LocalNewser dispatches from the frontlines of local news

Remember this Number: 19.3

When I look at a number like 19.3--especially when it's a figure that's "compounded annually," I'm thinking immediately of our beloved banks and their gouge-you-until-you-die credit cards.

19.3% We're Talking Ridiculous Credit Card Money, Folks

The only way 19.3% interest is coming into my life is when I'm paying it, because I'm sure not getting that kind of interest on any account I have from those same beloved banks.

But here's why you need to remember 19.3:  it's the forecast for growth in local advertising spending between 2009 and 2014.

That's a significant number, wouldn't you say?  Oh.  I'm sorry.  Did I forget the key takeaway?  I did.  I'm not talking about local television, radio or newspapers.  I'm talking online and digital. BIA/Kelsey predicts online and interactive local media spending will take off, from $15.2 billion to $36.7 billion.

At the same time, local legacy media will keep on sliding, dropping slow and steady this year, going flat in 2011 and then (hoo-ray!) the big rebound!  Okay.  Not exactly big or a rebound. But a lift.  A little lift.  "Even with improvements in the overall economy, we do not anticipate a rapid recovery among traditional media over the forecast period, because we believe the structural change in the local media industry has accelerated," Neal Polachek, president of BIA/Kelsey, told MediaWeek.

What that means in English is this:  everything's changed, and the money's headed online--big time.  Run the lines out a few years and tell me where you want to be working in 2015:  at a television station?  Or online?  Sure, stations will say "we are online," but remember what Polachek said, that structural change has accelerated.  Structural change does not mean adding a URL to your traditional, 1950's vintage media model.  It means rethinking the whole damn thing from the ground up.  And some people--the big thinkers out there--are going to get very stinking rich.

So think about your career.  And remember 19.3.

Silos are Dead: The Future of News is Now

I've had a chance to talk about the future of local news with Len Witt, who heads the Center for Sustainable Journalism (and--full disclosure--with whom I work on a community journalism project supported by the Harnisch Foundation) and he's a forward-thinker.  He's also a university journalism professor who knows how to shoot video and get it onto the web, which immediately puts him at the far end of the bell curve.

The interview he posted today with Paul Bass of the New Haven Independent is worth your time.  Key takeaways:  silos are dead, and multiplatform journalists who do it all are in.  Not the future--the now.  Oh, and this is really important:  Bass is having the time of his life.

Truth be told, I'm deeply involved in the "morphing of old style newsrooms that were just print, or just TV, or just radio" as Bass says, "into multimedia news sites." And I'll have more to report on that soon.  (I'm also having a fantastic time re-inventing what we call local news) In the meantime, meet a pioneer, reporting in from the digital front:

San Francisco’s Top Local Website: Not News, Not Weather–It’s Yelp

Take that, San Francisco Chronicle. How you like them apples, KTVU?

Research out from the digital number-crunchers at Internet Broadcasting reveal some intriguing insights into what people want from local websites--and what local newsers might want to think about as they try to lure those eyeballs.

In SF, where traditional local megabrands include the Chronicle (online as SFGate.com) and TV stations like KTVU, the dominant local website is Yelp, with nearly 20 percent market reach (19.7%) according to IBS.  "Yelp is the most visited local site in San Francisco, ahead of weather, news, sports, TV and Newspaper sites," said Arul Sundaram of Internet Broadcasting. "Yelp has created compelling, deep local content in the Bay Area and has worked to build its local brand."

Yelp, the user-generated database of customer reviews (the local dry cleaner, that new thai restaurant) launched in 2004, and according to TechCrunch, the site had six million page views a month by 2007 (that and $31 million in capital).

Another local blockbuster is Weather.com, which is the top local site in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Boston and Atlanta.  How do you compete against a vertical site like weather?  The researchers say it's the content, baby.  Have good stuff, and be ready to rock when opportunity knocks (and the traffic spikes).  As Sundaram observes:

"On average, the leading weather sites jumped to 15% reach in December from 10% in November, while TV grew to 10.4% from 9.2%.  This difference in reach illustrates both the challenge and the opportunity facing local media. Event driven traffic causes new usage and can be won by local media, but only if they invest in creating relevant content and brands to overcome the specialist focus of the vertical competitors."

LocalNewsers: Are You as Tech Savvy as a 13 Year Old?

Watching the snow fall here in Brooklyn, I waited and waited, knowing it would only be a matter of time.

And then, there it was: the reporter starting a liveshot, wooden ruler in hand, ready for the obligatory snowfall measurement. Yes. I could relax. The Gods of cliche would be appeased. And all was well again.

A lot of what I saw was dreadful, repetitive and--at times--insulting. A local news viewer in Baltimore tweeted at one point in disgust that local newsers in Bmore had just advised him not--repeat NOT--to stick his arm inside a snow blower.

In New Haven, a meteorologist even took to the air to concede his original forecast had been off (not by much, to be fair) but his concession of inaccuracy was in one way immensely new and refreshing--and it got people talking.

Most stations in the blizzard's path put on their standard storm performance: tons of crews, lots of liveshots, on early and staying on late. Admirable and to be expected. Some stations, including New York's WNBC, aired extended packages on kids sledding, snow shoveling, and they gave us all the experience of watching Chuck Scarborough describe--with seemingly genuine interest--viewers' snow photos.

In Philadelphia, though, KYW got some new ideas into the wintry mix, using Skype in a variety of ways, as Jonathan Storm described in the Inquirer: "CBS3's Ben Simmoneau and Anne-Marie Green Skyped from the shuttle taking them to their wintry posts, showing conditions in Glenside. Consumer reporter Jim Donovan cruised the city in a slightly more organized mode with "Skype Team 3," reporting with the Internet telephone-video software, a laptop, a Web cam, an iPhone, and two producers."

And in a nearly perfect demonstration of how stations are being lapped by technology that a new generation understands far more intuitively, Philly's Fox 29 went live via Skype thanks to a 13 year old, doing a cyber liveshot from his own backyard, to the amazement of the anchor in the studio: "There was a 13-year-old, Will in Malvern, broadcasting live from his backyard on Fox29, mumbling something about how he had hooked up his regular camera to his laptop and was streaming out, 'like mini-TV . . . you can just broadcast.'

'You are brilliant,' said anchor Sheinelle Jones.

But not necessarily the world's greatest reporter. Will didn't have a lot to say about the snow. 'I'm more interested in the technical end,' said he."

Not brilliant. Current. And smart local newsers ought to at least be as current as a 13 year old, wouldn't you say?

Social Media Week: New York–Watch LIVE

Stabbing Deep into the Heart of the Way Local Newsers Tell Stories

Remember, they're laughing because it's true.

I didn't intend to post this, but the more I've watched it, the more convinced I am that this British sendup of everything that's wrong with local news storytelling is ever more clearly a sign that this is a way of doing news that is rapidly dying--and deservedly so.  So many of the people I've known in the business have done things not because they made any sense or helped tell a story, but because that's how they learned it.  That's how it's always been done.  So we (they) keep taking those five useless steps toward the camera in standups and thinking they're being "active."

I've worked in newsrooms where consultants arrived one day to tell us to start walking in standups, and then months later, a new memo arrives saying "stop walking."  I've been ordered to turn and point in liveshots--no matter what the story--and then done network shots where I was told upfront not to move in any way, shape or form:  no pointing, turning, zooming.

So watch this brilliant video and be honest.  Do you tell stories this way?  If you do, you may be opting out of the future of local news.  You may be throwing all your chips in with "old media" and the clear as ever cliches of local news that just seem more irrelevant than ever.

Remember.  They laugh because it's true.

[Not sure how to tell a story that breaks through the screen without making you look like a 1970s throwback? Good news--I do coaching. Call me.]

Told Ya So: NBC to Compete Directly Against Its Own Affiliates for Local Online

NBC Loves Local. Just Not Its Affiliates All That Much.

Remember how we told you a while back that NBC had helpfully bought up domain names in most major cities across the country, so that NBC and its stations could work together to dominate local media online?  This was not part of any plan to compete against NBC's own affiliates (Heavens, no!), but rather a wise company snatching up prime domain space just in case.

Yeah, well scratch all that.  If you're an NBC affiliate and you don't want to be part of the "Locals Only" concept in your own city, well, NBC's going to go it alone.  And yeah, that means competing against you.

LocalNewser was first to report the coast-to-coast domain grab last July, in which domains like "NBCBoston" and "NBCIndianapolis" were bought up in the name of General Electric. "NBCBoston" of course, would be a major change in branding for the Sunbeam-owned NBC affiliate in Boston, WHDH, which has invested heavily in "7News."  So WHDH declined to "go local" NBC's way, and now, as has been widely reported, NBC's said gotcha.  We go with "NBCBoston" and you go with whdh.com.

As of this morning, "NBCBoston" brings up nothing on the internet.  A Google search returns WHDH's website, which could of course be changing soon, when NBC decides to brand NBCBoston as something distinct and separate from Channel 7.  How this will work with NBC content on the WHDH site--and vice versa--remains to be seen.  But be clear:  this is just the beginning.

Deconstructing Ad Age’s “Not Dead Yet” Editorial on Local TV

Hey, here's the good news: Ad Age says local TV's not--as has been reported--dead. The venerable trade pub starts its argument for continued life in local television with a cliche: "Add local TV to the list of those whose death rumors have been greatly exaggerated."

Ad Age, increasingly an example of what's dying rather than what's enduring, offers little more than cliches in its argument that it's hardly as bad as has been suggested in the local television world. "There is a glimmer of hope for this beleaguered media channel" (um, local television is a "channel" now?). "NBC's decision to move Jay Leno back to his late-night spot could be seen as a huge victory for the network's local TV affiliates, who detested the programming strategy as Mr. Leno's tanking ratings delivered smaller audiences to their evening news broadcasts."

Yes, okay. It could be seen as a "glimmer of hope." But hope for what? That given another colossal miscalculation by a network, the stations still have the strength to threaten pre-emption of a network show? That is--yes, in a way--a sign of strength. It is not, however, a sign that stations are financially strong. And having "power," but no "money" won't get you very far in this environment. "(NBC) listened to (stations) and reacted," Ad Age suggests. Sure did. Some of the stations that were getting killed were NBC owned-and-operated stations. And others simply said you know what? This affiliate agreement doesn't mean we'll drive our franchise off a bridge into oblivion. But is that "a glimmer of hope?" Or just "not dead yet?"

Well hold your hat, dear reader, because Ad Age has a few more arrows in the quiver. First: midterm elections! C'mon! You know that's going to be money in the bank! Always has, always will. Candidates need local TV, and it's a big payday for affiliates. Yeah, I suppose that's true, even though things weren't exactly a runaway profit machine back in 2008, when there were local candidates, congressional candidates, Senate candidates, and, in some markets, a flood of presidential advertising. 2009 still fell off the edge of the earth. Again, elections are events. A massive shift in how audiences get information--and how advertisers reach customers--well, that's far, far more important than the election cycle. (Anybody notice that candidates have discovered social media? More and more, they're going to find those wonderful local television ads to be simply not worth the money.)

But Ad Age says this is great news: "Ticked off voters, competitive congressional races and crucial gubernatorial contests in states such as California, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania and New York could help inject more than $2.6 billion dollars of political ad spending into the market, the majority of it going to local TV." Yeah, listen up you general managers whose states were not mentioned in that short list! Stop yer bitchin' and look at the glimmer of hope! After all, New York stations might make some serious coin!

And Ad Age's last suggestion may be its most ridiculous. The pub suggests that elections will bring local television a "windfall" that will be turned around to fund upgrades and changes to maximize local television's ability to truly compete--especially against (ready for it?) newspapers.

Oh, for the love of God. Newspapers? Here's how Ad Age puts the rosy, cash-rich scenario: "Local TV stations are arguably better equipped to survive the media transformation than their newspaper counterparts and have an opportunity to reinvest this windfall of good fortune into their future. They should concentrate on broadening their distribution to the places people will be watching in the future -- according to Frank Magid Associates, more than half of U.S. mobile phone subscribers want to tune into live, local news broadcasts on their small screen -- and they should think of themselves as community hubs and useful digital experiences, taking advantage of the unique asset only they offer: a mass of engaged viewers seeking great, local video content."

So take that "windfall" and get yourself some cool iPhone apps for your station and fear not!

Yikes. As Ad Age continues to send its dated--and outdated--material to stations in print--just like they did in Don Draper's day--I sit here blogging on a Metro-North train headed into New York--connected via Wi-Fi and listening to live streaming Irish folk music on my iPhone from Ireland's RTE Radio 1. So here's your LocalNewser tip for stations: save yourself some badly needed cash by cancelling any and all subscriptions to Ad Age. If your sales force wants to know which way the wind is blowing, check out Mashable. (You can find it in this wacky new place: it's called the "internet.")

Reflecting on King, History, and the Gift of Working in Birmingham

Among the many, many blessings I received in my years working as a journalist, perhaps the most surprising were the times I had working as a general assignment reporter in Birmingham in the 1990s.  As a kid from Connecticut, learning the nuance, culture, and history of Alabama were an unexpected gift.  I had a chance to meet some of the very people who marched alongside Dr. King--men and women who put their lives at risk in the pursuit of their shared dream.  On many occasions, I attended services in Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, scene of one of the most horrible acts of racism and hate in the history of our country. Time and time again, I would visit people in homes seemingly unchanged from the 60s, most notably in the two photos that adorned so many walls:  JFK and MLK. I imagine President Obama may have found a place on those walls today.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth

As a history buff and a history major in college, the streets and buildings of Birmingham simply oozed with history--much of it ugly.  But it was also important to be there in the 90s, far enough removed from Bull Conner and his ilk to see the opening of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in 1992, where I was given the honor of interviewing a true Birmingham revolutionary, Dr. Fred Shuttlesworth, subject of one of my very favorite photos of the Civil Rights Movement, a passionate Shuttlesworth in the pulpit at 16th Street, his every cell committed to the cause.

As a kid, my only concept of the City of Birmingham was a bad one.  An ugly steel city known for its hate.  By the time I left Birmingham, I'd come to love the place. I'd laid my own hand on the bars of the cell where Dr. King wrote his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and I'd seen the way city leaders took on the history head first, filling a park where hideous acts were committed by men in police uniforms with art that reflects honestly on that history, lest anyone ever forget.  I came to learn that while there is so much work left to be done, at least in this place, the work was being done out in the open, for all to see.  In other cities far closer to my childhood home, the ugliness accumulated under the rug from so many sweepings.  It will need to be cleaned, instead of simply ignored.

History Remembered in Birmingham's Kelly Ingram Park

On this day, I think of where we are as a country and where we've been.  And while I didn't cover the events of the Movement, I'm so deeply grateful that my crazy and impulsive decision to go into journalism connected me to our nation's history in such a magnificent and personal way.

If you have a moment, watch King's final speech.  The "mountaintop" speech is my favorite, not just because of the crystallized sadness of knowing what would happen the next day in Memphis, but of his ability to speak directly to it.  I have yet to get through this speech without tears, and I'm not sure I'd want to.

Resume Reels: Remember, They’re Marketing and Sales, Not Journalism

Spent the day at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism (sometimes referred to as Jeff Jarvis' Temple, and by local television types like me as the place that has a nicer control room than almost every station I've worked at).

A group of J-School students and I spent a few hours talking about resume reels--what goes on them, how to put your best face forward, what happens when the news director or hiring person gets their hand on them.  (Scary stuff, indeed!)

One thing jumped out at me:  the students were very wary of editing their reels or including elements in a montage that weren't really part of a story that they reported, either at the J-School or during an internship.  In essense, they were prioritizing the journalism over the getting-a-job-ism.  In one case, a student asked if including a story shot during an internship at a New York station (NY mic flag standup, working a package out of material collected by the station's crew, etc.) somehow implied to a news director that the story was entirely their work, and that it aired.

In my experience, if you're applying for a first reporting job, and you haven't specifically--and PROUDLY, LOUDLY--told me that during your internship you did, in fact, report a story that aired on a newscast in New York, I'm pretty much figuring you wrote the script, did the standups, and did what interns are supposed to do: learn how to do it.  Is that misleading?  Is it essentially un-journalistic?  I say no.  It's using the best stuff you have to show that you can do a standup, write a script, write to video, and cut a compelling track.

If you basically tagged along with a New York reporter, copied their standup and then later re-tracked their script word-for-word, well I would consider that unethical and misleading.  But using good raw material and assembling a story the way you would if you were covering the story...I think news directors expect that's what interns do.

But aside from some simple ethics:  don't steal another reporter's script, say, I think a recent graduate's anchoring is never assumed to have been anchoring on the air, especially if the chyrons are from a station in Miami, or Philadelphia, or Boston.  We know you got them to keep the studio crew up so you could get some anchoring on your tape, and I, for one, like that you did it.

Because your reel isn't a journalism test.  It's a test of how you present yourself, what you look like, what you sound like, and how well you can grab one viewer's attention:  the news director.  Leave 'em intrigued, impressed, and wanting more.  That's not what we call journalism, that's what we call marketing, advertising, sales.  And I think we all get that.  I've put plenty of great standups from otherwise average packages into a reel montage.  I've gone back and carefully editing things out of tapes that I felt didn't serve me and my abilities.  Is that unethical journalism or good self-promotion?  Ultimately, what are these reels for, anyway?

Getting you hired.  Once you're hired, you better be on the ball with the big J rules.  But to get the job?  Even for a seasoned pro?  Why look at a reel as anything other than what it is:  a piece of carefully crafted marketing aimed at getting you a job.  There's no Academy Awards category for trailers because they aren't really about film.  They're about getting people to go and see films.  So the editors get the energy level high, use the best jokes, the coolest action--all kept at just the right pace, and hopefully get you thinking:  hmm...I'd like to see that one.

Your reel?  Like a movie trailer, it's not filmmaking.  And it's not news, either.  It's an ad.  Put your best face forward without breaking a few basic, essential rules, and if that means a tweak or a re-shoot, why not?

Anyone disagree?