Money for Page Views: Journalists Turn Into Revenue Lapdogs

Remember last week, when I posted about Michael Hicken’s article in The Faster Times “Internet Isn’t Killing Papers, We Are”? Well, it turns out there may be a good reason for his rather inflammatory view.

Courtesy | Anna Cervova via Public Domain Pictures.net

Money.

In an interview last week with Fishbowl NY, The Faster Times founder Sam Apple explained that his journalists are being paid 75 percent of the ad revenue generated by their respective pages on the site.

That means that if any one of the 19 angry readers who commented on Hicken’s article (so far) or any of the countless other journalists who he’s inflamed or ostracized clicked on even one of the ads accompanying his unsatisfying and un-researched prose, they have helped him. Infuriating!

Now, correct me if I’m wrong here, but a scenario in which people are responsible for ad revenue doesn’t sound like journalism, it sounds like sales. And when journalists are forced to behave like salespeople, it runs against all of their journalistic training.

Who would bide their time covering zoning meetings or bridge commission meetings, or getting bored to tears at a meeting about whether the town should invest in new banners for main street or a new stop sign on a side street, when they knew that covering just one rock band concert with an ad for cheap tickets could net them an awesome 75 percent of sales.

As journalists, we vow to inform the public, to remind them of things going on in their very neighborhoods that they simply might not have the time or patience to track down. Turning journalists into another lapdog to revenue is probably the worst possible scenario for journalism.

Can We Trust The Internet? Winnowing Out Misleading, Untrue Sites

“I think it comes down to whether we can trust the internet to winnow good from bad in the blogosphere,” Trina commented on my post Coming Out From Behind the Byline: One Journalist’s Take On New Media.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about this idea of winnowing: weeding out those websites and blogs with URLs that aren’t worth typing. The internet has provided me with countless examples of where good sites can go wrong.

A citizen journalist using just a video camera uncovered reporters censoring former presidential candidate Ron Paul at a gathering of GOP candidates for president on Mackinac Island, MI about 19 months ago, reported columnist Tim Skubick for the Leelanau News. Or that’s what they thought.

Courtesy | Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures.net

“I don’t want these Ron Paul people, but I need shots of audience people eating and crap like that for voice over,” the producer says in the roughly 60 second video, which Mr. Skubick says garnered 65,000 hits in its first week in youtube.com. (The original video seems to be unavailable, but see another posting by searching “Censoring Ron Paul support?” on youtube.com.)

Unfortunately, Skubick reported, the citizen journalist didn’t check the facts. After shooting a ten-minute segment with Ron Paul, “the goal was to get some generic video of what was going on inside. To make sure the video was not slanted to favor one candidate or the other,” the producer asked them to avoid filming more Paul supporters.

But one posting and a flood of vicious emails later, the reporters stand accused of censorship, a cardinal sin in journalism. “No one called; no one suspended his or her judgment to get at the truth,” writes Skubick.

That’s not the only way that new internet sources are straying from the straight and narrow path that journalists follow in reporting the news.

Six minutes before medical examiners pronounced Michael Jackson dead, an IM feed reported the King of Pop’s demise. Events shortly after proved this report true, but internet outlets that passed along this news even an hour afterward were in the wrong.

Old Media outlets like CNN and MSNBC took several hours to confirm and report this historic event. Why, you ask?

“Someone may have been calling the hospital, the family, Tito Jackson, Jesse Jackson, not only for confirmation but for a voucher that the next of kin had all been adequately notified,” said Scott M. Fulton, III, on Betanews, where he blasted these new media sources. “You remember journalism, don't you? Or is that too much ‘old media?’”

Let’s be clear: bloggers, youtube.com posters, and other internet content producers are not all journalists. Some are simply people with a computer, internet, and desire to share their opinion. But the internet gives them the same platform as the rest of us.

So how do we winnow out the good sites from the bad? For now, the truth is that we can only control the content on our own websites. There is no ranking system where we can decry the distributors of false or misleading content.

I’m curious though, about search engine optimization. I won’t pretend to completely understand SEO, a complicated phrase that simply means “how I get my content to the top of a google search,” but I understand that this calculation does depend in part on linking.

By not linking to questionable content providers, can we keep a website low in search results, thereby reducing the number of people who click through to their site?

I’m not naïve enough to believe that one person alone can change a site’s placement in search rankings or even that a collective effort can change the ranking of some of the most popular sites, but maybe together we can begin to winnow out the worst of the worst.

The Internet Isn’t Killing Journalism; Overpaid Journalists Are

Shocked? So am I.

But that’s the view taken by Michael Hickens of the Faster Times, who says that when he was editor of Ziff Davis Enterprise, he made $90,000—and had reporters who made more than that.

My experience—and the experience of several colleagues I polled—has been nothing like that. We toil for salaries less than half of that figure.

So, are overpaid journalists killing newspapers? I’d much rather say it’s the Internet.

Coming Out From Behind the Byline: One Journalist's Take on New Media

What does it mean for a journalist to come out from behind the byline? I've been asked this more than once. The next question, inevitably, is "Why would I want to do that?"

Well, my dear colleague, let's start with why. Step with me into the info-bahn. It's a cluttered place, with pages and pages of information on just about everything. Want to know about obscure patents for things like inside-out style garments and canine testicular implants? There's a site for that. What about how to trap a muskrat? You'll find that too. How about the true tales from Albuquerque? (It's a fun-sounding place, what can I say?) Here's one and here and here.

So, how are you going to stand out? Why should Ms. Susie Q. Internet Searcher come to your site? Well, that's where it gets a little tough: come out from behind your byline. You have to talk to her. It's simple but scary. 

In every J-school classroom, in every newsroom, and in every community, journalists have been told to stay objective. The school board member who just purchased a trumbone company which then got the school's contract to supply the new music department wants a fair shake. Have you been asking neutral questions? You might have a nose for the news, but make sure it's connected to objective eyes. That lesson has sunk in.

But now, with journalism in crisis (Yes, it's a tired cliche. I know) we're being asked to do something new. Engage the audience. Tell them what you really think. That trumbone guy? He might not have known that his shiny new trumbone company would be competing for the school's music program contract, but it is certainly suspiscious. Can you talk about it?

FUN FACT: The German name for this instrument is "Sackbut", which actually means "pull" and "push."

Can you tell readers about other schools that have been fleeced by trumbone-toting school board members? Can you tell them about the nationwide rise in trumbone sales despite cuts in school music programs? Can you talk about your own experience learning to play the trumbone? Can you tell them something, anything at all about trumbones?

That's part of what the new journalism is. Or, at least, that's the part I've learned about so far. So, for now, that's what coming out from behind the byline means to me.

Of course, when I learn more, I'll let you know.

Just look for me, lightly pushing aside my byline to come out and chat for awhile.

Finding The Media For Your Message

Even those new to journalism quickly learn that you can’t bring print material directly to the web. Nearly everyone can spot when you regurgitate print material in a blog, webcast, video, or slideshow.

It’s up to the saavy web journalist to repurpose, recreate, or simply start from scratch when creating for the web. So how do you choose a media for your message? Consider the strength of each medium.

Blogs are undeniably popular. Just about every journalist making the leap to the web begins by writing blogs. They’re not articles and they’re not op-ed pieces, but on many news sites, they’re a comfortable mix of conversational speech and news reporting.

Webcasts invites the audience to join you in listening in on a special interview or explore some minute portion of a larger topic. They’re kind of like the sidebar for the web. On an interview webcast, the subject often does most of the talking. For other podcasts, reporters talk about things they didn’t mention in their stories or even the background to their stories. One of my favorites is the How Stuff Works “Stuff You Should Know” webcast.

Slideshows are basic. Get the pictures, craft the cutlines, and post. Audio slideshows take this simple form to a whole new level. How? By combining all the power of pictures with a simple interview-style explanation, it reaches beyond the short two to three sentence explanations offered by the traditional slideshows. For example, you could interview a sculptor about a statue he is carving and combine it with pictures showing his weeks of progress. Suddenly, this familiar form seems more interesting.

Videos give you the opportunity to connect with your audience as a person. Consider this example:



Would you feel the same about the subject if he you could only hear his musical rendition of his cover letter in a webcast?

After one week, this video received close to 8,000 views on Youtube.com and its creator, Alec Biedrzycki, has been interviewed by CNN. Maybe this want-to-be marketer would consider a career as a web journalist?