E-Media Tidbits

Philly.com Right now, the lead story on Philly.com comes from one of their sports blogs, not from either paper contributing to the site. Shades of thing to come for the news business?

Yesterday, Jim Romenesko published this memo from Philadelphia Inquirer managing editor Mike Leary to the paper's staff. It leads with: "...We are adopting an Inquirer first policy for our signature investigative reporting, enterprise, trend stories, news features, and reviews of all sorts. What that means is that we won't post those stories online until they're in print."

Leary continued, "For our bloggers, especially, this may require a bit of an adjustment. Some of you like to try out ideas that end up as subjects of stories or columns in print first. If in doubt, consult your editor. Or me or Chris Krewson."

Not surprisingly, these statements generated strong backlash from online-media proponents such as Jeff Jarvis and Steve Outing. This is understandable. On the face of it, this does indeed sound like a great leap backwards for journalism and the news business. (I'll be honest -- that's exactly how it struck me on first read, too.)

Zac Echola probably summed up this sentiment best in Uh Oh Inky: "[Leary's memo], to me, is saying that your Web site is little more than radio news, with a few news 'packages' you can send off for antediluvian awards and pats-on-the-back. You will only focus on the breaking coverage, and then you'll shovel the paper online at a later time. Oh! And if you use your blog to collaborate and tweak your print stories, maybe you won't get to do that any more."

I follow Krewson (the Inquirer's executive editor for online/news) on Twitter, and he's been posting there about this flap. He contended: "...75 percent of what we do online will not change." He also claims that the Inky is not trying to hobble its blogs: "Blogs offer us a great way to keep people coming back to the great work produced by The Inquirer throughout their day. There's no quicker way to break news than on a blog, and no better way for us to leverage our staffing advantage over other local media. In addition, beat reporters with blogs say the process has helped them cultivate and nurture sources."

It's true Leary's memo can easily be interpreted as setting the paper and the site at odds. I just spoke to Krewson by phone, and he admitted, "Had I seen that memo before I came to work here eight months ago, I'm not sure I would have applied for this job. But having gotten to know the people here, I know that they are not ignorant of the Internet." Krewson contends that this policy shift is part of a strategy to create complementary differentiation between the roles of the print and online operations.

Krewson forwarded to me an Aug 6 memo he sent to Inquirer and Philly.com staff. While he wouldn't reveal pageview numbers, the highlight is that Philly.com's blog traffic is up 700 percent in the past year. So now, traffic to Philly.com blogs now rivals traffic to repurposed news content. Also, for most of the top Philly.com blogs, breaking news seems to be driving much (possibly most) of the traffic growth and spikes.

Krewson also made these points in our conversation today:

• Breaking news DOES need to go online immediately, and blogs currently are the easiest way to make that happen on Philly.com. The print-first policy shift does not apply to breaking news coverage.
• News organizations should break news as much news as possible, not just react to it. "Would you rather be covering a press conference or provoking one?"
• Positioning matters in print. Krewson is skeptical of the value of putting less time-sensitive enterprise content and features online before they appear in print. "The news business has always held some completed stories until they'd have space to run them with the prominence they deserve," he said. "If you put all your features online as soon as they're finished with the editorial and production process, just because you always have enough space online, without regard to the timing that would offer the best print play, that's the tail wagging the dog."
• Positioning matters online, too. Krewson noted that in the last year Philly.com has moved most of its blogs from Movable Type and Blogspot to the new content management system, clickability. While Clickability has some shortcomings, it does give Philly.com much more flexibility to mix blog content with content from the Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. Making that content more visible and findable increased overall traffic to the site, which in turn improves the economics of advertising.

I see Krewson's point. For ad-supported venues like Philly.com, the Inky, and the Daily News which are struggling to survive, you simply can't ignore the numbers. Whatever brings in eyeballs, do more of that. And if what draws eyeballs in print is different from what draws eyeballs online, you must take that into account.

According to the numbers, breaking news is currently king for Philly.com. So if you're a news organization with limited and still-shrinking resources, and big debts to pay, it makes sense to invest your most precious remaining resources (staff time) where you'll get the biggest return (traffic).

I think perhaps this might be the hardest part for online-media proponents to accept: You can't -- and shouldn't try to -- do everything online when you don't have enough resources to support it all. And most news orgs simply don't. They wouldn't be slashing staff if they did. For now, granting selective prominence to feature stories is one of the few things that keeps print news media compelling to readers (at least, to the readers it still has). And for now, for better or worse, print still brings in most of the revenue for news organizations.

It would be nice if news orgs could focus simultaneously on covering breaking news, producing enterprise and feature stories, and engaging with the community. But given financial realities, the Inky and many other papers can't do it all. To stay afloat, they must focus. Breaking news generally yields more high-traffic content for less staff time than either big features or online community building.

Blogger Howard Owens pondered the issue of different roles for print and online: "For how many years ...did I read about the evils of shovelware? We were all right in saying that, so why is it wrong now to say 'let print be print' and 'let online be online'?" He argued for online operations to focus on breaking news and intensive followup on stories.

Krewson's said, "I want the Inquirer to be the 'LIVE button' on Philly.com. I want us to always be telling people what's happening right now. That's something that we have the staff and resources to do, and very few other operations can."

For now, Krewson may be right about that. But looking ahead, as the established news organizations in Philadelphia are likely to continue to shrink, I anticipate that eventually breaking local news is all those organizations might be able to afford to offer. And (although I know many Poynter Online readers won't want to hear this) that might be OK.

...But that does make me wonder: Over time, where will the big enterprise stories come from in that town? Which in turn makes me wonder, who will really care?

Increasingly, I suspect that journalists and award committees care far more about big feature stories than communities do. Maybe big features and breaking news don't really fit well together in the same venue or business. Maybe this nascent attempt at differentiation in Philadelphia is a step toward the eventual demise of long-format journalism. That might make sense, if journalists and news orgs prove to be more attached to that approach than communities. Or maybe journalists might be better off using services like Dan Pacheco's Printcasting to deliver periodic big features.

Take a moment to challenge your own assumptions about what you've always thought news organizations and journalists are "supposed" to do, and then comment below to share your thoughts. I'm not pretending to have the answers here. We're all just thinking this through -- me included.