GANAHL ON MEDIA: Hype In Hyper Local?

Even as the legacy media business model implodes and dozens of media outlets and thousands of journalists disappear, many pin some of their hopes for media’s future on hyper local news sites. But, are they ready to do media’s heavy lifting?

Hyper local sites deliver original and aggregated content about specific geographical areas. They rely on multiple content sources ranging from government databases to professional and citizen journalists. Many, such as The Voice of San Diego, The New Haven Independent, and the MinnPost are rightfully recognized for their innovations.

However, the revenue streams of some remain undeveloped forcing them to rely on grants from foundations such as the Knight Foundation for much of their revenue. The Knight Foundation has funded over 50 projects related to community information projects.

A recent study of how news happens in a major city raises serious questions about the capacities of both hyper local sites and legacy media.

The study titled How News Happens: A Study of the News Ecosystem of One American City is by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, and it analyzes all the news reported by 53 news outlets in Baltimore, Maryland during one week in July 2009. The research is based on a “minute-by-minute” analysis of “every piece of content” produced by the 53 news outlets during 3 days of the studied week.

Frankly, its conclusion: “that what the public learns is still overwhelmingly gathered, synthesized, and framed by traditional media-particularly now much-diminished local newspapers,” seems obvious Just think about your own news habits: how often do you rely on hyper local websites for information?

What is surprising is what the study says about the content redundancy built into news reporting. Nearly 83% of the 715 different stories produced during the studied week contained no new information and was basically repetitive. Traditional media, mostly newspapers, generated 95% of the 121 stories with original content. New media’s productions are only 4%, or less than 6 stories.

Even more surprising is media’s reliance on official sources for story ideas. The study documents that government triggered nearly 3 out of 5 stories, and that the press initiated only 14% of the stories. Pew reports, “press releases appeared verbatim…though often not cited as such.” It also reports “instances of plagiarism-reposting stories without attribution.”

But most surprising is how “much-diminished’ the legacy media truly are. For example, the number of stories produced in 2009 by the Baltimore Sun has plummeted to 23,668 stories, a decrease of 73% since 1991 when more than 86,000 news stories were produced. Even more telling is the fact that the Sun supported two competing newsrooms in 1991 when it published both a morning and evening paper.

Quite a news ecosystem, wouldn’t you say? Is Pew documenting the extinction of a news ecosystem? Are legacy media on their deathbed? Do hyper local news sites lay stillborn on the delivery table?

Media pundit and educator Jeff Jarvis shouts not so fast: “We must (remember) we are at the dawn; the very beginning of the new news ecosystem.” He trashes The New York Times’ story, and claims the Pew study merely allows legacy media to validate their own self-reported importance while ignoring the uniqueness of hyper locals’ contributions. Jarvis insists hyper locals are redefining the very nature of news while pushing to new limits journalism’s entrepreneurial spirit.

Really? This is a new dawn? Maybe it’s just a false dawn, or the beginning of an excruciatingly protracted dusk.

Seriously. Not only are news producers in the current news ecosystem ‘greatly diminished,’ so are the consumers they attract and the revenues they generate. In an earlier column I wrote, “declines in newspaper circulation mirror (the industry’s) revenue declines.” Today’s newspaper circulation of 48.5 million equals 1945’s newspaper circulation of 48 million, and is a 23% decrease from the 1984 peak of 63.3 million. The New York Times reports similar losses in network TV news audiences that have decreased from 50 million in 1980 to 22 million in 2009.

This much is clear though: there are transformational changes in the news ecosystem and hyper local sites are struggling for position. The Pew study is just one data point in the national news ecosystem. It should be replicated across the country especially in those cities where hyper locals are more established.

Graphics Courtesy of Pew Research Center: How News Happens

GANAHL ON MEDIA: A Fed Bailout?

Want to start an argument with a journalist? Easy. Demand their reporting notes, insist they reveal the names of confidential sources, or suggest they seek government funding to keep their legacy media afloat. And that’s the controversial suggestion Leonard Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson make in their report The Reconstruction of American Journalism commissioned by the Columbia University Journalism School.

The two are no strangers to the practice and study of media. Downie, a former executive editor of The Washington Post teaches at Arizona State University, and Schudson is a professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. The Columbia Journalism Review published a 35-page summary (which I have read) of the complete 100-page October report (which I have not read) on media’s current condition and strategies to salvage the legacy.

Reactions to the report have been widespread and range from CJR’s digitally published comments to media columnists such at The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, to even Twitter where the debate can be followed as #columbiajreport. An ironical footnote to the report’s release is it occurred in the same week The New York Times announced plans to reduce its newsroom by 100 positions, and the Audit Bureau of Circulation reported newspaper circulation declined almost 11% in 2009. Please see the accompanying table published in The New York Times.


So, how did Downie and Schudson incite this debate?

They conclude, “Fewer journalists are reporting less news in fewer pages, and the hegemony that near-monopoly metropolitan newspapers enjoyed during the last third of the twentieth century, even as their primary audience eroded, is ending.” They remind us that the number of newspaper editorial employees has dropped 33% from 60,000 in 1992 to 40,000 today.

But, you might ask, aren’t all things, including the business models of media moguls, shaped by evolution? Isn’t survival of the fittest a business world imperative? Not necessarily.

The duo quotes a Knight Foundation commission that suggests independent reporting “is as vital to the healthy functioning of communities as clean air, safe streets, good schools, and public health.” In fact, it is this reporting, or accountability journalism as they call it, which “undergirds democracy” as it performs the press’ watchdog function. They believe that only legacy media and their outsized newsrooms can sustain this type of reporting.

While they celebrate the plethora of online news operations launched by entrepreneurs, philanthropists and universities, they conclude, “it is unlikely that any but the smallest of these news organizations can be supported” by current online revenue.

Given the enormity of responsibility the pair ascribes to legacy media, namely the perpetuation of democracy, their six strategies to save newspapers seem almost simplistic. These strategies include reduced taxes through nonprofit status, increased philanthropic donations, university-supported reporting, wider access to public databases, heightened pressure on public broadcasters to provide local news, and government funding of editorial functions.

Certainly, it’s highly unlikely the government will appoint a media czar to restructure an industry already well on its way to being reinvented by its more innovative practitioners and experimental consumers. Still, the report is a provocative analysis of media’s traditions, foibles and best practices. And it should be studied because it may inspire novel and enduring changes.

GANAHL ON MEDIA: State of News Media

OK, I admit it: I’m an addict…a stat-addict. To be sure, I’m not alone, there are many stat-addicts: sport-stats, market-stats, caloric-stats, you name it. Me, I’m a media-stat addict, and I can’t get enough stats about circulation, advertising or site traffic. Lucky for me I found the mother lode of all media stats, the Pew Research Center’s The State of the News Media: An Annual Report on American Journalism. The series of reports are the work of the center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ).

The 2009 report is the 6th in a 6-year series beginning in 2003. It analyzes 9 major media sectors across 5 areas: audience, economics, newsroom investment, ownership and digital journalism. Its analysis is based on ‘aggregating as much publicly available data as possible,” and PEJ’s own extensive content analyses. At 180,000 words, or 700 plus printed pages, and dozens of charts it is mammoth. Go figure: that’s over one million words during the 6-year project! The online edition allows us true stat-addicts to sift the data and create our own multi-variable charts. Cool, huh?

So…what is the ‘state of the news media?’ PEJ concludes that the 6th annual report “is also the bleakest.” While equal numbers of news seekers still seem to value the practices and values of traditional journalism, they are increasingly abandoning legacy media as sources of traditional news, and migrating to ‘on demand,’ online platforms. These online platforms deliver news when audiences want it, in formats they want. These formats include wi-fi, mobile, social networking sites, blogs, video, microblogs, RSS and e-mails. News audiences now “hunt and gather what they want when they want it.” Additionally, many of these news seekers then share, or repurpose the content through the very same platforms they initially hunted.

Thus, the crisis is less about audience size, and more about audience migration, and the resulting shifts in platform revenue from legacy media to online media. The gains in online platform revenue are nowhere equal to the losses in legacy media revenue. PEJ describes it is as the “decoupling …of advertising from news.” Add to this today’s economic collapse, which has “at least doubled the revenue losses”, caused by the migration of audiences from legacy media and you start to appreciate the depth of the crisis.

So what are the media habits of these online news hunters and gatherers that are precipitating such change? PEJ concludes that while those that use the Internet has remained relatively constant for the last several years at 70% to 75% of the country’s population, they increasingly ‘hunt and gather’ for news more frequently and for longer periods of time.

Nielsen's ranking of the top 10 news sites

Moreover, online platforms seem to be more popular sources of news when compared to most traditional news sources. According to a Pew Research Center survey (August 2008) 37% of the total Internet users go online for news at least 3 times a week, compared to the 29% that watch network nightly news and the 22% that watch network morning shows. Another PRC survey (December 2008) found 40% relied on online sources for national and international news compared to 35% that relied on newspapers. Where do they seek their online news? PEJ reports the top 5 most popular news sites in 2008 according to Nielsen Online are MSNBC, Yahoo! News, CNN, AOL News and The New York Times.

As to the future of legacy media, PEJ concludes, “There are growing doubts…about whether the generation in charge has the vision and boldness to reinvent the industry.” I agree. The skills necessary for traditional journalism don’t readily translate into online entrepreneurship. The future of legacy media is tied to their ability to forge increased collaborations with innovative online partners. And that…means more excitement for us stat addicts! Stay tuned.