joemichaud.com

Just stumbled onto the first instance I’ve seen of a mainstream news site using Facebook Connect as a way to ID users in comments.

Back in February, I suggested the new system could be a breakthrough for news site managers tired of all the anonymous trolls. Until now, I hadn’t come across anyone taking that leap. CNN/Money is requiring commenters to use  Facebook Connect, and it looks fairly new, but I can’t tell for sure.

Check it out on this story about stocks. It’s a ripe topic for trolls, but you’ll notice most of the folks are pretty calm. Also note their Facebook pictures next to their posts.

Best part is, their post will appear on their Facebook news feed. Who wants to look like a troll to their friends and family?

If other sites are doing this, please add them in the comments. I’m very interested in following this.

Lots of news industry buzz recently about Google’s new  Fast Flip news reader. Gee, the buzz  sounds a lot like the buzz over the Kindle.

The logic goes like this: Newspapers are at a disadvantage in the digital age because  they’re inconvenient to read. If only we could make the journalism more accessible to more people,  then there’s a business model to be had. And if there’s a way to make them pay for it (a la the Kindle), well, problem solved!

Trouble is, the  business model of printed newspapers involves a slew of different revenue streams, all connected through the experience of a multi-page paper physical product that can picked up off a park bench.

Picture the Sports section of a newspaper in the late 1990s, during the “good times” but before everything imploded in 2001-02. Even in these good times, the Sports section has maybe three ads in it: two for tires, and one for a strip club. Yet there are maybe a dozen bylines of sports writers and columnists, photographers, plus copy editors and layout people.

Where does their payroll come from? Flip  to the next section: classifieds.

In those boom years, some newspapers were getting half their ad revenue from classifieds, and the majority of that from help-wanted. Only about 10 percent of total revenue would come from circulation, (also known as “readers paying for content”).

The sports columnist didn’t know it, but a good chunk of his paycheck was coming from the classifieds section.  Very little came directly from people who cared what he wrote. But  people  bought the paper to read his column, and they also read the  classifieds. Everyone was happy (except of course for the tire store owner, who couldn’t believe a help-wanted ad cost 5 times as much as  his ad for tires in the Sports section).

Fast-forward to now. How does the Kindle or the Fast Flip experience translate to that business model? It doesn’t.  There’s no way their advertising or subscriptions will support that sports columnist.  That would be like assuming the sportswriter in the 1990s would get paid from the advertising in the Sports section. There would have been one sportswriter, maybe.

Neither the Kindle nor Fast Flip addresses the real problem facing newspapers: their traditional business model relies on a number of  revenue streams related only by their bundling in a physical product. Kindle and Fast Flip unbundle the product, and leave it with  one or  two small revenue streams.

The urgency for local newspapers — the same urgency that they have faced since the mid-1990s — is to create  new diversified revenue streams that support community journalism. Some of these business lines may look like the Sports section of 1997: no real revenue to speak of, but strong reader interest or public service. Some may look like the classifieds section: no journalism, but lots of different streams of money.

It will be a shame if developments like Kindle and Fast Flip simply encourage complacency, when the need for true innovation in revenue is greater than ever.

I subscribe to a number of email newsletters (and yes, yes, I also do the RSS thing) and I’m astounded by the number of newsletters that still have no information in the subject line, as if this is 1999 and I should be delighted just to get it.

The subject lines  say something like “Today’s headlines” or “Newsletter for Sept. 8, 2009.”  In a cluttered in-box,  and in a busy day, who’s going to take the time to see what’s in there?

Perfect example of bad and good, before and after: Fast Company switched from generic to dynamic subject lines about 10 days ago. A screen snap shows how they look in my Gmail in-box. See the difference?

Case in point: When I initially sorted my mail to make that screenshot, most of the “generic” subject lines were unread; most of the “dynamic” ones had been read.

For local publishers, a well-subscribed, well-read newsletter is  the most cost-effective way to increase traffic and loyalty to your website. Unfortunately, I see those generic subject lines a lot on local sites.

Yes, you’ll quickly find out why your newsletters have generic subject lines: “the system spits them out that way.”  Or “that’s an extra step and we don’t have the staff.”

Baloney.

The point of doing newsletters is to get people to open them. Change the technology, or change the workflow.

My former employer, Blethen Maine Newspapers,  finally got new ownership last week,  over a year after it was  put up for sale.  The new company is called MaineToday Media (which I obviously think is pretty cool because “MaineToday”  had been the name of our division of the old company).

I’m sure the transition is stressful for those on the inside, and even more so for those whose jobs were eliminated, but it promises to be healthy in the long run.

The  new owner, Richard Connor, has said he wants to make the company successful by tightening  the whole organization’s  focus on local news, and by becoming more responsive to the needs of customers. He has also made clear that there will need to be fewer employees going forward. All those  represent big challenges, and I wish him the best as he puts the company on a path to success.

There’s no question that newspaper companies have to get leaner in response to the new economic realities affecting all media, especially around advertising revenue. And newspapers in particular need to get much more focused on their communities,  in terms of both readers and advertisers. Retaining those readers and advertisers – and growing each as much as possible – is key to stabilizing and growing a newspaper company.

At the same time, newspaper companies need to find ways to meet the needs of local consumers who have turned away from the newspaper, in print and online. The Press Herald, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, have enviable reach in their markets. Counting  print and online usage, on a monthly basis they might  touch  around 60 percent of people  in the  communities they cover.  At a time of fracturing media usage, that kind of reach  is huge, and it will be a  challenge  to retain it.

Still, 60 percent reach  means 40 percent of the consumers in those markets have made a conscious decision to  bypass those brands, in print and online. In the past, newspapers would take that as a challenge to remake themselves to serve “young readers,” for example, while gingerly avoiding turning off their core readers. (Hint: it didn’t work.)

Today instead, many newspaper companies are focusing hard on serving that core audience with the news they want, while also creating new print and online products that serve untouched segments. These are local people who aren’t interested in local news, for example, but who do have needs for local information.

I mention all this because the new MaineToday Media contains a strand of DNA  that — for better or worse — was laser-focused on finding and serving local consumers and advertisers who probably weren’t going to be served by the newspapers. I hope there’s a way to embed that DNA in the new organization — or at least keep it on ice until the fundamentals of the company are solid.

At any rate, I wish success to everyone, both new and old,  in the new company.

Howard Owens has written a well-researched, well-thought and well-written piece called The Imperative of Localism and Local News that’s worth bookmarking and reading when you have time to digest it.

His main point is that daily newspapers abandoned true local coverage decades ago, and they need to get back to the true roots of localism if they want to reclaim relevance.

It’s not often discussed in newsrooms, but readership declines started at least fifty years before the introduction of Mosaic. Readership peaked in the late 1940s, more than a decade after radio became a commercial force, and years before television reached popular saturation.

And while U.S. newspapers are not alone in facing competition from new technology or changes in social habits, the readership slide is greater in the U.S. than any other industrialized nation, with American papers now ranking low on readership 1,000 adults.

Part of Howard’s argument is that daily newspaper journalists lost touch with the needs and interests of most people in the communities they cover.

In the decades preceding the current “hyperlocal” fad, professional journalists, and the people who manage them, didn’t seem to realize is that “local” is what newspapers did before the “professionals” took over and decided the local flower show was nothing more than a calendar item and real news mean combing over every council member’s campaign contributions.

The theme is reminiscent of a debate  I recall from the 1980s: had reporters and editors become too much of a professional class, out of touch with the needs and interests of “ordinary people”? Part of the debate in the ’80s was about pay scales. In the 1950s, the typical reporter in the 1950s made wages on par with a store clerk, but by the late 1980s, the pay of a reporter at many dailies was similar to an entry-level lawyer.

While no one would begrudge anyone upward mobility, was there an unintended consequence? Had journalists lost touch with the public whose interests they supposedly represent? Could a reporter or editor living in the suburbs be expected to understand and cover the lives of those in an inner city?

But that’s a sidetrack  off Howard’s  argument. His point is that “local” is a concept worth striving for, if you’re a journalist who cares about a community. That’s why he launched  The Batavian, an ambitious — yet practical — approach to creating a local online community/journalism resource. His goal is to create a  resource that both informs and engages  local people about the things they care about.

Sadly, its probably too late to save newspapers, and it’s too late for newspapers to save their communities.

The Web won’t save newspapers. The mere transference of newspaper journalism onto digital devices is a doomed business model.

But the Web can save and revitalize local communities.

If you’re someone who cares about local, please take the time to read Howard’s inspiring  essay.

Noted media economist Robert Picard expresses the same frustration I’ve been feeling lately over the recent “coverage” of the financial difficulties of U.S. newspapers. His recent blog post “The Dead and the Dying” sums up the journalists’ hysteria nicely:

Nickle and dime-ing readers like the airlines? Special treatment from the government? Relying on professors to tell us what’s going on? Have journalists gone mad?

In some ways they have. They are panicking at problems in big city media and ignoring the fact that most newspapers are relatively stable and reasonably healthy. The only newspapers experiencing serious competitive difficulties are those in the top 25 markets (about 1 percent of the total) and these are joined in suffering by corporate newspaper companies whose executives have made serious managerial mistakes.

It’s simply mass hysteria.

I don’t know how else to explain the universal underlying assumption in coverage by reporters at all levels, in all media, that newspapers are fatally broken, that the business model doesn’t work, and that the solution is somehow more complicated than this:

Make your product relevant, and necessary, to the lives of local people and advertisers, and adjust your expenses to the realities of the new advertising landscape.

That’s not easy, but it’s not  impossible, either.

Facebook recently  launched a new service that  enables any site to plug in Facebook’s commenting functionality, and connect comments to a user’s profile.

I wonder if this could be a breakthrough for local media sites — especially newspapers — that have struggled with nasty comments. And as two additional bonuses, this new tool provides sophisticated technology for free, and  could expose a whole new population to a site’s content.

First, on the comments struggle.  It’s not just about the unpleasant comments that invariably show up; it’s about the time and energy it takes to deal with them. Every questionable comment becomes the trigger for second-guessing. The internal and external debates are nothing but time-sucks.

Because Facebook is mostly made up of actual profiles of people, their comments tend to be friendly. If you’re on Facebook at all, you’ve probably noticed: Hey, no flames!

Here’s a posting from the Facebook Developers blog that explains how it’s done.

With the Comments Box, Facebook users on your site can comment on your content, post those comments to their profiles, and share them with their friends on Facebook. The Comments Box allows non-Facebook users to make comments on your site as well. And via our APIs, you can access related comments made on Facebook as well to bring the conversation together.

Do read the rest of that blog, which includes a video. Setting this up is pretty simple.

Now, clearly there are tradeoffs.

Not everyone is on Facebook, or wants to be. Some people will never comment under their real names. You’re handing over your commenting to the Facebook system, with all that implies in terms of controlling what appears on your site. (I haven’t dug deeply enough into this to see how easily you could  delete a comment or ban a commenter from appearing under your stories.)

On the plus side, you’d see what happens when people do use their real names. You’d be tapping a huge base of users who already are comfortable posting comments using the FB system. You don’t have to handle registration or admin or customer service. You don’t need to maintain the system.

But the biggest plus could be this: user bases on local media sites have flattened in recent years.  Using FB comments would automatically turn each of your commenters into a viral marketing machine. Any comment made on your site by a FB user would show up on their FB page, exposing the comment — and your content — to all their FB friends.

Getting new users to try an existing site — after they’ve chosen repeatedly to pass it by — is a tremendous challenge. You can spend a whole lot of time and money trying to make it happen, and the odds are, even if you can being some new people in, most won’t stick. FB comments have the potential to create new loyal users. For free.

I think FB comments are worth a try. Consider adding them to one section of your site as a live test. Make sure to let people know it’s an experiment and you want feedback. Ripe areas could be high school sports, local entertainment, business. Be sure to assign one staff person to implement and monitor the experiment, and to communicate results.

If it doesn’t work, no harm. If it does, expand it.

Please let me know if you try FB comments, and what your experiences are. Post comments here or email me privately:  joe [AT} joemichaud.com

One of the striking elements about yesterday’s inauguration was the physicality of it.

An estimated 2 million  people traveled from all over the country just to be anywhere near the event.

All over the world, people gathered in front of TVs in their offices and schools, but more significantly, many made a point to go to venues set up just for watching the televised event.

What does this say?

It says that proximity matters. In a time when we can easily gather “virtually” with anyone we know, anywhere in the world, people will still get up off their couches and unplug their laptops, and they will  go stand with friends and strangers to share an experience.

That speaks to a basic hardwiring of the human psyche that we in media need to keep remembering:  Now that everyone knows how to use technology to share an experience virtually, there are times when we choose to gather. Now that it’s a daily routine for many to connect  on Twitter and Facebook, they still go out and find each other.   There’s a shared experience around  the physical space we occupy.

And that brings us to the future of local media. I believe people’s actions   yesterday — they were drawn to proximity with each other, around a shared event — reaffirms the idea that local media can be relevant.  People identify with their geographic communities, and with their virtual communities.

The challenge  for local media is to understand the innate needs of human beings who identify with a physical space. Local media must make itself indispensible to those who identify with the place,  must make itself part of that community, and must make sure it’s always invited along when people gather.

Who knows,  maybe take it a step further, and create a physical community space where people gather?

Also posted at www.AIMGroup.com

Recently I’ve  reviewed a number of small newspapers’ websites and strategies, particularly around classifieds. As you might expect, there are a few common threads. They are not universal, by any means. Some sites need a lot of work, and some just need some tweaking.

Before I get into those  areas for improvement,  I should say I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the openness of smaller newspapers to thinking differently, compared to larger papers. On the other hand, if you don’t have much auto advertising, I suppose you’re more likely to see that category as opportunity rather than risk.

So, a few recommendations for smaller papers to generate results:

1. Clear strategy for classifieds. Many papers still seem to define classifieds as “whatever comes in on the phone.” There’s big revenue opportunity in acting more intentionally about these categories. Why not decide to be the best resource in your region for buying a car, finding a home or getting a job? Why not be the best place for advertisers looking to find those consumers?

2. Classifieds as categories, rather than as a homogenous mass. Neither consumers nor advertisers think much about “classifieds.” They have a job to fill or a car to sell or a house to buy. Speak to those needs in product mix, in site navigation, in promotion.

3. Targeted products. Keep them simple, and focus each on consumer and advertiser  needs in a category. The needs of a homebuyer are vastly different than those of a jobseeker.

4. Simple pricing. Figure out what price points make sense for advertisers in each vertical category in your market. Pick no more than 3-5  and be prepared to shift based on feedback.

5. Clearer site navigation to classifieds. Many sites make it unnecessarily difficult to find that car for sale. Highlight the classifieds categories in sitewide navigation, on every page.

6. Show off your assets. Top Jobs is an excellent model for all classifieds categories. Why? Because it takes advantage of something newspaper sites  have, that no vertical site has: drive-by traffic. Find ways to pull classifieds content onto every page, not just jobs, and not just on the home page.

7. Cleaner branding. Sure, I’m a believer in creating a new brand that says “Hey, our homes site is much, much more than simply the newspaper classifieds.” But if it isn’t, do you really want to put the time and effort into promoting MontanasBestRealEstateForYouOutofTownSuckers.com? Better to keep it simple, and leverage your marketing dollars more efficiently.

8. SEO’d site structure. Why make a site look smaller than it has to be?  Many small newspapers   have a small news site and a small auto site and a small homes site, all under different URLs. Google happily sees them all as separate small sites, and ranks them accordingly. Yet simple URL changes could make the collection look like a  medium-sized site, and earn it the higher rankings it deserves in all categories.

9. Better use of space. Encourage your web designers to think in terms of “static” and “dynamic” content.  Dynamic  means story headlines that change regularly, and ads that change regularly. Static means logos, navigation, lists that don’t change,   basically things your users will quickly learn to ignore. The first screen of every page — from home page to classifieds verticals — should be heavily weighted with dynamic content.  That first screen is prime real estate. Be ruthless. Every pixel should be there for a reason.

10. Less clutter. Somewhat related, but mostly about ads. Cut down on the number of display ad positions. Tiny rectangles aren’t effective for advertisers. If you have small advertisers who need a low-priced solution, find one. Reserve your display ad inventory for those who need, and can pay for, high visibility.

11. Reposition as a partner. Newspapers in small markets have an opportunity that their large-metro brethren have long since lost: They can be a real partner to local merchants, employers, realtors and auto dealers as these businesses seek customers online. Done right, this opportunity represents real growth for small-market newspapers.

Taken together, these points mean smaller papers are leaving significant money on the table in classifieds categories, and the amount is probably just a function of their market’s economics and demographics.  The good news is, those smaller publishers seem much more willing to make the changes required to go get it.

(also posted at AimGroup.com)

Some truly sad news in the past week: Bluffton Today, the start-from-scratch, let’s-try-a-new-model newspaper in Bluffton, S.C., is going to start charging for home delivery of its daily newspaper, srtarting Dec. 1.  For three years,  Bluffton Today  has been delivered  to every household, free.  The announcement is here.

Much of the attention on Bluffton Today, of course, has been its heavy focus on developing a voice for the citizenry of Bluffton. By opening up blogs, photos and other contributions to local residents, BlufftonToday.com became the center of local dialogue. One of the more powerful learnings  of this model was the emergence of a community of local moms in Bluffton, a learning that led directly to the launch of local moms’ sites by newspapers across the U.S. in the past two years.

And the online-print loop was also innovative. The website is almost entirely community-driven, while the printed newspaper is a combination of professional journalism and community voices.

Still, it was the saturation-home-delivery concept that I personally found intriguing. Bluffton had the potential to test a game-changing story for advertisers: in a time of increasing  fragmentation of both media and attention spans, we’re going to guarantee that your message gets into every home in this attractive area, every day. Since advertising pays the bills at any newspaper, local advertisers’ perception of value is key. The model of saturation delivery is relatively widespread among weeklies; it’s rare among dailies. With Bluffton being a high-demographic area attractive to advertisers, and combined with the intense community focus of the publication,  it could be the perfect test case for the concept. Alas, it won’t be.

But the saddest thing of all is this:  not only will the newspaper start charging for printed copies, it also will begin charging for access to parts of BlufftonToday.com. The community’s response is predictably harsh, as seen in this exchange on the site between the editor and readers.  Note the people who feel they’ve helped build this community resource through their contributions of content, and now they’ll be charged just to use it.

So the experiment is over, and Bluffton Today will become like other newspapers, including its struggle to survive.

As newspapers have flailed around in recent years, Bluffton Today was a source of inspiration and hope. So the end of this experiment is not just an isolated incident. I fear it could be a significant setback to those who continue to experiment within newspapers, not only adding to their own doubts, but also undermining what little support they get from their sponsor organizations.

To them, all we can say is: Please don’t give up.