#Facebook ain't salvation for newspapers

Unfortunately, from blindly buying into Facebook-based commenting systems rather than internally controlling commenting as part of a paywall, to thinking that "socializing" every editorial employee if not every employee of the newspaper with a corporate-backwalled Facebook account, it seems like too many newspapers are still looking for and buying into easy fixes.


The reality, though, is different.


First of all, some newspapers continue the same stupidity that got them into trouble in the first place.


For instance, if you, like many nondaily and smaller daily newspapers, have finally gotten your website paywelled, but undercut it by posting updates about breaking news stories on a regular basis to your free Facebook site, don't be surprised if a lot of people don't sign up for online newspaper subscriptions. Why should they? I wouldn't. Twitter's not quite so bad, if you keep your updates generic and link to a continually-developing version of the story on your website, behind your paywall.


The same holds true for blogging, to some degree. If you're a smaller daily, and your website isn't set up to do an internal, paywalled blog, don't set up a linked, free Blogger or Wordpress blog.


Second, if you don't have a paywalled website, Facebook isn't offering you its comment moderation services on your website out of the goodness of its heart. Rather, it's looking to:
1. Increase its demographic information about its members by seeing what they're reading, and targeting ads that way;
2. Increase its information about what ads on your website may interest them, and targeting its ads that way.


Third, Facebook appeals as much to the casual glancer as the in-depth reader. It may send a few more eyeballs to your website, but, whether that website has any sort of paywall or not, they're not likely to be very "sticky" eyeballs.

Pound #socialmedia sand down a rathole without a #paywall

OK, folks, what would you think of ...

One of the larger newspaper/media companies in America coming up with this bright idea:

Everybody in the editorial office now, including copy editors, who of course aren't out reporting stories, is  supposed to create a "personal" office FB account and Twitter account. This from a company that paywalls nothing at any of its daily papers, including multiple seven-day dailies.

It started paywalling one this spring.

Then some alleged hardcopy subscribers bitched about having to remember a password, so they dropped the paywall.

First, I suspect the paper didn't even check to see if these were hardcopy subscribers. Second, anybody knows you can reset a password. Third, after this, the paper (now becoming corporate-wide) signed up for Facebook logins to comment on stories, allegedly to make it easier to moderate offensive comment.  Which you can do even better by restricting comment to paying subscribers with a paywall!

Yet another example of how the newspaper industry continues to shoot itself in the foot.

Anyway, back to this latest directive. Beyond the copy editors not reporting stories issue, my political and religious views are 180 degrees to the third dimension diametrically opposite the place I currently happen to be. So, readers aren't going to want to read Tweets from the real me anyway.

And, speaking of "political angles," somebody at the office here created a stupid, hokey, WWI-knockoff poster about "Facebook and Twitter: It's everybody's job." Yep, 50-something regular readers will be "hooked," sure, while 20-something "leeches" will keep on leeching. That's great strategy there.

Meanwhile, via a press association website, I saw Russell Viers touted as another "guru" for how to "fix" newspapers. He's no more a guru than Clay Shirky, Jay Rosen, et al. First, he says he was dead set against paywalls in the past. Then, he claims that the current NYT one - you know, the one with the Canadian hack invented for it even before it officially debuted in the U.S. - was "working." No, really.

With "gurus" like him, Rosen, et al, on the finance/business side, and being listened to, judging by posts on his blog, again, newspapers keep shooting themselves in the foot. One reader talked about "giving it away" as long as he had ads, clueless to the fact that many people use ad-blocking extensions.

UPDATE, Oct. 27: OK, the latest on this "brightness." The whippersnapper online editor at this paper, in his belief that Facebook = salvation, last Saturday, when we are shorthanded on the copy desk anyway, suggested that, if we had time, we live blog the World Series on the company's main Facebook page, complete with poll. And, he's doing it again tonight with Game 6.

Hey, "dude." People do that already. They work at Yahoo Sports and ESPN, where serious national baseball fans will go to keep up with things like that.

UPDATE, Nov. 2: Not too long after the first update on this blog, the online editor asks me (and our news editor) if we would put some sort of picture/logo (not necessarily our mugs) on our FB and Twitter corporate pages.

And I obliged -- with one version of the Green Party logo. For some reason, I was asked to take that off.

Otherwise, the whole thing seems like an attempt to reach Gen Y types who are generally plugged in, but generally ... DON'T READ NEWSPAPERS! Among other things that they've learned all too well from the tail end of Gen X.

UPDATE, Dec. 20: Oh, and add to this a news editor and assistant news editor who spell "south-southwest" as "south, southwest." Among other things.

The AP keeps slipping

Really, AP? Using a photo from AOL serf labor site Patch.com for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's controversial helicopter flight to his son's ballgame?

Really?

Yet another bridesmaid on a job

Was one of a few, maybe jst two, finalists to be managing editor of a semiweekly in Rio Ranch, New Mexico. Didn't get it.

Publisher left me head-scratching. Before I interviewed in person, I forwarded by email a list of references, even though he said he didn't need them until we were closer to a handshake.

He contacted nary a one.

Best I can figure is he had locked in on one or more candidates, possibly or probably younger and/or less experienced, to see if he could get them for less money, even though he had mentioned some definite numbers to me. He said, in a query to him after he told me his decision, that I interviewed well, when I said I was hoping for a "takeaway" from the decision. I should have been more direct with asking why somebody else, not me.

So, to recap ... a weird interview ... and from a "family owned" paper, not a corporate guy, who, IMO, didn't hire the best candidate.

Before that? Allegedly passed over from editing a week due to possible age discrimination. (Also a "family" group.)

Before that? Passed over on running a five-day daily (yest, it's CNHI) by a publisher now "looking" again, six months later or so.

On both the corporate-owned and family-owned sides, one has to "wonder" at times, right?

Corporate-owned newspapers may, by and large, NEVER adjust to the fact that 30 percent profit margins will NEVER return. They certainly have made a hash, in general, of monetizing online operations and likely will continue to do so.

Family-owned newspapers? Well, there are good ones. The Albuquerque Journal, once the Net took off, never made its online content free in the first place. That's rare, though. Many nondailies, with no wire compettion, still give ou their online content for free, and the ads don't pay the freight.

AP source anonmyity gets ridiculous

Here's the latest. On political strategy for a presidential race that won't have its first semi-binding vote for nine months .... granting campaign aides anonymity to "leak" about their boss's campaign plans.

Allies and aides who outlined the path that Romney is charting to the nomination spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publically discuss private strategy sessions.

Ridiculous. "Traditional media" gets worse at this all the time.

Oh, and Philip Elliott of the AP, "publically" is NOT a word. "Publicly" is.

Paywalls and leaks — are they desirable?

The Nieman Labs note that the new New York Times paywall, already live in Canada, can, in current incarnation, be cracked with just four lines of Javascript. And, it says, beyond that, that some "leakiness" in a paywall, if the media company knows how to manage it, can actually be a good thing.

The story approaches the issue in part from a cost-benefit analysis. It notes that there are a couple of classes of people who are simply determined not to pay for content in such situations. Those who have the skill, or who get the information from someone else who has the skill, will work around the paywall easily enough. As long as they're looking at ads, the story says, and maybe clocking an occasional one, then the NYT is still ahead, rather than spending more money to tighten the paywall.

OOPS.

Just one problem with that analysis.

Those same people, in general, are already blocking ads on their computers. I can't believe Nieman was either that dumb or that naive.

And, beyond THAT, the reason WHY for paywalls is to generate revenue not only from falling Internet ad rates, but, because savvy online news readers are already blocking ads, and savvy online newspaper IT staff know that.

That said, from there, we can honestly discuss whether a "straight" paywall, a "freemium" system, or a metered system like that of the NYT is the best thing for a daily newspaper vs. a "weekly" (in hardcopy) magazine, etc.

But, this idea that a fair amount of "leakage" will actually help on the ad side? Stupid.

Is TPA shooting itself in the foot on public notices?

Every other year, the Texas Legislature considers, or is rumored to be considering, changing state law so that local governments do not have to post matters of legality, such as rezoning hearings, etc., in a local newspaper of public record.

Usually, proponents in the Lege argue that municipalities will save money by posting legal notices on their local websites. Or, if government websites aren't worthy, due to transparency and conflict of interest concerns, something like Craiglist.

And, every biennium, the Texas Press Association argues against the idea.

TPA has argued not just against government websites on the conflict of interest and related issues, but have argued against web-based postings in general on grounds such as "a lot of people don't have Internet access," etc.

Well, what do we have now? TPA and the Texas Daily Newspaper Association have now teamed up to offer web-based public notices!!!

At a bare minimum, local governments can now argue that ad rates for public notices should be drastically lowered, since it costs a lot less to run them online. And, if the local newspaper of record is a TPA member, then the local government can say this meets current state law on posting requirements, without going out to Craigslist, etc.

Plus, with the state budget deficit also a municipal budget deficit, this door opening is surely only going to increase that push. And, if TPA doesn't like it, I suspect state law might just get changed this time around.