‘Readers owe you nothing’
Don Day January 30th, 2008
How’s your top screen full look these days? Lots of ads, logos, tickers, promos, logos, anchor heads, whizzing this, rotating that? Got a nice in-your-face eyeblaster? Maybe a giant page slider? Cool!
OK. Maybe not. It’s as if we think our users owe it to us to wade through all that crap just to read the frickin’ news. All I want is to know what’s going on. OJR’s Robert Niles - a former newspaper reporter - sums it up: “Readers owe you nothing.”
They have no responsibility as citizens to read your reporting, and no responsibility as consumers to look at your ads. The have the right, and ability, to go about their lives without ever once glancing at your publication…
And…
You can, and should, design your website, or your newspaper or magazine, in a way that draws readers’ attention to your ads or in-house promotions. But when your design crosses the line and forces readers to look at ads they don’t want, you encourage those readers to look elsewhere, jeopardizing the readership levels that makes your business sustainable.
11 Comments Add your own
1. Safran | January 30th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Excellent find, Don. Best line:
“Just because someone has subscribed to your newspaper, e-mail or RSS feed or bookmarked your website does not guarantee that person is your reader. You must convert people into readership every single day.”
2. Amanda E. | January 30th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
And some more suggestions based upon my travels around the web:
* Teleprompter scripts do not make a web news article. Just because I can read them doesn’t mean your average visitor can. Trust me, sprinkling VO/SOT, ad lib, chroma, etc all over your articles just doesn’t present a good image of your product or story-telling skills. Take 5-10 minutes and re-write them.
* Actually post current news. Its annoying to find a week-old story as your top story. I don’t think you’ll use weeks old packages in your evening broadcast night after night, why do the same on the web?
* Put some effort in writing your articles with and proof-read before posting. A local station here in Spokane that will remain nameless - if you read one of their articles before they edited it after it hit Fark, it read to appear that their live truck fleet had other duties besides ENG.
* Spell check your articles. Yea I know the old light bulb joke about CG’s editors and their spelling skills, but there is no need to carry that joke over to the web.
* Engage your audiences. There’s no need to hide in your newsroom away from your viewers. Put a human face on your staff and they’ll come back to your site. I must publicly commend KXLY for their efforts in reaching out to their viewers in the digital realm.
* The term “new media”. Come on, the web has been around for over 16 years. Heck cnn dot com has been around for what, 12 years now? Its the equivalent of a newspaper referring to a TV station as “new media”. Just regard it as another format to present your stories. The term itself would be better applied to a new box of tapes.
3. Dan | January 30th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Amen Brother. Preach it !
Not that anyone will listen.
But I’m happy I’m not alone in seeing all the
bullshit publishers and broadcasters (bigger bugs,
now with promos for upcoming show CONSTANTLY
in the corner of my TV screen) are thinking is
just fine. Like the guy says, we have other options.
dr
4. Gorman | January 31st, 2008 at 8:12 am
Sometimes, don’t you wish you could take time one day to print stuff like this out and rubber cement it to monitor screens of your newsroom and managers? I think it would be well worth the price of replacing the monitors. But that may be me.
5. Danny | January 31st, 2008 at 11:23 am
The problem that we as media companies have with ad space is that they undervalue it and thus, “solve” that problem by adding more spaces …which makes them even less valuable / effective for clients.
Imagine if we all just had one ad (for instance, like Yahoo.com, who makes what $1-2M per day for their front page placement?) …has and through supply and demand we actually got decent market value for it.
Not only could we drive more revenue, profits would be higher as a result of needing fewer sales people to sell 25 different ad positions and fewer creatives that would have to be generated through a creative services person / department.
It would help drive CPMs higher thus helping bridge the gap between the dollars that traditional media outlets drive vs what the web currently drives.
….but alas now we have so much riding / dependent on all those different ad spots that it’s hard for us to scale back.
6. Nick | January 31st, 2008 at 11:27 am
Same goes for newspapers that copy and paste their front page articles and leave the “For more, see page A3″ in the body text. Lazy!
7. Dave W | January 31st, 2008 at 12:28 pm
On this blog you’re preaching to the choir, but the writer does make some good points. Make the website another extension of your journalism — unfortunate to say that many tv stations gave that up years ago. Is your website just a promo blog, or is it a vital, must-read information source? Rewrite, edit, truly become interactive.
We are so blessed with good news websites that keep getting better, like the NY Times, WCBStv here in the East to give two examples, but are saddled with crap like on WNBC.com or myfox5.com … part of companies that have the resources to do much better. MSNBC.com, for example.
Hell, even the Times has its moments - they crapped up my screen for a full day with that Apple Leopard ad. The screaming to the publisher hasn’t stopped.
8. Tim | January 31st, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Don’t JUST spell-check your articles, either. I am certainly sure that the public is not that interested to know that the local whatever failed to “meat” a deadline. Read the articles to make sure that they make sense; and that they use the right words.
If I can’t trust you to get the words right, how can I trust you to get the news right?
9. Gutzon Borglum | February 1st, 2008 at 8:41 am
My favorite thing about TV news websites are the “Mount Rushmore’s” across the top of the page!
10. Rocker | February 1st, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Yeah, those smiling anchor Mt. Rushmores are dumb. Everyone knows that space should be used for a picture of your helicopter.
11. Tim | February 1st, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Those Mt. Rushmores should at _least_ be a javascript or Flash “Whack-a-Mole” game!
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