Digging Deeper
Young Newspaper Journalists Could Flee Because of Slow Pace of Change
As the layoffs and buyouts pile up in U.S. the newspaper industry, and Romenesko becomes a daily wake, there is one other troubling problem: Young journalists are less willing to stay at newspapers because the papers are so slow to change their culture.
Newspapers have a history as top-down organizations where senior management huddles in conference rooms to decide what everyone else will do. Innovative ideas usually die on the vine or in bureaucratic red tape. And that’s frustrating for young folks who want to be change agents at newspapers and make a difference.
Vickey Williams studied 10 print newsrooms as part of the Learning Newsroom project from 2004 to 2007, releasing the report All Eyes Forward (PDF) to detail the challenges in changing newsroom culture. One finding surprised the research team and upset the newsroom veterans:
While a certain amount of turnover is expected and normal among the youngest practitioners of any craft — in pursuit of career advancement or reflecting a simple change of heart — these messages seemed different in both volume and intensity. A majority of younger journalists (age 29 and below) in nearly every pilot seemed to us to be saying, “We’re leaving because the changes we see as necessary aren’t happening fast enough.”
Williams joined the Media Management Center at Northwestern University in April 2007 as director of its Digital Workforce Initiative. She recently sounded the alarm about young folks fleeing newspapers in a blog post on the Readership Institute’s website:
“[Young journalists] are turned off by the tendency of veteran journalists to argue down new ideas, cling to old ways, and avoid risks,” she wrote. “As Readership Institute research has shown, those are outcomes of newspaper people’s tendencies to be oppositional, perfectionist and conventional. I’ve seen the generational friction play out dozens of times as younger voices get shut down by veterans who fall back on ingrained behaviors.”
Williams called for newsroom leaders to engage young folks in meaningful ways, give them timely responses to ideas, and teach them more about the business side of journalism. When I talked to Williams recently, she told me that young journalists — and really, all journalists — are going to have to become more business-savvy, whether they stay in media organizations or go freelance.
As for what organizations can do to retain people who want change to come faster, Williams believes they have to give those people a seat at the table in discussions about innovation, and foster bottom-up communication and collaboration. The following is an edited transcript of our recent phone conversation.
What brought you to the Readership Institute?
Vickey Williams: I worked in seven newsrooms in reporting and editing jobs, from small papers in Alabama to mid-sized and large papers in Oakland and Tampa. Then I went to a corporate editorial job for Community Newspapers Holdings Inc. (CNHI). We had about 200 small dailies in 22 states. I realized the best way I could work for those journalists at those newspapers would be to come up with a national training program.
It was really while recruiting and training talent and getting in the middle of some future-focused conversations that I came across the research of the Readership Institute. Long before I came to the Media Management Center and Readership Institute I was a consumer of their research. I left the corporate job in 2004 and went right into a Knight Foundation-funded research project [the Learning Newsroom] that was a joint venture of the American Press Institute and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. They had received a million-dollar Knight Foundation grant to look at the culture in newsrooms.
I knew about the Impact Study that the Readership Institute had done of 100 newspapers; it was groundbreaking research that the industry hadn’t had before. I was the one who said, ‘You’re telling us about four cornerstones in helping to grow readership: content, service, branding, culture. When are you going to tell us what to do about culture?’ The Impact Study was the first signal we got that newspapers have a really lousy culture. I should stress that I’m a journalist, and a lot of my work naturally focuses on journalism and newsrooms. We have a bad culture in newspapers across departments.
I was the program director [of the Learning Newsroom] and I contracted with two organizational development experts to help me with pieces of that training. And we went in to work with those newsrooms in-depth in-person for a year, and then we went back for six months of follow-up research. That’s where the age thing came up. I’ve enjoyed other people’s reactions to my blog post, and I agree with them strongly that this is not about age…I saw as many dyed-in-the-wool change-resistant 22-year-olds — I saw a lot of them — and I saw plenty of 60-year-olds who were very future-focused. It’s very complicated. And it will play out for years.
What made you think that newspapers had a bad culture?
Williams: I don’t know if you’ve waded much into organizational development or design topics, because I hadn’t as a journalist. There’s 40-plus years of research out there about how any organization can become more nimble, more anticipatory of change, can get more consumer-focused. The stories of companies that have remade themselves in the face of declining consumer demand — just as we’ve faced — there are many, many books on them. It’s not as if this problem hasn’t been studied, and it’s a common problem in mature industries.
I’m convinced this is the state in newspapers, and not just in newsrooms — that we’re very internally focused. When I first heard the Impact Study in early 2001, in classic journalist style I reacted strongly and negatively to the culture findings. I wanted to know what these people were looking for — these were news organizations we’re talking about. It took me a day or two to really think about it and realize that the profile of an aggressive-defensive workplace — was the profile of every single one of the seven newsrooms I worked in.
When I was in newsrooms I was always in hard news, and I’m wired that way. This was in no way a touchy-feely exercise aimed at making people look forward to coming to work each day. It was all about saving the franchise, and to me, it still is.
Do you think a lot of the cultural issues are about being too internally focused and not finding out what’s going on in the rest of the world, finding out what’s going on with readers in the community?
Williams: It is. And it can play out in a number of ways. Certain people in an organization are going to play it safe and conventional, and say, ‘We don’t have any rules for that.’ Certain other people are going to argue down everything. Certain people will look for this to pass, because ‘gosh we’ve been through so many other things, let’s just wait until this gets off the radar too.’ We have different mechanisms for dealing with our reluctance to change, but they’re all equally effective at standing still and doing nothing.
I think the volume on outright resistance to change is down even since the completion of that work in newsrooms, which wrapped up in early 2007. I would have to bet that in the 15 months since then that resistance is going down. I am not at all convinced that we know how to replace that with something constructive. So in short, we don’t fight it as hard and as loudly — the fact that we have to change — but we don’t know what to do instead.
When students go into journalism schools, the people teaching them came from a traditional background, and the students want to land a job at the New York Times and don’t think about starting their own blog or podcast.
Williams: Which is really a shame, because I think if you took Millennials in their untouched state, they would be very much inclined to be audience-focused because they are such notorious consumers themselves. They have such high expectations for what they consume. So I wonder if some of that is being shaved off of them in journalism schools so that they come out ready to fit in with the internal focus that still predominates in most newspapers.
I’ve heard that some people in newsrooms who are skeptical about changes, who say ‘do we really want to do this digital initiative?’ — those people get shouted down. Is there room for criticism?
Williams: Sure, there is. And not every digital idea is a good idea. On the other hand, look at the agenda for the last five years for all the industry conferences. Most of them have the word ‘innovation’ in their titles or it’s the theme for their conference. And it’s a long stretch. Innovation is almost the end game and brass ring, and we’re so far from a climate to foster that in our workplaces, that we have a long way to go.
What will it take to create that kind of climate?
Williams: I think we’re on the way, I don’t think it’s hopeless by any means. We saw progress in 10 out of 10 newsrooms, and we saw three almost make it to ‘constructive,’ which is extremely outwardly focused and those organizations are more successful. And they met that profile in 18 months, which is remarkable, because that’s usually a journey that takes five years. So I have hope and optimism that our industry can make it, but I wish it had started [to change] in 2001, when we first got the message, and we might have saved more jobs and had a lot less angst.
I read one of your blog posts about community and being outwardly focused. Do you think that’s a key to a successful newsroom — involving the audience, involving the community?
Williams: Absolutely. The move toward increased interaction in community and networks is both a challenge and a godsend, because it should force us to become more outwardly focused and build greater links with the community. My boss Mike Smith [executive director of the MMC], who is very much a business and strategy guy, would say we are in for several more years of pain. There’s no easy way out. If we can get more interactive and build community to build online traffic to build page views to build revenue… That’s part of it.
The formula that we tried in the newsrooms was pretty valuable. In short, it was a prescription for journalists to get more business savvy — and they will get more business savvy one way or the other. If they become a victim of the cutbacks, then they will be looking at making their own living and be worried about income and attracting advertisers to their website. So getting more business savvy is only a plus.
A lot of people in the hard news world, traditional reporters, feel like they work in their own silo. They develop their sources, they do their big investigative report. And when you ask them to go out in their community and involve readers, a lot of them don’t like that idea.
Williams: Investigative types were some of my toughest audience, and were the most suspicious of my motives with this program. They thought I must have some ulterior motive, and bless them, that’s the way they’re supposed to be. I think they’re turning the corner as they see that databases [can help with] investigative reporting and using Twitter as a reporting tool is smart. As they see more applications and potential for the type of public service journalism that they love, and can see those opportunities in the digital realm, they’ll become less suspicious.
What were some of your biggest challenges in doing culture-change training?
Williams: Well, this was several years ago, but I’ll never forget a conversation I had in one newsroom where it was clearly the veterans vs. the bloggers. The veterans were diminishing the value of it, they didn’t get it, and the bloggers said ‘that’s what’s wrong and we’re out of here.’ I didn’t expect this when I did the research, but it was kind of the flaming headline to me: Young people had one eye on the door.
Most of our meetings were tough because we set the stage for a very candid conversation and it was about what needs to change around here. By the topic and ground rules of this work, it made for difficult conversations — sometimes difficult to facilitate, sometimes difficult for leaders to hear.
I asked people what they thought about the data [showing that young people wanted to leave], and the veterans even wanted to argue down that the data was correct. And if it was correct and young people were leaving, it was because they were wimps, and good riddance. I remember in one newsroom, a fairly large one, where we opened the floor and said, ‘Would anybody in this age group, which was 29 and younger, like to respond to this? Are we not reading you right?’ A twentysomething said, ‘We talk about this every single day. And the “this” is the slow pace of change, and how much time we spend talking to ourselves instead of looking outward.’
One thing you mentioned on your blog was giving younger people more power and giving them a seat at the table to do things with a bottom-up approach.
Williams: Bottom-up is exactly the right terminology. If you read one book on organizational development, you’ll get the message that often in troubled industries like ours, the answers we seek are held by people at the front lines. In newspapers that means giving feet-on-the-street people a seat at the table and gathering their feedback whether they’re in the newsroom or advertising or production about what’s going wrong with the product.
In newspapers, even when leadership says ‘We want this kind of place, we want ideas to flow from the bottom up,’ it takes a long time to convince people that you’re serious. Because for years, we have been an industry with our panels and task forces and we’ve generated lots of reports that have gathered dust on the corners of bosses’ desks, and people don’t have the energy for that anymore. So there are a lot of dimensions for what it will take for us to change.
I’m curious about the overall focus of the Readership Institute. Judging by the website, the main focus is getting people to read print newspapers, but now there are so many people going online. Does that change what you do as an Institute?
Williams: I think that began several years ago. Rich Gordon has been on staff and he’s been looking into a whole host of digital projects for years. If you look at who’s on staff, we’re all digitally focused. At least it feels to us that we are. The Running While the Earth Shakes (PDF file) research is totally about digital innovation.
Do you think it’s important to bring in an entrepreneurial aspect to newsrooms?
Williams: Absolutely. My post was about traditional print companies, in those workforces. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect that twentysomethings, Millennials in the traditional newspapers, would be given the key to the igloo where new products come out. And should they? Probably. I think it can’t come soon enough.
Another question that MMC is asked is whether they should be part of the workforce or separate. And the answer is that it depends on every single situation, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to that. I agree with Jeff Jarvis that it would be a very good gamble to allow Millennials to start up companies or products. But I can’t think of a single media company where that would be allowed to happen on a broad scale.
Full disclosure: Like the Learning Newsroom, MediaShift has received funding from the Knight Foundation.
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Doing Less with Less
The Newspaper Blurb That Complained to Me
In my daily perusal of the ever-shrinking San Francisco Chronicle print newspaper, I noticed this little blurb tucked away on the front page of the Technology and Business section (now on the back page of the Sports section):
Leaner newspapers = less news
> The staff cuts at newspapers across the country are starting to take a toll on content, according to a study being released today. The challenge newspapers must meet immediately is to find more revenue on the Internet, according to the Project of Excellence in Journalism’s study. Newspaper managers need to find a way to make money from the rapid growth of web readership “before newsroom staff cuts so weaken newspapers that their competitive advantage disappears.” Stories are shorter, the study found, and staff coverage tends to focus on local and community news. “America’s newspapers are narrowing their reach and their ambitions and becoming niche reads,” the study said.
Then a weird thing happened. The newspaper blurb actually started talking to me.
The Blurb: I am a microcosm of all that is wrong with newspapers today. I am a tiny blurb on a complex and difficult subject, and I barely scratch the surface of what this story is all about. I am just the tip of the informational iceberg that you can find in full online. What purpose do I even serve?
Me: Well, you are alerting me and other people to an important new survey from the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The Blurb: But I don’t even have room for a web address linking to that survey. I am just a tiny blurb lost in a sea of clutter on a page that includes: blurbs on this week’s prominent news events; a comparison between the iPhone and iPhone competitors; a look at travel websites; a look at popular iPhone apps; and a roundup of CNET reviews of waterproof gadgets. Worst of all, I sit below another equally small-sized blurb about Facebook’s redesign. Meh.
Me: Don’t you find it ironic that you’re a blurb about cutbacks in content at newspapers, and there you are: a cutback in content yourself.
The Blurb: Don’t get me started. The Chronicle business section is a study in reduced expectations and content. There are three original stories in today’s business section with two written by staff writers, the other a freelance columnist. The rest of the stories are wire stories, CNET content, a Dilbert cartoon and wire service blurbs like me.
Me: Not surprising, as the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) survey found that 34% of newspapers had cut back on business content, and only 17% had increased business content. Not only that, but 30% of business sections lost reporting resources over the past three years, with just 19% adding resources. Business sections are obviously getting squeezed by the instant info people can find online. Anyone following business news now goes to financial portals like Yahoo Finance or sites like TheStreet.com or Motley Fool rather than relying on local papers.
The Blurb: But why get all blurby then? If papers want to accept their place in print as yesterday’s news, then perhaps they should do longer, more thoughtful pieces and get more magazine-like than strip down naked with tiny blurbs covering their bits and pieces. What happened to the Examiner/Chronicle’s push to be a daily magazine with more splashy graphics, photos and depth?
Me: Probably pulled under by the reality that print infrastructure costs more money, whether it’s paper cost, distribution or just running a circulation department. The web has its costs too, of course, like hosting and development and analytics — but those are relatively low compared to running huge presses and sending out trucks to deliver papers.
The Blurb: I really have to wonder about my future as a print blurb. USA Today has succeeded by running shorter news stories for people who are traveling, but will print papers turn into a bunch of blurbs strung together? Don’t people want depth? I wonder if the people who created me — the editors at the Chronicle — think about what will run in the print paper and what will run online.
Me: At the moment, they are running a longer version of you (the full AP story on the survey) on their website. What’s really interesting about the survey is that newspaper editors have either gained the online religion or they were forced out. According to PEJ:
At larger papers, where staff cuts have been deepest and the newsroom moods darkest, fully 57% of those surveyed say “web technology offers the potential for greater-than-ever journalism and will be the savior of what we once thought of as newspaper newsrooms.”
And only 6% were “worried” about the web. Are they delusional or just the most positive-thinking people the newspaper companies could find to run them? Yes, the web offers potential for greater-than-ever journalism, but why will that necessarily benefit newspaper newsrooms? Can’t any journalist or citizen journalist practice better journalism online?
The Blurb: Maybe, but the newspapers are at least trying out a lot of new approaches to doing news, whether it’s Google Maps mash-ups or databases or mobile journalists.
Me: Yeah, the survey showed that 90% of big newspaper editors thought that mobile journalists (or “mojos”) were valuable to the newsroom, and only 8% said they were less valuable. But of course there are still mojo skeptics:
The editor of a large circulation paper dismissed the entire concept as “some kind of cartoon character.”
The Blurb: You know, I could have told you a lot more about the survey, if only I was bigger than just a blurb.
Photo of shredded newspaper by Kelly Meyers via Flickr.
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Regulating Speech
EU Member’s Plan for ‘Blogger Registry’ Is Wrong-Headed
When blogs were born over 10 years ago as a way to share the details of one’s life with a limited number of people online as a sort of journal, no one could have imagined the importance that this type of D.I.Y. publishing would later take on. Today, bloggers who started out just writing for themselves have empires. Bloggers these days have larger spheres of influence, attracting the eyes of more people — even presidential candidates. — and they enjoy the freedom to write whatever they want (within reason) on their blogs.
But is there an inherent danger in this kind of unbridled editorial freedom? Is the democratic state of the blogosphere capable of becoming something more revolutionary? Or even malicious? At least one European lawmaker thinks so. Estonian EU parliament member Marianne Mikko wants to establish a sort of “blogger registry” which would oblige authors to prove their credentials and reveal relationships and potential special interests. And while her recommendation is far from becoming European policy, the suggestion of such regulation has shocked bloggers around Europe and leads us to the question: what if?
Bloggers Must Prove ‘Reliability’ and ‘Quality’
On June 3, European bloggers awoke to a surprising announcement from Europe’s parliament. The Culture Committee adopted a report “on concentration and pluralism in the media in the European Union” which, despite its title, seemed to call for just the opposite. The draft report calls for a motion at the European level to “preserve media pluralism.” At first, the document makes many valid points: European journalists fear for their jobs in an ever more precarious market; media consolidation represents a threat to journalistic quality; consumers deserve a choice in media, etc. But it was “point O” which raised eyebrows across the region:
…whereas weblogs are an increasingly common medium for self-expression by media professionals as well as private persons, the status of their authors and publishers, including their legal status, is neither determined nor made clear to the readers of the weblogs, causing uncertainties regarding impartiality, reliability, source protection, applicability of ethical codes and the assignment of liability in the event of lawsuit…
The tone of point O hints at the recommendation that would come later:
Suggests clarifying the status, legal or otherwise, of weblogs and encourages their voluntary labeling according to the professional and financial responsibilities and interests of their authors and publishers.
Reading the parliamentary language as it appears here might not sound off alarms right away. But a week later, in an article on the European Parliament’s website, the intentions behind Mikko’s recommendations became clear:
Ms. Mikko told us “the blogosphere has so far been a haven of good intentions and relatively honest dealing. However, with blogs becoming commonplace, less principled people will want to use them.”
Mikko goes on:
We do not see bloggers as a threat. They are in position, however, to considerably pollute cyberspace. We already have too much spam, misinformation and malicious intent in cyberspace…I think the public is still very trusting towards blogs, it is still seen as sincere. And it should remain sincere. For that we need a quality mark, a disclosure of who is really writing and why.
The conclusion to be drawn from the report recommendations and Mikko’s later comments is that legislation should be put in place to identify bloggers and the “quality” of their writing lest they be used to harm cyberspace.
Blogger Reaction
While Mikko’s statements suggest she isn’t targeting bloggers, her explanation seems to single them out as the source of some potential future wickedness. European bloggers were none too happy about their work being considered a “pollutant” to cyberspace. Comparing bloggers to spammers wasn’t very nice either. But what really got folks riled up was the notion of bloggers being required to identify themselves or “register.” UK blogger Cramner wrote:
Since when has one needed permission from the State to express more than one’s personal view? Are we about to surrender the freedom to blog to the EU’s licensing authorities? Will Euroblogs become the only permitted mechanism for placing information in the public domain?
While the concept of a registry isn’t mentioned in the draft report, comments made by Mikko later seem to point to the creation of one. Rumors soon spread that the EU had actually passed a law that would require bloggers to register themselves. Swedish press went to town with the “blogger registry” story. Bloggers decried the death of free speech in Europe, alluded to similarities with China and compared Marianne Mikkos to past European dictators.
Drastic? Perhaps. But as a blogger myself, my reaction is similar. The generalizations about how “honest” the blogosphere is and its potential danger are disturbing to me. Robbing people of their ability to start their own publications online or publish their views on other people’s blogs would stifle creativity and entrepreneurship. And as an American with a tendency to idealize European social policies in general, this proposal not only seems out of line with EU values, but also wildly misinformed. What does she think blogs are? Others asked the same question, making so much noise that Mikko responded. In an interview with the EU Observer, she attempted to set the record straight, but her comments weren’t very comforting:
We do not need to know the exact identity of bloggers. We need some credentials, a quality mark, a certain disclosure of who is writing and why. We need this to be able to trust and rely on the source.
The Economist is a valuable brand, its articles are trusted by readers without contributors having to reveal their names. If there is a way to validate the best bloggers the same way that publishing in the Economist validates its writers, it should be done. It is clear that a Harvard professor of international relations is likely to treat, for instance, the Middle East peace process or European integration in an educated and balanced manner. The same trust cannot be put in a radical high school student from Gaza or a Eurosceptic who has never been out of his village. The reader should know why this or that blogger should be trusted on a particular issue.
If that’s the case, then why should Marianne Mikko be trusted on this particular issue? What’s ironic here is that someone who seems less than informed about blogs is demanding that bloggers be a reliable source for the information they are providing. Equally ironic is the fact that much of her report is dedicated to warning against a future in which media is in the hands of just a few people — an argument which is, in essence, for independent blogging.
A Regulated Blogosphere
Mikko’s comments seem to suggest that only blogs written by recognized journalists or associated with mainstream media are to be trusted. The term “reliable source” is quite vague and lends itself to the idea that only scholars and the government are to be trusted. So what would this look like in real life?
Let’s imagine: A tech enthusiast writer spots a niche and wants to start a blog. But first he must go through the proper channels. He must prove his credentials on the topic. Passion for and knowledge of the space wouldn’t be enough. Not being a recognized journalist in the field or an industry expert, and without any published writing to show on the topic, this budding blogger probably wouldn’t stand a chance at getting his blog — no matter how informative or useful it is — registered as a “reliable source.”
Then there are the blogs that are already out there. The issue would be how do you certify that blogs have been covering a topic — or a variety of topics — over time? On VivirLatino.com, I write about everything from politics to marketing to current events. But with my background, I could be considered an “expert” on only one of those topics. Would I make the cut? And what sort of criteria would be used to judge me? Would I have to stick to blogging about only things I’m a registered expert on?
These are imaginary scenarios, but the proposal is real and begs the question: Could it really happen? Most people I spoke to here in Europe are skeptical. Tech journalist Lars Pasveer told me that he thinks the law would be hard to enforce.
“Although the EU has seen its share of controversial legislation over the last few years (long-term storage of data on Internet use, email and phone traffic for instance), I don’t see Mikko’s plans as realistic or viable,” he said. “Apart from the fact that it takes all the wrong cues from repressive regimes like China, the fluidity of the Internet and weblogs would make such a database a beast to manage.”
Pasveer points to a Dutch effort that looked to put warning labels on websites, which eventually failed.
“The Dutch justice department made an offhand remark that all sites in The Netherlands should carry warning labels about their content,” he said. “It got some press coverage at the time but has since dusted over, since in reality there is no workable solution for such a system — nor will it prevent people from seeing it elsewhere.”
But draft laws have already been introduced at the country level in at least one EU state: Italy. Last year a proposal, popularly referred to as the Levi-Prodi Law, reached the desk of the Italian Prime Minister for a law which would force all online publishers — including bloggers — to register their sites and pay fees, even if the site isn’t earning money. Popular Italian blogger Beppe Grillo broke the story in English, and bloggers across Italy were outraged when the law was approved at the Council of Ministers level in October of last year. It was awaiting a trip to the Italian parliament for approval but the change in government from PM Prodi to PM Berlusconi derailed that, though it seems it’s up once again for approval.
What do you think? Are laws like the one proposed by Mikko necessary in order to maintain honesty and integrity in the blogosphere? How might laws like this one help or hinder innovation in online publishing? Should freedom of speech protect bloggers from laws like this? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Jennifer Woodard Maderazo is the associate editor of PBS MediaShift. She is a writer, blogger and marketer, who also covers Latino cultural issues at VivirLatino.
Blogging image via Sue Richards, Beppe Grillo image via Rogimmi, EU flag image via Giampaolo Squarcina, all on Flickr.
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Digging Deeper
Your Guide to the iPhone
From time to time, I’ll give an overview of one broad MediaShift topic, annotated with online resources and plenty of tips. The idea is to help you understand the topic, learn the jargon, and take action. I’ve already covered blogging, citizen journalism, online privacy and various other topics. This week I’ll look at the iPhone.
Beginning of a Phenomenon
The iPhone is the first cell phone offered by Apple Computer, combining its popular iPod MP3 player with a multi-touch-screen smartphone with web browsing. Apple CEO Steve Jobs played the tech world’s wizard as he unveiled the iPhone on January 9, 2007 at the Macworld conference, where people lined up to gape at an early version of the phone behind glass. Here is Jobs’ quote in a press release from Apple marking the occasion:
iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone. We are all born with the ultimate pointing device — our fingers — and iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse.
If you had a drink every time Jobs said the word “revolutionary” during his speech to the Macworld faithful, you wouldn’t be able to see straight by the end of it. Yet Jobs’ hyperbole matched the reality of the technology. Once the iPhone came out in June 2007, you could now call people on a cell phone that had no buttons for numbers or even for a keyboard. You pushed virtual buttons and virtual keys, and swiped your finger across the screen to cycle through pictures, or spread two fingers to zoom in.
Because the iPhone had such a large screen, taking up almost the entire phone, you now had a great device for showing your friends pictures, or for viewing videos during a flight. Eventually, Apple released the iPod Touch, basically an iPhone without the phone, because the screen and web features were so spectacular, making it a great portable media device.
But the iPhone was not the ultra-perfect “Jesus phone,” as some people had predicted. Apple required that you sign up with AT&T as your cell carrier to get an iPhone; plus, the original iPhone had a pretty weak camera (and no videocamera), and ran on a slow data network (that would be corrected later, with the release of the iPhone 3G). The virtual keyboard was not as tactile as a real one, so it took some practice to write text messages or emails. But still, the iPhone caused a huge outpouring of consumer excitement, and people camped out to get the first ones when they were released.
First Year of the iPhone
As the hype became reality and the iPhone was released to the public, interested consumers split into two camps: those who had to have the device, and those who wanted to wait until a newer version came out (or until their current cell-phone contract ran out).
The early adopters loved the sleek look of the phone and the simple touch-screen interface for going through voice-mails or picking out music albums. But it didn’t take long for the early adopters to get burned. After launching the 8GB iPhone for $599, Apple lowered its price to $399 just two months later. That upset a lot of people who felt like they were the most loyal Apple customers by buying the iPhone when it was still untested. Jobs had to post an open letter to iPhone customers apologizing for the price drop and offering them a $100 coupon to use in the Apple Store on other products.
But the price drop worked, and the iPhone quickly made inroads in the smartphone market, selling more than 6 million units worldwide in its first year of sales. According to Gartner Research, Apple was the No. 3 vendor of smartphones in the world in the first quarter of 2008, with a 5.3% market share, and was No. 2 in the U.S. with a 20% market share. Not bad for a new pricey phone from a vendor that had never sold cell phones before.
Even more profound was the way that people were using their iPhones. While smartphones such as the Treo and Blackberry got business users to combine their cell phone usage with email, text messaging and productivity applications, the iPhone was now becoming the convergence device of choice for consumers. With AT&T’s all-you-can-eat unlimited data plans, people felt free to go online with their phones like never before, and the simple interface and large screen made the experience much better.
iPhone users were playing (and buying) music; surfing the web; collecting and sharing pictures; playing videos; and using email, as well as social networks like Facebook. Finally, the long-standing idea that people could take a small mobile device along to play media and interact with people was becoming a reality.
Mobile research firm M:Metrics found that iPhone users were clearly being drawn to use the mobile web more than users of other smartphones. Among the firm’s findings last March:
> The iPhone was the most popular device for getting news and information on the mobile web, with 85% of users doing that in January 2008.
> 30.9% of iPhone users watched mobile TV or video vs. just 4.6% of all cell phone users.
> 49.7% of iPhone users accessed a social networking site or blog vs. just 4.2% of all cell phone users.
> 30.4% of iPhone users watched YouTube on the phone, while 36% used Google Maps.
“The iPhone has certainly delivered on its hype,” said M:Metrics senior analyst Mark Donovan. “Beyond a doubt, this device is compelling consumers to interact with the mobile web, delivering off-the-charts usage from everything to text messaging to mobile video.”
The App Store & Locative Media
While Facebook, YouTube and others developed some nice iPhone applications, Apple opened the floodgates by allowing anyone to create programs that could run on the iPhone (as long as they passed certain security tests). When Apple released the new iPhone 3G on July 11, 2008, it also opened the new App Store, with more than 500 applications including games, web radio and eBay auction trackers. Almost all the apps were either a few dollars each or free.
Media companies were quick to jump into the App Store, knowing it could be another way to reach their audiences. The New York Times, for example, launched a special iPhone app that lets people read through its website more easily — browsing the news in pictures, or reading through stories while offline. A recent look at the most popular iPhone Apps in iTunes includes:
> WeatherBug weather info
> Pandora free online radio
> Yelp local reviews
> AOL Radio free online radio
> Lonely Planet audio phrasebook
> Bloomberg financial news and quotes
The new iPhone 3G has GPS capabilities, so apps can offer up location-based information as you walk around. After playing around with the new iPhone 3G, New York Times reporter Saul Hansell said he thought the location-based apps were the most exciting part of the phone:
To my mind the coolest feature — and the one with the most promise — was the integration of location information with data from the Internet. This hit home with a little $2.99 application called CityTransit that pops up the New York City subway stops closest to where you are. Yelp, AT&T’s Yellowpages.com, Expedia’s TripAdvisor and others have versions of applications that help you find the nearest Thai restaurant, Starbucks, gas station or endodontist.
On day one, some of these were better designed than others, but it’s clear that these location-based apps will be a great way to answer the millions of questions that pop up as people move around. What’s more, this sort of device will soon become the world’s best guidebook. No more page flipping: Just tap to find out what you are looking at now and what you can do next.
Going 3G
So far, the reviews of the second-generation iPhone 3G have been largely positive, as Apple solved the browsing-speed issue by running data on AT&T’s 3G network. The new iPhones cost only $199 with a two-year contract for AT&T, but the carrier is charging $10 more per month for data on its higher-speed network (and more for text messaging as well). The new phones have a better system for GPS, and can run all the apps in the new App Store.
While Apple could trumpet 1 million in sales of the new iPhone 3G in its opening weekend, there were problems with the launch, as well: The huge demand crashed servers, so that people were not able to activate their phones in Apple and AT&T stores. Plus, the phones were very difficult to find as 21 states were completely sold out within a few days, according to Fortune’s Apple 2.0 blog.
Perhaps a longer-term problem with the new phones is that AT&T’s 3G network doesn’t exactly blanket the U.S., with 10 states having absolutely no coverage at all. That should change as AT&T starts upgrading its network, but it could be frustrating for people living in smaller towns or rural areas, who would be stuck with slower Internet speeds.
By the time of the 3G launch, Apple faced much more competition in the consumer smartphone marketplace than it had with the launch of the original iPhone just a year earlier. The touch-screen Samsung Instinct came out a few weeks ago and had the best-selling debut of any device to run on the Sprint network. Other competing smartphones include the LG Voyager and Palm Centro, and new phones with Google’s open Android operating system are due early next year.
In many cases, these competing phones cost less than the iPhone, and offer slide-out keyboards, videocameras and other features missing from the iPhone. But they don’t have the sleek, reliable Safari web browser, App Store, or iTunes and Mac integration that the iPhone has. If the iPhone can inspire more hardware (and software) makers to innovate, then we’ll all be better off, with improved web browsing, communication and ways to take our media everywhere.
More Resources
To read more about the iPhone 3G, follow these links:
Apple’s iPhone 3G: It’s really a computer that makes calls at Dallas Morning News
Apple iPhone Apps With Ads: A Risky Bet at Silicon Alley Insider
Big Media Launch New iPhone Apps at MediaWeek
Can I Resist the iPhone 3G? at Slate
Exchanging A Defective iPhone 3G Is A Huge Pain In The Butt at Consumerist
IPhone Rivals Look to Cash In at Macworld
Is the iPhone 3G Bad for Mac? at the iPhone Blog
Ten iPhone Programs to Check Out at AllThingsD
Will 3G iPhone Help Push Geo-Based News? at MediaShift Idea Lab
What do you think about the iPhone and its ultimate place in media history? Do you think of it as a pioneering device or a flawed overhyped gadget? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Photo of iPhone in hand by Colin Campbell; photo of Steve Jobs with iPhone by Alessandro Aimone; photo of iPhone bag by Scott Beale, all via Flickr.
Filed under Digging Deeper, MobileShift, Your Guide to...
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Guardian at the Gate
How PaidContent Succeeded in Mining Digital Media Niche
Why is this man smiling? Rafat Ali was just another freelance journalist back in 2002, and wanted to strut his stuff on a blog, so he started PaidContent to write about his take on the business of digital content. Now he is much richer for his efforts, having expanded the blog into a mini-media empire with venture funding and last week selling it entirely to Guardian Media Group for about $30 million.
I have been watching Ali and his site closely over the years, and I will not join the guessing game of which independent tech-related blog will be bought out next (TechCrunch? GigaOm? VentureBeat?). I think Ali has created a unique site in PaidContent that mixed his no-holds-barred commentary with hard-nosed reporting to scoop the business press and give insiders his own personal insights.
There have been times where Ali’s opinions can come off as a bit sharp and almost one-liners in the brief space of a blog post. And recently, the cross-promotion for PaidContent’s sister blogs, events and conferences, and other side businesses have almost overwhelmed the “real news” on the site. But those criticisms aside, I think PaidContent has been a pioneer in the field of online media and has been a case study in how one person can build a sustainable niche site. Here is how he did it:
Reporting around the clock.
Ali often worked late into the night and around the clock to beat mainstream business publications that were wedded to print or broadcast and held stories longer.
Knowing when to bring in reporters.
As Ali’s workload increased and the audience got bigger, he was smart enough to hire experienced journalists such as Staci Kramer, David Kaplan and Robert Andrews. Rather than treat the site as a blog where opinion comes first (a la TechCrunch), PaidContent stuck to its newsy angle of breaking news and getting interviews and quotes.
Knowing when to bring in business folks.
When Ali realized that he was seriously conflicted when trying to sell advertising and write editorial at the same time, he wisely started to separate those functions just as a traditional media company would. He even created an ethical credo of sorts titled, Our Essence of Being, with this important line:
I do think the society needs journalists, or at least the journalism ethos: people who can ask the hard questions, people who can be skeptical about any new thing, and yet question the old establishment’s willingness (or lack of it) to change.
Pushing boundaries in online ads.
PaidContent was one of the first publications to run ads in RSS feeds, and also ran “sponsored posts” that looked like blog posts but were clearly marked as ads. Despite these blurry lines in advertising and editorial, PaidContent never pulled punches in covering the business of its advertisers.
Making advertisers part of the community.
This might be the unsung strength of PaidContent. Rather than simply accept ads from any company or product, or join a generic ad network or federation, PaidContent handles the bulk of its ad sales and is more selective about making sure the ads are relevant to the content. I remember talking to Ali about this, and he felt that the advertisers had to be as much a part of his community as his readers and tipsters.
Keeping its focus, and expanding in a smart way.
As PaidContent morphed into the parent company of ContentNext, Ali launched sister blogs MocoNews (mobile news), ContentSutra (online media in India) and PaidContent UK. He started mixers and events that were heavy on networking and serving his community of readers than on flash and commercialism. Rather than grow too fast and get too big, ContentNext grew much more gradually and thought more about moves before making them. Plus, it always stayed focused on the business of digital media, and didn’t stray from covering that industry.
Getting credit for blogs.
After making his complaints almost a crown of thorns he bore daily, Ali finally got mainstream media outlets to start giving him credit for stories he broke on PaidContent. Not only that, but he got NYTimes.com — and later Washingtonpost.com — to run his content in a licensing/promotional deal.
Hopefully the Guardian will allow Ali and his online innovators to expland and cover more territory — and keep their credo intact. The media world needs more examples like PaidContent to point to as possible ways to keep journalism alive and well in the digital age.
What do you think? What ways do you think PaidContent has innovated and where have they missed the mark? Do you think they will be able to fend off competitors such as Silicon Alley Insider and TechCrunch, and how do you think they will work within the Guardian? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Photo of Rafat Ali by Lane Hartwell for Valleywag.
Filed under AdvertisingShift, MagazineShift, Philosophy
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