Local Sites Need To Be ‘Life Enablers’
February 22nd, 2008 — admin
The American Press Institute’s Newspaper Next project has released a report on the state of newspapers and how their role is changing.
One key finding is that readers are increasingly searching for information that is pertinent to them rather than what just would traditionally be thought of as “news.” The report advises newspapers to become “a local information and connection utility.”
As you read the 100-plus page report, it becomes clear that many of the problems and possible solutions are also applicable to Internet Broadcasting’s broadcast TV clients. Like newspapers, they’ve struggled to grow or even retain their local online audiences, with mixed results.
The study observes that the most common solution among newspapers is to offer up ideas which offer added value to current readers, instead of developing ways to bring in new eyeballs. Things like video are mentioned in this category, and we suspect that if our industry had the metrics to prove it, the same would be the case with visitors to our sites, and those of our competitors.
There’s a long discussion in the study about finding ways to enable conversations between your customers. It notes that the typical effort at forums tends to be limited to creating a conversation around a current news story. That’s certainly the case with sites in our industry, and the fact that most sites don’t even bother to create a way for their viewers to talk about TV shows seems ludicrous. We don’t think that any site can afford to ignore the low-hanging fruit, and discussions certainly fall into that category.
But the strongest takeaway idea in the study is the description of the ideal local site as being a “life-enabler.” It’s a good distillation of what an ideal local site should look like, whether it’s a newspaper web site, a broadcast TV site or a stand-alone product.
During our first lab experiment at IB last fall, one of the proposals that received a lot of serious discussion was the idea of creating a site we described as being a “home page” for people’s real lives.
The site would let you create a profile with as much or as little information as you wished. Not just where you lived, but where you worked, where your kids went to school, what kinds of movies you rented. As you entered parameters, your “home” page would fill up with widgets that contained relevant info. There would be a local news widget, one with a schedule of your kids soccer team, etc. And if a widget didn’t exist, you would be prompted to create it.
There are a lot of challenges with the idea, but I think that idea illustrated the point of the “life enabler” comment in the study. The ideal site wouldn’t be one that created content as a stand-along business. It would use the original content as a framework to create a home page for the way people live their day-to-day lives. That’s news, but it’s also all the disparate parts of their lives. Work, home, friends, connections, hobbies.
The study’s profile of MonroeTalks.com carries important lessons for online local media. That site doesn’t use any technology that is cutting edge, in some ways it’s a very old-school approach. But it’s a textbook example of what can happen when you enable people to connect locally on a platform that is trusted by its users.
I thought this passage was very relevant:
Any newspaper organization thinking of trying to create an online community should consider putting a discussion forum front and center on the homepage and giving the community the freedom to discuss just about anything. Yes, there can be taste and conduct issues, but conduct guidelines and a little bit of judicious intervention can keep those under control.
Any newspaper company striving to become the local information and connection utility will need to master a variety of community and social networking tools, configuring them to enable discussions and interchanges of opinions, information and knowledge. “critical mass” in the number of users. If a Web site can’t attract enough users, then a second potent deal-killer kicks in – failure to attract enough business customers and revenue.
The lesson for those in online local media is that a lot of these solutions can be done on the fly and with not a lot of staff. Many of the sites highlighted in the study are one or two person efforts (aside from the backend work). In some ways, you run these sites as if you’re a small start-up. What can of idea is compelling enough that you would quit your job to launch it on your own? That’s the idea you want as part of your local network.
One interesting omission in the study was any talk of building local or regional ad networks. Presumably, that would be part of the reason to launch some of these efforts. It’s easier to build ten sites that grab 2 million page views each than come up with some grand effort that adds 20 million page views. By making the ad sales platform and site-agnostic, you can increase revenue simply by aggregating network page views. It also makes sense to offer up ad serving to important independent vertical blogs, as yet another way to build scale for the local ad network.
In fact, the end of the report talks about becoming the local Google, and creating a branded destination site for local readers. I’m not sure that’s a workable approach for most publishers, and I think that building a local ad network makes much more sense.
Peter Krasilovsky’s LocalOnliner.com has a good take on the study’s results, and if you want to read the entire report, you can download a copy at this link.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:53 am
where the hell you been?
i’ve checked back in regularly to see what you’re writing, but nothing!
“they’ve (ib clients) struggled to grow or even retain their local online audience, with mixed results.”
telling a client they’re wrong when they’re wrong is the right course, but few will follow it.
keep telling them.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Nice post. On a related note: “Journalism, Value Creation and the Future of News Organizations,” by Robert G. Picard, published by the Shorenstein Center, ought to be required reading for everyone who wants to see journalism — and local news production — thrive online. One passage especially caught my attention:
“Many of the challenges of news organization today exist because the professionalism of journalism and journalism education have determined the values and value of the news, commoditized the product, and turned most journalists into relatively interchangeable information factory workers. Average journalists share the same skills sets and the same 56 approaches to stories, seek out the same sources, ask similar questions, and produce relatively similar stories. Few journalists encounter skills-related problems changing from one news organization to another and the average journalist is easily replaced by another. This interchangeability is one reason why salaries for average journalists are relatively low and why columnists, cartoonists, and journalists with special skills (such as enhanced ability to cover finance, science, and health) are able to command higher wages. Across the news industry, processes and procedures for news gathering are guided by standardized news values, producing standardized stories in standardized formats that are presented in standardized styles. The result is extraordinary sameness and minimal differentiation.”
Picard figures that less than 15 percent of all editorial content in metropolitan papers is generated in-house. Everything else comes from the wires and the syndicates — the same content that is seen everywhere else across the country. It’s rather like taking a road trip on an Interstate and eating at Burger Thing every morning, noon and night. Eventually, every meal becomes just a diversion from a boring existence behind the wheel in New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, St. Louis and Denver. All this takes place against a sobering backdrop: news consumption across all media has fallen dramatically in the past 50 years.
Perhaps ‘Life Enabler’ — albeit clunky and new-agey — is one possible solution to Picard’s “sameness.”
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:34 pm
I agree. I wish you posted more often, but some good points.
The problem with forums and blog comments is that it requires so much work to mamage. Most sites barely have the staff to handle their current duties, much less taking on additional work.
I also wonder who is going to create all that content that goes into your “home page” widgets.
February 24th, 2008 at 4:15 am
It’s good to see people thinking about the challenges we face trying to build a viable local hub. I’m not sure that anyone has worked out the ideal solution, but given your experience, I’m glad to see you’re seriously spending resources on the problem.
As for the work required to manage forums, lots of smaller sites with much fewer resources somehow make it work, so larger sites should be able to figure it out too.
February 27th, 2008 at 11:45 am
A life enabler would be nice. There’s a tremendous amount of clutter on the Web locally and some simplification would be great. Seems to me that with as much copy-catting as goes on on the Web these days, a really smart outfit (that maybe already has access to a decent distribution channel, i.e., you guys!) would cherry pick the best ideas from this report and see what you can do with ‘em? But hey, I’m just trying to find out when and wehere my kids can take the ACT test since their school filled up.
February 27th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Invited Media–
Thanks for continuing to check back. I can’t speak for anyone else who blogs here, but I took a week off, and have been buried in some projects. But I’ve promised to blog here regularly, and will make sure that happens (hopefully, close to every day)
As for telling a client they’re wrong, I think the relationships are more accurately like a marriage. Both sides are happy to be together, but they don’t always agree on what they want for dinner.
I don’t think any business will always agree with their customers 100 percent of the time. But hopefully you’ve built up a bank of trust that you can draw on when a serious challenge does arise.
February 27th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Kris–
The other side of this “life enabler” discussion is a backend database solution. To make this idea work requires a lot of number crunching and manipulating large amounts of data. It’s probably the toughest part of the equation, but in theory, being able to find something like the nearest ACT test would be part of this local solution.
February 27th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Hart–
It’s an interesting point about the lack of original in-house content. As you know, journalism is labor intensive, and most media outlets realize they can’t generate all their needs in-house.
The old school solution was to simply fill the gaps with AP wire, but in an online world where readers can quickly compare the content, that solution is a lot less attractive.
One stopgap was to try and fill the content hole with user generated stuff, but that can be an absolute bear to manage and coordinate.
So I wonder if we’re not moving towards a string of smaller syndicated content wire feeds. For instance, rather than having 500 outlets using the same AP TV stories, a station or broadcast group might partner up with a TV critic, who would write material that is exclusive to those sites. And if you combine that with a standalone vertical run by the critic (with ads served by the broadcast group), then suddenly you have a very viable solution.
February 27th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
yeah, after i wrote and submitted that comment about ‘telling them when they’re wrong’ i hoped no one thought i meant that they were always wrong.
but when you are hired as a professional in your field you owe it to the customer to tell them when they ARE wrong.
the idea that the customer is always right is a bunch of bs.