A Long Time

Hey everyone! For anyone out there who was reading my blog or just passes by, I wanted to inform you that I’ve been putting posts up on the SBU Basement Blog. I’m writing about clubs and organizations on Stony Brook University.

I think after writing these posts and just wondering about life in general, I may start writing blogs again. I don’t know what to write about though. I have so much going on. I don’t know if I should focus on one thing or everything. And then the next question is: How long will I stick with this before I fall out of love with it again? I’m not one to stick with diaries for too long so what makes this any different besides the fact that anyone can read it. We’ll see.

So my topic for today is Good Time Management Skills.

I don’t have any. I buy planners and they don’t work. People say that planners are the key to everything. I start writing in them and then I just stop. I don’t know what it is and I want to be more timely so much. The things that I could fit into my life because I sorted it out.

Things that I know about me that probably would help in my search for timeliness. I don’t stick with things for too long so I keep lying to myself with buying these planners. I think maybe I should do lists each day, but should I do it the night before or when I wake up. Also, I don’t want to kill trees with writing on a piece of paper each day.

Tell me how you manage time. How is time managed based on one’s personality or lifestyle?

Consumed by News

I was on a mini vacation last weekend in Florida. I felt like it was the most inappropriate time to take a vacation because I had SO much work to do. However, I couldn’t do anything about it and it was Florida, why am I even complaining.

The main thing you do while on vacation is relax. You sit at the beach, maybe go shopping, or look at television. So while I waited for my mother and aunt to get ready so that we could go out, I looked at television. And what do I end up looking at? The news.

I NEVER used to watch the news for the heck of it. If nothing was on TV I would either put in a movie, play video games, or read a book. The news would never even be on my radar. And here I was looking at CNN, wondering what the hoopla was over the beauty pageant contestant, which took me two days to figure out if she was for or against gay marriage because no one wanted to come out and say it (Anti-Marriage? Traditional Marriage? I’m sorry but these terms don’t work for me, I need layman’s terms).

This just made me realize how much news has become a part of my life as a journalism major. I want to learn news and am excited when I see and hear it. I also like when people are impressed that I’m not watching Gossip Girl or American Idol (although I do have shows that some would deem unworthy).

I was even reading the newspaper. I think I may have been a closet news freak and now I’m coming out (no pun intended since I referred to the whole beauty pageant issue).

Reinventing Journalism

For our final class project, we had to create a business model for journalism. Not an easy thing to do. If the experts can’t figure it out, who are we? We are journalism students hoping to find an available job when we graduate. We are the students who try to develop a personal writing style to gain a following. We only know as much as what we were taught. However, we are the future of journalism.

The conditions of the project was to determine the scale, revenue, staff, and expenses of the business model. The terms were that the recession would be over around 2010 with advertisement revenue not slowly building up until 2011. That doesn’t sound too far off from the direction where moving in now.

So my business model focuses on several things. I still focus on advertisements because like I said during my presentation, people are always going to need or extremely want something, making a need for advertisements. However, advertising companies would have to work a little to get put in publication despite the fact that we need them.

There will be a print copy and online version. Advertisers need to buy space in the print copy before they can get a page to themselves online. The advertiser who contributes the most amount of money will get a recording in the print copy. During the recording, the top five stories will be briefly discussed with the advertisement at the end. With a second major in psychology we learned that people remember the first and last things. So putting the advertisement at the end of the recording will make readers remember. On the actual display of the advertisements, another recording will be heard. This way if a reader doesn’t look at the advertisement, they will at least hear it.

The page that advertisers will be provided online was borrowed from True/Slant.com. Basically, advertisers get a page and they can do whatever they want, from blogs to pasting their page with advertisements.

The print copy and online version will receive different types of revenue. The print copy’s revenue will come from buying the paper and donations. The person or company who gives the most amount of money will have a dedication page to them that is only offered in the print copy. The dedication page will have a brief bio on the person or company and any issue that they want to bring up. The issue will then be further discussed online in a blog.

To go off on a slight tangent, I would have a citizen journalism page that’s only in the print copy as well. Yes, I know some of you don’t like this idea but citizens want to be involved in the news. My main goal for them would be to write feature and review stories on local sites. It would a version of soft advertising. 

However, citizens still may want to write hard news. If that’s the case, I would use the pro-am model and have a journalist write a non-biased version of the citizen’s story so that readers get both sides.

I feel like this will promote my print copy and gain revenue and advertisers because citizens are going to want to buy something with their name in it. I had an article in my community college paper and my mom made me bring home at least 20 copies. The localities that are being talked about will probably also buy the paper and put it in their waiting areas for people to see what they can offer. They may also want to advertise with us and place an ad on the citizens’ page. 

Back to revenue…The online version’s revenue will rely on micropayments and crowd funding. Micropayments haven’t worked for many of the news organizations, but people are still trying to use it. I feel in the the right method it could work. The goal is to redirect the viewer’s attention from the fact that they have to pay to something else (redirecting is another thing that I learned from psychology. Maybe taking psychology and journalism as two majors wasn’t such a bad idea).

That redirection would focus on rewards. That’s right, viewers are getting rewarded for reading and buying what they read. Although the micropayments would only be a penny a click, after a certain amount of money is spent, viewers will receive coupons or gift cards from partnered advertising companies. Of course, the amount won’t be large, maybe $5 off. Viewers use the coupons or gift cards, further endorsing the advertising company and willing to pay micropayments.

Crowd-Funding would almost work the same as the funding from advertising on the print copy. Journalists submit a topic and a person writes a description of the story they want to hear and contributes money. The person who gives the most, gets a flight to where the interview is being held, their questions will be asked during the interview (but won’t be the basis), and they will get a byline in the story.

My project consisted of other things but the main thing that I believe everyone is concerned about is regaining revenue. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them. I prefer honesty when it comes to anything so if you think my idea is completely ridiculous then that’s fine. If you think it’s a work of art, why thank you for the compliment.

Scoops Won’t Make The Cut

Jon Friedman of MarketWatch proposed that scoops won’t matter in the digital revolution. Two reasons for this are due to the speediness of the Internet and the idea of “news.”

Friedman suggests four criteria that editors will use to measure a story’s worth:

1. Most read

2. Most emailed

3. Most reader comments generated

4. How much time readers/consumers are spending on each individual story

Friedman states these criteria like a hard news story wouldn’t make the cut. I would rather read about food contamination than what’s going on with Britney Spears.

I thought scoops were breaking news stories but after reading the article, I was confused. I looked up the term and found out that scoops are exclusive news stories broken by a single journalist or a group of journalists working together. It can relate to scandals, secret information, or be breaking news stories. So I wasn’t as far off as I thought. Wisegeek, the website that I received the definition from, also stated that getting scoops requires a great deal of effort and a very large support team.

Now with all of this information, I can make my argument. There’s always going to be a scandal to uncover or breaking news. I understand that the Internet may get the information out quicker but it may not be accurate or not have all of the information. When Captain Phillips was rescued, it was reported that the pirates were shot and he was rescued. It didn’t say who shot the pirates, how was it done, or what Captain Phillips was doing while all of this occurred. This was further elaborated in the news story. So, there’s always something to add to a scoop.

Adding something to a scoop takes time. Internet getting out stories in a speedy fashion may not always be good, causing a double edge sword.

I feel that  journalists who are already established are leaving it in the hands of the journalism students. It’s like if you’re passionate about something, do it regardless of odds and ends against you. Friedman talked about a late fellow co-worker and how she would have reported information differently if she were alive. He should take that torch and continue with it, not let it blow out.

All is not lost so I feel that people should stop with the pessimistic attitude. People aren’t going want to do anything to help if you yourself don’t want to help save journalism.

True/Slant’s Business Model for Online

If it isn’t hard enough for newspapers to find the perfect business model, online news industries are coming up with business models for the web. True/Slant, a web news site, is mixing journalism and social networking to create a business model.

65 journalists will be put on staff and assigned to specific topics. They get their own page and hope to gain followers in the process. Other sites will be posted on the page as links for the readers. It’s like a blog.   

What I find funny is that the journalists must reply to the comments of the followers and comment on their fellow journalists’ posts. This is the same exact thing I have to do in my journalism class. My teacher wants to make sure that we get into the blog experience. I don’t know what these journalists will gain out of this. I know during class discussion that interacting with readers gives them a sense that their voice is being heard. That’s reasonable but to post a minimum amount of posts is a bit much. Contributors state the reason for this requirement is to bring in the social networking aspect.

It makes sense but people don’t comment that much even on Facebook. If they do, it may be a sentence or two that just acknowledges what the other person said or asked. It’s not a full out, in-depth analysis that will be required of these journalists. I know if I wrote something that I felt passionate about and the journalist just said, “Okay, good point,” and didn’t give any arguments for or against my statement, I would feel like I was being pushed aside.   

According to the article, these journalists don’t get paid much so they need to make a living doing other things, probably writing elsewhere. To write back a meaningful response takes time, especially if you have to read through 50 comments.

Another thing that True/Slant is doing is giving advertising companies a page to themselves. They can post blogs and gain followers also. That sounds like a good idea. Ad companies can post blogs on the new type of product and everything that comes with it. The people who post comments will probably be critiquing the product which is good and bad for the ad companies. But, as the saying goes, any type of publicity is good publicity.

Those were the features that stood out to me. The article commented on other aspects of the website. I was going to say that this was a good idea until I went on the site to copy the link and saw the head story. It was titled Tween girls as young as 10 are sexting, which is about young girls sending text messages with sexual innuendos to male friends.

That brought into my mind what are these journalists really considering as news. I’ll admit that the title intrigued me enough to read it and it was interesting but that’s not the kind of news that’s important at the moment, not to offend the parents of these children. However, this may be helpful to attract different types of advertisers that didn’t want to go to a news industry site like The New York Times.

You have to start off somewhere so if it’s working for True/Slant, it can work for another organization. So, I approve this business model.

Journalism Schools Are Still Holding On

Journalism has taken a turn for the worst. Layoffs, pay cuts, and the transition to the web has created an ominous cloud over the heads of journalists. Despite this, the Huffington Post has reported a 38% increase in journalism school applications. All is not lost.

I read in The New York Times that auto engineers were switching fields and taking on minors in medicine because of loss of jobs in the auto industry. I feel like journalist majors don’t have a choice once they choose the path unless they pick up a second major, drop the major or change it to a minor. It’s either print, broadcast/radio, or online. So, I think students still taking a path that may not get them anywhere is encouraging. It shows that news isn’t dead besides the loss of print and entertainment news taking over (I love President Obama, but if I have to hear one more story about his dog. I’m going to go crazy.)

The Huffington Post continued to discuss the current situation about the “new media” of online journalism and the amount of advertisements leaving print to go online.

There’s a statement that the writer, Rob Fishman, made that I felt summed up the whole crisis in journalism:

“ For now, old media has the content, but it’s losing the advertising. New media has the advertising, but not enough to foot the bill for content. “

I don’t think I could have said this any better.

Alan Murray’s Business Model

The Wall Street Journal has been the only successful newspaper to charge for their online content. Zachary M. Seward interviews Alan Murray and sums up five tips from Murray.  They are:

1. The best model is a mix of paid and free content.

2. You can’t charge for exclusives that will just be repeated elsewhere.

3. Don’t charge for the most popular content on your site.

4. Content behind a pay wall should appeal to niches.

5. The narrower the niche, perhaps the better.

You can click here for a more in-depth explanation of the tips and to view the video of the interview.

I like the concept behind these ideas. I may incorporate these ideas for my class journalism project in reinventing journalism. However, I still have a problem with some of these ideas.

Mixing free and paid content gives readers a taste of both worlds. I think that readers will prefer the taste of something that’s free. I always notice that people say something tastes better when they didn’t have to pay for it. Wall Street Journal offers some of its breaking news stories and blogs for free but readers are always going to want a little more. Soon the desire for more free content will overshadow paying for content.

I agree with tips 2-4 completely. Newspapers try too hard to charge for everything. Charging for stories that can be repeated elsewhere or are the most popular follows the concept that a reader can go somewhere else and get the same information for free and with almost the same or equal quality.

It’s like the Wall Street Journal is a part of your group of friends that offers you the same advice and keeps you company but you go to the Wall Street Journal when you really need something. To explain my bad analogy, it’s like building a bond. The Wall Street Journal gives you the news that you can get anywhere else but charges for the stories that you may not get elsewhere. It’s like the Wall Street Journal is saying by us charging you for this content we guarantee that we will give you your money’s worth. Getting their money’s worth involves content that they like and are interested in. That strengthens the bond, saying a sort of ”I got your back.”

I just don’t think the niche should be narrower, which is the last tip. It’s nice to have that specific group that will stick to brand loyalty no matter what charges apply, but how will you expand. After a while the niche will die out and new tactics or content will need to be used to attract different readers. Why do you think newspapers are trying to appeal to younger readers? Despite that, Wall Street Journal is doing something right. Why else would it prompt newspaper industries into scrambling for similar business models?

Authors Go Online

Print journalism isn’t the only thing going online to gain more viewers. Authors are publishing their works online as traditional publishing houses suffer from the economy. Digital publishing companies like Lulu.com and Author Solutions are the new footholds for aspiring writers as the development of print-on-demand publishing takes place. The process involves the authors sending the companies a digital file of their story and only printing out a hard copy when someone buys it.  

Lulu.com offers publishing packages starting at $299 while Author Solutions’ prices range from $399 to $12,999. Positive arguments listed in the article were the speediness of the book arriving to the market, the ’green’ factor of not printing a hard copy until it’s needed and the chance of success that may have not been offered through publishing houses.

I feel like authors will suffer the same way as newspapers. Newspapers set up online sites to gain revenue, which happened at first. Now the revenue that the Internet makes isn’t enough to help the debt that newspapers are in. Authors are spending at least $300 to publish a book that may not be successful. Even if people do buy the book, it has to be enough to at least offset the initial money put into it and hopefully gain a profit.

The article discusses a lot about authors being confident in their work to take that step, but people who audition for American Idol think they can sing when clearly they can’t (unless you’re William Hung who managed to sing bad enough to get a hit single. How that worked, the world may never know).

Another argument against the idea of self publishing is the lack of editing. Editors tell you what is missing and correct the grammar. An author may not notice errors going through a story despite how many times they reread it. The advice of having a second pair of eyes is true. Someone else will notice something that you missed. Also, I think that the author will feel so anxious to publish their work that self-correction may be thrown to the wind.

I will say that it’s a good idea for those who have the funds and just want a book out. However, if you can wait, I would recommend that you do. I have this saying that it’s more rewarding when you put your effort into something and do it the right way. Work hard on writing a book and find an editor because they know the ins and outs of the industry.

YouTube Causes Problems in China

“China occasionally blocks YouTube to prevent access to videos that criticize or shine an unflattering light on its policies.”  One particular video was supposedly a reenactment of police fatally beating a Tibetan protester. The group that posted this are sources tied to the government-in-exile of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader. An unknown official claims that this group uses lies to deceive the community and to hide the truth of the March 14th riot. The riot was an anti-government riot in Lhasa. This is the riot the video proposes the Tibetan protester, Tendar was beaten at.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang says that the Chinese government doesn’t fear the Internet but temporarily shutting down YouTube (or whatever malfunction is going on that citizens coincidentally can’t connect) shows some kind of fear. I feel like you only try to limit someone else’s power if your power may be put in question.

I wanted to also say that shutting down YouTube is a violation of the freedom of speech, but Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution states that Chinese citizens enjoy freedom of speech and freedom of the press. To me, enjoy sounds like you can take pleasure in this but when I see you having too much fun, then I have to take this pleasure away from you.

Bloggers, Micropayments, and Subscriptions, Oh My!

Bloggers blog for free but are willing to pay for online content. So shouldn’t they pay to blog? Something doesn’t add up here. According to J.D. Power and Associates reports, “nearly 40 percent of bloggers would or already do pay for online content.” “The most commonly cited reasons include the fact that they find value in professional journalism and that they don’t want the quality of news to decline.” Something’s really not adding up here.

Bloggers are trying to use the equation money + news = quality. However, some bloggers’ equations are blog + opinion = quality. Do you see why I’m not understanding this. The quality of news started declining when papers needed to get the stories out before their competition. Facts weren’t checked and sensationalism was started. This slightly carries on towards today with news outlets still relying on anonymous sources. Money isn’t going to change the quality of news. If money (which was provided through advertisments) was the reason that news outlets started doing whatever they could to get news out, it’s not going to have a reverse effect.

Another issue I have with this, is the word quality. Although quality has various meanings to different people, quality is meaningful, understandable information that everyone can rely on. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal is something that everyone can read. I feel like blogs are only for a selected audience. I don’t want to bash all blogs because some of them are high quality. They are high quality to the point that newspapers put them on their site or actual paper. However, not all blogs are this way and some can be biased. I’ll even admit that my blog is biased. I don’t want someone to read my blog and think that’s the whole story. I provide a snippet from a bigger subject that people need to look into and investigate. They shouldn’t have to investigate by paying.

This brings back the issue of micropayments. Micropayments have only worked for the Wall Street Journal. Bloggers prefer subscriptions over micropayments but in the end people still aren’t going to pay. We’ve been getting the news for free online for a while and viewers aren’t going to change that. Besides with news being 24/7, no one is willing to pay for old news.