In my view, it will bear watching whether a major newspaper can begin a successful new life as an online publication.  Newspapers across the country have been struggling with how to repurpose their print content online and make that content something that people want to consume.  For the most part online content from newspapers has been like the proverbial falling tree in the forest that no one notices.  Not only have print publications generally not done an outstanding job with their web strategy, there’s just too much competition online for them to make a dent.

What I’m hoping, for the sake of publications that make this move in the future (and there WILL be others) is that the new focus solely on the online product will mark an improvement in strategy.  I can only hope that they have hired or otherwise secured online consultants to help them with the transition.  Historically, print experts have not shown themselves as experts in what makes a good online publication.

The positive news (pardon the pun) is that organizations like the P-I have great news-gatherers … in most cases much better than their new online-only competition.  That does still matter.  Good luck to them.

*Image courtesy of the Associated Press

The problem for satellite radio, however, is that Internet radio and podcasting are maturing and filling the space that satellite radio once owned. Not only is there similar content available out there, the vast majority of Internet radio sites and podcasts are free.  SIRIUS is trying to combat this with an iPhone app that will allow subscribers access to the company’s Internet audio on their iPhones.  This is a great idea, but it’s too little too late.

A couple of weeks ago I canceled the SIRIUS subscription I’ve had for five or six years, deciding to experiment with Internet radio sites.  I’ve landed on using Pandora for my office music listening, and it’s a wonderful free replacement with outstanding sound quality.  Meanwhile, I’ve already replaced the talk radio content with podcasts.  There’s no true replacement for the sports programming available through satellite radio (I may miss having all of the NFL games this fall .. we’ll see) but I couldn’t see spending nearly $13 per month for just the sports programming.  I haven’t looked around for it, but between podcasts and streaming audio and video from the NFL, I suspect I’ll be fine.

SIRIUS XM reported a narrower loss in the most recent fourth quarter than the one before, and also reported a growing subscriber base.  However, they recently had to reach out to angel funding to save them from going under.  Unfortunately I suspect that it’s inevitable that the company will go the way of the wind.  Much of the growth that SIRIUS is seeing is from people who buy new cars.  Many auto makers have agreements to provide satellite radio-equipped radios, and in most cases the new car purchaser gets a free year of the service.  However, more and more cars are also coming equipped with an audio jack for plugging in an iPod or other mp3 player.  And, as we all know from reading the news, fewer and fewer people are buying new cars right now due to the economy.

Visit EndGame PR’s Podcast Production page to sample the variety of shows we produce!

Newspapers delude themselves into thinking that readers read nothing else. The assumption is that it’s not news until we cover it. So every newspaper covers the same story, wasting billions of dollars per year in duplicated effort industrywide.

And, for that matter, a related form of bigotry has always driven the whole “local” model for local radio and newspaper coverage. The model is based on pandering where the constantly reinforced message is that local people are better than people who aren’t local, and local businesses, organizations, schools, churches and resources are better, too. Local radio and newspapers take an us vs. them attitude toward the world, and that’s largely the business model.

Now that the Internet has killed “local,” the survival adjustment that radio and newspaper companies must make is to cover local events for a global audience. Radio stations and newspapers must now consider the larger, newer audience, and stop the bigoted pandering. And they must also stop covering the larger world.

While I agree with his premise that the Internet is killing local news, I disagree with his suggestion for a solution — that local news organizations need to stop pandering to the local audience.  I think the solution is the exact opposite.  I think they need to pander MORE.  I’ll give you three examples:

1. What affects your life more, a budget cut in the Defense Department or a budget cut in your local school system?
2. What affects your life more, a national report about crumbling infrastructure or a story about how a new stoplight is going to be installed at a problematic intersection near your house.
3. What affects your life more in the short term, the most recent quarterly earnings of Wal*Mart or the announcement that a new Starbucks is opening in your small town?

I think you probably see my point.  In most cases, local news affects your life more than national news.  And, there’s less competition for local news.  Anyone can hop on the Internet and find the national stories I mentioned above (that is, if I didn’t make them up), but they’re not likely to find much coverage of the local stories beyond their local news organizations.  This type of story is what local news organizations need to cover to survive.  Despite this, if I tune in to my local TV or radio station, or open my local daily newspaper, I see large portions of their “news hole” committed to national stories.  This is particularly problematic in the case of the daily newspaper, because the news I’m reading was actually printed the night before … and I know I can get a more up-to-date version online.

There are a miriad of changes that need to come to local news organizations if they want to survive, and you can add to the list “the need to become hyper-local”.  It’s an old business mantra — do what no one else is doing, and do it well.

Hat tip to Podcasting News for alerting me to this story.

Before you all email or post that Santelli is a pundit and not a reporter … I understand that.  Interestingly, however, in his profile on the CNBC website, he’s listed as an on-air editor.  Fact is, I think his rant was so far over the top that he can’t see the top any longer.  But, then again, it’s raised his profile and at the same time gotten people talking about CNBC … which I suppose makes him and his employer both very happy.

Scott suggests print reporters need to build alliances, diversify, and get closer to the cutting edge.  I agree.  The skillset that print journalists have is one that is still of use in the world.  Print reporters just need to learn how to put it to use.

As a PR professional, my world is changing too.  I find myself contacting fewer and fewer print reporters trying to get stories for my clients.  This is partly because there are fewer of them, partly because the ones who are there are overworked and less open to pitches, and partly because fewer and fewer people are actually reading newspapers.

Instead of wasting my time pitching newspapers all the time, I’m contacting bloggers, I’m posting online news releases via PRWeb, PR Newswire, and Business Wire, and I’m CREATING media for my clients via podcasting and web videos.  As the world moves further and further away from print media and more into online and user-generated media, the public relations pros who know how to work in that element are the ones who will continue to succeed.

What do YOU think?  Will the successful PR pro of the next decade be a cross breed of today’s PR pro and a social media producer?

The editor of PC Magazine says after the January 2009, the 27-year-old computer magazine will discontinue its print edition.  Henceforth, the magazine’s content will be delivered online and in an email version.  Here’s an excerpt from the announcement from Editor Lance Ulanoff:

While we are energized by the endless possibilities of the digital format, I assure you that the decision to stop producing a hard-bound copy was not an easy one. But the reality is that the ever-growing expense of print and delivery was turning the creation of a physical product into an untenable business proposition.

There’s no doubt we’ll be seeing more and more of these announcements from veteran print pubs.  The growth of online news content puts publications like PC Magazine at a huge disadvantage from a number of sides.  The magazine’s deadlines were such that the news it delivered to subscribers was six weeks old when it arrived.  Subscriber rates are down at nearly every print publication that exists today, mainly because it’s just not a format that people want any longer.  Digital is better for so many reasons that I just don’t have enough electrons to put them all on this blog.

Anyone interested in a pool to guess which major pub will be next?  My guess is the San Jose Mercury-News.  They’ve been shrinking that paper to the point where it’s almost irrelevant.

Rocked by warnings that it will cost news organizations $50,000 more per reporter to cover Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain, a growing number of journalists and press pundits are questioning why the media is staffing up coverage of the political conventions where little major news is expected. At least one paper and several Washington bureaus, we’re told, have budgeted only $100,000 for political coverage, and their convention teams will eat most of it, leaving little to put reporters on the campaign trail. Mark Potts, a media consultant who blogs about the industry on RecoveringJournalist.com, goes further: Leave the campaign coverage to the big shots, like AP, and spend that money at home. “That $50,000 would go a long way toward paying the annual salary for another reporter to cover something readers really care about, like city hall, or local schools.”

The resulting discussion (one example can be found at The Daily Kos) comes from many news blogs using this to further their case that bloggers can report the news much more efficiently than the traditional print news organizations.  While this is likely true, the problem with this discussion is that this Whispers item is not terribly clear.  Is that $50,000 figure the cost per reporter to cover one of the conventions, or is it the cost per reporter to cover an entire campaign?  I agree that the number is high, but there’s a vast difference between racking up a $50K bill in five days versus more than a year.

That aside, bloggers CAN cover the convention much less expensively than a traditional media outlet, particularly when you look at the traditional media outlet literally eating $100,000 worth of budget.  One great example of economical coverage comes from the blog Pam’s House Blend, which is fully credentialed for the Democratic Party Convention and is funding the trip through donations from readers.

Hulu is a joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corp, the companies respectively behind the NBC and FOX networks.  Video from the site is only available at this time for viewing in the U.S., but it provides a goldmine of content for those who can access it.  The site offers a variety of full-length movies and episodes from dozens and dozens of TV series.  Many of the shows are available in HD, although I wasn’t watching them in that definition because high def isn’t transferred through the kind of cable I was using.  Some newer laptops come equipped with an HDMI output, which solves the problem.

The reason I’m talking about all of this is not to point out how incredibly cool it was to have that much viewing content at my fingertips, or how proud I am of figuring out how to watch it …. although I must admit it was pretty awesome.

I’m blogging about this to point out that the future of TV is coming very, very soon, and I don’t think it’s coming over a cable or satellite.  It’s coming through the Internet.  It boggles the mind how much video content is available on the web these days.  All of the TV networks provide shows on their websites that have already been broadcast traditionally.  Hulu, meanwhile, has movies, newer TV shows, and a lot of cool classic shows like Adam 12 and the black and white Bewitched episodes from the first couple of seasons.  Don’t even get me started on YouTube.  There’s a lot more available there than just video of surfing kittens.  And, NBC announced today that it will stream entire NFL games live on the net during the upcoming season!

I’ve always said that Internet video wouldn’t truly take off until people could easily watch on their living room TVs.  Most people just don’t like to watch video longer than a few minutes while sitting at their computers.  My laptop setup was pretty simple, but even simpler ways to watch are coming.  There are rumors that the Netflix Player by Roku may soon show Hulu content, and Microsoft’s XBox now offers streaming video content and movie rentals.  The content is out there.  As soon as it becomes as easy to view that content as it is to plug a box into the back of your TV, people may decide that they don’t want to pay for television service as well when there’s plenty to watch on the net.

Watch out cable and satellite companies … the future of TV is coming, and it’s not coming through your boxes.

I just read a very interesting article from this month’s American Journalism Review that contended that American national newscasts, specifically those from NBC, ABC, and CBS, are not actually behind the times … but that no one watches them anyhow…

It’s no secret that the nightly news audience is smaller and older than ever. ABC, CBS and NBC combined have lost more than half their viewers over the past 25 years as media choices have multiplied. Their combined audience of 25 million still dwarfs cable news, but the average age of their viewers is now just over 60. So it’s no surprise that much of the content — including commercials — skews old. But the audience didn’t change because the content did; if anything, it’s the other way around.

Besides, it’s a reach to suggest the programs offer nothing of interest to anyone without blue hair and dentures. All three networks have recently stepped up coverage of environment and consumer stories. In one recent week, NBC reported on SUV safety, CBS looked at African American college enrollment and ABC covered efforts to clean up Yosemite National Park — stories that could appeal to a wide range of viewers.

The real problem isn’t that younger viewers are turned off by the stories the newscasts cover or that they feel excluded by commercials for retirement funds and cholesterol drugs. The trouble is that the newscasts as they exist today just don’t fit into their lives.

“I think of watching network newscasts as something my parents do,” Jen Jablow, 22, told the Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this year. “I can’t imagine my friends sitting down to watch an actual network newscast at 6:30 because we’re doing other things at that time. It’s a lot quicker to go online.”

You can read the entire article here.

The article points out a cold, hard truth for the networks. The truth is that no matter what they do, they can’t win. Younger Americans would rather Google their news. The average 30 and 40-something (full time job or two .. couple of kids .. large mortgage), meanwhile, has never really had that kind of time but probably won’t tune in when they get older because there are other quicker ways to get their news.

My wife and I both used to work in the news industry — she as a TV news producer and I as a radio news anchor and, for a couple of years, a TV news producer. We used to watch the news voraciously before we had kids. Now I’m 37 years old, she’s 35, and we have two children. At 6:30 we’re either finishing up cleaning the dishes, bathing the kids, or refereeing the latest argument about little brother annoying big sister. And, the fact that we USED to be regular viewers is probably unusual. For most people we know, it’s just something our parents did.

So … if the 20, 30, and 40-somethings can’t ever be counted on to watch the evening news, what audience does that leave for the national network news? If you said “the 50-somethings and older”, then you’re right. They are the last generations to grow up in a world where the network news operations were dominant. Do the math and you’ll figure out that as the Boomers (who are probably too busy trying to look younger to watch the news anyhow) and Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation” pass away, the audience for the network news vanishes with them. That gives the networks 30 years or so to figure out how to stay relevant.

So, what will happen then? I don’t think network news operations will ever go away entirely, and the 6:30 p.m. newscast probably isn’t either. The networks provide a service and are absolutely necessary in times of crisis. However, I see absolutely no way for the 6:30 newscast, as it exists right now, to ever return to any prominence.

If you make changes to your news product and no one notices, are they changes at all?

I have no data to support this statement, but I would guess that while radio spending is down slightly over the past few years, much of the spending on online media is new spending … i.e. not shifted from radio. If anyone has data to support or dispute this, I’d love to see it.

Now if I could just get a larger piece of that online money spent on sponsorships of Startup BizCast, I’ll be in great shape!

Per an Associate Press story that circulated earlier in the week (yeah .. I’m late to this party), the editor of Pasadena Now put an ad on Craig’s List that read:

We seek a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA.

He received responses, and hired two reporters.  They’ll get up early (their time), watch the council meetings, and write the stories while the editor sleeps half a globe away.  The publication is paying the reporters a combined $20,800, which is dirt cheap compared to the cost of paying a reporter in California, but pretty good pay for someone in India.

Now, we’re not talking about the Wall Street Journal here.  Pasadena Now is run out of the house of its editor.  And, one of the reporters is a graduate of the journalism school at the University of California at Berkeley.  With that under consideration, this is still completely and utterly unbelievable … to the point where you want to double check that it’s not a hoax.  There is absolutely no way that these two Indian men can possibly cover the issues in a city in which they do not live.

On top of that, as a PR person how the heck do I pitch a story to them? ;)

Perhaps the saddest part of this is that similar, although not as extreme, situations are found all over the United States, thanks to Clear Channel radio.  The mega media company has a new plan to cover the news in multiple cities out of one newsroom.  For instance, the news in several cities in the Mid-Atlantic region is covered out of Richmond, Virginia’s WRVA Radio.  This is nearly as bad as covering Pasadena from India.

At many news outlets, true journalism is on life support, and it just seems to be getting worse.