Lessons on display in Biloxi

Executive Editor Stan Tiner sounds a bit like a proud papa (okay, a lot like a proud papa) when he talks about the performance of the Sun Herald staff during hurricane Gustav. And why wouldn't he?

There is also an important lesson here about our responsibility to present the news in all the ways our readers want and need it. I'll let Stan's words tell that story:

Hurricane Gustav was quite a learning experience for the Sun Herald, and one to which the newsroom team responded with an incredible and successful effort. What a testing ground for our flip video/sunherald tv reporting.

The proof is in the numbers. Of course, a hurricane always puts up big numbers on our website, but look at the results for our video – six the top ten hit parade. Think about that. A week ago most of us didn't know there was such a thing as flip video. We were lucky to post one or two videos a week before, if that.

Last Thursday the staff received training, and on Monday we went into action with nine cameras. What our web viewers got was a glimpse of the power of video by a staff of story tellers who used the cameras to tell the dynamic story of Hurricane Gustav far beyond the limits of any other news organization, since our staff doubtlessly exceeded all other news assets covering the storm in South Mississippi combined. We are learning about how web users WANT to receive information on the web, and we are delivering. Meanwhile our storytelling in words and photos represented some of the best real time reporting in the history of the paper as well as online. The photo gallery is the best I have seen and the numbers back this up. The Sun Herald photographers had the best day I have ever seen for a staff. I have never seen a better portfolio for shooters than our team took yesterday.

This experience also reminds me how the so-called “old media” aspects of our work – words in ink, and still photography – adapt so well into our interactive media world. We are evolving and growing in our skills and this is perhaps the true test of our ability to survive and prosper. I don't believe anyone will tell me I am wrong when I say our first day print edition represents the height of our powers as a newsroom team.

Awesome. That is all I can say. We learned some incredible lessons from Katrina, and yesterday's performance was so crisp and efficient and that this old editor is awed. Everyone performed at a high level and the result is platinum.

Off topic: Do you love music?

This is off topic for this blog, except for where it isn't.

I love music, in a personal, eclectic way. The last concert I saw was Van Morrison (Robert Earl Keen's show was canceled last week); the next will be Sigur Røs. If your relationship with music means something personal to you, too, you should give a read to Ethan Kaplan's post on the coming of music experience as the next phase in record-LP-themed album-CD-DVD progression.

Come to think of it, what we do is about experience, too – or ought to be.

Frugal and hard-working

Chuck Liddy at the News & Observer supplies this caption: It's a peaceful end to a busy 16 hour day for our budget conscious trio as they drift off to sleep with dreams of mcclatchy prosperity in the future.

But, can Joe Neff find out what they paid for that room??

Suicide girl: I didn't want to die

Have you read Leila Fadel's piece about the 15-year old girl who failed as a suicide bomber in Baghdad? Have you watched the video? Did your paper or website use them?

Comment is F**ked

BBC blogger coach Kevin Andersen has some choice words about The Guardian's Comment Is Free initiative; his remarks appear under the headline above: Comment is F**ked. Everybody who's wrestling with issues of taste and civility in comment sections (all of you, in other words) will find his examination worthwhile.

Here's a taste:

A few suggestions. Don’t treat your audience as the enemy. If you’re going to talk down to your audience, they are going to shout back. And quite honestly, I would say to any media organisation that your best columnists and commentators don’t necessarily make the best bloggers. Most media organisations think blogging is simply snarky columns. Wrong, wrong and wrong.

It’s a distributed conversation. Ms Ashley says: “As with child bullies, I wonder if these anonymous commenters and correspondents would really be quite so “brave” if they were having a face to face conversation.” You’re right, and I am in no way defending some of the toxic comments that you’re receiving. But step back. Read your column as if it were one side of a conversation and think how you would respond.

Let's talk before we write

Here's a novel approach to formulating editorial opinions: let's listen to what readers think while we're doing the thinking and writing, and not just afterward.

That seems to me the essence of what Star Tribune Editorial Page Editor Scott Gillespie announced this week for Opinion Exchange, a new process through which the Strib's ed board will interact with readers.

I'm planning to follow their experiment closely, and encourage any of you involved with opinion or reader connections to do likewise – or, better yet, start an experiment of your own.

You can read his post and find the site here.

In a nutshell, we’re turning our online section into a blog. Instead of a relatively static presentation of what we publish in the daily paper, Opinion Exchange will become a frequently updated, interactive online destination. Blogging is far from cutting-edge, but we believe our approach is unique among newspaper websites.


We’ll start each weekday with a post that will summarize the discussion that takes place at our daily Editorial Board meeting and invite readers to comment on the issues we plan to write about. Those online discussions will inform — and sometimes influence — our opinions. Because opinion page readers tend to be some of the best informed online users, we’re betting the discussions will be both thoughtful and provocative. If they veer out of bounds, we’ll moderate.

Our editorials will continue to represent the institutional voice of the newspaper and will be researched and written by the Editorial Department staff. But Opinion Exchange online will give us the benefit of hearing from you while we’re doing that work — not after the fact.

Easy as 1-2-3-4

World's quickest lesson in aggregation:

1. Visit Addict-o-matic.

2. Type in a subject that interests you. (I did "McClatchy Company" and later "Van Morrison" and "Anchorage Alaska".

3. Realize that this is unmediated, uncurated, instant, free.

4. Find a way to aggregate and add value to news of local subjects.

Götterdämmerung is both twilight and a dawn

In common understanding, Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) is thought of as synoymous with apocalypse: a scene of utter destruction, unrelieved by hope or nuance. Yet in Nordic lore and in Wager's opera, that twilight is balanced by a dawn: as the gods pass from the scene, another race is born and emerges for its time in history's sunlight: human beings.

The concluding opera in Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle, Götterdämmerung’s most prominent moment is indeed the fall of Valhalla, a magnificent combination of musical score and stagecraft. Depending on the director, it usually features tumbling towers, clouds of smoke and rumbling peals of music. Yet as the thunder of Act Three, Scene Three recedes, the last three minutes of the 15-hour cycle are filled with ineffably beautiful music announcing the dawn of a new age.

Is this a metaphor for the passing of godlike networks and newspapers from a lost Valhalla? For the birth of a new kind of news? In some ways, yes, it is.

A McClatchy board member asked a couple of years ago what I thought the biggest change in news introduced by the internet had been. Many answers came to mind: our shift to a 24/7 news cycle, perhaps, or the introduction of powerful new tools like video and database presentation. But I settled on another: the complete erosion of the gatekeeper model.

As we saw things not many years ago, the editor was a gatekeeper, entrusted by the paper and the community with filtering genuine news from trashy sensationalism, with balancing the harm that might befall a suspect’s family with the community good of identifying him.

We took it seriously, and for more than a dozen years in Anchorage, I tried to be the best and most honest gatekeeper I could. We put things in the paper that powerful people didn’t want there, and once in a while I kept out things that staffers thought were ready to print.

Well, so what? However well (or poorly) we might have performed, those days are gone. Nowadays editors can stand at the gate if they want, but the fences are down and all the people are standing over yonder.

Of course good taste and good judgment remain important value-added ingredients we bring to the presentation of news, both printed and digital. But the notion that we have any fundamental control over what gets said or debated is already badly dated.

Far from mourning that fact, we ought to embrace it and explore the opportunities it brings. Rather than either chasing the lowest in popular taste or hiding out in an ivory tower, we can engage in genuine conversation with our audiences, learning what they think, sharing what they know and ultimately creating information that will be far more valuable and satisfying for them.

I started thinking anew about this while listening to an NPR report on crowd sourcing of innovation and design this morning. Of particular note was a sneaker company that asks customers to submit designs that are then voted on online. Winning designs get manufactured; the designer gets $1,000 and one percent of the sales revenue. The practice not only reduces design costs; it also serves as marketing for the products.

I’m not ready to let readers vote on what should be on page one tomorrow, but I can’t see any reason why we don’t ask them to weigh in later on the choices we did make. Would it be interesting to know that X% of your readers thought something you put on a-11 belonged on a-1? What about listing 10 possible story assignments and asking readers to help decide which get covered first? Why couldn’t some reporters blog the process of reporting and writing a story, detailing what questions they need answered, taking advice and later telling readers in real-time about their progress (or obstacles) in learning answers?

Yes, things are changing. Towers are tumbling, new rules emerging and old promises being broken. As an old dog, I often wish it wasn’t so. But I believe in journalism, and I believe a new dawn’s coming for those who see this through.

Deciding what to run

Only a few McClatchy papers used correspondent Tom Lasseter's first-hand report of contradictions about Russia's rationale for invading Georgia on the front page today. Most used a more generic wire report that focused instead on Russia's pledge to start leaving.

Here's a relevant sample of Lasseter's report:

... a trip to the city on Sunday, without official escorts, revealed a very different picture. While it was clear there had been heavy fighting — missiles knocked holes in walls, and bombs tore away rooftops — almost all of the buildings seen in an afternoon driving around Tskhinvali were still standing.

Russian-backed leaders in South Ossetia have said that 2,100 people died in fighting in Tskhinvali and nearby villages. But a doctor at the city's main hospital, the only one open during the battles that began late on Aug. 7, said the facility recorded just 40 deaths.

The discrepancy between the numbers at Tskhinvali's main hospital and the rhetoric of Russian and South Ossetian leaders raises serious questions about the veracity of the Kremlin's version of events. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other senior officials in Moscow have said the Georgians were guilty of "genocide," prompting their forces to push Georgia's military out of South Ossetia — in a barrage of bombing runs and tanks blasts — and march southeast toward the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, stopping only 25 miles away.

I don't know why this would be.

McClatchy editor: John Edwards lied to me

The News & Observer's executive editor John Drescher tells it like it is in his column this week: John Edwards called him last fall and flat-out lied about his affair.

Edwards told me that the allegations were not true.

He said The N&O was the paper that arrived on his doorstep every day, the one read by friends of him and his wife, Elizabeth.

He said he'd never called before to complain or state his case. Given Elizabeth's health -- she has cancer -- he said it was especially important to him that the story not run in The N&O.

Read the whole column here.

The Ethic of the Link

A newspaper online is not an online newspaper. Here is Prof. Jay Rosen's take on "the ethic of the link." This is crucial to our emerging role as aggregators, combining our best work with links to other information.

Networks consolidate, cooperate

Good piece in the NYT today about television networks adapting to budgetary and technological imperatives with increasing use of "one-man band" style bureaus. We're looking for similar consolidation, cooperation and efficiencies too, of course.

A taste:

Today, as they confront new competition on the Web, television networks are increasingly embracing portable — and inexpensive — methods of production. Decades of budget cuts have forced the news divisions to reduce their global footprint, shutting bureaus and abandoning the old norm of four-person crews.

NBC, ABC and CBS now pool most of their international resources in London and deploy reporters to other countries as needed.

But a new breed of reporter, sometimes called a “one-man band,” has become the new norm. Though the style of reporting has existed for years, it is being adopted more widely as these reporters act as their own producer, cameraman and editor, and sometimes even transmit live video.

McClatchy at the Olympics

A blog featuring McClatchy and MCT staffers at the Olympics today even includes a list of websites and searches being blocked at the Olympic Media Center. Don't try "Falun gong" or Facebook.

Y en español: el Nuevo Herald's Olimpiadas.

Where accountability comes from

I've been reading entries in the McClatchy President's Award contest, work done in the first six months of 2008: hospital fraud, exploitation of illegal immigrant workers in poultry operations, government abuse at Guantanamo, disastrous lack of regulation in construction trades, a covered-up sexual harassment case in a mayor's race, hundreds of millions of dollars wasted at a state mental health program ... and many more.

I don't know which will win awards (I am not the main judge) but I know it's a powerful body of compelling, important public service journalism, and I'm proud to be associated with the folks who produced it.

You know, Pro Publica (God love them) might not do this much accountability journalism in a year. And almost nobody else but newspapers is even trying.

Unblocked

As some of you know, this site was locked by Google for a day or so as a suspected spam blog.

I'll plead guilty to a lot of things, but not that. And now it's back.

I'm planning to spend the weekend with the the guy who was my editor at the News-Letter, our college paper at Hopkins a hundred years ago. He always seemed to know what he was doing back then; maybe he can straighten me out on all that's been going on. 

I'll report back.

For want of an "a"

Note: this post and comments were mysteriously removed when Etaoin Shrdlu was locked down as a suspect spamblog last week. I'm restoring it now.

Without other comment, I offer these links to a very public fight between a writer and his editors, British style.

Warning: Very offensive language.

1. Writer to copy editors (called subeditors, in the UK)
2. Copy editors to writer.

Thanks, Daring Fireball for pointing this out.

I wish we were a rock & roll band

We're working hard across McClatchy to discover and embrace new relationships with our audiences, moving from the old gatekeeper paradigm to a new model of conversation, sharing and co-creation. It's a huge shift for us, coming right in the midst of wrenching economic dislocation, but so what? The payoffs are enormous: survival, and, more importantly, better tools for democracy.

These relationships are shifting everywhere. One of the most analogous for us, in some important ways, is the music industry. In the midst of a wrenching economic dislocation ("They're not buying CDs! They're stealing songs on p2p networks!") traditional record companies are hurting. Many artists are likewise dislocated (remember Metallica's stance?) while others proved impressively prescient (believe it or not, see Courtney Love's analysis).

Long before the age of Napster or Limewire – back when music piracy meant bad bootleg concert tapes and stolen studio recordings – the Grateful Dead had already explored the new frontier. Their business model, now a commonplace amongst many progressive bands: "Give away the music and sell the experience." (John Parry Barlow (among his many other accomplishments, he was a Dead lyricist) has written presciently on such matters; start your exploration with The Economy of Ideas.)

This is all a rather longwinded way of introducing you to this website devoted to R.E.M.'s world tour 2008. It's an "official" band website, but it's entirely fan driven – a tour de force of tagging and the integration of social media tools.

Isn't there a community of people who care about, oh the Iraq war, for instance, who might come together in such a shared environment if we made that possible? Could you discover geographically bounded communities (our real venue as a business) that would love their leading local media company to empower this for them? What other, better ideas can you think of?

Yeah, it's the end of the world as we know it (sorry). But there's another world awaiting.

U.S. Army Field Manual

click to enlarge

I read this in Harper's Magazine some time in the 1970s and typed this copy on my IBM Selectric. I kept it under the glass on my desktop for many years during the Alaska Newspaper War and always found the advice helpful in making plans. I found it in a folder recently (while looking for something else, of course.)

In the video business

Now and then you get a note – like this one from interactive director Andy Perdue at the Tri-City Herald (42,000 Sunday) – that makes you feel good about what we're doing. I'll just share it as he sent it:

On Sunday, the Tri-City Herald was out in force covering our annual hydroplane races, which take place on the Columbia River between Kennewick and Pasco. It's an event that attracts 60,000 people.

Before Heat 3A, a pleasure craft just downriver from the races burst into flames. People were jumping into the water, etc. It was quite the spectacle.

Fortunately for us, we had five photographers covering the races from all angles, along with two video cameras operated by Interactive Media. Before the fire was even put out, we had posted a story, a photo gallery and two
videos. The story went up within five minutes, and the other pieces were added over the next 20 minutes. The video shot by our summer intern was astonishing - so good that King 5, the Seattle NBC affiliate, called us for
footage instead of the local NBC station (which was offering live coverage of the races but was out of position to shoot the fire).

Traffic to the site immediately and dramatically spiked, and that traffic continues today.

For us, the lesson is that we are prepared to cover anything anywhere at any time. We have the tools and the skill sets. In this case, we also were in the proper position to take full advantage - and we smoked the competition.

Here's a link to the daily story (with all assets attached).

Only twits ignore Jarvis on links

When Jeff Jarvis dies (and I hope that's a long time from now), perhaps the best choice for an epithet would be "Do what you do best and link to the rest." In that short phrase he has summarized much central, essential truth about media in the new globally networked world.

As we struggle with reshaping our operations to fit into new revenue realities, you need to understand these issues at a fundamental level. There is much more here than an argument for aggressive aggregation (though it includes that, in spades). Surrounding that specific issue are concepts like shifting from scarcity and abundance, and questions about to protect the value of expensively produced content when perfect copies can (and will) be made instantly available.

And aside from the economics (a hard subject for us to get beyond, at the moment) there is this ultimately more important question: What is best for society? How can we serve audiences best as we advance the public service mission of accountability we have so long espoused?

There is no better place to start exploring than with Jarvis, whose prickly style (he sometimes dismisses those he disagrees with simply as "twits") and politics-on-my-sleeve digressions will discomfort traditionalists. But only a twit would fail to appreciate what a wide swath of fertile new ground he is plowing.

This useful summary is from a recent Jarvis column in The Guardian:

Links are the currency of the new media economy. We bloggers think we're doing AP and papers a favour when we link to their articles. I teach my journalism students that their headlines and intros are more important than ever because these are the advertisements that will draw people to click links and read more.

The problem for AP and other syndicates is that they are trapped in an old-media economy, selling their content to publications to support their work. In print, we needed countless copies of an article. But now, online, we need only one copy with countless links to it.

Update: I was reminded to write this post this morning when I watched my not-so-webbish wife click on a story at our national website, read the three graphs there and then click again to go to fresnobee.com for the remainder. Win, win, win.