Month: August 2007

Analyzing the online news audience

The Shorenstein Center, at Harvard’s Kennedy School, has issued an intriguing new study on user trends at news sites. You can read the whole thing (pdf) here, but let me offer a few observations and comments.

1. The study, titled “Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Look at News on the Internet,” prepared by Shorenstein’s Tom Patterson, shows that a trend we’ve already seen with newspapers’ print editions is happening online as well: the national newspapers (the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal) are doing much better than large and medium-size regional dailies, whose growth is stagnant. In fact, the study finds that the Times now accounts for “well over 10 percent of the online newspaper audience.”

This is serious — but not, I would argue, quite as serious as it might appear at first glance. Nor do I think it represents any major diminution in people’s interest in local news. Consider:

  • In most parts of the country, the national papers (especially the Post) are not as easy to get in hard copy as they are online. The Web sites of the national papers represent huge growth potential that simply isn’t available to regional papers, since getting the Baltimore Sun or the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (to name two of the papers included in the study) in print is easier and more convenient than reading it on the Web.
  • Readers outside a regional paper’s coverage area aren’t all that interested in what that paper has to offer. Nearly all of a regional paper’s target audience already has the option of easy home delivery. An exception that proves the rule: the Globe’s Boston.com might be the most popular regional news site in the country (depending on whether you consider the Los Angeles Times to be a regional or a national newspaper). And a lot of that, Globe insiders will tell you, is because of the “Red Sox diaspora.”
  • Most regional papers’ Web sites fall far short of the Times’ and the Post’s, which are models of how to do online journalism. Thus readers have an additional incentive to stick to print.

2. Shorenstein reports that the Web sites of PBS and local public television stations are losing audience. I’m not sure what to make of that, but I will point out that news is not the dominant programming paradigm on public television. Perhaps what this really means is that “Arthur” and “Sesame Street” aren’t as popular as they used to be. Certainly “The NewsHour” site is looking pretty good these days.

3. But we also learn that NPR and local public radio stations, which are far more news-oriented than public television, are losing online audience as well. And though I don’t pretend to know why, I do wonder whether podcasting has something to do with it. If you go to the podcast directory at the iTunes Store, you’ll see that NPR programs do very well. (Actually, so does the aforementioned “NewsHour.”) It could well be that the most Net-savvy of public radio’s listeners are going straight for the podcasts and not bothering to visit the Web sites. Podcasts are powerful; streaming audio (and video) is a loser.

Besides: I’m willing to bet that more than 90 percent of public radio is consumed in people’s cars. Even though public stations like Boston’s WBUR (90.9 FM) are trying to beef up their Web presence, the Web-print synergy that exists in the newspaper world has no analogue when it comes to radio.

4. The Shorenstein study finds that the growth of Digg.com is off the charts. The report describes Digg as an aggregator not much different from Google News or Yahoo! News, but that’s not quite right. Digg is a social-networking site that allows users to submit news stories that the community then votes on. Those that get the most votes rise to the top.

The readers’ choices tend to be tech-oriented, and those that aren’t can often be pretty juvenile. But the Internet, especially in its Web 2.0 incarnation, is all about community, conversation and participation, and Digg.com has found a way to apply that to news. There are lessons to be learned from that.

Update: GateHouse Media’s Howard Owens calls the Shorenstein report “seriously flawed,” and points to this for another perspective.

You go first, Mr. Cohen

Don’t you feel completely reassured now that the state has told us the feds are wrong about the Zakim Bridge‘s being on the verge of collapse?

OK, I exaggerate — but not by nearly as much, I suspect, as state transportation secretary Bernard Cohen was when he told the Globe’s Scott Allen, “It is not a safety issue, but rather a defect associated with the installation.”

Of course, the loose bolts in the tunnel were not a safety issue unless you happened to be driving through it when one of them let go.

This is exactly the kind of story that can have a far bigger impact now, following the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis, than it normally would. Bridge- and road-safety stories can have a quality of abstractness to them unless readers have a clear picture in their minds of people plunging to their death.

I assume — I hope — that the Globe is going to keep hammering away at this. No doubt Cohen and his boss, Gov. Deval Patrick, are freaking out at the prospect of another multizillion-dollar repair job. But people will have to understand that it wasn’t the Patrick administration who oversaw this shoddy project, and that it’s worth any price to prevent what happened in Minneapolis from happening here.

Yesterday, the Outraged Liberal argued for a higher gas tax instead of an increase in tolls. Unfortunately, we may need both. As well as lawsuits against the responsible contractors from here to eternity.

Photo of Zakim Bridge (cc) by Ron’s Log. Some rights reserved.

The last “D&C” update

Pending any real news (and certainly Entercom’s acquistion of half of WCRB (99.5 FM) qualifies as real news), I’ll let David Scott round things up one more time. Bottom line: It’s now clear that no one — not Scott, not the Herald, not the Globe and certainly not yours truly — had any idea of what was really going on until the agreement was announced yesterday afternoon.

Perhaps Entercom and Nassau can now cut a deal that would allow John Dennis and Gerry Callahan to take over the morning show on WCRB. No disrespect to Laura Carlo, but wouldn’t you love to hear Dennis introducing one of the “Brandenburg Concertos” while Callahan wonders out loud if Bach was an illegal immigrant?

What’s wrong with casinos

Retired John Hancock CEO David D’Alessandro offers compelling personal testimony in today’s Globe on the malignant effects of gambling — and, by extension, on why state officials should do what they can to make sure no casino is built anywhere in Massachusetts.

I love this: “I have faith in Deval Patrick. While untested, he strikes me as a man of courage.” Translation: If the governor moves ahead with casino gambling, he’ll do so knowing that he’s made a powerful enemy.

In this week’s Boston Phoenix, David Bernstein analyzes the politics of casino gambling.

Wilpers checks in

Former BostonNOW editor John Wilpers has responded to my request for comment on his semi-departure earlier this week. Here’s what he’s got to say.

Thank you for your e-mail and offer to post my answer:

Regarding BostonNOW, I will be consulting with them and the group’s management on their Internet initiatives and expansion.

I also will be launching an effort to export the concept I pioneered at BostonNOW — introducing greater relevance and community to a newspaper’s print and online editions through blogger recruitment, participation and publication.

The BostonNOW experience convinced me that mainstream newspapers can rejuvenate themselves and find tomorrow’s readers today by inviting the community into the paper.

The hundreds of tech-savvy BostonNOW bloggers, most of whom had no use for an old-fashioned newspaper, are excited about being published in a product seen by tens of thousands of readers every day. Those bloggers are seeing their profiles rise dramatically in the market, and as a result, the potential for previously unimagined levels of traffic on their websites rises as well. That kind of mutually beneficial relationship is appealing to both parties — the newspapers and the bloggers.

I intend to take that message on the road to help other newspapers learn how to develop those relationships and build the new audiences that will rejuvenate their franchises….

(And, yes, the plan includes pay for bloggers. I have even met with the National Writers Union to talk about contract templates and to get advice on compensation plans. They’re very excited about the potential for their members and non-members alike.)

BostonNOW’s melding of print and the Web is far more interesting as an idea than as a news product. Frankly, the paper is pretty bad, although there’s no reason to think it won’t get better. This Boston Magazine piece on BostonNOW by Jason Feifer — “The Rag That Would Save Newspapers” — captures the good, the bad and the ugly.

As for Wilpers, whom I’ve known since the early 1980s, when we competed against each other, the guy is a survivor. He’ll be fine.

Update: This isn’t nice, but it’s funny.

Stunt or not?

Bruce Allen of Boston Sports Media offers five reasons why the “Dennis & Callahan” lockout might be a stunt, but says he really doesn’t think that it is. Among other things, he cites Entercom sources who claim John Dennis and Gerry Callahan are looking for as much as $1.5 million apiece annually. Not much laugh potential there.

I doubt it’s a stunt, too, but you never know. Allen points to the time that Mike Adams locked himself inside the studio in order to demand a contract, an incident that was later revealed to be a hoax. But that was at least semi-amusing. What’s happening now isn’t funny or even all that interesting, my own incessant posting on the subject notwithstanding.

A $2 million reward (II)

The Globe reports that the Mashpee Wampanoags have acquired an option to purchase another 205 acres in order to build a casino in Middleborough.

Not to pick on Christine Wallgren, who’s done some good work on this story. But telling us that the sellers are “the Gates family” tells us nothing. As previously reported by the Enterprise of Brockton, we’re talking about Middleborough Police Lt. Bruce Gates and his two siblings, and they stand to make as much as $2 million from the land deal.

Bruce Gates was in charge of security at that fiasco of a town meeting where voters approved a deal with the Wampanoags, then turned around and rejected the casino itself. The latter vote is non-binding, but it’s a good indication of how townspeople really feel.

Gates has said he got nowhere near a ballot box that day, and I believe him. But it was his police who reportedly barred anti-casino pamphlets from the meeting while allowing casino supporters to enter wearing pro-casino T-shirts and caps.

The Enterprise promises more tomorrow.

Wednesday morning update: Wallgren gets it right in today’s Globe, and notes that the secretary of state’s office is reviewing complaints filed about Gates’ alleged conflict of interest.