Random Mumblings

Comment management draws lots of comments

2009-11-06T12:58:23Z

I had a great time doing a Webinar at the Poynter Institute on Thursday with Howard Finberg and a big assist from Elaine Kramer, who manages the Associated Press Managing Editors' Online Credibility Roundtables. Our topic was management of online comments and Michele McLellan has some thoughts about it.

Coincidentially, online comments on the knoxnews.com Web site and the APME Roundtable on Comments are the focus of a long piece by Frank Carlson in Wednesday's edition of Metro Pulse, an alternative and entertainment weekly in Knoxville. Knoxville area blogger Say Uncle has some thoughts about that.

Meanwhile, one of the things we didn't touch on in the seminar, subpoenas for commenter information continues to be part of the continuing story about the murder case and trials that were the focus of the APME Roundtable. News Sentinel Editor Jack McElroy deals with the issues in "Journalism subpoenas can be abusive," "FBI criticizes News Sentinel for disclosing subpoena," and "KNS turns commenter info over to FBI." A topic for a future Poynter Webinar, I'm sure.

(The photo is a somewhat fuzzy picture of Howard Finberg, director of Poynter's News University and who moderated/ran the Webinar. He is shown in Poynter's Studio H.)

Here is a sampling from Twitter of the react to the Webinar:

Managing comments on your news site? 1) consider your audience when deciding what to allow/disallow 2) Be as lenient as possible. #nuwebinar -- mattcrist (mattcrist)
@amysimons thanks for that hastag info :) #nuwebinar #bp09 -- tvamy (Amy Wood WSPA TV CW)
@cfaust it was a great webinar, lots of great advice and tips. You can read all related tweets by following this hashtag #nuwebinar -- CjCastillo (CJ Castillo)
RT @mfriesen: Comment sections don't -- kmcdade (Kathleen McDade)
I though today's #nuwebinar was one of the more useful webinars I've attended. -- briannepruitt (Brianne Pruitt)
RT @amysimons: More bad: Commenters may contact each other, -- slicksean (Sean Kennedy)
@richpria: I find commenters often -- tvamy (Amy Wood WSPA TV CW)
Hard truth, sometimes: re 2 streams - editorial and comments - editorial must realize how much traffic commenters generate #nuwebinar -- Mudrock (Andy Murdoch)
@jacklail: Some of our commenters say stupid stuff. Part of it is entertainment, if that's what they want, it's what it is #bp09 ##nuwebinar -- amysimons (Amy Simons)
Pitch reporters on the benefits of engaging with commenters -- finding more info and tips, keeping story on track, having impact #nuwebinar -- jeffsonderman (Jeff Sonderman)
Watching NewsU webinar about online comments. Interesting to hear other newspapers are dealing with the same issues we are. #nuwebinar -- CjCastillo (CJ Castillo)
@jeffsonderman I like the idea of responding to comments as a more realistic presentation of story. It's an evolving narrative #nuwebinar -- Mudrock (Andy Murdoch)
Interactive poll result: Only 32% of outlets have reporters responding to comments. 56% say no time, 14% say they don't want to. #nuwebinar -- jeffsonderman (Jeff Sonderman)
Me: A story should be an ongoing discussion center where the reporter stays engaged with commenters, don't just publish and run #nuwebinar -- jeffsonderman (Jeff Sonderman)
Scripps reporters have accounts flagged -- cosleia (Heather Meadows)

Ethics in journalism's digital age

2009-11-03T18:48:05Z

I'm talking to a group of faculty members at Hampton University this afternoon about journalism ethics in the digital world.. As part of preparing for that talk, I rounded up some journalism ethics links that I thought others might also enjoy. (Special hat tip to Steve Buttry and Bob Steele for their help.)

[You reporters] should have printed what he meant, not what he said. -- Earl Bush, press aide to Richard Daley (more quotes here)

Halloween 2009

2009-11-01T15:17:53Z

Halloween jack-o-lanterns this year. Hallowween decorations from earlier years.

Hauling a tool chest of ideas back from Missouri

2009-10-31T22:11:34Z

The speed version of the better part of last week during my stay in Saint Louis. My hotel was just across the street from the arch, but, unfortunately, I never made it to it.

Here are some resources and thought-starters from the Associated Press Managing Editors "Inspiration Starts Here" conference.

Amy Webb did a rapid fire presentation on trends to watch. Val Hoeppner leveraged off Webb's list of trends with a blog post with a list of cool resources and tools of particular interest to journalists and another set of resources was added to the APME09 twitter stream by the Journalists Toolbox.

And then there were three great innovations.

Jill Geisler of the Poynter Institute had some advice for managing change in a presentation called You're Not Crazy, Clueless or Cruel; You're Managing Change. She had some links:

Change checkup
Rules of change
Four barriers to collaboration

There was a great update on APME Online Credibility Workshops. Michele McLellan blogged on one intriguing aspect being looked at in the credibility projects: When to unpublish news. Kathy English, public editor at the Toronto Star, is heading that effort and has produced this white paper called "The Longtail of News."

And, oh yeah, there was the panel that Kurt Greenbaum of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and I were on involving social media tools.

(Video by AP's Tim Donnelly. Flickr photo by Kyle Spradley).

Newspaper becomes the story in comment case

2009-10-28T18:29:12Z

Some of the coverage of the federal subpoena for information about a commenter on the Knoxnews.com Web site.

Jack McElroy: KNS turns commenter info over to FBI

Say Uncle: Saying dumb things on the internet

The Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press: Death threats spur release of web commenter's identity

Living a "Gutenberg Moment"

2009-10-26T14:44:38Z

On Sunday, I caught up with an excellent podcast with former MarketWatch CEO founder Larry Kramer that was posted in late September.

Kramer is a reporter turned editor turned entrepreneur who still loves journalism and believes content is king.

He is interviewed by Gregory Galant on the VentureVoice blog. Since focus of Galent's site is not about entrepreneurs, journalists and Old and New Media executives may have missed this one, but it's worth your time.

Kramer sketches out his journey from journalist to CEO, his ride on the Internet economy rollercoaster, and journalism, inlcuding paid content.

On paid content, he pointed out what happened when his site, what was known as CBS MarketWatch, pursued a multiple streams of revenue strategy mostly dependent on advertising while Jim Cramer's rival site, TheStreet.com, pursued a paid content model. There's some lessons in that for today in the renewed paid-content discussion.

Kramer's take: Don't be a purist in either camp. He notes Cramer's paid-content strategy with theStreet.com prevented it from becoming a mass brand.

He points out the content the companies he was involved with could most easily sell to consumers was "actionable" information, stock information for active traders, and sports odds and information for sports betting gamblers.

He also talks about the role of journalists in curating the Web. "There are new roles we need to learn to take," he said. "In journalism, one of them is curation.

"We were always curators in that we get 100 press releases at the paper, we'd pick the two to write about. The difference today is everybody gets the hundred press releases. We still have to help our customers, our readers to determine which ones are worth reading.

"We don't the distribution system anymore. But we do own, what we hopefully own, is an intelligence, and an ability to help our customer or the people that work with us to get what they want out of life."

Kramer said we're still in an "Gutenberg moment" with the Internet in which every industry will be changed, much as the media business is already changing.

"The biggest problem we have is people trying to protect their business model," Kramer said, "not their product. not what they do."

Good stuff from a guy who was involved in "digital media" before the consumer Internet.

I also found this Beet.tv video with Kramer from earlier this year as well as mediabistro.com piece.

(Photo from Beet.tv)

Newsroom cuts hurt economic health of newspapers

2009-10-23T15:26:54Z

Interesting budget season reading (emphasis added is mine) from Editor and Publisher:

This summer, Esther Thorson, dean of graduate studies and research at the University of Missouri's School of Journalism, as well as Shrihari Sridhar and Murali Mantrala from Missouri's Trulaske College of Business, presented research taken from the extensive confidential financial data compiled in Inland Press Association's annual Cost and Revenue Study.

They probed the spending on newsrooms, circulation and advertising sales and developed an econometric model to see how much revenue would be affected if the mix of spending was altered.

"Could they have distributed those dollars differently to make more money with good journalism?" Thorson asks. "And the answer is virtually always yes, very consistently across hundreds of newspapers. They under-spend in newsrooms by a pretty significant amount, and they overspend in circulation -- though not nearly as much as they overspend in advertising."

Specifically, their model suggests that "under-spending" in the newsroom isn't just missing an opportunity for greater revenue -- it actually damages the business. Cutting back investment in the newsroom just 1% is three times worse than the same percentage cut in circulation or distribution, and seven times worse than making that cut in ad salespeople. The deeper the newsroom cut, the worse the damage, this research contends.

Of “net neanderthals” and Google promiscuity

2009-10-23T01:00:41Z

Like News of the Weird headlines: "Net neandertahals" have found alive online and Google unintentionally encourages promiscuity.

Danny Sullivan breaks is all down.

Wither the 'Average American'

2009-10-18T23:52:18Z

The 2010 Census data (being collected now ... we completed our form last weekend) won't begin to be available until 2011, but experts already are making projections:

"The iconic American family -- married couple with children -- will account for a mere 22% of households."

"The average American has been replaced by a complex, multidimensional society that defies simplistic labeling."

-- Demographics expert Peter Francese in 2010 America, a new Ad Age white paper.

(via Silicon Alley Insider)

A better job would be ...

2009-10-18T21:26:09Z

“We have to go from a world in which we try to do a better job of covering the same news as everyone else to a world where we’re bringing our audiences news that no one else is.”

- From ABC News President David Westin at the Media Institute Awards dinner this week. A great quote, especially for local TV, which still spends a healthy part of the news day chasing each other on the same stories. The end result is most local TV sites in a given market have the same stories with similar designs, expediting the road to commoditization and uncertain futures.

(From Lost Remote)

Great advice for locally focused newspapers, too!

5 questions that keep Ken Lowe up at night

2009-10-17T15:05:55Z

1. Will media consumers pay for quality content on interactive platforms?

2. Shouldn't we be worrying about our privacy?

3. Can we find a better way to measure audiences across platforms?

4. Why are you still watching commercials if you use your DVRs?

5. What marketing opportunities will emerge as interactive, mobile media evolves?

(Ken Lowe is CEO of Scripps Networks, which operates the popular cable networks HGTV, the Food Network and others as well as related Web sites. Lowe was the guest speaker at the 2nd Annual UC Marketing Summit 2009, held Friday in Cincinnati. This list of five were included in Michael Rubin's running notes from the Summitt. Rubin, a social marketing manaager at an ad agency, also had some other observations from the speech, including Lowe's thoughts on the growing importance of mobile.)

Something to say

2009-10-16T20:07:10Z

The next couple of weeks seem to be all about giving talks.

Doing a roundtable discussion with Kevin Slimp and Tom Chester tomorrow at lunch at the Institute of Newspaper Technology. This session meets at Regas and should be fun. The institute cranked up on Thursday. Hope Tom and I can still hold their attention on Saturday; Slimp probably will have their heads filled to bursting by then.

Talking with some college faculty Tuesday afternoon about Skype and Twitter and such.

On Friday, Oct. 30, Kurt Greenbaum of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and I talk about "Social Media: Cheap & Simple Tools, Expansive Reach" at the Associated Press Menaging Editors Training Conference in St. Louis. Greenbaum has a great presentation I'm adding a few slides too. If you haven't signed up for the conference, hurry on over and do that. There are lots of excellent sessions planned.

On Nov. 5, I'm doing a News University Webinar from the Poynter Institute on "Managing Comments on Your News Site.". This one will be fascinating to anyone involving with wrestling with comments on news sites. It's a hot topic with lots of ramifications for newsrooms. Now, if I can just survive the being on a Webcam part.

Scripps Networks in play?

2009-10-12T11:52:30Z

A trade publication fuels rumors that Knoxville-based Scripps Networks will be acquired by a larger media player by saying it looks ripe to "be nibbled at or gobbled up whole."

Good listen for October

2009-10-08T14:12:40Z

I'm liking this title cut and other tunes from the new I And Love And You Avett Brothers album more with every listen.

The tomato paste libel case

2009-10-06T10:56:50Z

I've been doing a lot of research, thinking and writing about online comments for a Nov. 5 webinar on comment management for news sites for the Poynter Institute and APME.

So the story about a libel suit against the owner of a pizza restaurant just blocks from my home attracted my attention.

In what some consider an unusual and risky business move, a marketing firm is suing its former client for $2 million over comments he is said to have made on Facebook and Twitter.

Regardless of the legal merits of the case, if the intent was to stifle negative "publicity" about the marketing firm's business practices; it failed miserably.

The comments were originally made in relative obscurity even through they appeared on public networks. Since the suit, the news story on knoxnews has been one of the site's top read and most emailed stories of the past several days. And the case is generating attention worldwide.

(This is a screen shot of the "most emailed" list on the knoxnews.com Web site on Oct. 6, 2009.)

Note that attorneys for the marketing company didn't sue Facebook or Twitter where the comments appeared; they sued the commenter.

Facebook and Twitter just provide the network or platform for the comments. Comments at the bottom of articles on news Web sites are similar to Facebook and Twitter comments in that the site is just providing the means for communication.

Online sites from individual blogs to mighty Google, and Internet service providers like Comcast and AT&T rely on provisions in a 13-year-old law for protection against suits regarding user comments. In one of those twists of political sausage making, the law, the Communications Decency Act of 1996, was originally aimed at combating porn and obscene language.

The 15 minutes of fame for the The Pizza Kitchen libel case has resulted in worldwide attention as much over the business strategy of suing clients as over the legal merits of the libel claims. And on the Internet, that 15 minutes of fame gets replayed with every new search engine query.

Palo Alto, Calif., marketing and public relations blogger Steve Farnsworth (@TheRealPRMan on Twitter) is holding a chat on Twitter using the hash tag #SM4B on Wednesday at noon (EST).

Knoxville marketing and social media consultant Mark Schaefer, who has blogged about the case, is his guest.

Here is some of the react being generated by the case.

Mark Schaefer:

First, is it ever really a good idea to sue your customer? Pizza Kitchen has one store and 247 followers on Twitter. Even if the owner was really, really difficult, you just ... don't ... sue ... customers over something liks this. Do you??

Frank Reed writing in WebProNews:

I think these folks in Knoxville must be upset with the play of the University of Tennessee's football team or something because this is out of hand. Social media never plays well when it becomes social mudslinging. You can look at the PDF of the court papers filed by Lowe and Tritt at the Knox news site and decide for yourself if this is as stupid (or overcooked) as it looks.

Australian blogger Laurel Papworth:

How to bake a social media problem: Take one serve of Self-publishing throw in 2 spoons of strong emotion stir with some passionate about business bake with a leadership role and then serve with strong personality. Warning: Can get HOT!

TheFounder on the Tribble Ad Agency blog

It may not be apparent now, but one day in the history books you might find this story where an advertising agency sued their client, because their client seemed to be able to get a message out using social media more efficiently than the ad agency could counter with traditional means.