Over this past weekend, Berta and I trekked through the snow to the March WordPress Meetup at the Ten Stone Bar and Restaurant on South Street in Philly. We entered into an interesting conversation with Johnathan, who works on the blog section of philly.com.
Johnathan was concerned with getting readership to the blogs. He asked many questions about what it would take to get any of us as a reader. The general answer among the group in the conversation was “a minor miracle”. Our conversation has me questioning why news media is failing to do its job, on both the front of reporting actual news and evolving with the advent of blogs and user-generated content.
There are different kinds of news - newspaper, TV, radio. I find all of them lacking somehow. TV and radio news are the most sensationalist pieces of crap reporting out there. They’ve devolved from any merit they might have had into fluffy soundbites from celebrities. Just like MTV no longer plays music (if it really ever did), TV news no longer reports news (if it really ever did).
Newspaper reporting is a different weird thing. Personally, I find the media delivery poor. I do not like the texture of newspaper, or picking up the soggy rag from the porch when it rains, or having to wash my hands after handling it. Newspaper, physically, is only truly suited for lining bird cages. In regard to the reporting, it’s hard to say whether it fares any better.
The primary problem with newspaper reporting (if you jump ahead and make the assumption that the reporting is more thorough than TV or radio) is that nobody cares. It’s interesting how I can say that TV has whittled down its “news” into fluff that people will sit for, and then follow it with the idea that newspapers report on actual news, but nobody cares. I think there is a great middle ground that is untapped by the big media companies - user-rated/generated content. But the newspapers seem to fail at that, too.
Even TV could be improved by being viral. It drives me insane when you hear a report on TV or radio news that only gives you a fraction of the full story before moving on to the next, but if they directed you to more information on their web site, they’d have served a better purpose.
For example, a story on KYW reported that a school trip to Florida had gotten stuck there during the recent snow closures. With few flights able to enter Philly as a result of the snow, the students were stranded in Florida. Sure, it’s a human-interest piece, but where are the details? What were they doing in Florida in the first place? Did they perform a concert? Was it simply a class trip? The radio blip mentioned that they had sent their baggage on home, but they weren’t able to get home themselves. How does that happen? The story didn’t even mention what school these kids had come from!
If you’re going to do a 15-second spot like this, the least you could do is provide a viral link to your web site. The KYW site is pretty lousy in regard to providing additional details for the radio-reported news. If the stories on the site mirrored the radio news, but did a few extra things, the site would be very useful and people would have more reason to listen to their radio program.
For example, if the details that didn’t fit into 15 seconds were revealed on the site, that would provide additional value. If users could leave comments on the story asking questions, the reporting could be expanded to include answers to those questions. If enough people asked questions about it, the radio story could be improved, or it could be promoted to be more prominent.
This is the nature of the web - interaction. I’m not suggesting that newspaper sites dive fully into the Digg model of user-only reporting, but that they use the web as an integrated tool to aid their traditional publication. It’s almost offensive that they think they can throw a few blogs on their site and think they’ve fully entered some new age of reporting. No, some investment in thought and software development needs to be made, and your idea of what reporting is needs to shift to include the web as part of the solution.
I’m on the other end. I come in from the web. I’m not going to read your paper ever unless your web site gives me a reason to do it. If you use the paper as the portal into things that I normally wouldn’t seek on the web site, then maybe I would find value in the paper.
But hey, I’m a realist. I know that newspapers are not going to integrate, and it’s just a matter of time until you all just die off. Until then, here are a few tips from a blogger who has been online longer than you:
- Bloggers give outgoing links to other bloggers - If you want people to care, then you have to talk about them. This media, the web, is not about what happened to them, it's about what happens to me.
- Stop writing for print - You can't write a paragraph on the web that's five sentences long and expect the common blog-reading audience to bother reading. Check into some of the fine guidelines produced by web usability experts. Write more details in smaller chunks.
- We don't care who you are until we care who you are - I can name 10 high-profile, A-list bloggers off the top of my head. None of the people in this list are your columnists. I don't know their names, and I won't know their names unless they actually do something important on the web. Don't expect that I'll care when you drop their names when they have no cred in this media.
- Don't pretend you're in the trenches by being sub-par - Only 1/3 of the blogs I surveyed on Philly.com used a custom layout. All of the other ones used a standard Movable Type or Blogspot (???) template. You might not want the baggage that goes along with seeming like a professional reporter, but don't ditch your baggage by looking like an amateur blogger. There are plenty of designers in the area who would love to customize your blog layout for you.
- A blog is a blog - One surefire way to get me to never return to your site is to add a link in your blogs listings to a site that is obviously not a blog but a propaganda site. Wow.
- Popups suck - Haven't we learned this a long time ago? Tell your advertisers, "no popups". I don't even like seeing the little "Firefox blocked a popup" bar. There's no excuse for this.
There are a few other things, but I’m weary of pointing out what’s wrong with this ill-conceived media project in its death throes. The moment, and I mean the moment, that someone produces the right software to do it, it’s all over.
