THINK! helps the thought process

Today, I'll start by referencing a great (although dusty) post by THINK! The Blog for Readers of the International Herald Tribune, which comments on a Nov. 18, 2008, NYT story by Richard Perez-Pena on San Diego's nonprofit Voice of San Diego news site: http://preview.tinyurl.com/ppdn8e

This post showed up on Twitter today, via the in_media feed, and even though it references a months-old NYT story it's still relevant, because the attitudes illustrated are still central to daily journalism's failure to adapt to new challenges.

As THINK! points out, the Times piece is more than a bit clueless, even though it professionally covers many of the relevant bases in the first ten or 12 paragraphs, putting the Voice of San Diego in the context of failing daily newspapers and the need for new models, possibly including nonprofit news organizations. Then comes the lame part -- and, I assume, the reason THINK! rips the Times in its headline: "NYT's media correspondent tells us all we need to know about what's wrong with newspapers," and adds: "I think this speaks for itself. I mean, really, this is like GM backing SUV's and being surprised when Toyota and Renault do better."

VoiceofSanDiego's site looks much like any newspaper's, frequently updated with breaking news and organized around broad topics: government and politics, housing, economics, the environment, schools and science. It has few graphics, but plenty of photography and, through a partnership with a local TV station, some video.
But it is thin - strictly local, selective in coverage and without the wire service articles that plump up most sites.

That's exactly why daily papers are getting it wrong so often -- assuming that the new guys should basically do it their way, down to and including the use of the "wire service articles that plump up most sites" -- and make them boring and indistinguishable from each other. Yikes! Being local, selective in coverage and sans lame and commoditized wire copy is WHY sites like Voice of San Diego have a voice, and an audience.

And on a budget of less than $800,000 last year, according to the Times article, or about what the Times probably spends on catered lunches for visiting dignitaries. Times' columnist Thomas Friedman could pick up $800K singlehandedly in a matter of months, giving canned speeches to business audiences.

But sites like Voice of San Diego, and the Bay Area's Redwood Age -- http://redwoodage.com/ -- are the future, or at least an intimation of it. While even great, or once great, papers like the NYT are the past, or at least are living there in their current incarnations.

As a longtime reporter in the business journals realm, I've seen the same sort of dynmaic play out for years. Daily papers, like the San Francisco Chronicle here in the Bay Area, could have squished my paper like a bug at any time over the course of many years by simply doing a better job of covering local business news. But they never tried that approach. Just as many daily papers can't imagine trying the experiments organizations like Voice of San Diego or Redwood Age are attempting, even as those daily papers shrivel up, shrink and in many instances die.

Why? The people who own, manage and staff them can't imagine doing things differently. Simple things, like focusing on local news. being selective, and avoiding commodity wire stories.

Or maybe Gavin doesn't 'get it'

As a disgruntled S.F. Chronicle news staffer points out, in an email, "It's apparently lost on Newsom" that the Chronicle's reporters also produce content for the SFgate.com web site, and that "People under 30 certainly would notice when those stories disappear along with the paper."

Out of the mouth of Gavin

The Economist, not a slouch in the news biz itself, thinks San Francisco "stands a fair chance of becoming the first major American city without a daily newspaper."

What's more, in a May 14 story about how the Internet is killing newspapers while giving birth to new forms of journalism, the Economist quotes S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsom as saying that if the San Francisco Chronicle were to disappear, "People under 30 won't even notice."

Ouch. Top words, but likely true. The good news, according to the Economist and a host of others, is that new technologies and new experimental forms of journalism are beginning to emerge. More on that later. Here's what the Economist has to say: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13649304