Recovering Journalist

What Will Happen When the Presses Go Silent?

The Boston Globe had a story the other day about the travails of the Portland Press Herald last week, and it included a plaintive and intriguing question from a reader of the struggling, up-for-sale Maine paper:

"Can you even be a major city without a daily paper?"

We're going to find out the answer to that before very long, I'm afraid. And it's worth thinking about what such a city will look like.

No, its skyscrapers will not fall, its roads will not collapse, its populace will not move out en masse. In fact, I'll bet that whatever city loses its daily paper–and it will only be the first of many–will continue to be a major city, pretty much unabated. Its media landscape will change, but in ways that may be much less radical than many people think.

Let's think about an imaginary major American city–let's call it Whoville–and its media ecosystem. Today, Whoville has a major daily paper (the Whoville Bugle), four network TV stations with news departments, an AP bureau, an alt-weekly, a weekly business tabloid, a couple of weekly (or daily) ethnic papers, college papers, perhaps an all-news radio station (and at least a couple stations that still do some local news), a ring of suburban papers–mostly weekly, maybe a couple daily–and perhaps a handful of in-city neighborhood weeklies.

Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? And that's just the traditional media. Whoville and it's 'burbs also are bristling with new media. There are enough local online news and bloggers that Examiner.com and Outside.In each can devote a dedicated channel to aggregating Web content about the city.  Craigslist, Yelp, Citysearch and others have beachheads in the market, offering classifieds and reviews that are especially appealing to younger readers. Local outposts of MerchantCircle, Kudzu and other online business directories and Yellow Pages wannabes target local businesses.  Local restaurant bloggers, sports bloggers and other specialists write about things they're interested in.

Whoville's suburbs have blogs, as well, and perhaps a startup hyperlocal site or two. Just about every neighborhood has some sort of listserv or Yahoo group on which neighbors exchange information. And there are any number of specialty newsletters, Web sites, mailing lists and publications that serve specific audiences, ranging from PTAs to moms to local hobbyist groups. Oh, and of course, there's WhovilleBugle.com, the daily paper's Web site, not to mention Web sites for the local TV and radio stations and the community papers.

All of these media outlets are competing for readers in Whoville and its suburbs; most of them are competing for advertisers, too. In other words, there's a lot more to the Whoville media ecosystem than just the Bugle. And I'm sure I left a few things out (every market has a slightly different collection of local media, of course).

It is precisely this growth in competition that has helped to make the Bugle's financial position so tenuous. Surrounded by competitors that are picking off different audiences and advertisers and offering services for free that used to be revenue streams for the paper, the Bugle has been eaten to death by fleas (some of them very large fleas!). Once king of the jungle, it's now just another player–albeit probably the dominant player–in the Whoville media.

Now let's take the Bugle out of that mix.

The Bugle's owner, frustrated by mounting losses and departing advertisers and readers, decides to close up shop. It shuts the paper, idles the presses, and lays off the staff. (There are somewhat less dire versions of this situation, in which the print product disappears but the Web site remains, or the print product is drastically reduced to perhaps publishing a couple times a week, but for the sake of argument, let's go with the full doomsday scenario.)

What happens? The entire Whoville media ecosystem, described above, steps up to pick off the Bugle's advertisers and readers. Some of the media outlets that were dependent on the Bugle's coverage to inspire their content (e.g. TV news and bloggers) will learn to look to other sources. But there's already a lot of diverse media in Whoville serving local news and information needs, and they'll fill a lot of the gap left by the death of the paper.

Inevitably, a group of ex-Bugle staffers, backed by local money, will start the Whoville Daily Trumpet, a fraction the size of the Bugle but much more focused on the city itself. The new paper will leave suburban coverage to the community papers and be smart enough to not even mess with national and international news that's available in a zillion places. With more focus, a much leaner business plan, hungry ad sales reps and hired printing and distribution, the Daily Trumpet can be competitive in ways the bloated, overextended Bugle could not be. 

Many other ex-staffers will join the other existing media, beefing up their staffs and smarts. Still others will start blogs or small print or online media outlets to cover specific topics. Not all of these will make it, but many of them will, covering things the Bugle used to cover and serving various parts of the old Bugle audience.

Indeed, a year or two after the Bugle's demise left a seemingly enormous hole in the city's media landscape, that hole will essentially be gone. It will be filled by thriving, competitive media that already exist and a few new outlets that spring up in the wake of the newspaper's closing.  The Whoville media ecosystem will prove to be self-repairing, much more quickly than a lot of people would expect. The residents of Whoville and its suburbs will get their news and information from these old and new replacements, and advertisers will use those substitutes for the Bugle to reach those customers. 

The Whoville Bugle will be a nostalgic memory of local life–much like the Whoville Herald, the afternoon paper that closed without much of a fuss a generation ago, or the Whoville Daily News, which quietly bit the dust a generation before that. The Bugle will be toasted at annual reunions of the staff and remembered in dusty collections at the library and historical society, but it will soon be seen as yesteryears' news.

Let's get back to the original question. Will Whoville still be a major city? Sure. It will still have its various corporate headquarters, beautiful architecture and parks, international airport, pro sports teams, a thriving music scene, opera, theater, good restaurants, great neighborhoods and all of the other things that make up a major city. It just won't have its old-fashioned daily newspaper. And sorry, but the Bugle really won't be missed.

The AP–Of All Places–As News Industry Think-Tank

The Associated Press has taken a beating in some quarters lately over perceptions–largely misguided, I believe–that it's somehow competing online with its newspaper members. Not only does this reflect a misunderstanding of what the AP does, but a lot of critics seem to forget that AP is owned by those newspapers. It's a rare example of newspaper ownership of a savvy online player, and a lot better than the alternative (think: Reuters. Or Google).

One of the reasons AP is taking some heat, frankly, is because it's been especially aggressive and innovative in embracing online media. Once incredibly stodgy, AP's leadership now seems to be on the cutting edge in how it thinks about the new world of journalism. Go figure.

The latest example of that is a fascinating research report released recently by the news cooperative. "A New Model For News" slipped out of the AP a few weeks ago and has gotten very little coverage in the industry media. But it reads like a roadmap for what news organizations–and especially newspapers–should be doing to regain their competitiveness, especially with young readers.

The report is based on detailed interviews and observations of young (20ish) readers in the U.S., Britain and India. Not surprisingly, it finds out that kids don't read newspapers. No news there. But it does show that they've got real interest in news, and are going to all sorts of sources besides print to find out what's going on in the world.

You should read it, but I'll briefly summarize: TV, Web sites and mobile alerts are popular with these young news consumers. So is news exchanged via social interactions (online and offline) with friends and co-workers. (Missing from the report: Any mention of Twitter, but that may have to do with the timing of the basic user research, which is now a year old.) Interestingly, the young folks interviewed generally don't think they're getting enough depth in their news. The detailed profiles of the various young readers and their news habits are quite interesting–and depressing if you're still betting on print.

Yeah, yeah, you're saying, we know all that: Kids use non-traditional news sources. But what are traditional news sources, i.e. newspapers, doing about it? Not a hell of a lot. Most papers haven't done anything particularly interesting with video (traditional TV, not just Web video), mobile alerts, and even now-"standard" technologies such as e-mail newsletters and RSS. The industry's track record on these vital new media is pretty sad.

Not to worry: The AP report provides a veritable cookbook of "new models" for news production and distribution, including:

• Tying news delivery more closely to e-mail. Clearly, these readers want news pushed to them. They want to be alerted when something is going on that they care about (gee, maybe they're news junkies more than anyone thought!), and they want to be able to do it simultaneous with checking their e-mail or text messages. That means more e-mail products, mobile products and distribution via things like instant-messaging and RSS. 
• Deliver to the technologies these readers live with. Seems obvious, but again, most newspapers and their Web sites are still publishing most of their news the old-fashioned way. These readers are looking at TV, their phones and PDAs, and other, fresher technologies (a surprising number don't even have computers at home, or dismiss the computer as more of a time-waster). That's where news needs to be delivered, with the same quality and aggressiveness of traditional outlets. (AP is walking the walk on this: its AP Mobile News app is one of the snazzier of the new iPhone apps.)
• Don't underestimate television. It's still a significant form of news delivery for these consumers. That suggests that newspapers need to find ways to move their brands onto TV (what is this, 1955?). Online video is one thing–and it's important–but regular TV is still a very viable medium for these young readers, and newspapers don't reach them there.
• Give them depth. This one's a bit of a surprise, but clearly these young readers are frustrated by the thinness of the news they're getting. I think the secret here is to give them the option to go deeper if they like–but not to force depth on them. Products need to offer both brief and long versions that readers can choose.
• News consumption is increasingly multitasked. Translation: These news consumers want information they can access while they're doing something else, rather than having to focus intently on, say, a newspaper or Web site. They're getting news while driving or while doing other things. That means news organizations need to find ways to wedge news products into those activities rather than demanding 100 percent attention (young readers will give that if they're more interested in depth).
• A bit of news fatigue is setting in. With news coming from many directions, these consumers feel overloaded by information. This argues for well-crafted, focused news reports that maximize the amount of information delivered and provides it in high quality. Sounds like a business newspapers should know well–but it needs to happen in different media than paper.
• News is social currency. It's "cool" for these kids to know something their friends don't, and then to be the source of that news, or for them to be conversant with their friends and colleagues about what's going on in the world. That's an old-fashioned value that appears to still hold with these new audiences.

Again, you should read the entire report and think about how your company's products should be refocused to better serve this audience–which, of course, is the audience of the future. You've got to build products that that audience wants, not just creating (print) products for an audience that is aging rapidly (you know how that story ends). Clearly, from the AP report, even news Web sites aren't enough–and may remind them too much of their print forebears. There's a real need for a fresh approach to news, from reporting to delivery.

Moreover, one of the most interesting and profound statements in the report is from an AP editor who says, "We're reporting what is happening, not what has happened."

That's a critical change in tense, and very smart thinking. Everyone in the newspaper and new media business should be pondering it. Yes, it's a rougher first draft of history than many journalists are used to, or even comfortable with. But in an era of technology-driven news immediacy, it's exactly the right philosophy to have, especially to reach the younger news consumers who are subjects of the AP research report. 

All of AP's member newspapers should be closely examining "A New Model for News" and looking for ways to build products that exploit its findings. After all, they paid for the research. They might as well take advantage of it.

Update: On a related note, the Newspaper Association of America just released a good primer about what newspapers should be doing with mobile publishing. It all seems so obvious–but there really aren't a lot of good newspaper mobile efforts out there, much less any that really try to make money on it. It's a big opportunity.

It's the Election, Stupid

It's a Presidential election year, about as big a news story as there can be. But too many news organizations still are not doing a particularly good or innovative job of providing online campaign coverage that goes beyond standard print and broadcast coverage.

In fact, it's taken a startup site to redefine campaign coverage in this Presidential cycle. The remarkable FiveThirtyEight.com is providing daily updates of polling activity and adding sophisticated statistical analysis tools to attempt to track and project what's happening among the ever-changing electorate. 

While most mainstream media sites still are fixated on essentially meaningless national voter polls, FiveThirtyEight.com is breaking down state-by-state results to attempt to chart what's going to happen in the all-important Electoral College (the site's name refers to the number of Electoral College votes up for grabs). Poll data is weighted based on the pollster's past record of accuracy. And the site applies tools like regression analysis and similarity scores to attempt to bring clarity to the mass of numbers it collects.

Who's behind FiveThirtyEight.com? A guy named Nate Silver, whose day job is being one of the principals behind legendary baseball statistics site Baseball Prospectus. (Silver invented the legendary baseball player stat-projection tool, PECOTA.) 

Silver is bringing the kinds of advanced statistical analysis beloved of baseball stats geeks to the Presidential political arena, and the results are revelatory. He's even run 10,000 simulations of the election to try to project the outcome, and constantly changes his probability estimates of various outcomes based on the latest polling data. At the moment Silver thinks there's 17.44 percent chance of an Obama landslide, a 3.98 percent chance that McCain could lost Ohio yet win the election, and a 0.82 percent chance of an electoral college tie.

This is heady stuff, especially when most major news organizations' idea of sophisticated political coverage is pretty much limited to reporter blogs. How 2004. Last time around, ABC News' The Note defined campaign coverage, and naturally, this year every major news site has its own version–The Fix, The Trail, The Caucus, Top of the Ticket, etc. Some are very good. But they're still pretty conventional, especially compared to what Silver is doing. Also conventional: Politico, the much-ballyhooed politics Web site/newspaper startup from two former Washington Post reporters that's quickly become a player on the national political news scene. Politico is solid, but it's still basically a newspaper on a screen (disclosure: I did some pre-launch consulting for Politico).

FiveThirtyEight.com is not the only one exploring new ways of looking at the election, but other good examples are few and far between. A handful of others worth checking out:

• PolitiFact.com, by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, whose Truth-o-Meter is a clever way to look at the back and forth between candidates. PolitiFact is very witty and engaging about holding the candidates accountable for their statements, matched only by The Daily Show's masterful use of videos that catch contradictory statements. WashingtonPost.com has tried something sort of similar with its FactChecker blog, but FactChecker is inexplicably taking the summer off. Don't they know there's an election coming up? 
• Patchwork Nation, by the Christian Science Monitor, an interesting way to try to move election coverage away from the Washington vortex. Based on 11 blogs from around the country, each attempting to represent a different voter interest group (Evangelical Epicenters, Immigration Nation, Tractor Country, and so on) Patchwork Nation offers a different perspective, for sure. But I wish it had gone farther, and opened itself up to blogs and contributions from readers all over the nation, not just those 11 blogs. That would really bring the patchwork map that dominates the site to life. Still, it's a good effort to get beyond the usual political coverage.
• Poligraph, by HealthCentral.com (another former client) does an interesting job of tracking the candidates' positions on health care issues, with an easy to understand interactive graphic tool. You can even compare your own stance on various health issues with the candidates'. Extra credit: HealthCentral has made it easy for other sites to add Poligraph to their political coverage as an embeddable widget. One only wishes there were similar tools for other major issues.
• YouDecide, by San Francisco public TV station KQED, offers a smart interactive tool that both assesses your stands on various issues and challenges your position through a series of questions. It's an interesting approach, and it's also available for embedding in other sites (hint: embeddable widgets like this are a great way to spread a brand name).

Other than that, the list of interesting political coverage efforts is pretty thin. There are various versions of electoral maps and campaign finance databases, and WashingtonPost.com–which should be the ESPN.com of politics but never seems to rise to that level–does have a candidate-travel tracking tool, an issues-tracker (powered by DayLife) that seems out of date (it still lists Mike Gravel as a candidate), and a few rudimentary Facebook widgets (again, spreading the brand).

But FiveThirtyEight right now is way ahead in the election coverage innovation polls. But there could be a dark horse: Google did an incredible map-based site to cover last year's Australian election. If the company has something similar coming for the U.S. Presidential race (with less than three months to go, it had better get cracking), all those campaign blogs are going to look even more like also-rans.

The Mother of All Web Strategies

Not all newspaper companies are utterly bereft of new ideas and innovation. It just seems that way. But Gannett–yes, Gannett–continues to lead the way in thinking outside the newsprint box. And one way it's doing so is by going after a big, obvious demographic slice: local moms.

With little fanfare, Gannett has launched 60 sites in its various markets aimed at mothers and their interests, needs and passions. Two of the biggest and best are IndyMoms and CincyMoms, in Indianapolis and Cincinnati, respectively. These sites are largely user-generated–moms sharing tips, questions, photos, events, experiences, even prayers. Dive in and you see questions about pregnancy, places to vacation with kids, shopping sales, favorite movies, you name it. 

Best of all, the Gannett sites have great, friendly, funky designs that are informal and encourage audience participation—which appears to be happening in droves. And not surprisingly, advertisers are chasing these audiences as well, though the sites aren't yet blockbuster moneymakers. But clearly, there's an appeal to local and national advertisers who want to reach the motherhood market.

Gannett's not the only one experimenting with "mommy blogs." There are countless independent sites for mothers, and papers such as Boston.com (BoMoms.com) and startups such as TodaysMama.com are going after the same audience. I happen to think Gannett's doing a far better job with its friendly, informative, entertaining sites (BoMoms and TodaysMama, for instance, don't have a fraction of the verve and personality of the Gannett sites, and that's reflected in what appears to be tepid participation on those sites). 

IndyMoms, CincyMoms and their sister sites are great examples of what newspaper and other media companies should be doing more of: Getting beyond the traditional broad-bush, one-size-fits-all mass media model and targeting niches. In a way, these are variations on hyperlocal sites, adding content aimed at a specific local demographic. Local news operations should be building targeted sites like this for any sizable local demographic or interest group: sports fans, the military, large employers, the local music scene, whatever. Oh, and local communities, of course. 

Providing these audiences specific information and customized forums–and user-generated content and participation are essential for sites like these–is a way to put deep hooks into large local audiences and to attract high-CPM advertisers who want to reach those audiences. Gannett's moms' sites shouldn't be industry curiosities or interesting experiments–they should be an industry norm.

When Local News Breaks—Fix It!

There are right ways and wrong ways to cover fast-breaking local news on the Web, and as I write this on Wednesday afternoon, washingtonpost.com is providing a good lesson in how not to cover a high-impact local story.

I'm generally reluctant to write about Post.com, because it's my alma mater and it's run by good friends of mine. But they're not having a good day. 

A serious line of thunderstorms swept through the Washington area a couple of hours ago, knocking down trees and power lines, and reportedly spawning tornados in the area. Local TV is all over the story, with a veteran local weatherman calling it one of the worst storms he's ever seen here. Local schools even locked down students until the storms passed.

But washingtonpost.com has been very, very slow off the mark. For a half hour after the storm, all the site had was a headline at the top of the home page linking to weather updates, even as TV was carrying the first reports of damage. The site has now put up a short staff-written story that's gradually being updated, but it's awfully basic, and not very helpful—it reports that a person was killed in the storm somewhere in suburban Fairfax County, but doesn't really say where. It glosses over the commuter problems and a storm-related shutdown of the Metro subway system, and barely mentions the tens of thousands of people without power. And not a word about the school lockdowns.

This is a scary storm that's disrupting the afternoon commute and has clearly caused a lot of damage (which TV is showing, of course). But the Post site seems all but unaware of its scope, and is handling it in old-media sorts of ways. 

Why not put up a news blog to provide fast-breaking developments? (Ironically, that's how the Post was covering the national political developments last night!) How about a map showing the path of the storm? (TV can do this in its sleep.) Why not put out a prominent call to readers for information, anecdotes, photos and videos? This is elementary stuff, and should be at the top of the playbook for a local media site dealing with a nearby disaster.

The New York Times gave a textbook lesson on breaking local coverage in last week's crane collapse, for which they used blogs, maps and user photos within minutes of the disaster—but Post.com seems unable to provide similarly sharp local coverage.

Of course, there is one place on the Post site that's provided live coverage of the storm: The well-hidden, ill-fated hyperlocal experiment, LoudounExtra.com, which is doing a great job with a staff-written news blog. It tracks the storm in that western suburban county and mentions the school lockdowns there. But none of that coverage is being integrated into the main site. What a wasted opportunity.

Post.com friends: This is a major, fast-moving local story, affecting millions of people in your primary coverage area. Many of them doubtless are checking the site (if they have power!) to find out what's going on around them. You've got to do better than this.

Addendum: I wasn't the only local washingtonpost.com reader frustrated by the site's storm coverage today. Scott Karp's good take is here.

When the Best Stuff Doesn't Make the Paper

The advent of reporter blogs, online chats, podcasts and video is adding new volume and depth of coverage to many key beats. But it's also creating an interesting phenomenon: Some of the best information being uncovered by journalists is showing up in these newfangled venues rather than in traditional publications. And since the average reporter's blog or chat generally is read by a much smaller (if more devoted) audience, you have to start wondering about priorities. Should the reporter's best stuff appear in the newspaper? Or is it OK for it to show up somewhere else?

Here's a quick example, from an online discussion conducted this week by legendary Washington Post sports columnist Tom Boswell. The subject was John Patterson, a sore-armed pitcher cut loose by the Washington Nationals a couple days before:

When I saw his forearm after his first major surgery, last spring, I guess, I gasped. He'd lost much of his basic musculature. Gone from "Wow, bet that guy is a baseball pitcher" to just a normal guy. He didn't seem aware of the change. I doubted he'd get his fastball back unless he somehow rebuilt the whole forearm. Then, this spring, he had another four-inch scar on the forearm. Great interview, really nice guy, but not universally popular in the locker room because he looked like a star and didn't fit the team's blue collar play-hurt mold. Hope he makes it back in Texas. But I doubt it. And I've doubted it for a year.

Um, hello? That's a collection of fantastic insights about the guy who was supposed to be the Nats' No. 1 pitcher before his release—and it's information that never appeared in the print Washington Post, from Boswell or the Nationals beat writers, over the past year. Or anywhere else, as far as I can tell.

Arguably, this is one of the reasons newspapers are suffering: They seem afraid to tell the full story, warts and all. As many pundits and readers have complained, that shirking of journalistic duty applies to important topics, like the Iraq war and the Bush Presidency, not just the sports section. I can think of countless insightful anecdotes and opinions that I've read on reporter blogs or discussions—or heard expressed in journalist TV appearances—that don't seem to make the paper.

The possible reasons for this range from dire to innocent. Is it reporters trying to protect a source? Is it reporters feeling freer with their opinions and inside info in the less formal atmosphere of a blog, chat or TV gig? Whatever, it's frustrating as a reader or viewer to find out that you weren't getting the whole story from traditional coverage.

I think there's a real challenge for editors and reporters here to try to make sure that this sort of deeper reportage finds a much broader audience. If that means moving some of the informality of blogs into the newspaper, fine. If it means reminding reporters that they ultimately work to serve their readers, not their sources, even better. But as long as the good stuff isn't getting into the paper, the industry's decline is just going to accelerate.

Foul Ball

You can't exactly call the people who run Major League Baseball geniuses (believe me, I used to cover the baseball business). Just look at the steroids fiasco for recent proof. But in case you need more, it's at hand: Following in the idiotic tradition of the NFL and other sports leagues in attempting to control coverage, Bud Selig & Co. have imposed draconian rules on how the media can cover baseball games this season. If you're the "bearer" an MLB press pass, here are some of the new, unbearable rules:

• "While a Game is in progress, Bearer shall not transmit or aid in transmitting any Game Information on a play-by-play or pitch-by-pitch basis, more frequently than once every half-inning of play (except to report on the occasional and significant historic event)." (Sorry, bloggers, tough luck.)

• "While a Game is in progress, Bearer shall not transmit, display, or aid in transmitting or displaying, any video, audio, pictures, photographs or other non-text based accounts or descriptions of Games ... that Bearer obtains at that Game in any media." (I guess that rules out any reporting by iPhone!)

• "Any video captured within the ballpark, excluding press conferences, must be limited to 120 seconds and cannot be carried live; ... no live or taped audio or video is permitted to be captured from 45 minutes prior to a scheduled game time until that game has concluded; ... a manager’s pre-game interview or other content may not be transmitted live and audio or video transmissions of such content may be no longer than 120 seconds; ... a manager’s post-game press conference may be captured via video or audio and transmitted (and archived for up to 72 hours) on Bearer’s website but may not be carried live; and ... interviews with players, Club personnel and baseball officials may be transmitted by Bearer on its website for a maximum of 72 hours, may not be longer than 120 seconds in duration and may not include any Game highlights." (All you local TV stations and Web sites who want to do video? Forget about it.)

• Oh, and these credentialed media sites aren't allowed to display more than seven photos of each game, or display those seven pix for more than 72 hours after a game (unless linked to a story)—and "such still pictures or photographs of any Game cannot be used as part of a photo gallery, the definition of which shall be determined by the Baseball Office of the Commissioner in its sole discretion."

This is unbelievable—but maybe not, given that it comes from the people who gave us the designated hitter, juiced ball and juiced players. I guess I understand why lawyers for sports leagues want to control their product and trademarks—and protect the lucrative league-owned Web sites that increasingly are muscling in on traditional media coverage.

But at some point, MLB's leaders and other sports executives are taking their eye off the ball. Sports in this country exists primarily because the media covers it. If coverage suffers, so do ratings and attendance (just ask the NHL, the WNBA and Major League Soccer). Baseball should be welcoming the press with open arms—that's how the sport is marketed to the paying public.

Online News Squared reports that media companies apparently are pushing back on these ridiculous restrictions; as I've said before, the ultimate solution is for the media to simply announce that it won't cover the games until the restrictions are lifted. Boycott the games, editors. Simple as that. The resulting public outcry, and impact on attendance, should knock some sense into the Lords of Baseball.

Major League Baseball is uniquely protected by an exemption from federal antitrust laws. Maybe it's time that MLB understands that the press has its own unique protections in the First Amendment.

Right and Wrong

Required reading: Three great posts by Howard Owens (who's on fire lately) about what online news organizations should be (or are) doing right. Speaking of "on fire," here's a great read from Rob Curley about how the Las Vegas Sun aced breaking news online last week.

And on the other side of the ledger, a terrific post by Robert Niles about what newspapers are doing wrong.

A Reporter with a Following

Jay Rosen's much-hyped experiment to attach beat reporters to social networks ignores an inconvenient fact: There are already reporters operating this way.

One of the best is Washington Post baseball writer Barry Svrluga, who interacts constantly with his readers via a blog, regular discussions, podcasts—even personal appearances at the regular tailgating gatherings of his devoted fans before Nationals games at RFK stadium. Yes, Svrluga's fans are so devoted that they gather in his honor offline, to celebrate the friendships created in the community that has sprung up around him online. Not too shabby. Know any other beat reporters with that kind of following? That's what an active online presence (and general excellence as a beat writer) will do for you.

That's why last summer, long before Rosen announced his social beat reporting concept, I described Svrluga as the model of the modern major beat reported.

But now Barry's fans are in mourning. That's because Svrluga has decided to transfer within the Post to the Washington Redskins beat. It's probably a promotion, but not to the Nationals fans who had created a community around their favorite baseball beat writer.

Don't believe me? Check out the 100-plus impassioned comments on this post on Svrluga's blog in which he announces his new job. These readers felt a personal connection with Svrluga, even though they probably only knew him online. At a time when readers are deserting newspapers, isn't it refreshing to come across readers who are so devoted to a beat writer?

Every editor should be pondering this phenomenon, and thinking about how to create interactive stars with surrounding communities similar to Svrluga. At Philly.com, we're lucky enough to have one of our own, The Philadelphia Inquirer's Todd Zolecki, who coincidentally also covers baseball—and blogs, answers reader questions and podcasts.

Part of the Philly.com strategy for 2008 is to create many more such communities around popular beat reporters, columnists and reviewers. These sorts of followings beget deeply devoted readers--and in this day and age, devoted readers couldn't be more valuable.

Voices of the People

Steve Yelvington has a good post wondering why so much of the media blogosphere is up in arms about the FCC's decision loosening the rules on newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership in media markets. (He doesn't cite any of the media blogs complaining about media concentration, but you know who you are!)

Yelvington says:

It seems to me a case of fighting the last war. Local television franchises are rapidly losing their luster, and today are little more than a "must carry" opening to cable distribution. Audiences are fractured. The sun is setting on both broadcast networks and local affiliates. Newspaper companies that might have gone on a rapacious acquisition binge a decade ago are now just trying to keep the wolf from getting through their own doors. And, of course, the Internet makes anyone and everyone a publisher.

That's exactly right. And while the knee-jerk reaction of many journalism-business pundits and participants is to rail against big chains and media consolidation, that really does represent an outmoded worldview. It's especially ironic for bloggers to complain about media concentration when blogs are precisely the reason that we now have more voices in any given marketplace than ever.

Let's go back in time a bit—a couple of decades is all you need—and remember when most major markets had a newspaper or two, three or four TV stations, a handful of radio stations doing news, some suburban weeklies--and that's about it. Talk about media concentration! Now any given market has hundreds and hundreds of local news and information choices, with thousands (millions) more from distant markets a click away online.

There's a "bigness is evil" mentality at work here that I think is simply outdated. Big may be bad (I'd question that, but never mind), but the media landscape has become so incredibly fragmented that we've got more diversity of thought and voices than ever. Those voices are increasingly grabbing pieces of the local ad pie, as well.

This is why, when we inevitably see the death of a big-city newspaper within a few years, the hole left in the local media will be much easier to fill than anyone can imagine. Blogs, local sites, community papers, Yahoo Groups, services like Yelp and Craigslist—all of these will pick up the slack and provide as much local coverage, if not more, than the deceased paper did.

This is a golden age of media, with a flourishing of multiple voices. Fretting about whether the struggling local newspaper also owns the fourth-rated local TV station is just missing the point.