Category Archives: Grad School

I just wrapped up my first class in Valparaiso University’s Master of Science in Digital Media program. This is my final paper from COMM 601: Social Networking. Special thanks are in order to interview participants Michelle Ottman and Phil Kaplan.

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Building an audience, extending a brand: Newspaper organizations and social networking

Producers of traditional newspapers have seen audiences for their printed products shrink steadily. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 61 percent of Americans reported that they get at least some of their news online, 54 percent say they listen to radio news, and only 50 percent say they read a national or local newspaper, far fewer than in decades past. But most of those responding said they get their news from more than one platform — which offers a ray of hope to these beleaguered enterprises.

Newspaper companies, though they have a substantial online presence as disseminators of news, haven’t figured out how to make up for the declining advertising and circulation revenue of their print products. But while that business-side work develops, news organizations are busy building online audiences through the use of social networking. The most successful of these audience-building efforts are engaging readers, viewers and listeners; nurturing relationships; developing sources; and establishing trustworthiness. These efforts are critically important to traditional news organizations’ future viability.

How they’re connecting

Michelle Ottman, new product manager for the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune, says that her organization “dabbled” on Facebook and Twitter before starting to take them seriously last spring. “Since then, we’ve seen huge increases in web page referrals from both social media sites,” Ottman says. The South Bend Tribune has 2,271 Facebook users who “like” its main page on that site, and 521 followers of its @sbtrib Twitter account, which is simply a direct feed of its news stories. “We have a lot of room for improvement, but I think we’ve been successful in generating additional page views to our content by posting links on our social media accounts,” Ottman says. “We use these accounts to build relationships and engage with our readers. We do use these tools to develop sources for stories.”

(Edit: Michelle follows up to note that the Tribune’s main Twitter account, @sbtribune, has about 1,200 followers and is a manual feed — more than just a headline feed. Clarification appreciated — cz)

At the Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel, the story is much the same, according to Phil Kaplan, who is that organization’s executive sports editor and is also first vice president of the national Associated Press Sports Editors organization. “Twitter (4,000-plus followers) is probably first on the list, followed by Facebook,” Kaplan says. “Honestly, I think blogs are moving away from social media landscape. I could be wrong about this, but there’s not as much chatter about blogs.” Most of the Knoxville News Sentinel sports staff is actively engaged in social networking, Kaplan says: “I encourage staff members to embrace some kind of social media aspect. There’s no question that our future is tied to other platforms besides print. I see more work with social media and maybe less work going into the print product.”

Kaplan’s reporters, who focus on University of Tennessee football and men’s and women’s basketball, are also providing live-blogging coverage with CoverItLive software. As Kaplan explains, “I plan to have staff writers use the program to interact with others and help make our brand stronger. This includes chat sessions and use during game days.”

The South Bend Tribune and Knoxville News Sentinel are emulating the strategies of many similar news organizations in the pursuit of online readers, while molding strategies to fit their specific needs. Some companies are getting creative in other ways, as social media strategist Woody Lewis pointed out in a 2009 story from online social media guide Mashable, “10 Ways Newspapers are Using Social Media to Save the Industry.” Lewis cites examples such as CaptureCinncinati.com, an effort by the Cincinnati Enquirer establishing a photo-sharing site that has attracted thousands of user-submitted images. The Cincinnati Enquirer put together the best entries and produced “Capture Cincinnati,” a coffee-table book that sold for $39.95. CaptureCincinnati.com launched in 2007 and is still going strong today.

Lewis cites another Midwestern newspaper’s creative example, My.STLtoday.com, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This site is a “branded community” that hosts user-created groups and content, and special sections such as BestBridal. Excerpts from My.STLtoday.com appear in the printed paper as well. YourHub.com is a similar site produced by the Denver Post. (While I worked at the Knoxville News Sentinel, we tried a version of YourHub that lasted for a while, but was ultimately shelved.)

Lewis concludes: “The word ‘newspaper’ will take on a different meaning, like ‘record album,’ or ‘TV show.’ It won’t go away, and it will continue to describe some of the most hallowed brand names in the world. Social media will play a big part in that transformation. As the dynamics of our society change, as institutions go public or private, or disappear entirely, the need to report these events in a responsible manner will be even more critical. Social journalism is more than a buzzword, it’s the way social media will save the industry.”

Narrowing focus

The South Bend Tribune devotes a good deal of attention to the University of Notre Dame’s football program. Thus, the South Bend Tribune was able to leverage its presence in the social networking space to react quickly when a big Notre Dame football story broke: the naming in December of new head coach Brian Kelly. “When we broke the news about the hiring of Brian Kelly as the new Notre Dame coach we were quick to post the story online, send text alerts, newsletters, and we were the first to tweet it and post it to Facebook,” Ottman says. “The initial tweet exploded with mentions and retweets from major news organizations across the country. It was pretty exciting to see how fast the news spread on Twitter. Our page views spiked by 50,000 in one hour.” The newspaper’s Notre Dame football beat writer, Eric Hansen, has attracted more than 2,300 Twitter followers, Ottman also points out. Twitter figures into the Knoxville News Sentinel’s sports coverage, too. “We are planning Tweetups for football game days. Twitter has also helped us with stories, some from the individuals telling the stories through Tweets,” Kaplan says.

Ongoing story subjects such as University of Tennessee sports and Notre Dame football offer big opportunities, and major challenges, to news organizations. The South Bend Tribune competes with the likes of the Chicago newspapers, as well as a number of well-funded web operations, including enterprises backed by Yahoo and Fox Sports, for the national Notre Dame football audience. National politics is another high-profile, high-risk and -reward area in which traditional organizations are competing in the social networking arena — and that competition can be especially tough when a traditional newspaper organization goes up against a web-first startup. Just ask the leadership of the Washington Post.

The upstart in question, Politico, was launched by a couple of former Washington Post political reporters, and quickly established itself after its founding in January 2007 as a major player in political journalism. Politico averaged about 6.7 million unique web visitors per month, according to a report last year , and has more than 60,000 Twitter followers today. The Washington Post has more Twitter followers (nearly 100,000), but its politics-centric brand, PostPolitics, has just more than 8,000 followers — not a good sign. And in a twist, Politico has become profitable through advertising sales from a 32,000-circulation weekly newspaper it started well after its web operation launched (the newspaper prints up to five times a week when Congress is in session). With just more than 9,000 “likes” on Facebook, Politico’s footprint there doesn’t match the Washington Post, but Twitter is likely a better venue for its rapid-fire, brief stories — and PostPolitics lags on Facebook too, with barely more than 1,000 “likes.”

Politico’s signature feature is “Playbook,” the influential column by reporter Mike Allen (18,000-plus Twitter followers) that goes out by morning e-mail blast. In a recent New York Times profile of Allen, reporter Mark Leibovich described “Playbook” as “the principal early-morning document for an elite set of political and news-media thrivers and strivers. … an insider’s hodgepodge of predawn news, talking-point previews, scooplets, birthday greetings to people you’ve never heard of, random sightings (‘spotted’) around town and inside jokes. It is, in essence, Allen’s morning distillation of the Nation’s Business in the form of a summer-camp newsletter.” Politico, Leibovich writes, “wants to ‘drive the conversation’ in the new-media landscape of the 21st (century). It wants to ‘win’ every news cycle by being first with a morsel of information, whether or not the morsel proves relevant, or even correct, in the long run — and whether the long run proves to be measured in days, hours or minutes.” One can debate whether or not this approach is a good thing concerning the future of political journalism in particular, and the nation’s political discourse in general, but it is clear that Politico is succeeding in this focused arena, and it is using social networking — Twitter in particular — to build readership and extend its brand.

Building community

Natchez (Miss.) Democrat Publisher Kevin Cooper writes in a recent column that newspapers continue to be “the original social media of the community.” He points to the connections that readers of traditional newspapers seek when they turn to, for example, the obituary pages, looking for news about people they know personally or through family or work. Cooper writes, “Social media web sites help do that by taking the great big world of the Internet and making it feel more local to us. Our newsroom folks are finding more and more that social media tools can help them connect to sources that would otherwise be difficult to reach. Our coverage of the tragic oilrig explosion and fire was a good example of that. A quick post on The Democrat’s fan page on Facebook connected our reporter to families and friends of locals who were on the rig. Our newsroom was then able to share their stories with our readership.”

Newspaper organizations can make those connections in a number of ways through social networking, as Nathan T. Wright pointed out in his comprehensive presentation at the Midwest Newspaper Summit 2010 in February. Wright, a social media strategist and adjunct instructor at Drake University, offers a number of valuable insights in his slide presentation, “Fostering Community With Social Media.” Wright describes the changing reading habits and information sources that are driving newspaper readers increasingly to the web. “Community = Opportunity,” he states. “Focus on relationships with readers by using social media technology to build a community platform.” How?

• “Share the link love.” (i.e. “Don’t be afraid to link out” to other sources, even competitors.)
• “Develop commenting guidelines.”
• “Mine for sources and stories.”
• “Allow content reuse and mashup.”
• “Be active on social networks.” (This means actively engaging with readers, not just shoveling newspaper content onto Twitter and Facebook, Wright stresses.)
• “Develop niche content.”
• “Stay ahead of the shifts.” (Wright cites Google SideWiki and location-based sites such as Foursquare and Gowalla as key services to watch, and e-readers as important hardware to keep in mind.)

In the fall 2009 Nieman Reports from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, Geneva Overholser emphasizes the need to maintain journalistic values while building community through social networking. “Being there and being accurate are how journalistic credibility is brought to the social media ocean,” Overholser writes. “Yet many legacy media have fallen behind in delivering this one-two punch combination. While it’s a given that there will always be a need for reliable verification, what must be better understood is how people seek out news and information and how they learn through their use of social media.” She asserts that traditional journalistic values will serve news organizations well on social networks in which users exert more control and have more choices, continuing: “People are vastly more powerful now as consumers and shapers of news. The less loudly journalists applaud this development, the further behind we’ll be left until we fade to irrelevance. Accuracy, proportionality and fairness, as time-honored journalistic values, are well worth adoption by those conversing through social networks. Useful, too, would be journalism’s (albeit imperfect) emphasis on including a broad range of voices.” And in a business sense, these values translate well to extending a trusted brand online, as long as they are combined with swiftness, a knowledge of social networking practices and mechanics, and an active engagement with audiences.

Location, location, location — and don’t forget mobile

The South Bend Tribune’s Ottman, when asked to name the new frontier of social networking for her organization, answered: “Foursquare and Gowalla are the next big thing. I think location-based news will be huge.” As for location-based social networking’s specific application to her organization, she says, “At this point, I think it’s too early to tell. But, I do like how the Wall Street Journal is using their knowledge of local businesses and organizations to add tips to locations in the community. I also think it would be great if I could see where news is happening, in real-time, around me, wherever I am.”

The Wall Street Journal recently announced a partnership with Foursquare in which the news organization will provide location-based tips from its Lunch Box daily restaurant review column, as well as offering unique “badges” to appeal to those who enjoy Foursquare’s “checking-in” game-like awards. The partnership mirrors a similar joint effort with the New York Times during the Vancouver Winter Olympics. That agreement included recommendations on nightlife from New York Times reporters, a special badge, and other location-based unique content. Canada’s free daily newspaper, Metro News, entered a similar deal with Foursquare a few months ago. It’s clear that the location-based service’s backers see newspaper organizations as valuable potential partners as Foursquare seeks to establish itself as the go-to social network of its kind. It remains to be seen how fruitful these relationships may become — location-based services need further growth of their user bases in order to make such partnerships viable and worthwhile long-term.

Mobile technology is already the next high-tech wave to surf, the Knoxville News Sentinel’s Kaplan says: “We will continue to do more with social media. I see a day where we will staff areas where people can continuously ask questions or get updates throughout the day on handheld computers, from work or home and even their car on the dashboard (for the passengers, of course).”

And for Kaplan, it all circles back to those bedrock journalistic values. “If there is one thing traditional media rely on (newspapers lead this), it is the credibility of reporting the news and the trust of its readership. There are untapped groups out there waiting for us. Simple applications for mobile devices that easily deliver a product could be the hope for newspapers. It’s a way to make money — something that newspapers missed the first time around.”

A matter of survival

Newspaper organizations have taken the key initial steps to building online audiences through social networking. Whether these efforts will be the foundation for long-term financial survival depends on any number of factors, many of which are unknowable at present. In its State of the News Media 2010 report in March, The Pew Internet and American Life project presented a grim picture: “It remains as unclear in 2010 as ever how to monetize the growing audience. The year past was a time of experimentation for all kinds of entities, — but many have yet to materialize and others have little yet to show in terms of real dollars. The most established revenue source, online advertising, saw declines for the first time since 2002.”

“Pay walls,” that is, news organizations charging for online content, have met with consumer resistance, the report states. Micropayments, which might involve a visitor paying a small amount after reaching a set number of stories or content items accessed, are also under consideration. That’s a potentially more promising model, but for the near future, a flexible combination of print and online offerings, such as those developed by Politico, might be one road to profitability. A targeted print offering, coordinated with robust online content (along multiple platforms, mobile devices in particular), would offer the flexibility and immediacy that news consumers seem to want these days. Social networking is a critical component of such a strategy, because that’s where the people are. As Charlene Li, an analyst for Forrester Research, put it in 2008, “I believe that in the future, social networks will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be. And also, without that social context in our connected lives, we won’t really feel like we are truly living and alive, just as without sufficient air, we won’t really be able to breathe deeply.”

With the popularity of Twitter, and Facebook’s Connect partnerships and “like” button explosion, this statement is even more incisive now than it was two-plus years ago. Newspaper organizations need to continue to build their presences in social networks to transform into the sustainable news outlets of the 2010s and beyond. And they need to build that presence wisely: engaging with readers and integrating their content; proving, over and over, to be a trustworthy source of news; providing the immediacy, at the same time, that readers crave; creating a positive environment for commenting on and reacting to content; entering sensible partnerships with social networks; offering worthwhile advertising content where appropriate — in short, building community along emerging platforms.

The challenges are many, but so are the opportunities.

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Purcell, Kristen et al. “Understanding the Participatory News Consumer.” Pew Internet and American Life Project. Pew Research Center. http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Online-News.aspx

Ottman, Michelle. Message to the author via e-mail interview. April 26-27, 2010.

Kaplan, Phil. Message to the author via e-mail interview. April 28, 2010.

Lewis, Woody. “10 Ways Newspapers are Using Social Media to Save the Industry.” Mashable. March 11, 2009. http://mashable.com/2009/03/11/newspaper-industry/

Wolff, Michael. “Politico’s Washington Coup.” Vanity Fair. August 2009. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/wolff200908

Leibovich, Mark. “The Man the White House Wakes Up To.” The New York Times Magazine. April 19, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/magazine/25allen-t.html?pagewanted=all

Cooper, Kevin. “Social Media Is Not New to Newspapers.” The Natchez (Miss.) Democrat. April 25, 2010. http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/news/2010/apr/25/social-media-not-new-newspaper/

Wright, Nathan T. “Fostering Community With Social Media: Midwest Newspaper Summit 2010.” Slideshare. March 2010. http://www.slideshare.net/nathantwright/fostering-community-with-social-media-midwest-newspaper-summit-2010

Overholser, Geneva. “What is Journalism’s Place in Social Media?” Nieman Reports, Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Fall 2009. http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=101882

Van Grove, Jennifer. “The Wall Street Journal Partners With Foursquare.” Mashable. April 26, 2010. http://mashable.com/2010/04/26/wall-street-journal-foursquare/

“State of the News Media 2010: Online economics and consumer attitudes.” Pew Internet and American Life Project. Pew Research Center. http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/5–The-economics-of-online-news.aspx?r=1

Li, Charlene. “The future of social networks: Social networks will be like air.” Groundswell. Forrester Research Ind. March 6, 2008. http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell/2008/03/the-future-of-s.html