To aggregate, or report? On successful online publishing

If there's one issue online publications have really battled with, it's the teeter-tottering relationship between the creation of original work and the aggregation of third-party content.

For years, most news organizations have operated under the guise that everything in their (newspaper, magazine, website) was original. But hawk-eyed readers would notice the "Associated Press" (or "Hearst" or "Cox" or "AFP" or...) bylines in the newspaper, and note that such content was republished from somewhere else.

The reasons for doing so are many: sometimes it's to fill space in a regional paper without resources; other times it's to ensure broad (Washington, D.C.) or acute (New Haven, Conn.) local coverage without committing costly resources.

The same thing is occurring online, and that's no surprise as the digital medium matures. The problem now is that stories break online, which means they can be republished very, very quickly without clear insight (or regard) as to who originally reported the story.

Online, the struggle remains over how to properly attribute content. (It certainly doesn't help that publications don't establish style rules for this.) But what's really interesting is how websites -- particularly smaller ones -- are filling the gaps.

In an interesting dicussion via Twitter yesterday, Gizmodo editorial director Brian Lam and AllThingsD senior editor Peter Kafka exchanged a few questions about building a digital publication around the (expensive, time-consuming, valuable) creation of original content versus the aggregation of (free, quick, with little lasting value) third-party content.

Here's the exchange:

Brian Lam: the net's greatest threat to journalism is not old vs new, its that reporters no longer get as much exposure to new sources in real life.

Peter Kafka: @blam biz problem, not tech. Encourage reporters to walk around, make calls, they will. Reward them for reblogging, they'll do that.

Brian Lam: @pkafka true. but remember, in old media, they rereported stories from scratch that were already written by comp., instead of links. worse!

Peter Kafka: @blam true dat. plenty of old-media was (and is) essentially reblogging. that's my point - not tech, but biz model.

The Editorialiste: @pkafka @blam so how to solve biz model incentive problem? what's the answer?

Brian Lam: @editorialiste I think its a judgement call between aggregation and reporting. and a resource thing. reporting is expensive if done old way.

The very reason this exchange can occur is because of the Internet's link-based economy: now, you can legally, through fair use, reproduce a paragraph or so of someone else's content, so long as you attribute it to them and include a link back to the original work.

Never before was that possible in such a dynamic way: often, newspapers would cite reportage by other papers, but in newsprint, there was no link to help you find it. Similar but worse, broadcast organizations often based their own coverage on original newspaper reports without citing the original source at all.

The exchange also shows that online players -- my peers, since both write for competing publications about technology -- are constantly thinking about the online business model.

Both AllThingsD and Gizmodo stay afloat with some level of reposting third-party content -- sometimes it's a copied quote, link and original analysis; other times it's a rewrite of a scoop first published by another publication. It's a particularly popular thing to do in technology coverage, since so much of it is based on products, and therefore based on nonexclusive press releases.

However, both sites regularly offer original content. In the Wall Street Journal tradition, Kafka often reports on the inner dealings of tech companies. Lam's team publishes tips/scoops on unreleased gadgets with some regularity.

Both offer a mix of original and aggregated content. At the time of writing, Gizmodo counts 15 names on its editorial masthead (plus a regular columnist, plus two interns); AllThingsD counts five names on its editorial team (plus a columnist, plus an intern).

Not all of Gizmodo's 15 are full-time, and many AllThingsD's staff double as full-time reporters for the Wall Street Journal. For both, aggregation is important -- there's simply no way either publication can cover everything quickly and originally.

The problem, of course, is to what degree. Both Brian and Peter make valid points in the conversation above:

• How do you stay on top of breaking news if you're always doing original reporting?
• How do you become more than a regurgitation mill if you're always rewriting or rereporting third-party content?
• And is online reporting really the same as what mainstream media used to do, just more transparent?

As Brian notes above, it's a matter of resources. Online media garnered eyeballs by reposting everything it possibly could -- that's how it got its popularity. With popularity came some degree of money, which allowed for more staffing, which in turn allowed for more original content.

Gizmodo is a great example of this: it first made its name finding everything it could on the web about tech and transformed itself into a portal for the topic. Once it achieved a large audience (and money), it hired more editors to handle the aggregation, while its original team moved into original content.

Now, Gizmodo's become more of a magazine: it's got a cadre of low-level editors working on the day's quick-hit breaking news; it's got several regular columnists offering value through analysis; it's got a couple of high-level editors who work on what magazines call "special projects": regular features, or one-off special runs of coordinated content.

Unlike tech rival Engadget -- which has surpassed Gizmodo in absolute pageviews -- Gizmodo is now trying to differentiate by offering value through original ideas. (Engadget's done a measure of this too, but not nearly as much.)

And wouldn't you know it, Gizmodo has been making content-sharing deals with several popular tech websites. Gizmodo has become, if I may be so bold, its own wire service. (And other publications indeed find it cheaper to repost Gizmodo's content. But is that such a smart idea on the web, where you can always easily access the original version? That's for another blog post.)

(AllThingsD I'm leaving out of this, since so much of its content derives from the Wall Street Journal's regular reportage. However, the site has established a separate "Voices" section for outside, reposted coverage.)

Kafka's point above is that the business model forces trained reporters to work on unoriginal content, which I agree with. But it's Lam's point about budget that's really central to the situation. With a growing budget, more popular publications can afford to hire staff to work on original content: new features, marquee columns, event coverage.

With a modest budget, even the most bootstrap of reporters must resort to reposting or opining to keep the content flowing in between bouts of original reporting. (Unless a larger parent company is willing to subsidize this costly original reporting; see: Condé Nast and The New Yorker.)

So what's a publication to do? How do you leap the hurdle to move from repurposed content to original reporting? After all, you don't want to hire a full staff of reporters if you don't yet have the popularity to draw the eyeballs -- and thus earnings -- to support it.

Similarly, you don't want to hit a traffic ceiling in which you've got each one of your few reporters pushing content at full-tilt -- so much so that it's to the detriment of their work. That's also unsustainable.

(A side note, by the way: it remains unclear whether aggregation itself is sustainable. Can publications become news portals, or will that be the exclusive territory of Google, Yahoo and Comcast? Will we then begin an arms race for original reporting, or does non-automated republished news still have enough ROI to make it worth the effort?)

Aggregate, or report? On its face, it seems you don't really have a choice. Your popularity dictates the answer to that.

The challenge, then, is how to graduate from one sphere to the next.

What is a successful online media business?

How do you measure a successful online media property?

By awards?

By pageviews?

By unique users?

By profit margins?

I struggle with this question each day.

Name recognition is valuable, but not if you don't make enough money to survive.

Popularity is deemed essential, but how do you make money from all that attention? (Surely you've got a better idea than banner ads.)

Profit margins are the mark of a successful business, but making a killing on a single customer might not pay the bills.

Luxury goods makers know how to make lots of money from few people. (The ones that don't have enough customers -- some couture fashion houses -- are dying as we speak, margins be damned.)

Electronics manufacturers know how to sell many products to many people, but need tremendous volume to make up for thin margins.

Media outlets know how to create engaging, original content, but must keep up a side business (classifieds, ads, retail products, sports teams, educational-prep services) to fund what's otherwise an unsuccessful business.

Some companies subsidize each method's shortcomings by offering both or several models.

But bloggers measure their success by pageviews.

Can you be successful with a small amount of influential, engaged readers? (Perhaps with a subscription.)

Can you be successful with a large amount of apathetic, fair-weather readers? (Perhaps with those advertisements.)

There is a limit to how many readers you can reach with the kind of content you offer and the monetization scheme you've designed. Isn't there?

A foolproof online business model has not yet been made. It's still the Wild Wild West out there.

Don't forget it.

What does it take to be a multimedia journalist?

(Illustration: Steve Garfield)

I've had this discussion with a few people who currently practice in the general area that is "multimedia journalism." At the highest echelon, are you more journalist or programmer?

The New York Times' multimedia team explains in the latest Ask the Newsroom:

Aron Philofer:

As for learning these skills, there's some disagreement among those on my team with formal computer science backgrounds on whether taking computer science classes is worthwhile. Some say college courses are often too theoretical, but others believe that even the theory provides a solid foundation for problem solving. I wouldn't know because, like several other members of my team, I'm entirely self-taught. So I'm living proof that it's possible to learn enough to write a few production Web applications, manage a development team and not crash NYTimes.com (yet).

Gabriel Dance:

What I see far too often in journalism schools, and I feel is a mistake, is the idea that somebody can just learn computer programming in a semester or two. Developing interactives and projects on the Internet requires a love of computers and a deep interest in technology. Most of the time, people develop these skills on their own, or pursue a technology-related career. If you really feel that you want to be a journalist-programmer, I encourage you to take some courses in the computer science department. It will give you the foundation that you just can't get by taking a couple of Flash courses.

Steve Duenes:

The journalist portion of the journalist/programmer combination shouldn't be neglected. We've had a number of strong technological performers pass through our department, and some of them had difficulty knowing which information to pursue or how to pursue it efficiently. Some had interesting ideas, but they weren't able to fully articulate what they wanted to do, and as a consequence, they were frustrated when we had to make decisions about which graphics to go after.I'm not saying that a master's degree in journalism is the thing to do. It might be. But the important thing is to find an environment where you'll be pushed and where you can grow. If you're surrounded by a few people with good experience and if your internship or job requires you to behave like a journalist, that's good.

From my experience -- self-taught but not extensively so, thus better than the average new media graduate but poorer than the average programmer -- a journalism grad with new media experience is no longer the desired employee for the leading online publications (like the Times). More often, it is the programmer who took a few journalism courses, rather than the other way around.

The good news is that means the bar is much higher now, ever rising, and stories can and will be told with such depth and nuance thanks to a team that has mastered the tools needed to express them.

The bad news is that a new media journalism graduate who wants to work in multimedia won't be able to at the highest levels without some serious coding expertise under his or her belt. In other words: perhaps a master's degree in computer science will do you more good than one in journalism.

Digital Front Pages: Obama Elected President of the United States of America

When there's a historic moment, people like to chronicle the front pages of newspapers from the next day. But in this day and age, I thought the digital front pages of news organizations would be far more interesting, snapped moments after the big story broke. Here's how some of the most popular news outlets in the world handled the story, "Obama Elected President of the United States of America."

See how each handles the gravity of the story:

The New York Times:

Wall Street Journal:

USA Today:

Los Angeles Times:

Washington Post:

Chicago Tribune:

Chicago Sun-Times:

New York Daily News:

New York Post:

Boston Globe:

Philadelphia Inquirer:

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Houston Chronicle:

Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

San Francisco Chronicle:

Detroit Free Press:

New York Newsday:

Anchorage Daily News:

CNN:

ABC:

CBS:

NBC:

FOX:

The Huffington Post:

New York Magazine:

Le Monde (France):

La Reppublicca (Italy):

The Guardian (U.K.)

Truly fascinating.

NYT Taps Digital Budget for Print Hires

Just saw this on Romenesko and couldn't help but waxing on it for a moment:

NYT taps "investment fund" for business section hires

New York Observer
Executive editor Bill Keller tells his staff the fund "was set up to try and expand some of the business verticals that the company hopes have the potential to make good money down the road." He explains to John Koblin that the money "is in the digital budget, which is merging with the newsroom budget."

So effectively, this is an overt move that signals that the digital side is beginning to, or already is, carrying the financial burden of the print side. The digital side of NYT is expanding and hiring, while the print side is handing out layoffs.

So when will people start realizing which side of the newsroom pays the bills? And, for that matter, does it frustrate employees on the digital side that their profits are handed over to the still-more-prestigious print side with this budget merger?

I'm all for everyone working together, but I still believe there is a considerable amount of ignorance toward the digital side in traditional newsrooms. So it bothers me when the "investment fund" is the hard work of the digital side.

Why Does Bill Keller Hate The Internet? (And Himself)

In a recent address to a gathering of more than 250 college and university presidents and other top administrators during The Chronicle of Higher Education's two-day Executive Leadership Forum, New York Times head honcho Bill Keller had some choice words with regard to the Internet, blogosphere, and anything that isn't Times-run:

"For all the woes besetting our business, I believe in my heart that newspapers will be around for a long time," he said, even if they aren't always delivered "as that lovable old-fashioned bundle of ink and cellulose."

"Technology has lowered the barriers to entry in the news business," Keller said. "This is unsettling to the traditional news business, but it is also an opportunity."

Established newspapers can succeed by offering something the newcomers can't, he added: "Google News and Wikipedia don't have bureaus in Baghdad or anywhere else." Rather than creating content, the new Web-based news outlets aggregate it from various sources, including newspapers.

Bloggers, likewise, occasionally enlighten readers with original material, but "most of the blog world doesn't attempt to report. It recycles news," he said.

And this really bugs me. Why? Because Bill Keller is looking at the "newspaper situation" in a very, very partisan way.

In a way, that's what his job is all about. But hang on a second.

First off, a disclaimer: I was not at this conference. I do not know if these quotes, borrowed from the Chronicle's own report here, were taken out of context. I'm simply keeping the faith that those journalists respect their ethics as much as I do.

Bill Keller's given this speech a hundred times in the last several years. You know: the one where newspapers are dying. The one where staff layoffs have to happen. The one where "bite the bullet" and "bootstrap" and all of those choice phrases come into play.

Newspapers are the victim, he's saying. It's just not fair that the Internet gets all the traffic (and not NYTimes.com).

And I agree with him on one note: yes, the original source of much of the Internet's reporting are the mainstream media -- i.e. the salaried (or lately, temp'ed) professionals who get press passes to save the world from itself. And I'm certainly with Keller on the fact that the Internet news can't survive without them (especially those wire services), or at least that it would take a long, long time for new grassroots organizations to replace them (in some crazy apocalyptic way of hypothesizing).

However -- and this is a BIG however -- Bill Keller needs to quit the pity party. I'm not sad for him, I'm not sad for the Times, nor their shareholders. Why should I be? They peddle some of the finest American journalism out there from a venerated post in society, and they've adapted better than any other news organization to the Internet (ever see nytimes.com/multimedia? Fabulous!).

So why does Bill Keller find it necessary to continue complaining about the best marketing structure to ever hit world commerce: the Internet? With its advent -- and the Times' cooperation, no doubt -- Times stories run far wider than the five boroughs or tri-state region. Every hour of every day, the minor successes in progress on NYTimes.com are repeated and exaggerated as its stories are reproduced around the world. Even if readers don't click all the way back to NYTimes.com (where the ad revenue is!), they know they're getting reliable journalism. And that's one marketing and branding strategy that wins far more in the long run than the simple advertisements that the Times puts elsewhere.
In other words: The Times is getting more bang for buck as a successful Internet entity than as a brick-and-mortar paper, especially with marketing and advertising taken into consideration (the great journalistic stories ARE the ads).

So what's to complain about? Probably because the bean counters haven't figured out a way to collect data on it. It's an intangible -- how can you monetize the intangible?

Often, advertising and marketing budgets are black holes: you can't really calculate how well you're doing. You just pour money in and hope/expect that it's making an impact. I think this is how the Times should start looking at its journalism.

"Google News and Wikipedia don't have bureaus in Baghdad or anywhere else."

Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch. Why should they? Bill Keller, why are you taking pot shots at an automated news aggregator and an open encyclopedia? Just because it's easier to find relevant (local, ahem) stories on Google News and relevant subjects on Wikipedia rather than the U.S. section of NYTimes.com and Times Topics?

Fight a bigger battle, please.

If the Times shut down for a week, all of those news aggregator sites would suddenly be without serious, breaking, reliable, informative, educated, thoroughly-reported journalism. And it'd be instantly noticeable (until the Washington Post or Wall Street Journal stepped in). And the Internet would be worse for it, without a doubt.

So I ask again: what's there to complain about?

I urge journalism's leaders -- those at the top of newspapers, magazines, and any other business deemed "dying" by their own writers -- to quit the whining and realize their own value. To take a page from a trend story they like to run often enough, they sound like a bunch of whiny 'Millenials' who think they're not smart because their 4.0 GPA is now a 3.97.

Yes, you're smart. You're a valuable commodity. So enough with the low self-esteem.

Man up, Keller.

Newspapers Aren't Essential, And Other Reasons Why This Week's Bivings Report On Magazines And The Web Is Flawed

Magazines are slower at adopting Web 2.0 trends than newspapers, according to a recent Bivings Report study and a post on this blog eons ago.

The study's authors write, via Romenesko:

"We can hypothesize that this is due to the differing cultures surrounding the two types of print media: newspapers and the content they present are essential to most people's daily lives. In contrast most magazines are something 'extra,' and are often focused on entertainment."

Wait a second, newspapermen: Since when is newspaper content by definition more essential to most people's lives than magazines?

Now I'm not here to fight the magazine fight, and I could sit here for hours and write about how much the "duh" factor comes in about magazine websites becoming full of unique content. But it looks to me like the study's authors are taking it for granted that newspapers are essential.

In a study that makes claims based on data, there's little data to support this. Why do most Americans need the newspaper? And what exactly is defined by "a newspaper"?

In my opinion, it can be argued, reasonably, that everything past the front page section of the newspaper (plus the figures from the business and sports sections) is entertainment. Top feature writer Paula Span said to me last week that feature writing is nearly half of all the writing in a newspaper. And nowhere is it more evident than the front section pages of the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, the Washington Post, all the way down to your local rag.

Now feature writing and "entertainment" aren't exactly coterminous, but you can see where I'm going with this. A good portion of your daily newspaper is the same fodder that runs in a magazine. So I take objection to this assumption in the Bivings study.

So what, then? How do you explain the slow migration by glossies to the Web?

One word: Pictures.

Magazines thrive on images, and the Web is a text-driven vehicle, no matter how much you dress it up with images and video. Magazines, on the other hand, thrive on their artwork. The tangible nature of having that in your hands -- which I'm sure lends itself some perceived value -- is a good bet as to why magazines generally didn't see the need to run to the Web.

It boils down to this: The Web can replace a newspaper. But it can only supplement a magazine. And that's why I've never received a paper copy of The New York Times in my mailbox but I receive a small handful of monthly glossies.

It's not the entertainment content. It's the format.

What Wire Services and Britney Spears (Could) Have In Common

Ah, I just love the smell of plagiarism in the morning.

If wire services could talk, that's what they'd be saying, according to a recent article by CNET News writer Greg Sandoval. Apparently, newspapers aren't too happy that Google indexes their content without ponying up the cash for it.

You could say that the old newswire bus has crashed into the technology car at a major intersection, and the wire is not about to dole out its insurance information.

Even Sam Zell, the new owner of the Tribune Company, chimed in on the issue: "If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?" he asked reporters during a speech at Stanford University a month ago. According to the Washington Post, he didn't wait for a reply. "Not very," he said.

Business versus journalism. The business of the news. Selling information.

Maybe calling this the "Information Age" isn't such a corny moniker after all.

To date, Google has stood firm, refusing to pay to index news content. After all, in their eyes they're just pointing people in the right direction. And it's apparent that the newspapers need the traffic -- the article notes that newspapers get a quarter of their total traffic from search engines.

Yet at the same time, Google's been slowly making agreements with major agencies -- The Associated Press and Paris-based Agence France-Presse, for starters.

So who's to blame at this moral impasse?

It's apparent to me that the newspapers should reevaluate how much money they're losing. In fact, they may end up actually making money from the additional traffic.

Yet no one's conducted such a study.

Let's say the Wall Street Journal wasn't all that happy that Google News indexed its content (after all, Dow Jones has its own newswire). In the end, is the paper actually making more money from additional advertisement impressions and (digital) subscriptions than what it hypothetically loses from the exposure?

How do you even measure such a thing? The whole concept reeks of speculation. But without some way to measure it, there's no point in continuing the argument.

In the meantime, newspapers could pretend that they are celebrities. They could stop wasting time trying to fight the Google News 'paparazzi' in lieu of learning how to act in front of them.

Get used to being covered. Make it work.

In other words, stop getting angry that you're being covered and start putting energy towards being covered in the best light. It's one big game of whisper-down-the-lane, but every time someone whispers, it comes with the original attribution.

What's to complain about that?

Really, it seems that newspapers are uncomfortable making headlines. They're too busy worrying about the value of their own news than being in another's. And it's no surprise -- every time a newspaper makes headlines, it's usually for a bad reason.

Time to break the habit. No more 'no comment.' When circulation is down, whining and crying about unintended syndication is only shooting yourself in the foot.

Hook 'Em With Print, Sink 'Em With Pixels: How Newspapers Can Stay Viable

The more and more I read about newspapers' struggles to stay viable, the more and more I think we're in the midst of just another shift in thinking.

I recently mentioned that I've been reading Michael Schudson's Discovering the News, a history of sorts of the modern American newspaper. Last time, I mentioned that many of the changes in the way newspapers operate came from the always-adapting penny press.

So the more and more I read the "doom and gloom" (as one reader aptly put it) on the Poynter Institute's fabulous Romenesko column -- and look around on the street to see what papers people have in their hands -- I realize that the best new model for a newspaper is neither completely digital nor completely paper. It's a hybrid -- but not the one we have now.

What newspapers need is a model that brings together a printed paper like a daily Metro and a digital paper like NYTimes.com.

That's not to say that those two publications should merge. What I mean is that people tend to read small physical papers on public transportation and read digital articles when they get to work. In New York, this means that people read tabloid-size papers like am New York, New York Metro, the Daily News and the New York Post on the subway.

Rarely will you see someone reading the Observer, the Times, or the Wall Street Journal on the train. Why? They're big and unwieldy and most of all, they've got too much text to read for a short ride like that.

The current model of newspapers offers a newspaper that is comprehensive and a digital model that is the same information, only up-to-date with some extra "spillover" stories. This current hybrid isn't a hybrid at all -- it's two twin brother papers, one print and one pixel, competing against each other.

So on my way to work, I end up reading a free daily like am New York in the subway and getting the full story on NYTimes.com when I get to work, even though the Times' variety of journalism is much more thorough than the daily's. So I switch outlets: I don't check the 'full story' on the daily's website because it's not enough for me, and I don't have the option to get a quickie Times bit for the subway.

So here's what I propose as a better solution for the digital/paper hybrid as it currently stands: For big, urban-based, broadsheet newspapers that are fighting for circulation like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, etc., there should exist a quickly digestible companion version: A tabloid-size "little brother", 8 pages max, with ultra-truncated stories that pair with their full-blown (older brother's) counterparts on the web.

What could possibly be a better way to ensure that a reader stays loyal to your journalism?

If I had a shortened Times reader (and no, I don't mean their digital 'Reader' service) for the train, it would absolutely hook me into reading the full version online when I got to work. Why wouldn't it?

Who says free dailies should only be local?

And who says they can't have great journalism?

Put it this way: Why can't a 6-8 page daily spread include the top article of each Times section, like the e-mails they send out? Call it the New York Times "Express Edition" -- it's got the quality of the masthead with the brevity of a free daily (and it should be free, make no mistake).

I'm not necessarily saying that such a practice should eradicate the full print version of a broadsheet paper, however. A full version (like the one that exists now) might be better for less-urban areas not served by public transportation, and is probably better for everyone on Sunday.

But why should we put all our eggs in two baskets -- that is, the paper and the digital? I think newspapers should start looking into new ways to disseminate their valuable information and rethink the way they calculate circulation.