photo credit: Chris_Carter_

“Video killed the radio star” hit the airwaves at the end of the seventies. Soon it might be time to sing “Facilitation killed the Twitter star” as social media development coupled with information overload and fatigue merge for a not so catchy chorus.

Twitter is merging as both an inlet and outlet for the latest news. Journalists and whistleblowers alike are manning the feeds and putting everything out there, while one after one of the Everyday Joes and Johannas are also finding their way there to listen to these almost fanatical news mongerers. In Sweden, there are a number of them, like Emanuel Karlsten and Haris Alisic. People who have a nose for the news, and both the energy to plow threw, redistribute and comment them. But will this last? I say no, not in the way we are seeing and believing right now.

Because, while the Haris’s and Emanuel’s are easy enough to follow right now, their likes are spreading like a virus. More and more people are following their example, and that makes the feed hard to handle when the shit hits the fan. In recent weeks, the disaster in Norway hit hard and near home to us Swedes. Subsequently, the Twitter feed kept a close eye on the development and you could follow the mayhem closely, without even turning on the tv or visiting CNN.com. It was not overwhelming, as long as you stayed of following the hashtag #Utøya, but it was still clear that the quantity of engaged people has grown exponentially in Scandinavia. And just as with #Utøya, we have seen similar but even more frantic tendencies in for example #Libya.

The Year of the News Overload

There are plenty of social media aficionados who like to promote this as “the end of traditional media”. Following the Twitter feed is quicker and more direct, why in the world should we wait for journalists to meet their deadlines with this golden opportunity at our hands? But as some more levelheaded nerds say, we still need the more thorough and investigative news that our traditional reporters provide, maybe just in another format. I would like to add one more bit to that analysis, and it is the fact that I believe that we will soon see a reaction to the oh so quickly updating Twitter feed, just as itself was once a reaction to (informal) dictatorships trying to stop news of demonstrations and uprisings to reach the outside world. Why? Well, I think Zoe Williams of the Guardian was spot on in her analysis a few weeks ago.

“They’re [the news] superseded so fast that you never get time for that half-knowledge to turn into full knowledge before the next thing happens. The effect is a news twilight, where you can’t even be sure what has been confirmed and what hasn’t.”

A reaction is bound to come as quality becomes more and more desired when quantity and speed reigns. We can already see the early signs, in for example the constant complaining about our deer friends on Facebook posting… well, crap in all shapes and sizes! And while news outlets like my own try to engage our more common readers more, as I described in yesterday’s blog post, I’m personally not expecting these others to reach the unprecedented level of us enthusiastic maniacs, who clutter the Twitter feed during the Year of the News Overload we call 2011. Even we won’t be able to keep (it) up.

Watch out for digital fatigue

The New York times yesterday published a piece on Jessica Lawrence, an early adopter, who is consciously focusing only on one social media channel in order to not burn out and fade away. She’s feeling the pressure to be omnipresent, but is realizing that she cannot. And late adopters will probably see the same stress come lurking, if they haven’t already. Facebook works well for connecting with their friends, but when they hear about the proclaimed Facebook killer Google Plus, and how they are so outdate because they don’t get their news through Twitter? More and more people increase their use of tools for digital communication, and there is an end to how much you can take. Really.

At the same time, we’re seeing a parallell trend of pressure emerge.

“But any attempt by weary networkers to scale back is complicated by the proliferation of Web sites like Klout and PeerIndex that are busily computing users’ influence scores to rank them in an online hierarchy.” (Stephanie Rosenbloom, New York Times)

photo credit: Pink Sherbet

The pressure from your peers are thus extended by the pressure to increase your influence, which all of us social media advisors are repeatedly emphasizing is essential to your personal and professional success. Either you’re influential, or you’re a nobody.

All-in. Fatigue. Full stop. Fade away. Dr Killjoy has entered the building.

The day after tomorrow

And here we are now, it’s the day after you could not stand it anymore. Your Twitter feed was filled to the rim with a couple of thousand of people who hungered for your attention, posting news, comments and retweets to the right and to the left… and above, beneath and beyond. You could not take it anymore and decided to turn it off for a while, to listen to the birds and enjoy the wind through your hair. At the end of the day, you only wanted to be you and not who everybody else was expecting you to be. And now what? You still want to be updated, but you just don’t have the stamina to stare at a constantly moving screen to get them.

The Twitter feed in itself will be too much to handle, and tools like Twingly Live even makes it harder to grasp when the situation is as grave as in Libya. There’s no possibility what-so-ever for one single person to follow what the entire world is writing under one hashtag. And when the news are of smaller magnitude, how are you supposed to even find the ones that interest you? Are you supposed to continually search for them, or to follow each and everyone in your area? No, there is a need for something else, an alternative where you could ensure that you get the news as quick as on Twitter, but with higher quality and relevancy.

You still need the Emanuels and Harises to be there and filter away the bad stuff, to tell you what is good and why you should read it. But you’ll also want to make your own comments and give them tips on either leads or how you would like the story to be followed up. All in direct connection to the news itself, not in a quick moving feed among thousands over other people and subjects. These trusted few will be counted on to listen, produce and narrate from a position close to the situation, as the absolute validity of the news cannot be guaranteed by someone sitting in a cabin thousands of miles from where the action is. Somehow, you need the combination of the quality assurance you get from most traditional media, but with the quickness, closeness and responsiveness of social media. You need to trust. You need facilitators.

We want Lassie

There’s no news that we can already see a clear trend of emerging tools for aggregating the news, be it in the iPad’s All-American app Flipboard or in ventures like Storify and Summify. While Flipboard and Summify is based on algorithms, I believe that Storify is onto something more interesting in terms of reaction driven innovation. Google’s complex search algorithms and Facebook and Twitter’s friend suggestions are fine and dandy, but we will want to see a more humane side soon. We won’t want something to technologically believe what we want to read. No, we will wish for someone made of flesh and blood, who can look us straight into our eyes and tell us with confidence that this is interesting and why.

photo credit: Gayle N

We’ll beg for Lassie to run for help. Then we will ask her: “Okay, that was interesting! But have you thought about this angle, and what does other journalists and media have to say on the same subject? And is there a video clip that could prove what you say is correct?” We will continue along the path of consuming news vertically, focusing on the subject at hand and neglecting the boundaries set by the pages of a single newspaper, but with the spice of a little human touch to it.

We will want all of what current social media like Twitter bring to the table, but we won’t have any of the stress it induces. At least not when we look for news.

And the Twitter star will die and resurrect to become even more powerful as a facilitator on platforms that are yet to see the light of day. Maybe in the Liquid Newsroom that Steffen Konrath first proposed almost exactly one year ago?

photo credit: philippe leroyer

In any given business, there’s nothing like an engaged customer. Because engagement spells loyalty, and that sure beats trying to recruit new customers 24/7. In the news industry, it’s what all the hype is about, as we refer to the past and on-going situations in Iran, London, Japan, Egypt and London again. But how about all the new customers we so desire, how can we get them to a level where they engaged even when there are no riots where the streets have names they are familiar with?

In the YouTube clip I referred to in yesterday’s blog on how we easily lose our focus on journalism, Paul Lewis of The Guardian describes the engagement in controversial cases like that of Ian Tomlinson’s death during the 2009 G20 summit protests in London.

“As long as your news is the right side of a paywall, i.e. it’s free – anybody can access it. And stories like these that question the official version of an event, allowed people to realize that we had questions ourselves. They were online magnets. Individuals with material that could help us were drawn towards us by some kind of a gravitational force.”

Lewis is one of few role models when it comes to really crowdsourcing the news, but he does also posses an unique capability in his job at one of Europe’s most prestigious newspapers in metropolitan London. To be perfectly honest, most journalists and media don’t see situations as the G20 summit or the current riots in London even once in our lifetime, but we still want and need to engage our potential and existing readers in the same way as Paul does so well with his sources.

Beyond the riots, there are numerous events that trigger you and me every day. The journalistic problem is that most of these reactions still take place offline, and for a very selected audience. Social media has helped us to be more in touch and listen to what engage our readers, but the world we so much like to describe as completely transparent with “everything out there” is still nothing but a vision and a future maybe. And the same goes for reactions on everyday news – people love to press the “like-button”, but it takes a lot more to get the juices flowing so much that they actually get personal in a comment. At least if you refer to late adopters, or in other words: 99% of the population to date.

Here are a few advice on how to engage the people who are already in your universe, that is actual news consumers and/or followers in social media:

Experiment
You need to find out what engages your readers. Politics, sports and crime almost always do – but there is no guarantee that the same goes for the people who read the news in the channel you’re trying to engage in. They might be younger, older, all male or female, party people or philosophers, and what not. You need to analyse and experiment to find the triggers, and build from there.

Get on the right channel
There are different social media that are better suited for dialogue than others, and where people habitually express their minds and are often well connected and active on several other social platforms. Twitter is one of those channels, and it’s a perfect place to begin if you want to build your reputation and have it spill over. While Facebook is good for getting likes, it’s a lot harder to get people to discuss and really engage with brands and unknown people there.

Educate
Have you engaged readers before? If not, you’ll have to communicate and help people to get used to the fact that you really want their comments. The newspaper I work for has a reputation to be anything but transparent, even though one of our core values nowadays is “open”. But people won’t just turn their backs to decades of tradition just because we suddenly say we have changed, you need to pave the way and you need to have the patience to let people discover that you’re to be trusted.

But it’s also the other way around, if your readers are not used to expressing their minds, they won’t just love it from the get-go. And some readers might be new, and thus won’t have the same level of engagement for your brand or the news you produce. Help them get over the initial hump, by publishing likable news, communicating how readers can send in news tips, giving them leads on what you’re working on and asking for help, and by actually doing something with the tips you get. Again, patience is a virtue.

Engage your own
People generally do not want to discuss with brands, they want to talk to people and in our case that’s the editors and reporters. Despite what any anti-traditional, digital blog and media nerd will say, journalists and newspapers still are looked up and listened to. They might not trust us, but they still respect us. And if you are to get people to discuss the news, it helps to have Maria, who wrote that interesting piece, available to discuss her thoughts and why she was so controversial in that editorial. Once you make sure that those reactions reach its origin and start building the personal relationship between journalist and reader, it sure will also be much easier to get tips and inside stories you always look for as a reporter. Win-win.

Listen, listen, listen
Finally, it’s about you listening and not only transmitting. What news do you readers share and discuss? What do people say about and sometimes even to you? What have other media in your area succeeded with? And so on. You need to listen in order to learn, and you need to always be aware of the fact that if your Twitter profile, Facebook wall or comments on your website shows you yabbering away, without actually listening and responding with humility and relevant information, people will not even try to talk to you. After all, would you ever talk to anyone who does not listen to you?

photo credit: Brendan Lynch

CNN today reported that The Tribune Co is working on their own tablet solution in cooperation with Samsung. A crazy sign of the times, as large parts of the newspaper industry is going haywire because of declining revenues.

I’m not going to lie – things like this happen in most, if not all, organisations in the newspaper business, including the one I work for. We are panicking because of the decrease in circulation and revenues, and really don’t know which way to turn. Usually, it’s us telling the world what’s going on, and suddenly we have no idea about what tomorrow will bring? Of course we’re worried.

As we are not used to handle this situation, we end up looking for answers in the most weird places and with our defective world view supporting it.

We own our platforms, we always have.

People come to US for the news, it’s always been like that.

What? You’re saying we’re supposed to share the material we produce, without even getting a visitor or a click on our website? No no no.

What? You’re saying we can use free publishing platforms that someone else has produced for our online news? Nice one, but you’re not fooling us.

I’m telling you, we cannot handle the truth.

So, what do we end up doing when we need mo’ money and must own our own platforms. We build it, because they will surely come. They have to. That must be what The Tribune Co is thinking, that was at least my direct conclusion when Kate Gardiner and Matthew K retweeted CNN’s reports about the on-going experiments.

“	Newspaper company Tribune working on a tablet computer, CNN reports – http://bit.ly/r2JzDP
	ProducerMatthew August 9, 2011

“	@ProducerMatthew @KateGardiner That’s awful. When’ll we learn to focus at what we do best, and stop building own soft AND hard platforms…
	LexMarkus August 9, 2011

“	@LexMarkus @craignewman @kategardiner @gotoplanb It doesn’t surprise me. Tribune’s always doing weird, wacky crap.
	ProducerMatthew August 9, 2011

“	@LexMarkus @craignewman @kategardiner @gotoplanb Sort of like CISUM, which still hasn’t surfaced – http://producermatthew.com/post/3161058429
	ProducerMatthew August 9, 2011

Tribune Bankruptcy Case: Judge To Weigh In A two-week hearing begins Monday to determine the fate of Tribune Co. more than two years after an ill-advised $8.2 billion buyout drove one of the oldest U.S. media companies into bankruptcy protection. The proceedings follow four years of tumult and intrigue at Tribune Co.

“	@LexMarkus @ProducerMatthew @gotoplanb All I can see is hardware costs > newspaper printing costs in long run.
	KateGardiner August 9, 2011

“	@ProducerMatthew @NPR is always doing smart, whacky crap… why do they get it and not Trib? @LexMarkus @craignewman @gotoplanb
	KateGardiner August 9, 2011

“	@KateGardiner @npr @lexmarkus @craignewman @gotoplanb NPR is being productive in the interest of journalism. Trib just wants cash.
	ProducerMatthew August 9, 2011

“	I think we’ll leave hardware development them @KateGardiner: @LexMarkus @ProducerMatthew @gotoplanb
	craignewman August 9, 2011

“	I’m not smart enough to understand how this makes sense @ProducerMatthew: @LexMarkus @craignewman @kategardiner @gotoplanb
	craignewman August 9, 2011

photo credit: Johan Larsson

In the third blog on the redefinition of customer concepts and experiences in media, it’s time to have a look at the members and sponsors. They key here is in the names, as they are chosen to reflect the consumers’ importance for the organization – members are to be seen as engaged users, while sponsors actually pay our salaries.

Earlier posts on news consumption:

1. The Pyramid of Media Consumption
2. Breaking down the Pyramid: Observers and Visitors

The News Consumption Pyramid. Four levels of news consumers: (1) Observers, (2) Visitors, (3) Members, (4) Sponsors.

In the work to actually become a more customer centric organization, it is of outmost importance to look at how you talk about customers – be they potential, current or former. Because how we talk about our customers to each other, will ultimately decide how we talk to them in our customer service and other touchpoints.

Working for a local newspaper, it does not take long until you realise exactly how passionate your readers are, for better or worse. That is, as much as they love you when you do something good, as much will they hate you when you fail. Sure, that happens in other businesses too – but the difference is that all these emotions stem from the daily consumption of a journalistic product, where 200 journalists research, evaluate, write and have opinions about  the everyday life of 500’000 people. There’s at least one personal flipside to each and everyone of those coins.

The newspaper is also not seen as a commercial entity by itself, but as the collective voice of the community’s residents. As a lover of all things PR, I embrace this professional situation as a dream come true. But in a complex organization such as ours, there are a lot of people who are used to working with advertsing, tele marketing etc for businesses with ‘normal’ services and customers. To fully grasp the situation and treat customers with the respect they look for, we need to ensure that our terminology are up to par in describing the relationship.

As we approach the end of the scale in this context, it is important to note that the primary goal of most established newspapers still is to attract readers of the paper itself as a core product. This has changed somewhat over the past few years, as digital versions of the paper has been introduced (incl PDF:s, iPad versions etc). We know that we have not reached the end of this process yet (or ever will?), and may see drastic changes in the years to come. In other words, this model will need further adoption as time goes by.

3. Member
Nature: Active consumption.
Keyword: Confirmation (of interest and relationship).
Communication: Direct, primarily through digital channels – personal through e-mail, and general through specific news channel and social media.
Engagement: Broaden the relationship between reader and journalists/editors, and encourage readers to co-create new designs and services/products.
Content: News that cater to customer expectations in specific channels, customizable channels (content, design, rate of updates etc), added value to free alternative through special services and news material etc.
Service functions: Self service online, telephone, e-mail, social media and chats.
Required investment: Time, personal information/space and/or small amounts money.
Examples: Paywall news sites/sections, e-newsletters, newsflash services and smartphone/tablet news apps.
Metrics: Member registries, financial incomes and web metrics.
Call to action: To confirm reading habits, engage consumer to seek in-depth news, and earn WTP (willingness to pay) (level 4).

4. Sponsor
Nature: Active consumption.
Keyword: Sponsorship.
Communication: Direct personal communication through mail and e-mail.
Engagement: Confirm the relationship between reader and journalists/editors, and encourage readers to co-create new designs and services/products.
Content: In-depth news, focus on unique material, investigative journalism and deepened discourse. A complete summary of what is happening glocally right now, and will be happening long term.
Service functions: Self service online, and prioritized lines in telephone, e-mail, social media and chats.
Required investment: Time, personal information, daily routines and larger amounts of money.
Examples: Newspaper subscriptions (traditional and digital).
Metrics: Financial incomes, circulation and scope.
Call to action: To encourage and confirm the core service’s position in everyday life, and confirm WTP.

Per usual, any feedback on these concepts would be greatly appreciated – here, on Twitter or through e-mail (markus.pettersson@gp.se). This is far from a finished model, but rather a first step in a new approach that needs to be developed and deepened to become applicable.

So, how about up- and down-sales, the customer experience, transparency and engaging readers to co-create content? More on that in upcoming posts.

photo credit: Andrew*

Continuing along the lines I laid out yesterday, what are the exact characteristics of the two visitor levels and how we communicate with them? Here is a first attempt in breaking down the pyramid of media consumption.

First off, let me to get back to the important point of the context of this first discourse of categorizing news consumers. My aim is to find a terminology that could replace or complement how we talk about commercial consumers in marketing and sales departments – that is, in terms of customers and hot or cold sales leads. For now, the terminology differs from a journalistic standpoint, where a reader is a reader no matter the channel, and we are talking more about for example crowdsourcing end curation as aspects of consumption.

In yesterdays blog post The Pyramid of News Consumption, I used two similar models of community engagement to find a first somewhat viable categorization of our readers:

The News Consumption Pyramid. Four levels of news consumers: (1) Observers, (2) Visitors, (3) Members, (4) Sponsors.

The vertical dimension (top to bottom) specifies the level of engagement and investment that the consumer makes in you, while the size of the horizontal dimension corresponds to the size of the community. The reason for turning it upside down is simply for illustration, as it is to be seen as a funnel in which we find (most of) our future members and sponsors among the visitors.

So, if we focus on our two first levels, what are their characteristics?

Well, first off, we need to establish the fact that not every kid who grows up has the local newspaper laying around in the kitchen whilst eating breakfast. Therefore, we can no longer count on them recognizing our brand as a safe port for news and beautiful way of kick-starting the day. People may know our brand and may know our product well, but we must realise that it’s far from a foregone conclusion. And as we are adapting to modern ways, we are also working with services that change rapidly over the months and years to come. So, even a seasoned reader can lose sight of what we are here and now if she is distant from our brand for a year or so. With that in mind, here are few words on our visitors. (Credit due to Groundwire and their Engagement Pyramid for the inspiration.)

1. Observer
Nature: Passive consumption.
Keyword: Observation.
Communication: Indirect, through third parties, or direct in events and advertising.
Engagement: Earn interest and trust in brand.
Content: Focus on building brand through showcasing content, skills of employees and the core values that are deemed most relevant in the setting.
Service functions: In the current channel of communication.
Required investment: None.
Examples: News or comments in social media, advertising, corporate presence at county fairs or at conventions and conferences, journalists taking part in broadcasted debates or conference panels etc.
Metrics: Brand/advertisment impressions, distributed material, number of visitors/viewers etc.
Call to action: To engage consumer to actively consume, primarily through free online media (level 2).

2. Visitor
Nature: Active consumption.
Keyword: Engagement.
Communication: Indirect, through the specific channel of news consumption and social media.
Engagement: Establish relationship between reader and journalists, encourage readers to send news tips.
Content: News suitable for channel (ex quick news, culture, politics, editorials, polls), presentations of journalists (names, passions, articles, online presences etc), easily accessible presentations about all available channels.
Service functions: Telephone, e-mail, social media and chats.
Required investment: Time.
Examples: Following brand presences and/or journalists in social media, visiting a non-paywall news site without requirements to register etc.
Metrics: Web and social media metrics (visitors, followers, reads, mentions, retweets, likes etc).
Call to action: To encourage habit of consuming news and attract to a deepened and direct relationship (level 3).

Those are the key properties that are on top of mind for me personally, but as always I would appreciate any and all feedback – even if you completely disagree with my theories. The model must be deepened, and there’s nothing quite like transparent discourse to facilitate that process.

Time for a break from thinking and some rest. In my next post, I’ll look into the one or two of the remaining levels of member- and sponsorship.

photo credit: khalid almasoud

During the past weeks and upcoming months, I’ll work extensively with reshaping the strategy of how our newspaper works with customer relations and loyalty in what I call Project 360. The focus is on creating both an internal environment and external communication that focuses on adopting to a new world order in news consumption and also going 360 degrees – that is, making sure that we can easily access all information on our customers, but are also transparent to them.

The first thing I am looking at is how we categorize our customers and our services, which in turn will lead to a better understanding of how and what we should communicate. Looking at this, I primarily try to look at social enterprises and non profit organisations, as they are more developed in terms of engaging consumers than the commercial world is. This is especially important for a newspaper, as the nature of our services are just that, engaging. Local journalism is an integral part of it’s community and viewed by consumers as their product, and we must adopt any business model to that.

UPDATE: From the feedback I received, I’ve noticed that I need to further clarify the context of this post. I’m referring to the consumer from the perspective of circulation, marketing and CRM. That is, we are looking for a more pedagogic and fair way to talk about consumers than leads/prospects and customer base. Those old ways of commercially looking at customers is not working at all as we get more and more products, which are diversified both in content, channels and prices. While a reader is a reader in the newsroom, in marketing we tend to talk about customers as only people paying for our services and prospects as people we have contact information to. This is not a viable way of speaking about news consumers in the 21th century.

In looking for inspiration, I found a lot of it in two related but different so called engagement pyramids.

Groundwire

In their own words, nonprofit consulting group Groundwire delivers “technology to engage people, organizations and communities in building a sustainable society“. In The Engagement Pyramid: Six Levels of Connecting People and Social Change, they describe six different levels of engagement:

1. Observing (Goal: Inspire initial and repeat contact with the organization.)
2. Following (Goal: Offer value and secure permission to deliver direct, proactive communications.)
3. Endorsing (Goal: Earn enough trust to secure endorsement of the work.)
4. Contributing (Goal: Deepen commitment to the mission and the work.)
5. Owning (Goal: Instill and develop a sense of responsibility for the mission.)
6. Leading (Goal: Develop leadership skills and opportunities.)

I very much like this model as a way of understanding and communicating how a brand engages different people. Groundwire have done their research well, and added both a vertical (intensity of engagement) and horizontal aspect (number of involved) in the pyramid.

WiserEarth

A similar organisation, WiserEarth “helps the global movement of people and organizations working toward social justice, indigenous rights, and environmental stewardship to connect, collaborate, share knowledge, and build alliances.”

They too have a pyramid, which is a little shallower, but offers a slightly different perspective. In A Simple Model for Community Engagement, they develop a five level Community Engagement Pyramid.

1. Visitors (invited or accidental)
2. Members (if there is a clear cost/benefit)
3. Contributors (moved to action)
4. Evangelists (invite others to join)
5. Leaders (lead the community)

As you can see, they have more or less integrated Groundwire’s Following and Endorsing in the second level.

How to apply in commercial news media?

What I’m primarily looking for here is a way of describing phases of commercial consumption. That is, I’m looking for how the reader is engaged, and not the aspect of her or him engaging others by becoming a part of our organisation. The latter part is of course of equal importance for the full picture and is something we need to look deeper into as our work continues, but is left out in this blog post.

My idea is to divide the consumption phases into four phases:

1. Observer: Passive consumption of a service, through events or social media. (E.g., mentions in the Twitter feed, a coworker taking part in a broadcasted debate, or a corporate presence at a convention or fair.)
2. Visitor: Active consumption, without giving up information on yourself or any form of other compensation. (E.g., a newspaper website with no pay-wall or requirements to register.)
3. Member: Active consumption, while also providing information about yourself, making space in your mobile device and/or minor payments for the services. (E.g., an iPhone app, a subscription to a eNewsletter or paying for singular online content.)
4. Sponsor: Active consumption, while providing detailed personal information and relatively major payments for the core products, as well as making way in everyday life for new routines. (E.g., a daily newspaper subscription.)

I believe that we as a newspaper (nowadays) have a higher consumption treshold than a non profit organisation. We need to a better footwork than before in establishing our brand and our journalism to potential consumers, and should therefore but more emphasis at these early stages than we most often do now. When we had no competition at all, it was easy to go directly from level 1 to 4 with a good enough subscription campaign. But reality has changed and we need to adopt to it.

I would greatly appreciate any feedback on my thoughts. Am I way out of line, or on to something but missing some good points?

After listening to anything you have to say, I will venture on by looking also at for example what the services of these four levels should contain and communicate, creating transparency in a news organization and also to move on and look into how we can engage consumers to become evangelists.

photo credit: abroadjz

Beside Google+ hysteria, other things have actually happened in digital media over the past week. Guardian’s decision to shut down it’s international editions on paper was one of the most notable news on the media.

iWitness wins News Challenge
News aggregation is the hottest comodity in the news business right now, and one of the start-ups that could potentially wreck havoc is iWitness. Web designer Jesse James Garrett’s project just received a hefty sum of $360,000 through the Knight News Challenge grant. According to Nieman Lab’s Andrew Phelps, iWitness is an “aggregation tool that will mine Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube for user-generated material unique to a particular time and place“. Read more in Phelps’s interview with the winner.

Guardian going all-in on digital
The Guardian and The Observer will go all-in on digital with it’s international edition come October 1. Robert Andrews writes that the production in New York, Frankfurt, Madrid, Malta and Cyprus will cease, which would mean a 7.9% decrease in paper circulation in today’s numbers. Read what Guardian News & Media’s exectutive director Adam Freeman has to say about it.

Designing news to be usable
Freelance journalist Alex Gamela has written an extensive article on user experience and how to design the news. He points ut: “It’s not about just informing people anymore, it’s about creating a product that lets people do something with that information, creating richer and more immersive content, making it more valuable and with a longer lifespan.” He has identified seven important characteristics, of which you can read more in his guest post at Tracy Boyer’s blog Innovative Interactivity.

Respect your readers – don’t cut and paste
Doug Fischer, senior instructor in journalism at University of South Carolina, gives an example of why news papers are failing at his blog. And while very simple, it is yet also very valid. It’s all down to laziness and disrespecting readers, as the Sun Herald of Biloxi and the Mississippi Press cuts and pastes.

Smartphone sensors revolutionizing digital magazines?
Over at Media Shift, Susan Currie Sivek writes about how smartphones through primarily geo positioning are changing the digital publishing landscape. She quotes Joseph J Esposito: “”I see many providers saying, based on the location of your handset and your history, I can pre-filter and stream to you information that might be relevant to you.” Read more on Esposito’s views and sensor publishing in Sue’s post.

photo credit: toksuede.

Are Poland ready for the 2012 Euro Championships? 21 journalism students will travel from London to find out. This and four other posts in today’s round-up on interesting reads on the news.

Tips on crowdsourcing news, feature and investigative stories
Journal Register Co’s manager of community engagement and social media Steve Buttry have summarized how to get help from the public in making the news. This quote alone makes the long read worth it: “Crowdsourcing is not a magic wand that suddenly produces eyewitnesses and whistle blowers just because you asked. You need to build connections and credibility.” Read, digest and make use of an excellent post.

Journalism students travel to Poland for newspaper’s social media experiment
21 journalism students from London will hit 21 cities in Poland. Their mission: to use social media while finding out if Poland is ready to host the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship Newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza hosts the experiment, called Mission 21.

Three Newspapers That Hit Rock Bottom And Bounced Back
Gretchen A. Peck takes a look at the Star Tribune, Boston Globe and Journal Register Co to find out how they have re-enginered to go from certain doom to hopefuls. It’s always helpful to look at actual cases when we develop the news business, and these are three very good examples.

Digital Subscriptions Will Lift Magazines But Not Newspapers
Publishers see their circulation decrease, and for most that also means lower revenues. Instead, everybody are looking to compensate by venturing to increase digital subscriptions. Jeff Bercovici writes that according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, magazines might succeed, while newspapers won’t.

Comparing The Major Magazine Publishers’ App Portfolios
Publishers around the world are investing millions and millions in apps to different platforms, despite an obvious lack of actual best practices. Laura Hazard Owen have summarized the offerings of four major players: Condé Nast, Hearst, Time Inc. and Meredith.

photo credit: Andrew J Ferguson

Jessica Malnik wrote an interesting blog post on why a journalism degree is valuable, whether you are a reporter or not. Being on the other side of the spectra as a PR pro that has gone into the news business, I’d like to do a 360° and offer another perspective: why people in the PR business is needed in the news.

There’s no reason to kick on traditional media, as it’s already laying on back and bleeding. Everybody who works in the business is awkwardly aware of the fact that the paper circulation is decreasing and will continue to do so for pretty much the foreseeable future. Here’s we come in. The PR professionals, or spin doctors if you’d like. We are sitting on the exact knowledge the media is in dire need of, and most of us love journalism and would love the opportunity to work on the other side of the trenches.

So, without further ado, here’s my list of 3 reasons to why journalism needs a PR degree.

1. We know viral
For decades, our work has mainly been to persuade individuals in order to reach the masses. We have spun stories to prove to journalists why they should write, we have lobbied to make politicians support our causes, and we have made stars wear and use our merchandise to sway their fans into doing the same. We know how to identify people with the influence we need, and how to push both their and indirectly their friends’ buttons. In other words, we know viral like no one else and you need exactly that to increase your digital reach in order to compensate for decreasing circulation.

2. We know monitoring
We have been monitoring everybody from the media to the public for years. Sometimes, we monitor to safeguard our own brand or to keep an eye on our competitors, sometimes we do it to measure the outcome of our actions. I know some of you might kick me in the chin when I say this, but I believe that journalists are not as skilled as my own guild in this area. Yes, you’ve kept an eye on other news that matter to you, have subscribed to AP:s releases and so on. And when you have an embryo to a story, you sure know how to dig, dig, dig. But when it comes to the quick news, you’ve had the privilege to be served on a platter from all directions. Because you were the only outlet for news, and both people and business turned to you. Nowadays, they don’t need to. Instead, they publish them on their own blogs, and on Twitter and Facebook. And you never know where the news might turn up. In PR, we have been monitoring for years and years. Some have even done it full time. We have used them to see what people say about us, to find opportunities for both business and marketing, and what not. We have turned every digital stone, and as social media have progressed, we have become even sharper. As citizen journalism grows, you need to become more adapt at monitoring to supplement your already superior skills in researching.

3. We know you and speak your language
That’s right, we probably know journalists better than our own mothers. Many in PR love journalism and have pursued a career because we like good stories and believe in the power of reporters as truth-tellers and whistleblowers. Most of us are not like the bad apples who make stories up and lie to get press. And because we know journalists, we understand what you want and need in a way that most people in for example advertising or normal communications don’t. This makes us better fit to grasp your problems and find the solutions you need to primarily distribute and market the news without destroying its core.

PR can help journalism. Yes, we can.

The Sun sets a bad example on how to place and design sharing functions.