Nieman Journalism Lab |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2013 09:30 AM PST
Editor’s note: There’s lots of interesting academic research going on in digital media — but who has time to sift through all those journals and papers? Our friends at Journalist's Resource, that's who. JR is a project of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and they spend their time examining the new academic literature in media, social science, and other fields, summarizing the high points and giving you a point of entry. Roughly once a month, JR managing editor John Wihbey will sum up for us what’s new and fresh. Welcome to the wonky world of digital scholarship, 2013, early edition. Though academia may, for some, be synonymous with “sleepy,” there have been several actual news developments already in 2013 — chiefly the launching of two new journals, Digital Journalism and Mobile Media & Communication, which each just published Volume 1, Issue 1. In such an evolving and new area of research, many of the early papers in those journals are “think piece” in nature and try to frame basic problems and questions. But there are lots of good nuggets and insights for those interested in the future of media. As for the usual suspects — the several dozen journalism- and communications-related journals that touch on on social and news media issues — some interesting scholarship has already arrived. Below are some representative studies and papers — something to curl up with on a cold winter’s night. “Twitter as a Reporting Tool for Breaking News”: Study from the University of Sheffield, published in Digital Journalism. The study looks at the Twitter usage patterns of The Guardian’s Paul Lewis and The New York Times’ Ravi Somaiya as they covered the London riots in 2011. The researcher also draws on millions of tweets from hundreds of thousands of users employing specific hashtags during that same four-day period in August 2011. Lewis’ account was the second-most mentioned (he tweeted 441 times and was mentioned more than 30,000 times by others), while Somaiya was 34th (290 tweets and about 3,500 mentions.) They employed different strategies: “it is clear that Paul Lewis’ tweets are most often original tweets (312 tweets, 71 per cent) compared with Ravi Somaiya’s (133 tweets, 46 per cent).” Other differences include: “Paul Lewis uses 54 @ replies…whilst Ravi Somaiya dedicates more than a third of his tweets (89 tweets…) to @ replies”; Lewis shared 111 links, while Somaiya shared 70; and Lewis sent out 82 tweets with crowdsourcing requests for information, compared to three such requests from Somaiya. The researcher concludes that “studying breaking news on Twitter and early adopters in these situations is important as it can highlight the emergence of new journalistic conventions, which a focus on established journalistic norms alone may fail to identify.” For example, Somaiya voiced more opinion than old-school norms might allow, suggesting an evolving “hybrid norm,” the study notes. In many ways, the study is a natural followup to a 2012 conference paper, by different scholars, titled “Sourcing the Arab Spring: A Case Study of Andy Carvin’s Sources During the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions.” “‘Soft’ Versus ‘Hard’ News on Microblogging Networks”: Study from the New School for Social Research published in Information, Communication & Society. One big buzzword in academic digital discourse and web studies is “produsage” — basically, the idea that there are no longer strict lines between producers (media) and consumers (audience), and that there is an emerging hybrid category of producer-consumers which creatively participates in information networks. Who are these strange new beasts, and what makes them tick? This study looks at a huge volume of tweets — a one-percent sample from more than 2 million users over a week. It uses the semantic analysis tool OpenCalais to help code the tweets’ content, assessing some 240,000 messages in all. The researcher finds that “as users become more and more active, the degree of consumption at the expense of production lowers significantly.” Lower-activity users — those with fewer than 1,000 tweets — are much more likely to behave strictly as consumers; but as consumers get into the 8,000 to 25,000 message zone, their input-output (consumer-producer) ratio stays roughly 1:1, and they become something of a hybrid user engaged in “produsage.” Put another way, an “individual’s agency as a media participant grows over time with continued microblogging use and, as a byproduct of that growth, produsage increases as well.” The study makes some observations about Twitter content and user profiles, ultimately concluding that users produce the most information about human interest stories, entertainment and culture, and technology and Internet topics. Individuals who discuss business and finance — and hospitality and recreation topics — tend to have larger networks than others. Further, “Twitter users tend to produce much more soft news than hard news by volume.” “Mobile News Adoption among Young Adults: Examining the Roles of Perceptions, News Consumption, and Media Usage”: Study from the University of Florida and The New York Times published in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. The researchers examine the prior literature on how the next generation of news consumers behaves and thinks about mobile news, and they survey 384 young people. They juggle and analyze many variables — among them, the advantages young people see in getting mobile news over traditional sources, as well as their attitudes toward technology — in order to figure out how and why they might become mobile news consumers. They find that the “relative advantage perception of mobile news plays a role in how early and how much a young adult might use mobile news and his or her willingness to pay for such services,” but “it is insignificant in predicting his or her length of mobile news usage per occasion.” There’s a lot to digest in this study, but the holy grail of the long-term news future might be hiding somewhere in all of the data the researchers crunch. “Social Media and the Arab Spring: Politics Comes First”: Study from Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, and IDC published in The International Journal of Press/Politics. The researchers use the Arab Spring as a case study and examine social media data from 20 countries. They conclude that the effectiveness of collective action and protest through social media is highly dependent on political context. In some ways, they are trying to cut through a polarized and over-simplified debate between “cyber-enthusiasts” and the “cyber-skeptics.” Although they don’t deny that social media were important for Arab protestors, the researchers present some cross-national comparative data that show high rates of Internet penetration did not always lead to greater levels of protest in all cases. Another research takeaway is that a “significant increase in the use of the new media is much more likely to follow a significant amount of protest activity than to precede it.” The study adds new perspective to the pile of studies now accumulating on this important historical moment. “Mobile News: A Review and Model of Journalism in an Age of Mobile Media”: Paper from the University of Gothenberg published in Digital Journalism. The author reviews the existing research literature on how Internet-enabled information and communication technologies (ICTs) are changing both producers and consumers of news media. The paper serves as a useful overview for those trying to understand, in context, the diverse changes and experiments now going on in the news industry. It concludes by proposing a new framework for understanding these mobile news dynamics. It’s a model that sees a continuum along two lines: the continuum between human work and machine work; and the continuum between customization and repurposing. There is a tension here: “One finds that the production of mobile journalism has generally traveled from the human-led customization dimension towards the technology-led customization dimension (alongside some who exercise only different kinds of repurposing). Mobile news publishing seems to have become increasingly synonymous with excelling in technological customization, harnessing technological assets that enhance the perceived affordances of mobile devices.” “Mobile gazing two-ways: Visual layering as an emerging mobile communication service”: Paper from Boston University published in Mobile Media & Communication. The author, James Katz, who is starting BU’s new Division of Emerging Media Studies, examines the future possibilities and implications of mobile visual devices. (Think Google Glass.) He notes that such technologies might reconfigure our “self-presentation” — and how we might communicate with others — but also our perceptions of our immediate surroundings. Such technologies might “enrich the local information environment.” He also thinks about the potential downsides, e.g., What could street gangs do with all this? And Katz reviews privacy concerns in this brave mobile world. “Tweeting Social Change: How Social Media Are Changing Nonprofit Advocacy”: Study from the University of Buffalo, SUNY, and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis published in Non-profit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. In the wake of the viral “Kony 2012″ campaign, the researchers review the social media use of 188 non-profit, 501(c)(3) advocacy organizations (all those in the sample were reasonably well established and well funded) and try to identify patterns among their various strategies. They focus on Twitter, which about 80 percent of the sample currently employ as an organizational and communications tool. The average organization has about 2,500 followers and tweets about 100 times over a four-week period, though some sent out as much as 1,000 messages over that time. The study concludes that, for nonprofits, Twitter is most commonly used as “public education” tool (40 percent of all tweets fell into this category), not necessarily a mobilization tool: “[W]e found the majority of the tweets were aimed at providing information to stakeholders, followed by building an online community, and then calling that community to action.” The researchers ponder whether, as more advocacy goes online, the very nature of these organizations may change substantially. The paper can also inform debates over “slacktivism” and related topics. “What Happens to Our Facebook Accounts When We Die?: Probate Versus Policy and the Fate of Social Media Assets Postmortem”: Paper in the Pepperdine Law Review. The researcher, a law student, reviews the legal precedents and haphazard policies relating to the massive — and rapidly accumulating — online historical data relating to deceased persons now entombed in social media platforms. “Digital death” raises myriad conundrums and issues: company terms of service and whether they should be re-written; new kinds of wills, estates, custodianship and probate practices; the scattered attempts by various states to address puzzling novel situations; how to gain access to family members' accounts when they have taken passwords to the grave (and “password” vault solutions.”) The list goes on and on, and innumerable other unanswered questions surface. Of course, historians and journalists may also have a huge stake in all this. The second half of the paper is entitled “Digital Assets and Death: A Status Update!” Like. A news note: It’s worth acknowledging, especially following the death of information and Internet activist Aaron Swartz, that many of the studies in this area remain behind paywalls and are not “open access.” In discussing Swartz’s life, journalism scholar Jay Rosen recently noted that he had declined to serve on Digital Journalism‘s new editorial board because the publication was not free to the public. For a full explanation of where the open access movement stands, see this interview with Harvard’s Peter Suber. Photo by Anna Creech used under a Creative Commons license. |
| The newsonomics of Aaron Kushner’s virtuous circles Posted: 31 Jan 2013 04:33 AM PST
Aaron Kushner is the anti-Advance. Tomorrow, Advance makes digital origami of the Syracuse Post-Standard, going to three days a week of print (good Poynter inside view of the change). Its strategy: addition by subtraction. Subtract costs by cutting four days of print — in New Orleans, Michigan, Alabama, Harrisburg, now Syracuse, and maybe, soon, Portland — and add profits. My calculations showed about a 11 percent increase in short-term profits (“The newsonomics of Advance’s New Orleans strategy”), due to hard cuts in newsprint, distribution, and major downsizing of staff, including in newsrooms. Kushner and his 2100 (as in “we’re in it for the long-term”) Trust ownership group have taken a very different approach since he took over the Orange County Register on July 25 — not even six months ago. It’s addition by addition. Addition of costs in the short run, aimed at the addition of both revenues and profits in the longer term. If there were a Pulitzer for getting the most done in six months, Aaron Kushner should win it. Many publishers find themselves somewhere between the thinking of Advance (although they are hesitant to drop days for fear of sending the business into a fast death spiral) and 2100 Trust. The prevailing strategy across the country: Keep seven days of print, but also keep trimming, trimming, trimming. Kushner’s Orange County play is watchable enough. It becomes even more intriguing if 2100 Trust should win in the upcoming Tribune Company auction. On that bid, Kushner restated his interest when we talked Tuesday, though with caveats. One big caveat is whether the Tribune sells off the Register’s neighboring L.A. Times separately, or as part a package of its eight papers.
With that potential purchase in the back of our minds, let’s look at the newsonomics of the Register’s contrarian approach. It’s a strategy of would-be virtuous circles, and that’s important. The Register’s circles seek to find an upward spiral for a business model that’s been spinning downward for almost a decade. In part, the strategy is truly contrarian; in part, it reflects a building back of what had been a much-diminished metro newspaper. First, let’s take the Register’s most recent news. The Register showered its 124,000 seven-day print subscribers with golden envelopes in November. In each envelope: a check for $100, made out to the Register. Subscribers were asked to pick their favorite local nonprofit or charity, endorse the check, and send it back to the paper. A “massive number” of subscribers responded, and 1,300 nonprofits are about to enjoy the fruits of the campaign. No, the nonprofits don’t get cash; they get advertising in the Register’s print or digital products. It’s a massive stroke of goodwill, and p.r. It can be called a $12.4 million program — if all the 124,000 subscribers returned the $100 “checks”– though the $12.4 million is a price (of buying Register advertising), not a cost. So, for instance, the top three charities — The Salvation Army, The Wounded Warrior Project and the Orange County Rescue Mission — will collectively be able to spend $300,000 with the Register. That’s a considerable sum. It should both augment the profiles of the 1,300 charities that got some allocation and make the Register both more of a community citizen and a place to consider advertising down the road. “We asked readers to think hard,” as they received their checks, says Kushner. Readers couldn’t divvy up the $100, but had to decide on one organization that they most wanted to help. The program empowers people to have an impact — with the always popular Other People’s Money. Perhaps, though, it will encourage them to donate more of their own money as well. Kushner says it isn’t a one-time program, but “ongoing.” This is a smart, pro-community, good-for-business idea. It’s one I think we’ll see picked up around the country. It’s authentically good for community — and it’s a lot cheaper than a $12.4 million investment. Keep in mind that if Register “charges” full price for those ads, as we would think it would, its actual costs won’t come close to the pricing. Advertisers, with the aid of the Register’s creative services, can choose a combination of print and online advertising. Both presumably can run on an as-possible, rather than targeted, schedule; that’s only fair for a freebie. It also gives the Register the ability to place ads in its metro paper and 24 community weeklies, as extra, or “house,” ad space is open. Smartly, the Register, in print, will try to fit the ads into its existing page run, rather than adding pages. Even as it adds some pages, you can figure that the cost of the newsprint and ink is maybe an eighth or a tenth of the price of the ad. For digital advertising, of course, there’s no hard cost. Further, commissions don’t need to be paid, we’d assume, for salespeople handling the ads. Lastly, the first quarter — the slowest time for newspaper advertising — is a good time to start the program. All of that business rationale doesn’t detract from the community value of the program; it just makes it much more affordable for the Register. A $12.4 million program may cost a fifth of that. It’s a good example of smartly using supply and demand. Consider, for a moment, all the remnant (non-sold digital inventory) stacking up for publishers (and everyone else) around the web. Why not embrace that space with a golden-envelope-like, pro-community digital ad program? The ROI here may be soft. It is, though, one of Aaron Kushner’s would-be virtuous circles:
It is the Register’s very public investment (“The Orange County Register is hiring dozens of reporters”) in new newsroom staff that has drawn the most wonder.  For years, new hires at the Orange County Register had their faces posts in a small frame on a wall. With the recent burst of hiring, though, their faces have spread well beyond the frame. (Photos courtesy the Orange County Register.) Since Kushner’s arrival, the paper has added about 90 positions. Today, the newsroom total is 270, up from the pre-Kushner low of 180. Included in the 270 are 24 full-time, full-year interns — drawn from around the country for an intern program that is the place to be. The numbers, themselves, are impressive, a 50 percent increase. They represent one of the largest hirings of journalists since Patch placed 900 or so solo journalists in outposts across the U.S. two to three years ago. At 270, the Register is about half the newsroom size of the former behemoth next door, the L.A. Times. The raw numbers are profound, but what’s behind their deployment is even more eye-opening. The Register is applying a spirited strategy to match its staffing revolution. It’s been widely reported as a print-first strategy. I think that mischaracterizes it, though print is getting well-funded. It’s a reader-first strategy, and a wily one that aims at doing the right things in the right order, with capital to match. It’s addition by addition, of content and community connection. Print may be getting the first makeover, because that’s what readers are used to paying hundreds of dollars a year for; the paywall coming later this year will reaffirm the value of their subscription. The centerpiece of content and community connection is the Register’s re-engagement of its local community. The Register, like many dailies, had invested in community weeklies over the years. Like many, they’d gone through richer and leaner times, sometimes stepchildren of the mothership. Now 15 of the 24 weeklies have been completely redesigned, under the leadership of the peripatetic digital innovator Rob Curley. They’ve got lots more of that new staffing devoted to them and both more news space and community contribution space. Stories can run first in the weeklies — and then be picked up, if broad enough, by the Register overall. (You can get a good, wider sense of the new strategy in this recent interview with Curley.) This isn’t newfangled hyperlocal; they’re simply trying to do a hell of a job at local. It’s a move that understands that many readers take in the paper inside out — from their neighborhood to the wider metro area. To get the weekly papers, you have to be a Register subscriber overall, and that’s an important new step, just announced. If you’re a subscriber, you get the shiny new now broadsheet (formerly tabloid) new weeklies, most 24 pages in size. If not, you get a smaller Community News product, with samplings of news and, of course, localized advertising. The message, reminiscent of the membership pitches we’re hearing from Charleston to Los Angeles, is clear: When you’re in the club, we treat you like family. The main metro paper has gotten a major facelift as well. Among the add-backs:
It is addition by addition — though addition that followed much subtraction. The Register had been bled down to 180 newsroom staffers, from its 1990s zenith of 380, through its years of ownership shuffles and bankruptcy. So, in a sense, King Kushner is presiding over a royal restoration. That doesn’t minimize the investment, or its contrarian nature; it just puts in into context. Many of its principles harken back to the days of deep local coverage, days when circulation was a lot higher. Even in 2004, it was 370,911 Sunday and 302,864 daily. Today, it’s 294,000 Sunday and 160,000 daily, for print. (The new ABC data have myriad categories, but print-to-print comparisons work best.) When Kushner took over the paper, with its 180 newsroom staffers, it was profitable. Now, with the substantial investment he’s made in staffing and product, it’s unclear if it still is. 2100 Trust is making an investment in product, with the intention of so satisfying core readers — in print and in digital — that it can recoup that investment and more. So, let’s look at those numbers:
So let’s say the new ownership has added $9.6 million to the cost structure of the Register. Let’s assume the 2100 Trust would like to maintain the profit of five to 10 percent that it likely inherited. What kind of new revenue does it have to bring in? Advertising will likely be down. Print advertising is drifting downward, still, at metros. Digital may rise a bit. Figure the Register could be down $5 million this year. Other revenue sources — the Register bought into a new events business through its purchase of the OC Metro group in December — may help, but that probably will take a couple of years to kick in. So the big bet is on readers. Core readers. Already, the Register has seized its pricing opportunities. It took over a Register without much circulation pricing discipline. Kushner has rapidly introduced, and is cycling into, new pricing. The new price is $30 per four weeks for a seven-day subscription, or $390 a year. That means lots of readers are beginning to pay more, lots more, for the Register. So let’s do some estimating. Let’s say they are paying, on average, $60 a year more than before. If all those 124,000 maintain their subs, that brings in $7.4 million annually. If the Register can yield an average $80 per year from those same subscribers, that would be $9.2 million annually. There are lots of other up and down factors here — cancelled subs because of the pricing and added revenue from Sunday-only buyers, among them. Further, the Register’s metered paywall goes up this year, Kushner says. Once that goes up, the Register’s subscribers will no longer have the choice of dropping their subscriptions in favor of free digital. That loophole will be closed — and that supports the higher prices. Long story short, it’s possible the Register could take in about as much new money in circulation revenue as it is putting into its expanded news products. It still wouldn’t be enough to make up for ad revenue decline, but that’s a problem common among metros. So Kushner’s bet is a bet on the core. Core product. Core readers. It’s another intended virtuous circle:
That’s the playbook, based on the restoration of a community-oriented newspaper’s mandate. The golden envelope program reinforces that positioning, at low cost and high profile. 2100 Trust is doing the right things in the right order. The big question: Can it round that circle fast enough to satisfy its investors? For everyone else, it provides another lab. We have the Advance labs and we have the Register labs, each a relatively pure form of marketplace experimentation. Within two years, we’ll know which approach, if either, wins a prize. |
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