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is not a problem with journalism, it is a problem of weaning journalism from an aging delivery platform paid for via an outdated business model.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.

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]

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 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.

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.

So - I am looking for a photo department or similar group of people to do some multimedia judging for the contest. Obviously - being located outside of New England is a requirement.

There are only about two dozen entries - which can be accessed via URLs. The judging and some brief comments on the winners would need to be done by the end of August.

Let me know by email or comment below if you have interest.

It started with a radio piece on NPR: On the Media: Comments on Comments

It got kick-started by Jeff Jarvis: Comments on comments on comments

Kevin Anderson followed up with a post reviewing the whole thing: On the Media and Comments on Comments

And of course it spilled over to blogs and forums and Twitter and Google Reader and Friendfeed and ad infinitum. Hey, the medium IS the message. Wow.

By coincidence - we changed our commenting policy on Monday. Changed it slightly. Our approach has always been to start with the most open system possible and then gradually adjust ‘as the situation on the ground’ dictates.

We have been using Disqus.com to host our comments for about six months. Based on the feature set they offer we have gone with a hybrid approach to moderation. If you are a registered user, (with a verified email address) you can post directly, automatically, immediately, without moderation and without delay directly to any story on our Web site. If you are unverified, you can post but your comment gets put in a moderation queue awaiting review.

Not surprisingly we have very little trouble with registered users. Also not surprisingly it is the unregistered (unverified) commenters who try to spam the site with obscene, racist and libelous comments, not to mention the dedicated collection of sock-puppets we have attracted.

Disqus also has some reputation management tools and a ‘report offensive content’ button - but I think the simple act of verifying an email has been the strongest deterrent to bad behavior. Keep in mind, we do not require real names - only that if you pick a screen name you stick to it.

So after six months of this system, our biggest problem has been that the volume of comments makes it difficult for us to keep up on the average day. We have had an informal policy of reviewing and approving comments whenever we could. So, it could be three times a day, or three times an hour, depending. Unfortunately, as policies go that one is not very scalable or sustainable.

So, in the new policy announced yesterday - we are going to start moderating unverified comments twice daily. This will greatly reduce the stress on the approval system in the office, but hopefully it will also encourage readers to actually go and register for an account.

We can only hope that requiring commenters to be the owner of a working email account is not too high a barrier to participation.

Still a fair amount of work to do - the process involved downloading all of the media assets, renaming them, pulling all the metadata from a separate RSS feed, combining it all on a spreadsheet and then reuploading. Fun.

The best thing about Castfire is the API and the ability to slice-and-dice feeds. Castfire can feed out video and audio in RSS, ASX and XSPF. Below is the share-this-video embed version of the player:

A) It is really EASY to lose a contest
B) It is not that hard to win or at least place

The ways to lose are more apparent and more fun to mention:

1) Make sure the URLs you submit actually work by the time they get to the judges. Seems simple, apparently it is not.

2) DO NOT submit URLs that the judges will need to hand-type but which consist of a string of indecipherable letters, numbers and symbols longer than the text of the Gettysburg Address. Yes http://newspaper.com/video/2008/01/03/NEWS/ELECTIONS/0,93,45,21/MULTIMEDIA/player9873645/a38409dfhd73520213473hd83463249/ver?1203946&AD=sjdfuerfhndas8837&Q=M209374/video.flv I am talking to you. Consider using bit.ly, tinyurl.com or how about making a contest page linking to all of your entries. Seriously.

3) Do submit a cover letter explaining some of the context of the project. Include some traffic metrics or ad revenue if appropriate. Since the judges are probably not familiar with the story or your market - every clue helps them make a judgement.

4) Make sure you actually have a story to tell. Hook the reader early. Tell the narrative in the fewest frames possible.

5) Doing something new and different and interesting is more likely to win than ‘the usual’ - but it still needs to be ‘good enough.’

In general - we saw a lot of nice video and slideshow projects. That is good news, and I think the multimedia entries in have doubled or tripled in the past few years.

Most of the multimedia work was of a high professional quality and some was of network TV quality. However, very little of it combined a good story, good photography and good editing. As an industry, we still have a ways to go in that respect.

Everyone has different opinions about contests in the first place. Pleasing an audience is obviously more important than winning awards. And, judges are usually a bit more cynical and well, judgemental than the average reader. But, I bet that if we were not engaged with a project within  10 - 15 seconds, your audience probably wasn’t either. And after looking at 40 -50 projects today - I can tell you engagement is something almost everyone (us included) could benefit from thinking more about.

In which the writer pulls memorable comments from the NYT site such as this as proof of her thesis:

“if he wasn’t a reporter for the new york times, would we be reading this?”

“Monetizing your shameful past is disgusting. Haven’t you harmed your loved ones enough for one lifetime?”

I totally agree. Newspapers are allowing far too much conversation. And though only 5% of it is trash - that outweighs the other 95%. In fact - on that basis I now believe that because of this one ill-informed column newspapers (and Web sites) should not allow columnists. It just isn’t worth it!