Who better than you?

I’ve had an interesting convergence of conversations lately that have me thinking more about the power of do-it-yourself media. By that I don’t mean ranks from any Dick, Jane, or Sally and slapped up on a blog, but experienced, knowledgeable, accurate news and information gathered, analyzed, and distributed by trained professionals with a larger goal in mind.

Here’s a sampling of the conversations:

~ Anne, who’s just left a big online-media job with a regional news organization that ought to know better, talking about finding a new way to gather local news (and ads) on the Web and get it to people who really want it.

~ Rob, who runs a major performing-arts company, worrying about how his shows will be advertised to sell tickets and where enough people might read the reviews to sell more tickets.

~ Tom, a diehard new-media newsman, experimenting with distributing headlines and commentary via Facebook.

~ Kathy, my wife and publicist extraordinaire, looking at shrinking print and broadcast news holes and targeting new (albeit fragmented) venues to publicize theater events and promotional offers.

~ John, another smart newsie, running a news-aggregating service (“actually the machines do most of the work now,” he says) out of his house while trying to help traditional news orgs figure out the digital thing.

While it shouldn’t come as any surprise, given my work in custom publishing (where journalism meets marketing), what these and many similar conversations point to is the increasing opportunities for smart organizations of all sizes to tell their own stories. Whether they hire a company like mine to do it for them (pitch alert: because we have the people and expertise in place and the critical mass to offer good pricing) or they take advantage of the glut of first-rate writers, editors, and graphics people to build in-house media-marketing teams, companies of all kinds have a chance right now to leapfrog over the struggling mainstream media and talk directly to customers.

A big auto-supply company could provide useful information to car buffs, build a loyal community of DIY grease monkeys, and drive sales to new products. A supermarket chain could offer healthy-cooking ideas or budget-management tips, or open a forum for customers to share favorite recipes. A theater company could build a lively community of arts patrons who want to read and talk about plays and dance and more. A big office-supply company could carve out a niche among small-business owners by providing information and expert advice on the wide range of issues these entrepreneurs are hungry for. It doesn’t even have to be information about paper or inkjet cartridges… in fact, it shouldn’t be that limited. It should also be news on the latest tax loophole, or advice of benefits, how to write a business plan, or how another small biz found success using a product or service from your company. There’s an audience waiting out there for help, and your company can answer the call.

It’s all about building credibility, loyalty, repeat visits, and sales. It’s about carving out your own unique territory that builds and extends your brand. It’s about starting a conversation with your customers that keeps them coming back to you. Yes, there are marketing challenges of the chicken/egg variety (how do you tell your story to people who are not yet your customers), but SEO technologies continue to crack that nut, and there are still plenty of places and ways to ply traditional marketing tactics (despite the death knells in major markets, most daily newspaper are still operating fairly soundly and the mail does get through).

The era of the “corporate journalist” is upon us. Who better to tell your story than you?

Join the revolution

I just read Clay Shirky's essay on the current revolution in the newspaper industry. It really is a brilliant look at the changes happening right before our eyes.

While I still fall in the camp of "people will pay for well-done news" (though my grip on that idea is slipping), I have to admit that everything Shirky says about the broken model of ad-supported news organizations (all that infrastructure!) makes perfect sense. And while I am apprehensive about where it is all headed (like, who's going to pay the journalists? and who's going to watch our backs with big business and government... not to mention analyze tomorrow's Sox game?) I can't really argue with his premise that we are now in an era of great experimentation.

I knew this in some ways back 11 years ago when I switched from the print newsroom to the Web at the Herald. We certainly were creating a new model of news content and delivery--with different options, opportunities, and challenges--both for the newsroom and the bottom line. Since then, I've been watching the drama unfold (unravel?) from the sidelines of other work situations--though the changes in content delivery and accessibility matter every bit as much in custom publishing, and PR/marketing.

But back to Shirky... In the next several years, many things will be tried. Many will fail. Some will succeed in niche ways, and some will work in bigger ways. Something new will come along. Like it or not, change is underway. We might as well embrace that fact and look to the future.

Pay for news online – why not?

As the Rocky Mountain News turned out the lights today, my online-news buddy Karla and I sat down for coffee to hash through the questions of “are newspapers dead” and “what becomes of news as we know it.”

To me, there are open questions (and opportunities) in the hand wringing over newspapers’ demise. For one thing there’s the assumption that newspapers must be saved; and then there’s the lingering popular notion that people won’t pay for the news. I’d argue that a reasonable portion of the public now willingly pays for its daily dose of news, and there’s no reason to expect that to change – it’s just the business model that is changing (delivery, payment methods, content options, etc.), however painfully and publicly. Does it spell the end for more newspapers as we know them? Yes, especially some of the big ones that are leveraged to the hilt and face heavy local competition for readers/viewers and advertising. (As an Advertising Age article pointed out the other day, the vast majority of newspapers in the U.S. are actually doing fine, with annual profits on this or that side of 10%.)

Back in 1998, when I entered the online-news arena to launch BostonHerald.com, one of our earliest debates was whether to charge for the content. We investigated many scenarios to accomplish this, but in the end the publisher decided that since the pioneers of online newspapering (N.Y. Times, boston.com, and others) were giving their stuff away for free, there was no business logic in us to try charging for our version of the news. That decision was debated at papers around the world over the following year or two, and everyone came to the same conclusion. News had to be free and advertising alone would have to pay the bills – for better or, as it turns out, for worse.

Skip ahead to today and you have Google, Yahoo!, and many other online sources swiping and scraping the news from newspapers and TV outlets, posting it for free, and making money off the advertising they sell with it. And you have the Monsters and the craigslists of the online world chomping away at available local advertising. The result? The Rocky Mountain News shuts down because it can’t make as much money as it needs to spend. And the Rocky wasn’t alone as it teetered on the edge of closure.

Flash forward to the near future and you have a scenario where many newspapers across the country will have lost the fight against free news online and no ad support. As they close, the pool of credible news-gathering operations shrinks and an ugly question of the industry’s role as government and business watchdog looms. (That’s a topic for another day, though it has bearing here, for sure.) In this future scenario, the news audience is left mostly with second-rate news outlets and self-appointed voices of varying quality being the primary sources of “information” on everything from politics to sports to the arts. That may amount to a lot of info, but it’s not necessarily good info. (Cue the Wikipedia debate here.)

While greater minds than mine have considered this, here is where I think news will go in the not-too-distant future: One or more online “news stores” will open that sell high-quality news content in whatever format or frequency you want it and in whatever size allotments you like. Just like online supermarkets today, you can shop the shelves on a daily basis or subscribe to a regular bundle in a “my news” model. Love everything about the Red Sox and nothing else? Load up your cart. Want a variety pack – say, the Herald for Sox stats, the Boston Globe for City Hall coverage, the Brookline TAB for hometown info, the Times of London for theater reviews, the Jerusalem Post for updates on the war, etc. – then pick and choose the news you care about. When you’re ready to check out or subscribe, you pay a few cents or more for each item and your news package is delivered when, when, and how you want it.

At the core of this scheme are two key points: someone with legit credentials (and a paycheck) has to generate the news you buy, and the branding and promotion of those content sources will become critical to the equation. Just as you go to the supermarket now and choose between several different brands of butter or frozen pizza based on your taste and quality preferences, so too will you be able to visit the open market of paid online news and make your choices based on the merits of different suppliers. And while you might no longer subscribe to just one newspaper, you will reward your preferred news sources with your micropayments and thus contribute to the health and vibrancy of the market-driven news industry of the 21st century.

Will this system work? How long will it take to get there? I can’t say. Certainly many hurdles need to be overcome, not the least of which is getting a critical mass of news sources to demand payment for their content (watch Newsday for pending developments on this front), and creating the entity or entities that operate the news stores. And then there’s the reality that today’s news audience is technologically fragmented – from print-product holdouts to those with the geekiest gizmos. But these are details to be resolved over time.

So today, while I shed a tear for the Rocky, I see opportunity and exciting possibilities on the horizon. Getting there won’t be easy, or a smooth ride. But get there we will.