nytimes.com Design Director Q&A

This is an interesting installment in the New York Times' "Talk to the Newsroom" series -- a question and answer session with Khoi Vinh, Design Director.

In the discussion, he notes:

Over the past two-plus years, as The Times newsroom has embraced blogging with tremendous alacrity, we've created over 150 blogs, and over a third of those remain active today.

This actually goes back to my first post. That is HUGE number of blogs!!! Way too many, in my opinion, and I think that the fact that only a third of them are still active is a testament to that. Granted, some may be blogs devoted to specific news events. For instance, I know Newsday had a Pope Blog to chronicle the recent papal visit. (Not sure how successful that was, but seems like kind of a silly idea to me.) The Times, though, had this special section, which I think is well-designed and works well.

Vinh also notes that they use Word Press to publish their blogs, not their custom content management system. It seems like it would be only a matter of time before blogging technology is built into their CMS.

Other interesting points from the Q&A:

• They prefer to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to “hand code” everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver
• They are focused on maintaining the 150-year-old brand identity of the Times, even in the online medium
• They recognize The Guardian as a competitor that uses design well

Moment of Truth

I was glad to read this profile of Sports Illustrated reporter Gary Smith, who is one of my favorite journalists. He wrote one of my two favorite pieces of sportswriting, an article called Moment of Truth about a photograph of the TCU locker room before the January 1957 Cotton Bowl. It features this passage, which I think will demonstrate why it's one of my favorite articles:

The older you get, the more you realize that this is what sports are most about: the moments before, the times when a person takes a flashlight to his soul and inspects himself for will and courage and spirit, the stuff that separates men such as Jordan and Ali from the rest more than anything in their forearms or their fingers or their feet. Who am I? And, Is that going to be enough? That's what you're peeking at through the door, and believe me, those are two big and scary questions, the two best reasons for all of god's children to play sports, so they can start chewing on them early.

If you want to read the rest of the article, it is -- interestingly -- available on Google Books. I don't really understand Google Books and what it has and what it doesn't, given the copyright issues, etc. Maybe a topic for a future blog post.

For the record, my other favorite piece of sportswriting is John Updike's "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu." Great headline. Favorite passage here:

Understand that we were a crowd of rational people. We knew that a home run cannot be produced at will; the right pitch must be perfectly met and luck must ride with the ball. Three innings before, we had seen a brave effort fail. The air was soggy; the season was exhausted. Nevertheless, there will always lurk, around a corner in a pocket of our knowledge of the odds, an indefensible hope, and this was one of the times, which you now and then find in sports, when a density of expectation hangs in the air and plucks an event out of the future.

Fisher, after his unsettling wait, was wide with the first pitch. He put the second one over, and Williams swung mightily and missed. The crowd grunted, seeing that classic swing, so long and smooth and quick, exposed, naked in its failure. Fisher threw the third time, Williams swung again, and there it was. The ball climbed on a diagonal line into the vast volume of air over center field. From my angle, behind third base, the ball seemed less an object in flight than the tip of a towering, motionless construct, like the Eiffel Tower or the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was in the books while it was still in the sky. Brandt ran back to the deepest corner of the outfield grass; the ball descended beyond his reach and struck in the crotch where the bullpen met the wall,
bounced chunkily, and, as far as I could see, vanished.

Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs—hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn't tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted "We want Ted" for
minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.

Why No Most Viewed?

I have been annoyed for a long time at the fact that the New York Times make available its lists of the most emailed, most blogged and most searched articles -- but not the most viewed. These lists, while I suppose interesting, completely fail to tell me what the most important article in the newspaper was. The one that, if I want to know what everyone else knows, I should read.

Instead, the most-emailed list tells me which articles people find either funny or relevant to people in their lives. For instance, travel articles (like this one on Yosemite, currently in eighth place) make this list with what seems like a disproportionate frequency. But this isn't surprising if you think about the circumstances. People reading these articles are likely to have trips planned to the destinations being written about. And they are likely to have companions on these trips. And of course, they want to send them the article. They also have friends and acquantinces who know they have the trip planned, and who want to make sure that they've seen the article. So they email it too. None of these reasons, however, mean that I should read it. Since I don't plan on visiting Yosemite any time soon, the article is of literally no value to me. But there it is, on the list.

It seems like another big reason that articles get emailed is for their human interest value or humor. For instance, the article in the number two position on the most-emailed list is "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Worries," a feature story on "nakations" -- nudist resorts and vacation destinations. This story is entertaining. It is funny. It is a good read. And at the end of it, you want to share it with your buddy or your significant other, with a jokey note.

When I worked at the Post, we used to call these stories "talkers." There's no news value, but it's something you want to talk to people about -- and these days, something you want to email them about.

All of that is fine and good -- but it still doesn't help me figure out what people are reading.

Likewise with the "most searched" list, which right now looks like this:

bush
health
china
obama
food
education
immigration
iraq
tibet
modern love

All of these terms are too vague -- food?!?! -- for me to have any idea what stories people are reading. The top search term, "bush," returns 126,530 results. Not helpful. The most interesting thing to see here is that the Modern Love column is obviously popular and should be more prominently placed on the home page so that people can find it without searching.

I also suspect that reporters would like to know which articles were read the most. While they may get this info from periodic internal analytics reports, it would be nice to see it in real time.

Technology, Journalism and TV

Back around Super Tuesday, we discussed in class the cool interactive touch-screen map that CNN has been using to display voting-district-by-voting-district results on the night of each primary.

With the touch of a finger, John King can show us not only what's happening in a state but what could happen. For instance, a typical state on the night of a Democratic primary has dark blue (Obama) clusters around urban areas, while the rural parts of the state are colored light blue (Clinton). But in an instant, King can zoom in and show us the undecided areas, where the votes haven't been counted or the polls haven't closed yet. Then, with a touch of the finger, he can hypothetically call that area for one of the candidates -- and then we see whether that puts them over the edge in the state or not. It's even faster than real-time, it's pre-predictions.

So, it's no surprise that old media like the New York Times want to get in on this action. As I mentioned in a previous post, nytimes.com features an interactive election map as well. But without the touch screen, it's not nearly as cool. So instead, the Times did a feature-y, personal profile on John King. As a huge CNN fan, I did enjoy finding out that he is engaged to reporter Dana Bash. Besides that detail, the article didn't hold a candle to the experience of watching him on election night. I'm looking forward to seeing a) if other networks will invest in the technology, which was made by a company called Perceptive Pixel, and b) what happens to John King's career.

An Internet Phenomenon as Seen by Old Media

As a student journalist at The Hoya, Georgetown's newspaper, I worked alongside our somewhat inane sex columnist, a girl named Julia Baugher. She was the subject of much office consternation, as an outsized personality in the midst of a bunch of newspaper geeks, and things only got worse when she a) plagiarized a column on Christmas gifts, b) had a series of fights with her editors and c) after she was fired, told everyone (i.e. TV networks) that it was because the Jesuits at Georgetown couldn't handle her racy column.

Since then, things have only gotten worse. (Anyone who has watched someone they dislike become famous will understand why, I think.)

The short version: After college, Julia Baugher moved to New York and decided to reinvent herself as a personality named Julia Allison. She had several different stints in the dating columnist/media airhead/famous-for-nothing/commentator/sexpert/general annoyance arena before landing her latest gig as editor-at-large for Star magazine.

Around this time was when her life on the Web really took off. She started a blog (which she updated CONSTANTLY) and began dating Jakob Lodwick, one of the founders of College Humor. They decided to start a blog about their relationship, jakobandjulia.com. As you can see, that went horribly awry and they basically broke up on their blog. Which was only more fodder for other blogs (mainly in the Gawker family). They began chronicling Julia's every move -- which is easy to do, given how much she puts out there (see: http://twitter.com/juliaallison) -- in a harshly negative light. There is even someone out there who hates her so much they have an entire blog devoted to criticizing her. Basically, she exploded and is now EVERYWHERE I LOOK. (All of this negative attention, by the way, has led to her taken a so-called hiatus on her blog -- but she manages to show up on everyone else's blogs, not to mention her own Twitter and Facebook pages as well as on CABLE, of course.)

Suffice it to say it wasn't much of a surprise on a recent Sunday when I opened the New York Times to find this.

The lengthy profile gets some of her story right. But it misses just how much of her success -- and failure? -- is due to her constant Web presence. This is a woman who has fully embraced technology, and it's not embracing her back! Commenters on Gawker routinely say things I cannot reprint here about her, and they've obviously done real damage. It's a form of online bullying, and it seems like the Times doesn't quite "get" that. She's not Carrie for the Internet age, because Carrie was beloved and respected and popular! And Julia is a Web outcast. The article mentions the vicious comments, but it fails to grasp the power that they have and the dynamics that are really at play -- how the hatred has the ability to bring her down (fewer, at least, wide-eyed blog posts about her dating life) and build her up (more vicious comments on Gawker is Nick Denton's idea of a good time).

Urghhhhhhhh.

WSJ Secretly Free!!

I love this -- a workaround for the Journal's subscription wall. I need to investigate more ... and will be watching for when they turn it off.

Two More Spitzer Notes ...

1. Interesting to see that the latest Paterson news (that he and his wife also had extramarital affairs) was broken by the Daily News, in an exclusive interview -- but because they teased the story online, the Post had time to get it on their cover. Incidentally, the fact that he chose the Daily News is the kind of thing that is a big deal among beat reporters in Albany, who are all competing with each other for the same stories.

2. This Q&A is fascinating, particularly for journalists to see how the Times talks about things like this, and something we would never get access to if it weren't online.

Breaking News: Internet Changes Journalism!!!

... Not quite. We all know the Web has forever changed traditional journalism. But a new report looks at exactly how. This E&P article has some good highlights -- like the idea that whatever the medium, all journalists are essentially covering the same few stories.

Rick Edmonds has a good piece here, focusing on the business side of the equation.

Thoughts on Spitzer ...

Several interesting and relevant notes:

1. The story was broken by a traditional reporter (Danny Hakim of the New York Times) but online at nytimes.com, where it was continuously updated.
2. The steady but somewhat slow drip of details -- how much he spent, what he wanted to do, how the investigation started, whether he would resign -- have made the Web the best source of information. For instance, we all learned that his resignation plans were final this morning via either the Web or TV.
3. Many of those details were contained in the affidavit related to the investigation of the ring, which we were all able to read because it was posted online as a PDF on many many sites, even on nytimes.com.
4. All that said, a very popular online game has been speculating about the print headlines that the New York tabloids would use, or trying to come up with better ones. Why is it, I wonder, that the Post and Daily News save their best puns for the print editions?

Interview with Leslie Primack, student journalist

As a former student journalist, I'm interested in the relationship between print and online journalism particularly at the college level, where many papers don't have the resources necessary to make the initial investment that developing a serious Web presence requires.

For that reason, I emailed with Leslie Primack, a fresman at Brown and a reporter for the Brown Daily Herald, to get her thoughts.

Q: As a consumer of news, where would you say that you primarily get your information -- online or in print? Blogs or newspaper websites?
A: As a college student, I primarily get my global news online at washingtonpost.com, but most of my information comes from reading our school newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald. When I am at home, most of my information comes from the Washington Post each morning and news articles in the New Yorker.

Q: As a student journalist at the Daily Herald, can you describe how the papers' editors view their Web site -- i.e., do they plan extra content for it? Is it treated as a separate publication or just a different medium?
A: Though I’m not involved in online publication, I don’t think the editors plan extra online content, though they do offer numerous options such as Facebook sharing applications and convenient ways to subscribe to the newspaper via email. Blogs are not prominent: though one can register with blogger.com, there are not blogs on browndailyherald.com itself, to my knowledge.

Q: How do you personally use the Web for research in your reporting?
A: I use the Web extensively for each story. It’s invaluable for finding contact information (navigating through the department websites to find professors and officials to interview), and I always begin to set up an interview by emailing the subject. I’ve done interviews with alumni over the phone, and I use their websites to familiarize myself with their background so I can have so questions in mind going into the interview. I’ve also used facebook to find students to interview. (For example, when writing a story on video downloading, I searched for students in the Brown Film Society to get their perspectives.) However, I avoid actually contacting subjects over Facebook, as I feel that using their Brown email address is more professional.

Q: Are you at all concerned about going into newspaper journalism as a career, given the business problems that newspapers are having and their seeming inability to compete with the Web?
A: Yes, only this summer I’ve seen the New York Times increase its price and reduce its size, showing the financial trouble of print journalism. I’d hesitate to go into newspaper journalism because I wouldn’t want to end up writing for a purely online publication or getting laid off.

Q: Would you consider online journalism (working for a blog or news site exclusively) as a career? What do you see as the pros and cons?
A: I wouldn’t consider a career in online journalism. I prefer concrete print publications because I see entirely online things as somehow more abstract and not as reliable (though this may not be the case). I feel that the news loses its power when it can be scrolled through quickly online, and I know that I don’t read the washingtonpost.com very thoroughly because it is difficult to navigate and I get tired of staring at a screen for so long. The positive aspect of online journalism is that it is that the news is so timely and I often find things online just after they’ve happened, instead of in the newspaper the next day.

Q: How do you feel about the shift to online journalism?
A: I think it’s a shame that journalism is shifting to online. Maybe I’m old fashioned but I like holding a newspaper in my hand and seeing the headlines jump out at me. However, I must admit that online publications are more convenient and for the most part free, so many consumers prefer them.

Silly Old Newspapers ...

Both of these papers put the story about the letters sent to Congress with a photo of the bombing site on their front pages. As Gawker notes, most everyone knew there was no connection early this morning -- but there were the headlines in cold hard newsprint, unchangeable.

More Drudge Influence

I heard about this story but just learned that it was actually Drudge who revealed that Prince Harry was fighting with British troops in Afghanistan -- prompting his removal.

This piece takes one stance on the tricky journalism ethics here. Interestingly, no one expects Drudge to abide by those same ethics ...

Old Media on (Very) New Media

It seems like when election time rolls around, we always get an interesting look at how well old media understands the Web. In 2004, it was the fascination with Howard Dean's netroots campaign.

This year's online story is John McCain's daughter Meghan McCain's blog, which was the subject of an old media story on the front page of the LA Times.

It seems to me that the story doesn't totally "get" the blog. To me, the blog is very much like lots and lots of personal blogs out there. It's a look at her daily life -- mundane at times, silly at times, happy at times, too-much-information at times. These are not adjectives that describe typical political communications, but they do describe typical blogs. Maybe the reporter is too familiar with the former and not at all with the latter?

The Atlantic 'Crunches Content'

This is an interesting move -- I wonder if it's true that online content necessarily has to be shorter. Speaking solely from my personal experience, I have no problem reading long-form items, including journalism, online. I regularly read the New York Times magazine cover stories online. But, I have noticed colleagues who prefer to print out documents longer than a few pages. Could it be a generational difference? And could the Atlantic's audience be older?

Drudge: Journalism or Not?

If you've been following the Democratic primary race, then you probably heard about the Drudge Report posting of a photo of Barack Obama in Kenyan dress, claiming it had been sent out by a Clinton campaign staffer. The story -- and the photo -- were widely picked up by mainstream media outlets, including the New York Post and Daily News, who both put it on their covers. And the news even made it into a New York Times article in the A section, headlined "Clinton Campaign Starts 5-Point Attack on Obama."

But all of these papers were citing Drudge as their only source -- no one had any other confirmation that the item was sent out by a Clinton staffer, which is the only thing that makes it newsworthy.

It's interesting that these mainstream newspapers, who have standards of journalistic ethics and -- at least at the NYT -- standards on how they verfiy things from blind sources, are putting so much stock in Drudge. It just goes to show how someone with little more than a Web site and an email address can gain tremendous credibility, even in journalistic and political circles.

Even more interesting is whether what Drudge is doing should be called journalism. On the one hand, he regularly writes his own headlines that are links to other publications -- but they are often overstated, dramatized or misleading. But, when he originally posted the Obama photo, he included his post photos of Sen. Clinton and President Clinton also wearing ethnic dress -- much as a mainstream journalist might try to qualify a statement in a quest for objectivity.

For Matt Drudge's perspective, you can read this speech he gave at the National Press Club ten years ago, called "Anyone With A Modem Can Report On The World."

An Ambitious Web Plan for an Old Journalism Institution

The New York Observer announced today a big plan to expand their popular blog on New York politics, the Politicker, to all 50 states. As someone who works in public affairs and political communications, I think this plan has a great chance for success.

As the great Tip O'Neill once said, "all politics is local." And while the quote might be overused, it still rings true. For instance, right now I'm working for a client who has an interest in an issue that's being debated in the Pennsylvania legislature. Without being in Harrisburg, it's very difficult for me to figure out what's going on on a timely basis. My only option is to read the website of the Patriot-News, which often doesn't cover our issue. So, I hope it succeeds.

A Look Back at Election Coverage

Some fun with the Wayback Machine! Here is what the New York Times election coverage page looked like on Thursday Nov. 9, 2000, and here is the eight-years-later version. These days, it's hard to imagine a news site having an all-blue background like that one did. The white background definitely adds to the clean element on the page, I would argue. Interesting that eight years ago, though, they had an interactive map (at least of Florida).

LA Times Woes Continue

As chronicled here in the New York Times, LA Times publisher David Hiller is having a rough time. The piece notes that the LAT was late to get on the Web bandwagon:

For years, as newspaper Web sites became deeper, richer and more complex, Tribune’s sites fell behind, limiting their ability to draw readers and advertisers. Just last week, the Times Web site added the ability to put hyperlinks in its articles, something other major papers have had for as long as a decade.

It's worth asking how much that strategy contributed to their current problems. I'm sure it's a lot.

One Mission, Two Newsrooms

A long, in-depth look at the challenges the Washington Post is having with its online operation (and vice versa). As a former washingtonpost.com employee, I have to say that the physical separation (The Post is in DC, post.com is across the Potomac in VA) is a huge factor. Supposed colleagues rarely meet each other face to face, which breeds big distrust. When I was there working in the Sports section as an online producer, there were a few editors on the print side who were “good guys,” but everyone else largely ignored and/or antagonized us. Another big factor then (2002-04) was that a lot of the print guys were not technologically savvy and didn’t understand — or want to understand — that the Web was important. It seems that that realization has to be clear now.

Election Coverage!

Of course, election night has always been one of the busiest nights of the year for any newsroom. But before the Internet, reporters and editors would wait for the polls to close, get as many results as they could, write their stories, and go home for the night. As we know, this sometimes produced disastrous results:

But these days, the old guard newspapers — the New York Times and Washington Post — are providing real-time updates throughout the night via their web sites. The New York Times web site features interactive maps that are updated continuosuly. The Washington Post has even expanded to the mobile world — you can sign up to get text messages with election results.

I’d love to know how popular that texting service was on Super Tuesday. My guess is that people who care enough to sign up for texts would probably be in front of a TV or at their computers.

Interestingly, the “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline could never happen online — it would simply be erased moments later, as the AP did when it mistakenly called Missouri for Hillary Clinton last Tuesday, and then had to reverse its call and give the state to Barack Obama. Little harm was done — in fact, I doubt many viewers will remember that mistake. A far cry from the fame (infamy?) of the image above.

Blog Overload?

Below are just a few(!) of the blogs that are listed on washingtonpost.com’s Blog Directory. In my opinion, there are way too many. No one could possibly follow this many blogs overall, not to mention just from one Web site. What’s more, their names do little to help readers differentiate and make good choices about what they want to read with their limited time. For instance, in the Politics section alone there’s The Fix, The Sleuth, The Talk and The Trail. Those all sound the same to me! However, they are all traditional areas of coverage for mainstream newspapers, and while producing them is certainly a lot of work, they are not totally beyond the realm of the newspaper’s coverage.

Take a look, though, at some of these names and descriptions. When was the last time you saw these topics covered in-depth in the print edition of the Washington Post?

PostRock: J. Freedom du Lac and and David Malitz riff on the world of popular (and unpopular) music.

Channel This: Writers for The Post’s Style section recap their favorite TV shows.

Offbeat: Emil Steiner on real, strange news.

Under God: Claire Hoffman takes a daily look at what we do in the name of God.

On The Plane: Post reporters file dispatches as they travel overseas with the president and other officials.

I wonder: do these topics really better lend themselves to online coverage, and that’s why they deserve space online but not in print? Or is the Post desparately trying to drive page views by blogging about whatever is left over in their notebooks?

Welcome!

This blog is intended to look at how the Web — in all its different forms — is affecting traditional print journalism. I would argue that the advent of the Web is the single biggest issue facing newspapers and magazines today, both from an editorial and business standpoint.

On the editorial front, the world simply does not operate on a 24-hours news cycle any more. By the time we get the newspaper in the morning, chances are we’ve already read about much of the “news” online. This seems to have produced two shifts: one, more newspaper content is “news analysis” — pieces that try to lend another layer to the traditiona. who, what, when, where, why and how of a story; and two, newspapers have ramped up their online content to be continuously updated. Case in point: even the staid New York Times, which didn’t even print a color photograph (too racy!) on its front page until 1997, now has a variety of blogs on its Web site. (Its blog City Room even covered the death of Heath Ledger with minute-by-minute updates — a huge departure for a newspaper that has always been above the fray of celebrity journalism — but that’s another topic).

From an advertising standpoint, newspapers are dying. Their main revenue stream — classified advertising — has been almost wholly usurped by searchable, real-time and often free Web sites like Craig’s List. This crisis is affecting newspaper in different ways, which I’ll explore on this blog. To read about a recent example, check out this video and article about the departure of L.A. Times editor James O’Shea, who quit out of a refusal to make the budget cuts he was asked to implement by the publisher.

More to come …