Kiesow 7.0

Journalists seemingly like nothing better than to ruminate over the decline of our industry. Romanesko is often little but layoff and buyout notices. Fading to Black documents much of the same. It is almost all we talk about - and sure the bad news is true and close to home. A former colleague reminded me of that via a Twitter this week regarding the handful of buyouts we are now in the middle of.

It is a personal tragedy for the people who lose jobs. It is painful and destabilizing for those left behind. It certainly is not the best news for readers. But what does any of it have to do with the decline of journalism?

Nothing.

Maybe not a great example, but the six years I spent at AOL were filled with almost monthly mergers, reorganizations and layoffs - much of the tech industry is the same. And, the comparison stands not because AOL is in decline but because that is what companies in tightly competitive markets do - they fight to compete.

Right now newspapers are adjusting to an awkward reality in which they are not the only information game in town. As a one-time near-monopoly the industry grew staffing, grew profit margins and ignored innovation. Well, payback sucks. Today’s downsizings are nothing more than 30 years of pent-up economic corrections crammed into a 2-year crash course. Emphasis on ‘crash.’

The problem with newspapers right now is not that no one wants news. Rather, it is that fewer people want it once daily in print. That is not a problem with journalism, it is a problem of weaning journalism from an aging delivery platform paid for via an outdated business model.

So, print circulation is down, profits are down and newspapers need a bit of time to regain their equilibrium. This is true not just for income v.s. expenses but also for print v.s. every other distribution platform out there. As an industry that has been around for 400 years, 5 or 10 years of chaos once in a while can’t be completely unexpected.

The question really is, once the current recession passes and papers start filling the occasional job again, what will the titles be for those first few new hires? If we have learned from the pain of this transition we will be hiring people with skills that cross disciplines: multimedia journalists, database editors, interactive designers and the like.

Newspapers are certainly not going to look the same in 5 years. We may even lose a few along the way. But as long as there is a need for news, someone or something that fills the need will take their place. And that ’something’ will be hiring journalists. In the meantime we need to stop worrying so much about the decline and start worrying more about the recovery.

Every crash has a bottom, but it’s often easy to miss amid all the screaming on the way down.

Hint: at the time it probably had something to do with telling stories.

This comes to mind as I spent the week moving the paper’s blogs from the LifeType platform to WordPress Multiple User (WPMU) the same platform that powers wordpress.com. The project was a whole lot of fun as we had to figure a way to export all of the users, posts and comments from 20 blogs. Did I mention that LifeType does not include a simple export feature?  In the end we found a sample script that sort of worked and had a freelance developer customize it to go Lifetype-to-WPMU. It still involved a fair amount of exporting and importing SQL files, but the heavy lifting was all scripted as part of the Wordpress import feature.

The nail in the coffin on the project was trying to redirect the correct URLs for every blog and post from old to new. Considering that our Lifetype setup was fond of underscores and SEO and WP dictate that hyphens are preferred, some mod_rewrite was called for.

Not being a developer and not knowing much about mod_rewrite - it took me about 12 hours to finally find a combination that worked. So - this is why I am in journalism now - finding solutions, learning new things, and telling stories.

Here is the code - it is the “good enough” solution. But, any programmer would probably tell you it could have been solved in about half the lines:

#
# Rewrite old permalinks to new location
# FROM: /web_notes/2008/07/28/more_on_comments/
# TO: /webnotes/2008/07/28/more-on-comments/
#
RewriteRule (.*)/(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)$ http://blogs\.nashuatelegraph\.com/$1/$2-$3-$4-$5-$6-$7-$8-$9 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule (.*)/(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)$ http://blogs\.nashuatelegraph\.com/$1/$2-$3-$4-$5-$6-$7-$8 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule (.*)/(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)$ http://blogs\.nashuatelegraph\.com/$1/$2-$3-$4-$5-$6-$7 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule (.*)/(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)$ http://blogs\.nashuatelegraph\.com/$1/$2-$3-$4-$5-$6 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule (.*)/(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)$ http://blogs\.nashuatelegraph\.com/$1/$2-$3-$4-$5 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule (.*)/(.*)_(.*)_(.*)$ http://blogs\.nashuatelegraph\.com/$1/$2-$3-$4 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule (.*)/(.*)_(.*)$ http://blogs\.nashuatelegraph\.com/$1/$2-$3 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(((.*)_(.*))(?!wp-\b))/(\d\d\d\d/\d\d/\d\d)/(.*)   http://blogs\.nashuatelegraph\.com/$3$4/$5/$6 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(((.*)_(.*))(?!wp-\b))/ http://blogs\.nashuatelegraph\.com/$3$4/ [R=301,L]

We had a made-for-TV story come along yesterday. A mother stops at the local Dunkin Donuts with her two kids and 17-year old brother and leaves them in the car. While she is inside the brother gets out and opens the trunk to pull out items he needed for work.

Meanwhile a man walks across the parking lot - gets in the truck and pulls away - with the brother clinging to the back bumper. And it is all caught on security cameras. The story ends well as the truck was recovered a block away - but the scenario is terrifying.

So, we had the video and an interview with the family - both of which we put up Web first Thursday afternoon. The question is - what’s the Web headline going to be?

<insert Jeopardy music here>

Some of the more creative minds in the newsroom suggested (almost) jokingly that we go with a tabloid TV head:

A mother’s worst nightmare!

or

Are Your Kids Safe?

Both of course followed by a tagline - ‘film at 11:00.’

In the other direction - what we ended up using in print today was

A harrowing few minutes for family

That is clear enough and probably engaging in print - with a subhead and photos. But it certainly does not scream ‘Video.’

What is the balance in Web journalism between telling the story and selling the story? Tabloid papers live off the quality of their headlines - is that approach a better fit for online regardless of how you handle it in print? Does pandering to an audience just come more naturally online? Is it pandering? So many question marks?

After a brief discussion I have to say we went the safe middle route:

Security Camera captures car theft with kids in the backseat

The headline has most of the SEO-goodness you would want, plus it gets the idea of ‘we have video’ in there along with the potential peril to the kids - but without going overboard. But, I still wonder if it would not have gotten more traffic yesterday with something like:

Coffee shop stop nightmare for mom, kids - see the video!

What can you justify when you are talking about trying to drive pageviews?

I have been saving this one for a while. I got this voice mail a couple of months back - following an installment in the paper of a series we did on the transgender population in New Hampshire.

I changed the voice but had to share the call. It is reassuring that people still take their local paper seriously enough to call and leave angry messages and actually switch to another paper when they are mad at us.

OK - it is internship season again for us - we are reviewing applicants for the Fall (and hopefully soon for the Spring/Summer.)

I sat in on a panel with Russ Kendall at the NPPA conference in Lousiville last month - and  we were both amazed that not only did we have many of the same complaints about student applications, we actually used one of the same students (anonymously) as an example of what NOT to do.

So, I should have titled this ‘how not to get an internship’ and so it is - with the caveat this that is based on past experience not this month’s round of applicants.

1 ) Don’t ignore directions. Read the ad. If it says no calls, then don’t call. If it asks for a cover letter, please do so.

2 ) Do not under any circumstances send only an email with a link to your portfolio. No matter how good it is, that is not a job application.

3 ) Don’t have typos in your letter or captions. Spellcheck. Spellcheck again and then have someone else proofread for you.

4 ) Don’t interview unprepared. Research the paper you are applying to. Each is different and boilerplate responses are not going to score many points.  I always love to ask - “So, can you critique some of the multimedia you have watched on our site?”

5 ) Don’t be cute. This is an internship, not summer camp. Please be creative with your presentation but keep it professional. No hand-made CD holders or pictures of your cat/friends/significant other in a sunset on your letterhead or CD label.

6 ) Don’t ask about the pay in your first contact. No, it is not a lot, Yes, it is enough to get by. Save the financial discussion for a second interview.

7 ) Don’t apply if you are planning to join the Peace Corps/take another job/want the summer off.

8 ) Edit, edit. edit your still images as tightly as possible. Pictures of celebrities are typically not portfolio worthy just because. Presidential candidates: ditto.

On the ‘please do’ side:

1 ) Be professional.

2 ) Demonstrate you understand the paper’s needs and how you will help fill them.

3 ) Explain what you hope to learn and why here.

4 ) Be knowledgable about the business of newspapers.

5 ) ‘Get’ the Web.

6 ) Oh yeah - have some great photos and multimedia to share - and be excited to talk about them.