Meigs Field’s destruction, 10 years later

March 28, 2013

“The reason he did it that way was because he knew he had to cheat to win,” Whitney said. “The fact that the mayor would do something illegal like this was shocking. But, in a sense, it wasn’t because the mayor had gotten so desperate and obsessed with this concept. He said it was terrorism, but he always wanted to close it for a park. And frankly, the park is not that much to write home about. After 10 years, it’s kind of disappointing.”

via 10 years later: The nighttime raid that destroyed Meigs Field – Chicago Sun-Times

I’ve read quite a few criticisms of former Mayor Daley but “He had to cheat to win” has got to be in the top 5 harshest reviews.

Also, I don’t normally recommend reading comment sections but the one from a former president of the Friends of Meigs Field makes a cogent argument for why the greater crime was the mishandling of Meigs Field as a monetary asset that might have helped close some budget shortfalls.

A sitcom moment in an article about a talk show

March 25, 2013

From his vantage point on the set, Lauer believes Today has turned a corner. “The show that you watched yesterday and today is fundamentally different than the show we were doing six months ago,” he says. “That’s been a conscious effort. We will find a way each day to uplift and inspire you. It’s more who we are. We are not dour, depressed people.”

(“That’s who we are!” declares Hoda Kotb, the co-host of the tacky fourth hour of Today, who barges into the room with Kathie Lee Gifford.)

via Matt Lauer and the Decline of NBC’s ‘Today’ Show — New York Magazine

The whole piece is worth reading but this is my favorite part. Mostly because it reads like an almost too-good-to-be-true Lenny and Squiggy-style entrance from “Laverne and Shirley.” (Also this is Kotb and Gifford’s only appearance in the entire piece so it was used entirely for the punchline.)

Links to the past: Digital publishing edition

March 24, 2013

Here’s what caught my eye over the past week:

A hotel doorman from the Talbott Hotel in the Gold Coast helped save a baby’s life, which brought us this quote from him: “I’m 54, but I can still run pretty good, especially if there’s a baby that needs help.”

Lots of print publications use “Tell us what you think!” or “Send us your picks” when trying to create Web content around its top lists of burgers, bars, etc. The Chicago Reader took it up a few levels by creating an evolving virtual jukebox of its readers’ favorite songs.

This Adweek piece about ghost websites that manufacture traffic for the purposes of selling ads but have no real readers was a big talker this week. In related news, 60% of people can’t recall the last banner ad they saw.

Even monkeys don’t want anything to do with selfish people.

How The Onion, Vice and Gawker are creating mini-agencies within their media companies.

Time Out Chicago is shuttering its print edition and going all-digital, triggered by an offer from The Sun-Times.

The City of Chicago owes $57.8 million dollars to the company that owns the parking meters because the Daley administration allowed a competing parking garage to open near one the company owned. (In related news: The parking  meter contract included monopolistic guarantees!)

A Gingrich/Santorum 2012 ticket was scuttled because neither could agree who would end up as vice-president which is the Republican primary contest in a nutshell.

Google Alerts are kinda busted.

There’s plenty of information to be had out there unless you’re hoping it’s about your local neighborhood.

And finally, here are a couple pictures of Allison Janney dancing on a table and looking like the coolest person ever.

Loyalty over linkbait

March 23, 2013

Broadcasting & Cable has some interesting quotes from Vivian Schiller, senior VP and chief digital officer, NBC News about why NBC broke up its joint relationship with Microsoft and moved away from its portal model to one of – according to B&C – “building a loyal following rather than blind page views.”

“What you get with a portal is a huge [influx] of traffic and you see a lot of unique visitors,” said Schiller during a keynote discussion with B&C programming editor Andrea Morabito as part ofB&C/Multichannel News’ Next TV summit on Thursday. “But the bounce rate is extremely high… It’s not really going to be your loyal, engaged audience.”

[SNIP]

“I think that how you measure success is changing,” she said. “It’s about finding your niche, finding your quality and tapping into what you can do best.”

Truth. Although how this squares with NBC’s decision to shutter Everyblock – as unique and niche a news site as there was with a loyal, engaged audience – is for others to answer.

In any case, unique content brings you loyalty. If your headlines or story structure are all about the quick-click you won’t stand out. If you can promise advertisers consistent traffic from a specific demographic or provide a type of content consistently to subscribers who want it, you can sell that. Traffic spikes and stories with empty calories that don’t speak to your core audience are not monetizable and a waste of your time.

Moreover, if you’re chasing the same stories as everyone else, that’s a mistake. As a news site, know your core subjects and develop your newsroom around them. You don’t have to weigh in on every little thing just because it’s “blowing up on social.” (For this week, we can call this the “Not-everyone-needs-to-cover-the-Check-Please!-host-search rule.) Frequent deviation from your core subjects will confuse your audience and dilute your site’s value. Know what you do and do it well and leave the rest to others who can’t.

The above developed from some things I posted to Twitter yesterday. Thanks to Benji Feldheim and Ernest Wilkins for their thoughts on it.

Today in “Questionable Use of Newsroom Resources in 2013″

March 21, 2013

You’re The Washington Post. In the past year you’ve made headlines on all the news/media blogs about an incident where a young blogger you employed passed along an inflammatory rumor as fact in one post, which damaged your reputation for truth and reporting, and poorly attributed information in another, which led to cries of plagiarism. You end up firing her. In the post-mortem, there’s a lot of talk about the value of grindhouse blogging and how it contributes to errors like this. There’s also speculation as to whether the Washington Post can adequately support such an operation.

So obviously when you’re planning on hiring an arts and style blogger a year later you pretty much structure the job with exactly the same kind of pressures that led you to fire the other blogger in the first place.

“This blogger should be able to identify trends, cutting through the noise of the Internet to bring context and perspective to a Washington audience…We envision at least a dozen pieces of content per day, with the knowledge that one great sentence can equal one great post.”

Please cut through the noise of the Internet…and publish more noise. One great sentence can be a great thought – or a great tweet, at least – and be a thing of value but it hardly leaves room for context and perspective. And the suggested topics aren’t exactly ones that cry out for more words, particularly from the Washington Post.

Objections were made to the job posting and a writer from Slate objected to all the objections saying it was a great job because it was how he got his start at New York mag’s Vulture blog back in 2007.

Yes, this would be a great job if it wasn’t at the Washington Post and you were working at a startup where the expectations are different. And maybe if this was 2007.

Not only is the Washington Post ignoring what happened last year but it’s also pretending that there aren’t countless other blogs that do this sort of thing, do it better and do it without the ethical missteps. (Vulture, for one!) Why not task a writer with 3-4 pieces per day of varying length which strike a balance between aggregation, original reporting and analysis? It would be different enough, likely offer more value and be the kind of thing that breaks through the noise.  Locally, the Chicago Tribune‘s Eric Zorn and Chicago magazine’s Whet Moser produce great work in this vein and are duly recognized for elevating the conversation.

Not that I’m saying longer pieces are always the best idea. For example, an editor assigning one of its lead feature writers 1000+ words on (the midway point of?) the search for a new host of a popular public television show might not be the best use of constrained newsroom resources. How much more of a competitive advantage does that get you when you know all your competitors can write around the nut of the story by putting far fewer resources into it? Especially when the nut of the story comes down to little more than an audience data capture effort by the show* and is “influential but non-binding” according to the show’s producer?

In that case, one good sentence would have sufficed.

* Really? You need a street address for a vote? Sure you do.

You can’t have one without the other

March 19, 2013

“…the community that sustained the Phoenix has passed from the scene. At one time the Boston area was awash in concert venues, record stores, guitar emporiums, independent book stores, head shops — the kinds of businesses that reached their customers by advertising in alternative weeklies. Now they are almost entirely gone. There was very little to offset the costs of producing a free magazine and a free website. Its no wonder that Mindich personally had to subsidize the Phoenix to the tune of $30,000 a week, according to a report in Boston magazine.

via MediaShift . How the Boston Phoenix Kept Its Readers But Lost Its Advertisers | PBS.

How publishers will live after the death of display advertising

March 16, 2013

My friend Mike Fourcher, new media entrepreneur and erstwhile publisher of Center Square Journal, has a smart post on his blog about the death of the Boston Phoenix and Google Reader. Mike argues these two events further illustrate the death knell ringing for display advertising as readers become less passive and information becomes more readily available.

What’s the solution? Mike says:

The rest of the publishing world, especially start-up operations that lack a strong brand and ad sales team to support them (i.e. non- Condé Nast/Gawker/Disney/Tribune), will need to build their revenue plans around active reader interactions. Subscriptions are an obvious path, but so are ticketed events, survey participation and merely attending free events sponsored by publications. We will have to consciously choose to support publications either with our wallets, our feet or our data.

Three things I thought about after reading the above, most of which have more to do with larger brands/publishers than startups:

First, events are great but they should be more than “come meet the writer” or quasi-TED gatherings. The Chicago Tribune has a two-tiered approach that grew out of its Trib Nation community engagement. Not only do they hold events with columnists and primary sources but they also offer classes on how to build your own blog or how to find ways to pay for college. At its core, the Tribune is using the resources and people it has to offer something of value beyond a news product.

Along those lines, publishers have an opportunity to disrupt the traditional ad production model by providing more creative ad services for clients. These services include print and display ad production, experiential/event opportunities and branded/native content creation published on their owned sites. In the last year, a few digital publishers have experimented with the latter but traditional print publishers have lagged behind in part because of the structural and ethical considerations (exceptions are The Atlantic and The Economist though the former found itself tripped by a bit). Most publishers create sales and marketing staffs based on selling ads, not around the idea of a mini-agency within a publisher. As for the ethics, Time Out Chicago‘s Frank Sennett published a set of guidelines for sponsored/native content and I’ve yet to see anyone present a smarter argument for how to handle this.

Lastly, though display advertising as it exists now is still dying, advertisers will still look for branding awareness and agencies will still look for impressions, at least in the near-term. Publishers will need to provide other products – print and digital – that provide both. While sponsored content guides as inserts in your daily newspaper or weekly magazine are one possibility (and allow for an arm’s length between the primary product and the advertorial), the “presented by” types of placements found in apps and tablet products are another more traditional placement.

For roughly a year* before I left Chicago magazine, I spearheaded the launch two apps: a “best of” dining and drinking app for smartphones and a newsreader/digital magazine app for tablets. As you can see, the mobile app not only offers sponsor placement but also a spot for the client’s own branded content – distinct from the editorial (“Ketel One Guide to Drinking in Chicago”). Both the tablet app and the smartphone app had sponsor logo placement on the splash screen too and the client received a co-branded presence in any of the promotion ads for the apps that ran in ads in Chicago magazine, on the website and in other Tribune publications.

If I were doing the project again now, I’d argue for creating a co-branded, mobile-friendly microsite within Chicago magazine’s larger .com.  The dining and drinking content would be complimented by daily content and lists at the forefront. Sponsor placement would run throughout the site and perhaps even geotarget so users could find, say, bars near them that serves the client’s products.

All of this involves what Mike said above: getting beyond the products from the newsroom or the ads that traditionally supported it and finding the value elsewhere in the building or in new product forms.

* Admittedly, this should not have taken a year but that’s a story for another time.