Nieman Lab reprints a piece from The Conversation decrying Russian attacks on journalists.
It ignores that Ukrainian journos could themselves be killed in Ukraine pre-invasion and that Russia has accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting journos during the war.
There, Sophie Culpepper says "ask your readership for story ideas."
Uhh, no.
First, even without some political specifics, out here in South Wingnutistan, that's asking you to report on Facebook community group page rumors and shite like that. And, if you tell them, no we can't do that, the portion of the people who want that will likely accuse you of head-faking them or more.
Second, WITH political specifics. You're going to shoot down their asking you to do local or state level versions of #StartTheSteal (that's what it is)? I say that with a husband-and-wife team from my coverage area being arrested on J6 charges and using a variety of legal attacks for deliberate dilatory reasons on their not-yet trial after backing out of a plea deal. Oh, the husband was also a local GOP precinct chair.
A local version of why masking is fascism? (I had someone buy a half page ad to that effect in my newspaper two years ago.) And, then, when you explain the actual facts on that, you just redouble their belief that you're "part of the media." (Which, yes, I am.)
Yes, she says you have people vote on the allegedly best, actually most popular, ideas. And, how do you stop poll crashers?
And, Culpepper's bio makes clear why she'd offer such stupidity without big caveats. Brown University grad. Starter of a high-end online-only paper in Lexington, Massachusetts, a high-dollar, very blue, city and county. (The county as a whole isn't quite as Dem as I would have guessed.) And, someone who graduated just two years ago, and probably had family dinero help to be able to start her own newspaper.
Arrogance.
That's the word.
And, not just from Culpepper.
It's also from Nieman Lab, presuming someone this young and with relative lack of experience has "solutions" to offer.
The Snooze would be my "beloved" Dallas Morning News, last print product of A.H. (does not stand for Adolf Hitler) Belo, now called DallasNews Corporation and its last print product since Al Dia (Spanish for "The Snooze") is now digital only.
Continues to snooze?
It's whacking more jobs, either by buyouts or firing.
"Adjusting digital memberships"? What the hell does that mean? I still hit (not complaining) plenty of non-paywalled items there. For example, this piece, part of what seems to be a very good series of pieces on lives damaged by fentanyl. Claims to be "member-exclusive content." Didn't drop a paywall on me. I clicked on a half-dozen such stories. No paywall.
What it really needs to do is two things.
1. Stop circulating on the west side of I-35 outside the Metromess itself. (Where I live, I can get it, and I see it in places where the StartleGram isn't, which is a commentary it and parent McLatchKey, and don't get me started on not even finding the Denton Wrecked Chronic.)
2. Take a page from the StartleGram and whack a day (two?) of print publication. (I haven't checked to see if it's already at six-day, so maybe it's done that.)
Remember, this is a company with a forearm's-length litany of screw-ups. CueCat? Selling off its share of Cars dot Com? Multiple screwups on paywalls? Selling off non-Dallas print products? Check on all of the above, with the paywalls screwup continuing as I type.
And, boy, community newspaper owners, publishers and general managers need to hear that.
In fact, to state it again?
Community newspaper owners, publishers and general managers need to hear that.
So, hear it!
From the Community Journalism Project:
To me, this is spot-on.
Quick takeaways:
1. Community newspapers are ever-more stretched out. Asking them to do yet more with less is just no bueno.
2. Are you doing renewal postcards for subscribers and other "hygiene"? (Ten percent — I would have guessed more — have past due subscribers, 90 days or more past.) Without embedding this one, here's a related CJP video about retention strategies in particular. In basic, it notes about 65 percent of people renew automatically to the community paper, about 5 percent you lose, and so you need to focus on retaining 30 percent or so.
3. Have you thought about outsourcing some of this "hygiene" to folks like CJP?
4. The meat of the webinar is IF you have people who want something digital, how to offer something without cannibalizing the print newspaper. Related to that is, if you have digital customers, doing the digital version of "hygiene."
On point 4, what I relate to is, as "no DeJoy in Mudville" continues to raise USPS rates, using digital to target out-of-county readers who are move-aways but might have grandkids who live locally and want to see them in sports pictures, etc.
They also note that digital should NOT be seen as a way of "converting" subscribers there to print.
Now, that said, CJP did not offer prices for its services at the end of the piece.
They do talk about managing rate increases on this, but it seems that they're only talking about subscription rates. The elephant in the room, of course, for many smaller community papers, is advertising rates.
OTOH, some of it seems out-of-date. They talk about somebody at the high school football game posting score updates from a smartphone to the company website. Really? You're competing with Facebook pages, Dave Campbell's website here in Texas, and other things.
And, if you're a publisher who isn't comfortable with at least the basics of a Blox-based website, and isn't comfortable asking a staff member to do that, you should maybe ask whether you shouldn't be paying CPJ to do this.
But, back on the good side, they say don't overpay for digital bells and whistles if you don't know how to use it. And, boy, this is true.
Back more to No. 4. If you're part of a group of anything more than three-four local newspapers, much of this can be done at the corporate level. Any group of half a dozen or more papers, and definitely 10 or more, whether having a presence of moderate, modest or none digitally, and whatever they're behind on, on print "hygiene," should have a dedicated staffer at corporate level. If there's no single corporate office, run it out of the largest newspaper in ownership and bill out prorated charges.
Yep, starting tomorrow, by state law, you're supposed to post your legals with the TPA webpage run by that grifting Column.
If I owned a paper that were a TPA member, since the new state law applies only to TPA members, especially if I were a smaller newspaper that didn't have its own website, especially if I were not a "full" TPA member and wasn't getting the 2x2 ads and TexScan, etc.?
I believe I'd quit, Mike Hodges. At a minimum, the onus would be on TPA staff to talk me out of it. I know, we get a run a year, maybe two, every other year, of constitutional amendments ads, and once a year, maybe, of the affordable housing ad since COVID started, but I think that's gone away again, and I know that, last year, shockingly, Danny Goeb placed some political campaign ads via TPA. But, other than that, if you're not paying the extra freight for the 2x2s (most of which are oilfield ads anyway), what do you get?
And, mark my words: By 2027, more of the camel's nose and head that was let in the tent this spring will be shoved inside by a future Texas Legislature. (I wouldn't be surprised if somebody makes a run at that in 2025, but doubt it will pass then.)
Notes from the field?
First, setting up default rates sucks if they're not an even dollar, and your liner rates and mine aren't if they're per-word or per-line based. You CANNOT enter ".35" for 35 cents a word. You have to start with $1 and then use the up/down (down in this case) cursors. AND? Despite that I've never heard of a paper charging fractional cents for anything. Column's "wizardry" calculates out to not just mills, or tenths of a cent, but to tenths of mills, or hundredths of a cent. Hey, Hodges, as long as you're paying Column for its Florida public benefit corporation stable genyus, can you get that fixed? Or, rather than Hodges, Kevin King, the guy who emailed me? (I tried, after I started the cursor going, editing "within the field," but when I hit save, it changed 0.35 to $35. More stable genyus there.
And, my office puter being a 10.6.8 Mac, of course it is not compatible there.
Wonder how many other papers hadn't set up accounts, and of them, how many are hitting the old Mac issue.
Finally, per my owner's desire not to give away the store, my newspapers DO NOT HAVE WEBSITES. I'd argue that the TPA, in conjunction with the Lege, is involved in a reverse-spin restraint of trade. Why didn't the stable genyuses, TPA version, get newspapers like us exempted? We're not the only newspapers in the state without websites.
More notes for the stable genyuses at Column?
First, supposably, I can adjust my templates under "my organization." Don't see that. Don't see any place to input column widths for legal displays.
I do see under "my organization," a Column employee also listed as part of the "team." More "ugh" and probably more snooping by TPA, which has also in the past couple of months increased its nagging about "you have a missing issue." Technically, NewzGroup, but on TPA's behalf. Since we don't have a website, and no current full-page wind farm ads, I delay posting there by a month, ever since the county's IT person asked if we had a website and I mentioned we have that as an option. Sorry, Hodges and NewzGroup but that's the way it is.
First, this legislation, overviewed by Nieman Lab, appears to be somewhat better than the old Local Journalism Sustainability Act, harshly critiqued by me here, but that's a low bar.
It does address the issue of "pink slime" getting any money, though not really on hedge funds.
The 750-employee size limit remains unchanged and is still too large.
It does double the LJSA's 100-hours-per-quarter standard of eligibility for employee tax credits to 200, which is definitely good. (I had suggested 250, but could live with 200.)
It does not mention requiring the Ad Council to advertise in community newspapers, a blown opportunity.
So, on some big-ticket items, it's one-third better than the LJSA, or 40 percent if we split the diff on pink slime and hedge funds. Still should go back to the drawing board on the Ad Council issue. (And on the employee max size issue, of course.) And, a Congresscritter who used to be a newspaper editor shouldn't have missed that, unless Claudia Tenney thinks that's "socialism," which means that how much brainstorming she will do will be problematic.
Update, Oct. 4: NNA supports this because of tax credits to small biz to advertise in local newspapers. Also at its convention, it called on the feds to get various agencies to advertise more in local papers, but did NOT mention, at least by name in a presser I got, the Ad Council.
NNA also supports the Journalism Protection and Competition Act, S 1094, to make large social media companies pay for using newspaper content. I oppose, partially but not entirely based on what's happening in Canada with its social media journalism law.
Why would a pair of weekly papers with known ownership, a website, and contact email addresses, namely Cuero and Yorktown, advertise for what is essentially a general manager position, and do so with a Gmail contact address? And, that known ownership is ... Moser.
