Newspapers

In journalism, it's variously called a "write-off" (or "woff"), a "blurb", a "gofirst" or a "standfirst" - a short, snappy line that summarises or teases a story and, hopefully, encourages people to keep reading. Some sub-editors are very good at writing them, to the point where the standfirsts oversell the story and reading on only sets up the reader for disappointment. Some blurbs, rather like the one I've cut from brisbanetimes.com.au and pasted here, miss the point. Surely the big news about Matthew Newton is not how he worked so hard for months and will now miss the chance to host The X-Factor, it's the fact that he had a spectacular metldown (not his first) and allegedly beat up his (now ex) girlfriend Rachel Taylor, who has taken out an AVO and vowed to press charges, and was consequently dumped by the show and by his own management. I don't think anybody is, as the blurb seems to imply, standing around the barbecue today discussing how unlucky Newton is. (Apart from the one X-Factor wannabe quoted in the story.) In fact, I suspect many people will, like News Ltd writer Paul Kent, vigorously take another tack. My opinion? Newton probably is ill, in which case he needs treatment, but that shouldn't be allowed to overshadow what he's (allegedly) done. We should all take a reality check on who the victim really is.
PS: Yes, the blurb is supposed to summarise the story at hand, but it doesn't even really do that. Maybe "X-Factor contestant defends hard-working Matthew Newton"?

A brief beef: I am sick of seeing and hearing news items where local governments are referred to simply as "council" without an article. Would we write or say something like: "Mr Bloggs said bank would put up interest rates"? No. Yet we often read or hear in the media the likes of: "Cr Nerk said council would approve the project." I know public servants and politiicans speak this way but that's no reason for media professionals to follow suit mindlessly.

We journalists are a sensitive breed. We take it personally when people say bad things about our profession or our particular medium. In fact, we often get so emotional in defending ourselves that we don't do what we're trained to do -- and that's look clearly and objectively at the facts. For years now, many newspaper journos have had their heads in the sand about the implications of declining circulation. If they are not in denial about it -- and how could you be when you look at the figures -- they are full of wacky ideas about how they can reverse the trend. The sad fact is that the decline of newspapers is terminal, it's just a matter of when the plug will be pulled. Specialist publicaions may have a little longer, but it's likley that print will be dead within a decade or two. This doesn't mean newspaper journalists are necessarily doing a bad job, it means the demand is for online delivery. All very good -- except that too many online consumers expect their news for free, and it's near-on impossible to deliver a quality product for nothing. In the UK, the Daily Mail may have found a formula that works -- but it's too early yet to say whether advertising alone can support the major mastheads as we know them. Even if it does, further staff cuts are inevitable -- and, of course, that will impact on quality. It's hard to know what to make of Rupert Murdoch's plan to introduce a national "newspaper" for delivery on iPads, but some commentators have already written it off. At least Murdoch is putting his money where his mouth is and giving it a go. And, by doing so -- and by constructing paywalls around some of his existing online products -- he's acknowledging the thing many of his own employees can't accept: that newspapers are living on borrowed time.

I was complaining on Twitter recently about the trouble I've been having with video on the websites of Australia's two biggest newspaper publishers. On the Fairfax sites (including brisbanetimes.com.au and smh.com.au), videos auto-load after a short delay in which, if I can find the right place to click, I can switch them off. Videos on the News Ltd sites (news.com.au and its subsidiaires) give me the option to watch or not but they take an age to load (and I'm not a patient person, so I often abandon my attempts). Neither situation, I ventured in a Tweet, is ideal. One of my tweeps said video has no place on newspaper sites. I disagree. I think they should offer video -- and, inevitably, they will have to do so just to be able to compete -- but they should invest more not just on the content (which can be amateurish) but on getting the technology right. Then I remembered one provincial newspaper where I worked as a younger man, where the IT guy (as he would be called today) was a slacker who deliberately made maintaining the very basic computer system seem more difficult than it really was. Because nobody else on staff knew much about computers, he'd created a nice little earner for himself and his secret knowledge. Of course, nowadays there are many different technologies at play and different delivery platforms to consider, so the job is genuinely difficult. But the fact is, they've got to do it. If the product doesn't work to the expectations of the potential readers, they will go somewhere else. A technological failure could sink a masthead just as easily as an editorial error.

As Peter Preston notes here, video didn't kill the radio star, and UK radio listenership is at record highs. That doesn't surprise me at all, and I'm sure listening figures are still buoyant in Australia too (although last time I looked, the radio audience wasn't keeping pace with population growth). But I must take issue with some folks on Twitter who think this is a good sign for all "old media" --specifically that newspapers will continue to thrive the way radio has. The simple fact is that radio, whether it's delivered on the AM and FM bands, on the free digital spectrum or over the internet, is basically the same beast as it ever was -- spoken word plus music designed to inform and/or entertain various targetted markets. And so long as we humans have to do things -- like drive cars or iron or watch the children play -- that require the separate employment of our eyes, radio has no need to change. Newspapers face a different challenge, because the method of delivery is changing more radically and the audience is splintering. While the printed word will survive as long as people can read, the medium of words on newsprint will decline and almost disappear. There will undoubtedly be, even in the distant future, some people who keep books and old papers, and maybe even some who publish them. But as far as the business side of things goes, putting words and pictures on paper, and delivering the product by truck, simply will not be viable. And, as we've already seen, once you start to publish newspapers electronically, they cease to be newspapers as we know them. They can have audio and video and interactive elements -- and, crucially, they can be accessed from anywhere in the world. So far, newspaper publishers haven't excelled in delivering quality sound and vision, except when it is lifted from their professional colleagues at radio and TV stations. Meanwhile, over at Twitter and other social media sites, the really breaking news is being delivered in 144 characters or fewer and in "real time". So when it comes to news "hot off the press", the whole dynamic is changing. Many newspapers are already evolving into magazines that combine longform feature articles and endless opinion pieces at the expense of actual news. Publishers are investing in a small number of highly paid columnists and other specialists rather than in large numbers of flexible foot soldiers who can dig out news at the local level. Looming large over these changes is the big question: who's going to pay for it? Rupert Murdoch is already betting some of his considerable farm on the fact that readers of The Times will pay for online content, while Peter Preston notes that the UK Daily Mail's website is doing fine by creating its own online niche. He says the online edition could be profitable by advertising support only, without a paywall. Australian publishers are already weighing which way to go. The current thinking is that The Australian will embrace a paywall but its News Ltd stablemates (The Daily Telegraph, Courier-Mail, Herald Sun etc.) will not. Not yet, anyway. Farifax already has internet-only titles in Perth and Brisbane and a recent Macquare Bank report suggests taking the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age wholly online would be a profitable move. What the publishers all know is that print is declining and they must invest in quality online products. And they know there are two groups of readers out there: those who will pay, and those who never will. Readers who decide to pay will demand extremely high standards of journalism that reflect their own world view; those who don't pay will still want a product that engages them and tells them what they want to know. Even the online "freesheets" must have unique, targetted content. There is so much choice out there that readers have no reason to bookmark and regularly visit any one product unless it really stands out in a crowded market. My hope is that publishers will see the wisdom of investing in journalism -- not just big-name, big-buck columnists but old-school journos who know their patch and can consistently unearth good yarns that might otherwise go unreported. After all, if we want to know the latest on Lady Gaga or Lindsay Lohan, we merely have to type their name into Google and select one of thousands of choices. But where do we go if we want to know what's happening in our own backyard? The way things are going, there will soon be no news at all from the parish pump -- and we'll all be the poorer for it.

The quickened pace of the news cycle continues to confuse traditional media. For newspapers, one of the big questions these days is: should we publish something in print after it's already appeared online, especially on our own websites? In the case of the Courier-Mail today, the answer was yes (in regards to a picture on page 14 which was all over its webpage yesterday). Today, the printed C-M finally caught up with the death of the world's oldest Twitterer, Ivy Bean, who passed away on July 28. A two-day lag for news from Britain used to be commonplace, but it's not now. Meanwhile, mX surely set some kind of record yesterday with an item about this controversial new website, catsthatlooklikehitler.com. Sorry to burst the bubble, but it's been around since June, 2006 (do a search on the Wayback Machine if you doubt me)! A hip'n'groovy, youth-oriented paper like mX oughta know stuff like that.
PS: This intro from the C-M could have been written by the copywriter for a washing powder commercial:

NEW tests have smashed Queensland's first case of DNA innocence testing after analysis found a convicted killer was 45 billion times more likely to be linked to blood from the scene.

More likely than who or what?

This comment slipped through the net at The Australian online today. The blacked-out words have been censored by me; they appeared in full on the Oz's site:

There's much excitement in journalismland about apps for iPads and other devices. If we believe all we read, they will be the saviours of newspapers. This Sydney Morning Herald article trumpets the fact that readers can now access the SMH and other papers in multiple digital formats for varying amounts of money. That's all very well, but it's based on the possibly erroneous assumptions that Australians a) still want to pay for news and b) still want to pay for news as it's packaged by News Ltd and Farifax. Will more people buy the SMH just because it's accessible via an iPad app, or will the dwindling number of loyal readers simply swap their print subscriptions for digital ones, meaning no significant net gain in paid circulation? While the publishers may save on printing costs in this event, they really won't be rescuing their businesses in the long term if they don't do something to grow the pie.
P.S. Another big question: will advertisers see the same value in an advertisement on an A5 screen as they do in one on A3 newsprint?

Journalists, you just can't trust 'em ... The Nation newspaper's website ran this pointer on its front page.

The BBC's Have I Got News for You pointed out this gaffe from an item by Jason Beattie in the UK's Daily Mirror:

Newspaper sales in Australia are declining, but in an impersonation of Nero fiddling while Rome burnt* or an ostrich with its head in the sand, the official body representing publishers is reportedly blaming a "slow news year". The simple fact is that the population is rising but newspaper sales are falling -- across the board, by 3.1 per cent. Not only are papers losing numerical sales, they are reaching a smaller and smaller percentage of the total population. They are in grave danger of becoming irrelevant. Rupert Murdoch knows this; that's why he's fast-tracking plans to sell online content (but, as I've mentioned before, some of his titles really haven't got their online act together). I'm not prepared to set an extinction date for newspapers, but the figures don't lie (well, not since they changed the methodology) . Urgent action is needed not just on the online front, but in bolstering the print editions by paying attention to what people who buy newspapers actually want to read, rather than filling them with dross meant to appeal to people who don't buy newspapers and never will. (I'd suggest it's no coincidence that the Sun Herald, a huge offender in this area, dropped by 7.7 per cent.)
P.S. Of course, if Newspapers Work boss Tony Hale is right and it has been a slow news year, maybe Fairfax and News should channel William Randolph Hearst and commission staff to go out and create better news.
* Yes, I know the fiddle wasn't invented in the first century AD and the story is spurious.

Not only is Catherine Deveny no longer writing for the Fairfax group, it seems history has been revise 1984-style so that she never did. The no. 3 result in a Google search comes up with a link to a National Times/ The Age page that says: "Unfortunately we currently do not have any content for Catherine Deveny. "

There's no stopping Britain's Daily Mail when it comes to pursuing its own agenda. According to the rightwing newspaper's website, a poll says "most voters want Tories to govern without Lib Dems". Well, that's not what the voters said at the only poll that counts just a few days ago. The truth is that Tory leader David Cameron snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when he failed to win a majority despite the pathetic performance of the Labour Party. He may end up running the country, but his mandate is pretty shaky.

Meanwhile, in Brisbane, the Courier-Mail's website is running the following blurb for Terry Sweetman's column. Things must be very dire indeed for LNP boss John-Paul Langbroek if the web production staff at Brisbane's only daily paper can't spell his surname properly. For the record, Sweetman gets it right in the actual column.
Update: Since I wrote this, the mistake has been corrected.

I was just looking at a news story on the website of a well-known newspaper and noticed how the formatting - in this case the presentation of quotation marks - changed midway through the story, then reverted to the previous style towards the end. Once upon a time, newspapers employed professional sub-editors and other production staff whose task it was to make the product read and look as if it had been compiled by professionals. A lot of what they did was not immediately noticeable to the general reader, but it was considered important because it ensured consitencey and separated the work of professionals from that of amateurs. The standard of design and editing often marked the difference between a paid-for quality paper and a free rag. So, I find it ironic that in the same week Rupert Murdoch revealed that a pricing policy for his papers' websites is imminent, many of his (and other publishers') titles are still presented online in an extremely amateurish fashion. I don't know a lot about running a business, but I reckon you should get the product right before you start charging for it.
P.S. Just in case you're thinking of criticising the production standards of this site, bear in mind that it's free and it's written and published by me on my own in my very limited spare time.

Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes has his say on the issue of whether tablet computers like the iPad will "save" traditional newspapers. He draws on his interview with Chris Mitchell, the editor in chief of The Australian, which hopes the new technology will help his paper charge for its online content. As Holmes points out, its success is really dependent on how many people want to buy the Oz's news agenda, rather than do as most people do online now -- switch from site to site searching for the news that interests them. You may care to read just one thing -- a favourite columnist or a quirky story -- from each site you visit. It pains me to say it, but I think tablets will just delay the death of newspapers as we know them rather than be their saviour. It could well be that it's the concept of a newspaper -- paying to read somebody else's selection of news and opinion -- that is dying, not just the idea of it being printed on paper.