Evan Smith of Texas Tribune: 'Journalists Deserve a Living Wage'
Because the Tribune does not receive advertising, Smith said, it relies on “five buckets” of revenue: membership, major donors, foundations, corporate sponsorship, and earned income through events and premium products like newsletters. And, despite what he calls “the Nick Denton legacy” of online news, the Tribune will never pay its writers based on their page views.
“Nobody took a pay cut when they left their jobs to come and work for the Tribune,” Smith said. “One of the benefits of raising enough money to do a real operation was we could pay honest to goodness real journalists a real wage. Journalists deserve a living wage, not to be nickel and dimed on the basis of traffic.”
Inaccurate, and not completely fair to Nick, because Gawker writers got a bonus based on pageviews, their base pay was separate. This became too expensive for Nick and he abandoned it. Now they’re concerned more with unique visitors than pageviews. Obviously if you’re a traffic generating machine, you’re going to be more valuable to the bottom line but saying pay is directly tied to traffic as if they’re being paid per click is disingenuous.
Writers should not paint themselves into the same dilemma ad sellers have. Television may be a medium of scarcity when it comes to available ad time, but if the same number of people see my ad on my laptop monitor that see it on my television monitor, I shouldn’t be charging less for the one on my laptop. The dilution of the value of web traffic in relation to other mediums has a direct correlation to how much money online media outlets have to give to their writers.
For Smith, it’s also easy to knock incentivizing pageviews when your business plan is not tied to them. Ultimately it boils down to what will be more sustainable. You can’t run a profitable news site based on ad revenue without being obsessed with traffic. It’s a game of volume. While I agree with you that Smith is taking an unfair shot at Denton, ultimately what Smith is suggesting is that his business plan allows the Tribune to make decisions, personnel and otherwise, without putting an undue emphasis on traffic, which I believe is a healthier—and perhaps more sustainable—way to run an editorial site.
Congratulations, OnEarth.org on your redesign! Hazan+Co. is very proud to have played a part in it.
Wow, Poynter wasn’t kidding about being responsive to feedback
Yesterday, I suggested that it might be the worst idea ever for Poynter to open up its beta site to feedback before it had gone live. Today, I’m starting to rethink that position thanks to an email from Poynter Online Director Julie Moos.
Hi, Jake. Thanks for tumbling about Poynter’s redesign. It’s possible this will prove to be one of the worst ideas I’ve ever had, but our readers feel so strongly about the site that the sooner I can involve them in the changes we’re about to make, the better. (I learned this from our last two redesigns, which we sprung on users in 2002 and 2008, to much mutual misery, especially related to reading Romenesko.)
So far, the feedback has been positive, and since we’re actually pretty far along in the process (we know where the content is going, we just want to know whether our taxonomy makes sense to users), I think there’s more harm in getting too far ahead of them than in risking exposure too early.
So, I’m hoping your “good idea” tag is the one that predicts the future, but if I’m wrong, it won’t be the first or last time ;)Julie
In the last couple of weeks, we’ve been treated to two very different approaches to unveiling a redesign where a site’s audience is especially opinionated. Gawker (and Hard Candy Shell) chose to “leak” their beta site, but they’re benefiting from the early exposure just the same as Poynter. It will be interesting to see how different the launched products are from their beta versions.
Knight Panel asks good questions; answers tk
The tensions of technology: more smart strategy from @knightfdn’s panel of nonprofit all-stars http://j.mp/daBAV0
List of issues touched up in the videos linked to above: “In today’s final pair of videos, Evan Smith of the Texas Tribune leads a discussion that focuses on the not-always-obvious tensions implicit in innovation: whether to hire staff with narrow or general tech expertise; whether to develop free-standing tech departments or incorporate tech employees throughout an organization; how to adjust technology to reader demographics; when — and when not — to go open-source; how to translate technology into revenue; how to distinguish mere fads from true technological trends; how to create platform-flexible content; how organizations might share technological resources; etc.”
List of issues satisfactorily addressed: n/a
This is not to say that the panel was bad, but that these are THE tough questions of the day.
Two radio-related sites, two very different ways to feature a logo.
With its recent redesign, WNYC, the celebrated home of Radiolab (perhaps the best radio show … ever), followed in the footsteps of Newsweek and placed its logo in the top right-hand corner of its website. While in this case, the overall effect is very sharp (the entire redesign is, really), don’t expect too many news sites to follow suit. WNYC.org is unique in that it uses the area in the right rail, above the fold for content, rather than ads. (Directly beneath their logo, WNYC.org features its radio shows.) I doubt too many sites that have ads above the fold in the right rail are going to be rushing to put their logo above them.
This brings me to another radio-related site that I happened upon recently, ThisAmericanLife.org. They have chosen an entirely different approach to their logo, which is quite large and situated beneath the top navigation and in the left rail. What I found interesting is that the logo and the top navigation bar never move, regardless of whether the user has to scroll down. It works.
Both placements have their drawbacks. In case of WNYC.org, perhaps it’s doing too little for their logo, while This American Life could be accused of doing too much. But they both represent bold choices that give their websites a unique flavor.
Even devout newspaper owners dream of shedding their print baggage
Techcrunch on Rupert Murdoch’s announcement of an iPad-mobile-only “newspaper”.
Here’s a quote from the original LA Times article:
“We’ll have young people reading newspapers,” the 79-year-old Murdoch said during the company’s Aug. 4 earnings call. “It’s a real game changer in the presentation of news.”
Um, no you won’t. You’ll have young people (if they buy your product) reading news on their iPad or other gadget. Isn’t it bad sign that he insists on still calling it a newspaper? Am I being too … semantic?
There’s something telling about a media magnate like Murdoch, who owns plenty of newspapers, launching another “newspaper” that can only be purchased and read through a mobile device. Even he’s tired of the print baggage. He’s saying, fuck it, let’s start from scratch, too. It’s start-up fever!!!
Mediaite has posted a screengrab of a “leaked” version of Gawker’s redesign. “As one can see in the screencap below, Gawker appears to be planning a dramatic shift from a traditional, single-stream and cascading blog layout, to one that is a more conventional “site” layout,” Mediaite’s Colby Hall speculates. But it’s not clear from the screengrab alone if this is a shot of the homepage or of an interior page. My feeling is that this could be an interior page. Look at the top: it lists the number of visitors (the low number implies that this is an article page); the arrows beside the date make more sense from the vantage of being inside an article and wanting to click to the next one chronologically; the new/old bar makes more sense, too, since why would you need it if you’re on the homepage (you would know that you were looking at the newest content). It is hard, however, to deny that this is some sort of landing page with the abstract and byline text and the links to related articles. Maybe this is a glorified tag page? It would make more sense if we could see below where this screengrab cuts off. My feeling is that if this is a redesigned homepage then the chronological posts must exist below the fold. Damn “leak.” Tell us more!
Nomad not mad
A former president at Newsweek and a handful of writers are starting a magazine designed exclusively for mobile devices called Nomad editions. What strikes me is how happy and energized former execs and editors at print publications always sound to be free from the yoke of their print baggage. One reason: No longer are they held captive by the tyranny of print content and ego. Finally, they can take a step back and develop content in conjunction with the medium and the audience.
Why is this important?
First off, the medium dictates how the content will be read and experienced. Whether right or wrong, Nomad has decided to limit its reading time per edition to 30 minutes.
The medium dictates personnel. They can hire people who are excited about working in a new medium, rather than having force/convince print writers, designers, etc. to contribute or actually use social media, etc. (Yes, more professionals in the print world than you might think resist any engagement of the Web.)
The medium determines your business plan. People will pay for apps. Its clear how a unique product, designed for a mobile audience could get regular readers and make some money. In the print culture, the idea is that you can just rewrap your print content in a new skin and people will pay. Nonsense! The operative word here is unique.
The medium dictates content. Maybe not the substance of it, but certainly the presentation and consumption. My writing varies from my Tumblr to my Wordpress blog to my Twitter feed to my text messaging to my emailing to my 2,000 word feature. This seems like an obvious point, yet think about how many print products try to take their print articles and just copy and paste them online with no thought to the medium. Hint: It’s all of them.
I pray that places like Nomad are successful and quick, so at least there’s a chance for print products to look at their example and learn from it.
Content is no longer king, people. At best, it’s a constitutional monarchy.
