So what sets you apart?

Dave Fleet has an interesting piece on social media as a commodity on Social Media Today.

He’s mostly concerned with marketing, but the points he makes hold true for media-types, as well.

What do clients care about?

• Ideas - creative, strategic ideas that solve a problem and accomplish objectives
• Integrated solutions – approaches that bring together disciplines into a strategic approach
• Understanding – a clear knowledge and grasp of the issues that matter to them
• Rounded team – a well-formed team that covers all the bases
• Chemistry – a team that gels with the client-side team personally as well as professionally
• Thought leadership – demonstrated leadership in the areas that matter
• Success – documented case studies – the one area in which, for now, being a first mover gives the advantage.

So which of these do you offer to your media company? Or to your readers and viewers? If you don’t offer any of these, why not? We thought social media was going to catch on, but how many of us thought about what would be next?

We need plans, not prayers

I like (mis)quoting Edward Miller, who once said that saying “I want better writing in this section” isn’t a plan, it’s a prayer, and one that’s unlikely to be answered.

Well, the media is full of those these days, from Dean Singleton to Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch just told Rueters that people will be paying for newspaper content on the Web, saying premium content will be available and widely-accepted.  That’s easy for him to say: people already pay for the premium news that the Wall Street Journal offers.

But would you be willing to pay for the gossip columns in the New York Post? I’ll admit to reading them occasionally, but I wouldn’t pay for them.

In fact, what kind of premium content does Murdoch think newspapers will be able to offer? Media companies are shedding editorial jobs at an alarming rate. That means fewer people to report and write those premium stories.

I’m the first to admit there’s no good business model about making money online, though some people have interesting ideas.

But those are least something approaching a plan. They have actionable steps, goals and metrics.

Both Murdoch and Singleton have promised new and exciting content without ever saying what it would be. They’ve both also cut jobs. Those two things aren’t compatible.

Very few media companies have figured out how to charge for their content, and it hasn’t been for lack of trying. How about trying something different?

Do companies need a social media leader?

Mike Volpe from Hubspot.com took the New York Times to task yesterday for hiring a social media editor. His argument is that it’s everyone’s responsibility to take part in social media, SEO and inbound marketing. He’s absolutely right.

But he’s wrong, too. Start-ups filled with people who’d be using social media and social networking tools don’t really need someone to show them the way; they can just trust their people to do the right thing. But large media companies, ones that have resisted social media (at least somewhat), do need a voice and they need a person pushing reporters and editors to understand what they need to do. They also need people — dedicated people, not catch as catch can like so many other newspaper projects — to help train the staff.

I know that I’m biased, since my job is just that, but even if it weren’t, I think I’d see the necessity. No one needed to explain Twitter to me, but I know that other people need help. There’s a whole range of experience in newsrooms with regard to social media. Some people just get it, others want to ignore it.  We need to get everyone comfortable in this new space, and putting one person in charge of doing just that makes sense.

Novel ideas are what we need for the future of newspapers

Steve Outing has an interesting column on Editor and Publisher’s site about different ways to make newspapers money.

He really likes a plan from the New York Times to allow people to buy sponsorships. I wrote about the other plan from the Times last week.

Sponsorship is a fascinating idea, and Outing suggests some cool things that people could be willing to pay for.

And that’s exactly what we need. Too many publishers and CEOs are looking backward to models that were tried and failed in the mid-90s. Instead of trying to do the same thing in a different way, why not try to do something different?

So I’ll ask: what novel ideas do you have to make newspapers profitable, and how would those ideas work?

In which I’m hard on Dean Singleton, again

I wrote last week about Dean Singleton’s plan to make people pay for local content. I don’t think it’s a good idea, because instead of increasing revenue, it’s going to shut off access to content, not just for local readers, but for search engines, as well, making the sites less connected with larger conversations.

Jeff Jarvis makes that point (and more) more eloquently that I could.

I’m much more concerned about what Singleton wants to give away. He’s expecting to create a rich site filled with user-generated content and other information, but no local news stories.

Putting aside that the company should being doing their best to create context, including using that user-generated content; or arguments about the actual worth of most local news these days; or even questions about how much user-generated content there will actually be, this sends the wrong message. It tells readers that their content is less valuable than content produced by trained reporters.

In some cases, it might be, but not all the time. In fact, to some people, the user-generated content is more important than the latest on sewer rates or the zoning board. It shows life in the community, and it also can help to break news. It isn’t secondary anymore. Having a user base that’s dedicated to documenting their community and talking about issues that matter to them isn’t optional, and it isn’t secondary to the local news that’s being written by staffers. It’s a vital part of any news organization’s future, and giving it (or appearing to give it) second-class status is a mistake.

Monday morning roundup: Two looks at ways to make journalism pay

A short Monday post for right now.
TechCrunch has an interesting, detailed take down of the idea that micropayments are the future of journalism.

Some salient points (I’ll let you read the whole thing if you want to):

• Everyone NEEDS to make profit, but only strong businesses will. In other words, just because you run a media company, it doesn’t mean you automatically deserve to make money.
• The micro-payment ideas might be great for publishers or companies like Google, but not necessarily for journalists.
• And this quote, from Freakonomics: “Putting micropayments on news is like putting tollbooths on an open ocean. Internet users, awash in a sea of information, will avoid new barriers by navigating around them. And frankly, the interests of a free society are rarely served by building barriers between the people and their news.”

The founder of Spot.us has a lengthy post on PBS‘s MediaShift Idea Lab blog with some insights on the start-up’s first six months.

The big takeaway? Readers are less willing to pay for the quick-hit, short journalism that dominates so many newspapers these days. They want something in-depth, well-reported and that presents original ideas. Big-think analysis pieces (like the one I’m writing now?) aren’t as popular.

So what say you? Find any interesting media analysis today?

Metered web reading is our savior?

The New York Times has a fascinating proposal to make some money off Web content: metered reading. You’d get so much for free, then to continue, you’d have to pony up.

It strikes me as a quintessentially New York solution, in that it reminds me of a taxi’s meter. And it might work for them. Executive Editor Bill Keller told staff that there needs to be a balance between too small a free period, which would drive people away, and too long, which wouldn’t get much revenue.

The Times is in a strong position, as they already make a lot of money from online ads. But not all local sites are. It could be that their sales staff isn’t good at selling online ads, or their advertisers don’t understand the value, but they aren’t able to claim much revenue from the Web.

So you can see why executives at local papers might be tempted to follow suit. But before we rush, lemming-like, to implement this (actually!) new idea, let’s have a think about it.

The Times is in a really great position in terms of content. They have fresh, constantly updated stories from all over the world, covering any topic you can imagine. You could spend hours roaming around the site, and, indeed, some people do. They also have hundreds of journalists filing stories. Do you?

Say you’re a mid-sized local paper with about a dozen reporters filing stories every day. You’ve convinced them to file early and often for the Web, and they’re doing that. On a good day, you add a few dozen stories during the day, covering breaking news, crime, traffic and local government. That appeals well to your base of readers, but your base is much smaller than that of the Times. And how long would it take to read all those stories?

Revenue models aren’t one-size-fit-all, as we should already know. This metering plan MIGHT work for very large, national papers with rich archives, lots of fresh content and many different topics to choose from. But for smaller papers, ones that have to compete with television stations or other media sources, it might end up driving people into the arms of their competitors.

There are other models out there, which might fit better. (And I hope to talk more about some soon).

My two-line social media policy

A lot has been written about the Wall Street Journal‘s (somewhat paternalistic) social media policy and the one being hashed out at the New York Times, as well.

Smarter people than me are weighing in, but I think I might be able to add something to this conversation, since I’m training the staff at The Gazette on using social media.

My two-line social media policy:

If you’re using an account for work purposes, identify yourself as an employee of The Gazette.

If posting something would embarass you or the company, or call your professional reputation into question, DON’T POST IT.

That’s it. I give out pages of best practices, too, but those two get to the heart of the issue. Just as we would have never in the past expressed a political preference, we should refrain from doing so now. if it seems like common sense, it kinda is, but it still bears repeating.

The biggest issue people seem to be taking with the WSJ policy is that it shuts down transparency. It forbids staffers from discussing how a story was reported, written or edited. Bad advice, and among the reasons so many newspapers are failing at social media. When there was one edition a day, the story was all that mattered. Now, reporters need to be transparent at all stages. How they source and write the story is important, and so is the discussion afterward.

Rather than grasping and trying to control something (since no one’s been able to control falling readership or declining revenue), newspaper executives need to trust their reporters, calm down and embrace social media.

I can’t close any more eloquently than Patrick Thornton did.

Just use common sense, and common sense says not being social on social media doesn’t make much sense at all.

You only THINK you’re paying for content

(Note: I’m back, at least for a while. It’s a time of even more upheaval in the newspaper industry, and I’ve found myself with a lot to say.)

There’s been a lot more talk about making people pay for online content recently. Dean Singleton made a big deal of that at the AP conference, and has now announced a plan to make people do just that.

It’s a bad idea, one I made fun of and Jeff Jarvis did an intelligent take down of. I could keep making jokes at Singleton’s expense (and still might, actually), but I also want to explain why this idea is so wrong-headed.

The argument is that people pay for content when they buy a newspaper, so they should do the same when they read content online. I’ve been wondering how much people actually pay per story in the newspaper.

Between May 4 and May 8, The Gazette published 335 stories (collections of briefs are counted as one story). That works out to an average of 67 each day. A few years ago, that would have been much higher, but with cutbacks, that sounds about right for a mid-sized daily in a small city. The Gazette’s newsstand price is $0.75 per issue. That means if you bought the paper at your favorite convenience store, you paid an average of about $0.01 per story. In weeks where the number of stories is higher, you’d be paying under that. If you subscribe, that number will come down even further. That penny doesn’t go toward reporting and writing the stories, either. It goes toward the (many) costs to make the physical newspaper.

But who reads all those stories? Some do, I know, but I certainly don’t, and I’m not alone. I read stories that I already know will be interesting to me. But when you’re buying a paper, you have to buy the whole thing, not just the news or sports sections. Online, there’s no such requirement. And who is willing to pay for stories they’re not going interested in?

Now think about how much it costs to publish a newspaper every day. Presses, workers, paper and ink all cost money, not to mention paying people to plan routes and then deliver the papers. The paper shows up at your door, and that’s why you’re willing to pay for it.

You have to seek out—at least somewhat—news stories online, and it doesn’t cost the company nearly as much to publish or display them. So what’s the justification for charging?

I don’t have good figures about the exact daily cost of printing a newspaper (does anyone? I’d love to hear them), but let’s be generous and say it costs twice as much to print a paper than to display it online (I bet that number is closer to five times more expensive). That makes each story online worth about $0.005. How do you collect that? How do you handle readers who feel the story didn’t deliver what the headline promised and want their money back? And, more importantly, isn’t it time to figure out a truly new business model, one that might actually work and help media companies survive, instead of hastening their death?