AR&D Reinventing Local Media

Sometimes a simple choice of a word can make all the difference in how we think. John Morton, the dean of American newspaper analysts, writes for the American Journalism Review (Enough is Enough) that by relentless cost-cutting, newspapers are committing a form of suicide. He calls cutbacks “wrongheaded” and “shortsighted” and believes they threaten the future of the industry altogether.

He writes that the days of “exceptional profits” for media companies are over, and he worries that the brand name and reputation of papers needs protecting as we move forward.

Mr. Morton has been around a long time, and there’s certainly room for his position in the broader discussion of media disruption. It’s true that when push comes to shove with public companies, the bottom line is all that matters, and adjustments by cutting staff, while not easy, are a necessary part of survival.

But John Morton’s thinking about the suicidal nature of such cuts is colored by questions over the validity of the disruption:

All these reductions are a response to two years of declining revenue and profit and a perceived shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet.

Perceived shift? Perceived? That’s not a slip of the pen keyboard, I suspect, and it underscores the difficulty of accepting change in the culture of skepticism that envelopes most newsrooms. After all, if all of this is just a “perceived shift,” then it’s not really real, right? Advertisers aren’t really moving money to the Web, and consumers aren’t really getting their news and information online, right? It’s all just a matter of perception.

Or not.

Charlton Heston is gone and all of Life mourns his passing. But here’s an interesting tidbit from my friend Holly.

I was reading a discussion board at 11:10 (last night, central time) when someone posted that Charlton Heston had died. A few minutes later, I went to Wikipedia to look at his Wiki entry. Yep, already there. It beat the front pages of all the major news sites. It’s not on CNN’s front page as of my clicking Compose Mail to send you this.

Like it or not, mainstream media, this is the way it is.

A week ago, I wrote about the concept of “finding” news consumers based on a comment from a student during a focus group. “If the news is that important,” the young man said, “it will find me.” How does that happen? Word-of-mouth and examples like this.

The change to Heston’s Wikipedia page could have come from his own people, or it could have come from a fan. But the fact that it occurred ahead of major news outlets is a stunning example of how people are able to sidestep the gatekeepers in the quest to be informed.

Why wait for “the media” to help you with mischief makers when you have the ability to do it yourself? This is from Mac Resources, the Apple store in Huntsville, Alabama. Note the “Digg this” link.

Click to embiggen

Most observers miss that businesses are a central component of the personal media revolution.

The challenge to mainstream media is increasingly to aggregate this kind of stuff. The direction is clear.

Here’s the link for Amazon. It says they’re “temporarily out of stock,” but that just means the process hasn’t fully evolved yet. Nevertheless, you can order.

Barnes & Noble doesn’t have it available yet.

I just did an interview with the AP about the CBS O&O stations firing high-paid anchors (Chicago, LA, Boston) in a dramatic cost-cutting move. The reporter asked, “So what does a station do after it has fired its own face?”

Good question.

I saw this one coming in 2003 in my essay “News Anchors: An Endangered Species.”

The industry’s obsession with celebrity and the easy marketing thereof is meaningless in a Postmodern world that has demystified the industry and its hype, rejects elitism and doesn’t need its information spoon fed by good-looking faces anyway. As the world of video news shifts to a broadband environment, where users can pick and choose what they want to watch and when they want to watch it, there are powerful forces at work that will make news anchors unnecessary.

What will the CBS stations do? I don’t really know, but I do know that the move must have every anchor in the business sweating bullets. If I were an anchor, I’d fully embrace New Media and use my leadership position to make a difference.

(Note to all my broadcasting critics who told me I was crazy five years ago: It’s going to get worse.)

I’ve just spent the past hour listening to a fascinating panel discussion involving Al Gore, John Seigenthaler and Jimmy Wales that I highly recommend. You’ll recall the “problem” that Seigenthaler encountered with Wales’ Wikipedia last year, and that is the basis for the entire discussion. It is an outstanding conversation between three intellectuals about free speech and the need for accuracy, and you won’t be disappointed.

In the conversation, Seigenthaler delivers a healthy rebuke to the broadcast news industry about what he views as its unwillingness to correct errors, even going so far as to suggest that broadcasters don’t deserve the large audiences they get, because they don’t care about accuracy on the same level as print journalists. Listen for yourself; it’s worth the time.

A big thanks to Tom Cheredar for uploading the file.

Articles like this one by Peter Osnos of The Century Foundation tug at the heartstrings of anyone who has been around media very long. What’s happening to newsrooms is sad. Every day seems to bring more bad news. The CBS O&Os laid off scores of people yesterday, even high-priced anchors, because business has gone south. Newspapers have been buffeted for several years now, and it’s taking its toll.

Osnos writes of the morale in newsrooms as if comforting an old friend.

…the real problem is something deeper, I sense. It is a belief that no matter how good your work, how thoroughly reported and influential, it isn’t going to matter in protecting your newspaper. Because of the revenue declines and cutbacks, the mood of proprietors and managers, on the whole, is near panic. Outstanding work by their staffs, the newsroom has become convinced, isn’t going to make a difference in the outcome of their institution. The effort at morale-building in the stream of front office memos announcing departures, the cheerful exhortations to survivors to do great work, only adds to the cynicism that pervades.

News people are by nature skeptics, and given to grumbling. One of their missions is to find fault. Self-criticism in newsrooms is standard, and so is defensiveness when the criticism comes from outsiders. None of these characteristics are at issue. The problem is that the prevailing mood of a declining and deteriorating industry is so pervasive and so discouraging that it reinforces itself. “What’s the point?” is a debilitating attitude, and it is very difficult to reverse.

What’s happening hurts, but I believe it’s the same necessary kind of hurt that comes with the death of a loved one. And I think we would all do well to think of it as such.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified the five stages of grieving, and they are as appropriate for this situation as any.

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

We’re past denial, although who can argue we went through that? We’re also past the anger phase. Professional news people lashed out at anybody they could tag, beginning with the blogosphere. That’s gone now, as is the stage of bargaining. If we could do this… If we could do that… Sorry, folks we can’t talk our way out of this one. Besides, to whom does one bargain for justice anyway?

I think what Osnos is describing is textbook depression, and that’s the stage that we’re in now. Television may not be as advanced as our newspaper friends are, but it’s there just the same. “What’s the point?” is the behavior of an industry depressed.

But look what comes next? Acceptance. That’s where we need to be, because minds who have fully accepted that those nostalgic days are gone and are not coming back are minds that can actually move forward. It’s the darkness-just-before-dawn syndrome.

As my friend Gordon Borrell likes to say, “Things are very positive where I work.” Indeed. Growth is on the web side, so let’s all get on board the Cluetrain. Historians will write what they must, but we’ve all got work to do.

I’ll let the smile on my face as I sign for the order give you an idea of what I’m thinking about this day.

We’re installing a way for you to purchase the book via our website, and it should be available via Amazon and Barnes & Noble in the next couple of weeks. I’ll let you know when that happens. I also hope to have them available in the bookstores at NAB/RTNDA, but that’s not a promise just yet.

Once again, if you want an autographed copy, send a $30 check to AR&D at my address, and I’ll take care of it.

Terry Heaton
1913 Redwood Trail
Grapevine, TX 76051

I won’t be blogging today, because I can’t trust any of the headlines. April Fool’s Day brings out the best worst in the tech community.

Arrington sues Facebook
Microsoft and Yahoo reach agreement
Google and Virgin Air to create settlement on Mars

And so forth.