Recovering Journalist

Georgia on My Mind (No, the Other One!)

I'm no fan of Google News. I think it's a clever idea, but its algorithms are sloppy, its sources are sometimes murky and as a result it has an annoying tendency to pick important news from the most obscure source, rather than striving for the most credible source.

And occasionally its algorithms go completely haywire, and something like this happens!

Conventional Wisdom–Not

Forbes is reporting that there will be 15,000 journalists at each of the two upcoming political conventions.

Unbelievable.

At a time when news budgets are being slashed because of declining revenue, how can a news organization possibly justify sending a raft of people to the conventions? (I suspect the numbers for the Olympics are about the same–and just as ridiculous.)

The Los Angeles Times is sending 15 people to the conventions, Forbes says. And that doesn't count journalists from other Tribune Co. papers that will be helping out. With what? Apparently, the Zellot cost-cutters missed this line item. Too bad. USA Today plans to send 34 reporters to each convention; Dow Jones is sending 23 to each. The New York Times and Washington Post aren't disclosing their numbers, but you can believe they're similarly inflated. The good news is that many organizations say they're cutting back from previous convention coverage–but it's still too much.

Sorry, but in most cases, there's really no (legitimate) excuse for a single news organization to send a large number of journalists to the convention. What stories are they going to get that the AP can't supply? Hijinks of the local delegates? Inside info about what the candidates hope to do for the economy back home? Local color on Denver and St. Paul? It's really hard to understand the need for this kind of bulk coverage. 

Unless, of course, you understand that the conventions serve as gala social events for journalists, as well. It isn't just political reporters that go to big events like these–it's editors, managing editors and publishers who get to go along for the expense-account ride (in expensive style, no doubt). That puffs up those numbers of attendees. It's a way of showing the flag, of hanging out with old friends, of doing some (much-needed these days) job networking. 

But that doesn't make it right. In fact, at a time when coverage is being cut back and newspapers and broadcasters really need to be devoting more resources to local coverage and other journalism that readers truly care about, this sort of boondoggle is just plain wrong.

Dog Bites Man; Kids Don't Care

A few years ago I was privy to a newspaper company's top-secret plan to reach the youth market--which spent a dozen pages establishing that, um, kids don't read newspapers. Look, if you need to spend that much time figuring that out and explaining it to your top executives, you're dead before you even start planning your strategy.

Comes now a Harvard study showing that, gasp, young people don't care much about news. (Did somebody really get paid to figure this out?) Only one in 20 rely on a newspaper for news. And that 5 percent looks even more shaky when you kick in the 2-3 percent margin of error.

There's really no news here. Young people have never cared much about news; now they care even less about fossilized news delivery formats like newspapers. And what are newspapers doing about it? Um, starting newspapers aimed at the youth market! Or publishing condescending kids' news pages (which appear in the very newspapers the kids don't read)! Great thinking.

Newspapers and media companies that want to reach younger readers should be doing it on the Web--not just with Web sites or blogs, but with tools that reach kids where they are: widgets for Facebook and MySpace, products tailored for mobile devices, a heavy emphasis on Web video. Stop doing studies to find out where the youth market has gone, stop trying to reach young readers with products from a generation or two ago, and start creating products that audience actually wants. Stumped on that? Hire some kids to help you build them, and then listen to them. What they and their friends want is where you should be--not desperately defending the media you grew up with.