrepreneurial journalists, who run the gamut in age and experience, would tell you there is a need for scalable solutions (and revenue streams) for their new-idea products.

Citizen journalists, who seem to embrace or shun the title “blogger,” would tell you they want an outlet for the unique set of skills they possess and to be acknowledged for those qualities.

In my home media market of the Portland, Oregon DMA, cooperative groups of these stakeholders are discussing ways to save (or not) “journalism,” either as a business, a noble calling, a civic institution, or all of the foregoing.  They are looking for the answer(s) for the problem: journalism-as-we-knew-it is dead due to societal changes which have fractured markets.

All true.  All false.  It’s not that simple; neither the problem nor the solution(s). There is no one-size-fits-all for a new journalism model.  Each of the above groups of “journalists” are answering to the same calling, but are dependent on different outcomes for their situations.  Publishers have payrolls to meet; journalists (independent or not) have mortgages to pay; entrepreneurs need to show a return on investment; citizen journalists have day jobs to hold down.

Where is all this headed for each of these diverse stakeholders? Who knows?  But we do know it won’t be down one path. My friend, Nozzl Media CEO Steve Woodward, calls it “The Futures – Plural – of Journalism.” My colleague, Carol Doane, points out “Building a new model may require listening.”  There have been dozens of insightful blog posts and tweets in the wake of a gathering called We Make the Media (twitter #wmtm).”  It follows in the footsteps of Digital Journalism Camp Portland, and dozens of other gatherings around the nation. Other ideas are the droning buzz of recovering journalists throughout the Internet.

We are all talking about it, but it just needs to get done (step-by-step over a course which isn’t marked and may take some turns).  Action is the aim of the Portland group and of some less visible (but just as important) industry revenue initiatives.  All the while, technology empowers new waves of “publishers” who will also be part of the new and multifaceted state of journalism.

-30-

kurt vonnegut

Low-Brow Poetry

The stories flowed
at the Low-Brow,
along with $2 PBR,
in a horrible symphony.

Kurt Vonnegut flipping off the VIPs
as he left, stiff drink in hand,
escorted by a dazed young writer
who now idolized him on a new plane.

Then there was another night
when
 all the poets almost starved.
“Yes, we’re the hospitality crew,”
we admitted, meekly, as we struck out.

It wasn’t even midnight on a Friday,
in this embarrassing one-horse town.
We drug them in tow looking for sustenance,
finally collapsing at the only venue still open.

Rita Dove, gracious but clearly famished;
Robert Bly first asking, then demanding,
“Where’s my drink – do you know who I am?”
As the bartender, non-plussed, got in his face.

We hung in there and were all soon munching
on a seemingly endless buffet of bad bar food:
tri-color tortilla chips and a near-rancid spinach dip.
As another successful poetry festival came to a conclusion.

It wasn’t my best photo at all – in fact it was captured on a Blackberry Storm – but it’s nonetheless exciting that a photo of mine has been included in a Schmap.com Guide of Portland. We love that event and try to attend most every year. It appears that Schmap cruises Flickr for photos and asks for the right to publish them on mobile maps.

bluesfest2 by jeffreyrbunch

Hi Jeff,

I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo has been selected for inclusion in the newly released ninth edition of our Schmap Portland Guide: Waterfront Blues Festival

According to its site:

“Schmap is a leading publisher of digital travel guides for 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. More than 90 million Schmap Guides have been downloaded since first release in March 2006: this phenomenally popular series can also be browsed online, with versions optimized for iPhone and Nokia users”

(1978 KB)
Watch on posterous

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Posted via email from jeffbunch’s posterous