Comments on: Why TV sites lag newspaper sites

By: Michael Odza

Michael Odza — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:21:47 +0000

This discussion makes me feel so much better! I work at a newspaper web site, where we are also (still) having all these debates/complaints. The real issue, as Merrill notes (#21) is that the incumbent industry does not want to give up the profit margin in its “core” business, even though that very core is shrinking in the face of the new business, which isn’t as profitable…yet. If owners or managers don’t divert some of the resources from the core to the new, they’ll never succeed — regardless of what philosophy of content or particular work flow they try.

Having got that off my chest, I will say that in my opinion, the written word does still take precedence over video, especially for the search engines, which supply a big chunk of the audience for any site. And the more words relevant to what people want, the better. (Quality, in some journalistic sense, is not as important, I’m afraid.) Breadth of coverage is more important than depth. (But depth helps too, just secondary.) And something no one has mentioned: true conversation between and among web site and audience members. And advertising. Classified ads (where we haven’t lost everything to craigslist, eBay, autotrader, Monster, etc.) are still valuable generators of audience. And timeliness, as a few people mentioned in the comments. The TV promos should tell people to check the site between scheduled newscasts (and there should be fresh content there to satisfy.) Newspapers also don’t want to send people to the site between printings, but you gotta do it.

Both newspapers and TV are leaking audience, but precious few of them have “grasped the nettle” and really faced up to the fact that a new medium (with seductive, but ultimately quicksand ability to reproduce some aspects of the old media) requires new thinking, new everything. Good luck to us all!

By: Chris V

Chris V — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:53:10 +0000

This is the best exchange I’ve ever seen on Lost Remote. When I feel it has run its course, I will print both the post and the comments and share them with station personnel at my site in Baltimore (click my name to give me a page view). I have one full-time staffer under me and a small army of people trying to get involved, so all of you are helping with this debate!

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:34:51 +0000

TR - Yeah, you’re right, I shouldn’t complain about not having enough staff. I should have TV reporters writing their content for the web.

And I’d love to have them do that as soon as I’m able to teach them how to take out all that producer-driven drivel ‘We’ve uncovered, we’ve learned, we’re live, we’ve got exclusive footage, all of that we’re doing our jobs and we’re letting you know we’re doing our jobs factor’ as well as teach them about the mysteries of grammar, punctuation, proper attribution of quotes (And writing quotes verbatim instead of paraphrasing them), spelling and the wonders of the AP style guide and the inverted pyramid.

Then once all that’s done I get to train them on publishing their content to the web, and since I’m on WorldNow that should be as easy as teaching a gerbil geometry.

Yes, once I can get all that done, I’ll have TV reporters trained as convergent content producers for TV and the web.

By: Gorman

Gorman — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:19:01 +0000

You can bust your hump to beat everybody in a 200 mile radius on a breaking news story.

You can coach reporters on how to efficiently and properly format a story for the Web, and even post it well before the evening news.

You can have photographers feed some photo-friendly video or take a picture with a camera-phone as soon as they arrive on scene.

You can have producers, editors, PA’s and interns churn out copy while you grab stills, build maps, etc and pull it all together.

But you can’t get overtime “just for the web.” Not on even an intermittent basis. Even in a progressive newsroom. And when you’re smaller-staffed, that’s a big hurdle.

By: tdc

tdc — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:55:34 +0000

i’ll argue just the opposite of merrell and nathan.

why go into the content generation business to begin with?

there is more than enough already out there and making your own means bloating a payroll.

funny how these purported “local” efforts are packing in more and more national content when, as the good witch in the wizard of oz will tell you, “there’s no place like home.”

By: Merrell

Merrell — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:40:11 +0000

I agree with Nathan, the problem I see with TV Website Operations is resource allocation. (It’s one of the problems in The Innovator’s Dilemma)
The profit generated by many online businesses are slim to none so why invest more money? Why not allocate more resources to our core business with a 30%+ profit margin? It’s a logical way of thinking but it’s that kind of thinking that results in the downfall of a many a company. (Kodak, Compaq, NCR)

By: NotDan

NotDan — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 03:48:47 +0000

#12 -funny as hell.
#17 - na ga do that. Uh, Ms. Simmons, can you stay past 11:35 to rewrite that vo/sot someone else wrote for you for the web? Or someone else, can you rewrite that? Oh, it’s overtime, fugeddaboutit. Uh,Mr. Editor, can you stay and re-edit that piece for the site? Does that mean overtime? Nah, forget it. Hey crew guys and field reporter, can you re-edit and feed that again for the site? Overtime? Great, it’ll take me 2 hours plus another hour to break down and another to get to the garage, and oh yeah that means you hit my second meal penalty. And since I was called in on a sixth day …my whole family’s going to Hawaii on vacation!

By: Cory

Cory — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 01:37:41 +0000

Tracy, that comment made my night.

By: Michael Chastain

Michael Chastain — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:46:56 +0000

It seems to me that partnerships between newspapers and TV stations would leverage the advantages of both mediums, but I’ve rarely seen that. But I’m an outsider, what do I know?

By: TR

TR — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:59:47 +0000

Z, it’s the TV reporter’s job. Having come from a TV newsroom where we were working aggressively to have everyone produce for both online and on-air — and now producing text, photos and video for my own site — the complaints about “not enough people” just make me laugh. There is no way in HELL that a “web producer” should be rewriting an “on-air” person’s web story. That TV person should have access to laptop with aircard and be writing for the web before he/she ever hits air. And if he/she can kick her/himself in the butt to work truly quickly, that can be done in a minimum of time without somehow “hurting” the tv product. Now, excuse me, I’ve got 20 minutes of self-imposed deadline to write a newspaper-length story for my own site. Then another 45 minutes after that to process 15 minutes of video for the next story I have in queue. All the while, I can hear the sound of TV crews clattering across the country whining that they have only six hours to research, collect, write and edit their minute-thirty package for 10 or 11 pm tonight and then OMG OMG OMG they are going to have to stay 15 minutes late to write something for the web AFTER the show OMG. Bah.

By: Z

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:26:45 +0000

Tried. Reporters aren’t interested in doing my job, too.

Part of the issue, too, is that when a TV reporter writes a story, it’s not usually even close to Web-ready because it’s written for a different audience. But a newspaper reporter’s story can often go online verbatim or nearly so.

By: tdc

tdc — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:43:31 +0000

suggestion: start a crusade to move past the term “re-purpose” to the new term “dual-purpose”.

if tv (as some have said elsewhere today) is thinking “outside the box”, then this may be a good place to start.

By: tdc

tdc — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:38:28 +0000

yeah, and with slideshows you don’t have to sit through a f’in :30 preroll for a lady’s laxative.

guys, i thought 30’s got buried along with the n-word.

By: Z

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:15:10 +0000

Another issue I’ve hit time and again is that TV folks will either not gather or not convey to others all the information that a newspaper reporter will. So when it comes time to write up the Web story based on a reporter’s pkg, I have only the pkg to work with, unless I want to chase down the reporter to get their notes (rarely taken) or their soundbyte verbatims (rarely written), or try to find the time to go through their raw tapes/discs (ha ha ha)

TV reporters, by and large, will gather the info they need for their TV story, and not much else. I mean, they won’t go find people to talk to if they’ve already got “enough” interviews, which might be all of two.

And Alyssa’s dead on–most people who are TV Web audiences view the site from work, and many, many of them can’t or won’t watch video on a work computer.

But a slideshow is silent.

By: wtf TV people?

wtf TV people? — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:14:11 +0000

*** VO SOT CD3019er ***

IN OTHER NEWS TODAY … TV WEB-SITES CONTINUE TO TREET THE WEB LIKE ITS A RED-HEADED STEP CHILD

THIS WAS ONE OF THE MORE POPULAR STORIES ON THE WEB TODAY …. A WEBSITE …WWW DOT LOST REMOTE DOT COM

WE’LL HAVE MORE ON THIS STORY TONIGHT AT ELEVEN PM OR YOU CAN CHECK OUT OUR WEBSITE SOMETIME AFTER SEVEN PM TONIGHT WHEN WE DO OUR ONCE PER DAY UPDATE …IF WE HAVE TIME.