Robert LaHue

A couple of months ago, I had a great “original” idea. Newspapers should develop mobile apps that would allow people to scan barcodes and QR codes with their smartphones at local shops. Those codes would earn the user points, which could be redeemed for cash, special offers, etc. Newspaper sales staff would manage these barcodes, thus developing a new source of ad sales revenue.

As is the case with many of my “original” ideas, somebody thought of it well before I did and is doing it even better than I imagined.

So kudos to Shopkick, a new startup with millions in venture capital that takes a “reward customers actually in the store” concept to a whole new level of fun, convenience and effectiveness.

In short, Shopkick uses a in-store device to work with a smartphone app that allows people to earn points and special offers by simply walking into a store. TechCrunch has a solid video from a demonstration of the app by Shopkick at a Best Buy in the Bay Area on Aug. 3 showing just how the app would work.

I think the Shopkick concept has great potential (so long as there’s a seat at the table for us Android users in the future in addition to the iPhone). And I think, in order to maximize their potential, the sales staffs at local media outlets could (and should) become their best allies.

This New York Times piece gives detail on Shopkick’s revenue model. If I had to translate it with alphabet soup, it’s an IRL CPC system. For every person that comes into a store and utilizes Shopkick, that store pays Shopkick a set amount of money.

Right now, Shopkick has agreements with some national retailers like Best Buy and Macy’s and shopping mall operator Simon Property Group. But as the company grows, Shopkick will want to drill down into more and more communities, and possibly work with local non-chain stores in addition to national retailers.

Does it make sense to develop their own sales staffs for this program, or would it be better to outsource the heavy lifting on the sales side to an already-established sales staff for a rev share? Like say, at a newspaper? Or television station? Or a web-based organization like TBD.com in D.C. (Shopkick’s not there yet), where you could even possibly develop more special features through cross-app promotion?

Plus, by having the sales staff at news orgs, which are already getting plenty of experience dealing with third-party vendor involvement with ad sales, deal with the sales and customer relations end of things, Shopkick could devote more of its resources to continually improving the technology involved. Thus, the app gets that much better, more people and stores use it, and the more everybody makes.

I think it would be a win-win.

Talking about the relationship between Google and newspapers is hardly an original topic. The Google-newspaper discussion tends to fall into two distinct categories.

Category 1: A shouting match between old printies screaming how Google’s aggregation is destroying the bottom line as they clutch their Underwoods while Google folks say, “No, no, we want to help you” while writing code for world domination.

Category 2: Random people offering their thoughts on how Google should go about helping newspapers transform their business model since they claim they want to do exactly that.

This post will solidly fit into Category 2. But I bring it up because I feel my suggestion covers something that has been under-discussed in the conversations of newspapers developing digital revenue. In fact, what I’m talking about is the situation where I, Mr. No Paywall of Northern California himself, would support newspaper content only being available for a cost, but doing so would require the help of a large, technologically adept, media-gathering organization like Google.

For the sake of creativity, we’ll call my idea Project LeadType. It would simply be the largest, most user-friendly news archive system the planet has ever seen.

My theory here is based on one primary belief: The content printed on a news page is an appreciating asset. There’s some value in fresh news, but there’s limitations on it. That’s why it makes sense to make it available for free or near-free to the public and get revenue through advertising.

But older news is tougher to obtain reliably. The older the news, the harder it is to find. Newspapers are a reliable source for historical information, giving them a special value. Really, even more value than when that content was fresh. It’s like wine, getting better and more valuable with age.

Newspapers have robust archives in print and microfilm, either on their sites or, in many cases, local libraries. But their online archives, in comparison, are relatively small. This is where Google comes in.

Google is currently undertaking the Google Books project, which scans book pages, then uses OCR software to allow text searching.

So, the plan is simple: Google uses their resources to scan historical newspaper archives. Large papers, small papers, everything in-between, use this to create a massive online database that is paywalled at a reasonable price, and share that revenue with the publications being searched. There would be options for searching specific publications at a lower cost, or a larger rate that would allow searching across all publications Google has helped archive.

This is being done already though, right? Yes, some larger newspapers have already developed what I’m suggesting, through a company called ProQuest. For example, with ProQuest, the Los Angeles Times has an online archive going back to the 1880s. But there’s three serious flaws with ProQuest’s current system.

First, there’s not enough publications involved. Anything besides a large city metro and you’re screwed. Google is in a better position to drill down to smaller papers in a community.

Second, it’s too expensive to access. One day of access to the Los Angeles Times, with the ability to print off four articles, costs $10.95. Printing off a single article is $3.95. That would drive away a casual viewer. There’s no reason somebody should have to pay $11 for one day of searching an online archive. Google’s skills in this regard would help drive the price down, making it more appealing for the casual researcher.

Third, ProQuest’s search system is too academic in feel. Using it makes me feel like I’m in LexisNexis or Pacer. A search on Google Books feels much more comfortable and laid-back. There’s an appeal in that.

Simply put, Google can do what ProQuest is doing, but better.

Is this the ultimate solution? No. A robust Google-built archive will not provide all the money a digital journalism business would need. But I think, at minimum, it could drive off the need for paywalling fresh content, meaning whatever other monetizing efforts a publication undertakes would be that much more effective. Plus, it would also fill a community need for customers in having an affordable, easily accessible historical archive. The simpler something is made to use, the more likely people will use it.

That’s my contribution to the Google talk. Where’s the wine list?

“Write short for the Web.”

I’m not sure if that was the First Commandment of online journalism, but it was definitely in the top 5.

The theory: People reading news online are busy. Therefore, they don’t have the patience to read through a long news story, so the writer must do everything in their power to keep the story as short as realistically possible. Make that writing so tight you could wrap your story around a lump of coal and have a diamond in two weeks.

In traditional desktop/laptop/netbook Web, that’s a rational argument. People are doing more than one thing at once when they’re online. For example, as I type this blog post, I have nine tabs running in my Firefox browser.

I also won’t deny that this comes to the detriment of good, long-form journalism. Emphasis on the word “good.” There’s a lot of long journalism that’s bad. In fact, I think most journalism over 1,000 words is horrible and could have been written just as well in half the space. But when it’s good, it’s amazing. Long-form journalism is the home run swing: The writer is either making tonight’s SportsCenter or dragging their bat back to the bench with your head hung in shame.

But, the rules of the Web aren’t necessarily the rules of mobile Web. I really believe that long-form journalism will find a more hospitable home in smartphones and iPads than what happened with computers.

Here’s my case why: Continue reading →

Might as well change my name to Benedict Arnold with that title, some in my field would say.

But, it’s time to face the facts and acknowledge journalism as more an action than a job. for two reasons. First, to deal with reality. Second, to also realize, finally, that this isn’t a bad thing at all, even for professional journalists.

This is, in fact, my answer to the everlasting “journalists vs. bloggers” debate, also commonly framed as “working in the century-old newsroom floor vs. working out of your parents’ basement” argument.

(Quick sidetrack: Can we ditch the “parents’ basement” putdown? I’m sure there’s a few bloggers making enough to afford their own basements to work in. And my college newspaper was in a basement.)

For too long, we’ve considered “journalist” to be a very specific job. You have to work in a certain place, in a certain way, and have the intent to be a journalist in order to commit an act of journalism.

I totally disagree.

Flashback to journalism school. You’re taught the Five W’s and H: who, what, where, when, why and how. Five of these constitute reporting. But then there’s the sixth: Why.

To me, answer the question of “why” is what separates journalism from reporting. Why is the red meat, or extra-firm tofu for you vegans out there. Defining Why is the response to eternal question of “So what?” that permeates a society often too busy for its own good. Discovering Why takes skill and enterprise.

So quite frankly, anybody who answers and passes along to another the question of why, with details and evidence to back it up, is committing an act of journalism.

And that can be done by anybody. People can answer Why without even intending to do so. Accidental journalism can exist.

Does this dismiss those who have made committing acts of journalism their livelihood? Like, well, me? I don’t think so. Two reasons for that.

First, just because it’s possible for anybody to commit an act of journalism doesn’t mean everybody wants to. I could go out and win the California Lottery. But I’m not necessarily interested in buying the ticket I would need to win the jackpot. Some people like playing the lottery, others just like to watch the drawing. Some people want to be journalists, other just want to read, hear and watch journalists’ work. The latter still need the former.

Second, while accidental journalism is possible, the majority of journalism will still be done intentionally. Specific skills further increase the ability to commit an act of journalism. So those who best acquire those skills can still perform journalism as a living.

So, for those pros still bristling at amateurs, even the ones blustering about how the pros are going to go down in flames: Quite sweating it. Yeah, things aren’t the same as they were 20 years ago. The market will be tougher. Some types of thinking that once existed won’t be able to survive anymore.

But it won’t cease to exist.

This just crossed my mind recently.

In 1995, my parents purchased our first family computer, an NEC Ready series from a Future Shop in Medford, Ore. (When you lived up by the border on the California, you made as many big purchases as possible in Oregon to avoid paying sales tax. Or pumping your own gas.)

It wasn’t top of the line, but toward the high end at $1500+. I can’t remember a lot of the power numbers, but I do remember it came with just-released Windows 95 and the size of the hard drive it boasted: A whopping 1.6 gigabytes.

Fast-forward to 2010. I buy an LG Ally phone running Android 2.1 from a Target in Yuba City, Calif. After the automatic discounts, rebates, and trade-ins, I paid $63.87 for the phone including sales tax. (But I also have a $50 gift card that will be mailed to be, so in reality this phone is going to cost less than $15.)

This phone has a removable memory card the size of my pinkie fingernail that holds 5 times the information of my family’s first tower computer. And I can go out and buy one that would hold 8 times as much as that.

Any company that’s not utilizing this kind of technological advancement to their greatest advantage is just plain nuts.

Here in northern California, particularly the greater Sacramento area, there was an interesting interview on the Capital Public Radio  show “Insight” Friday for those paying attention to the issue of paywalls on newspaper websites.

Back in January/February, the Dow Jones-owned The Record in Stockton (most famous resident: Oakland A’s pitcher Dallas “Stay Off My Mound” Braden) decided to raise the pay wall.

The Stockton system in brief:

• Non-registered users can view 3 local articles for free per month.
• Registered non-paying users can view 10 local articles for free per month.
• Print subscribers, as always, pay for the newspaper (I’ll call that Rate A). This rate comes without online access.
• Online-only subscribers can get unlimited access for $2.29 a week (Rate B).
• Print subscribers can add on the unlimited online access (Rate C). This is 77 cents higher than Rate A, but not less than adding Rate A and Rate B together.

Friday’s CPR interview was a follow-up with Record publisher Roger Coover on how the pay wall was going. Coover’s claim: It’s going fantastic in his eyes, and Stockton’s going to keep the wall up.

“This is no longer an experiment?” host Jeffrey Callison asked.

“No longer now,” Coover replied.

In fact, toward the end of the interview, Coover claimed that with the paywall in place, Stockton’s web operations were self-sustaining, a fact that would be an anomaly in current print news world.

Maybe in the face of this claimed success by Coover, I should be rethinking my strong opposition to paywalls as merely an entrenchment device by newspapers trying to squeeze the last few shekels out of a print-heavy business model.

But then Coover started giving some numbers to Callison, and now I’m not so convinced. Here are some of the numbers he shared. Continue reading →

Familiar with golf terms? In that case, mobile can be referred to as the newspaper industry’s “mulligan.”

Or, maybe to be more blunt, let me put it this way: Embracing and getting aggressive with mobile journalism, now, may be newspapers’ last chance to save themselves long enough to eventually transform their business model to one where print papers, if they’re still around, can function as a luxury item rather the norm.

I’m not exactly breaking new ground by saying that newspapers were way too late to the party with embracing the Internet and attempting to gain revenue from it. As a result, the current system the public is used to having (and won’t be broken from) isn’t one that can bring in money at a rate even remotely comparable to newspapers.

Now, along is coming the mobile news market. Devices such as smart phones, e-readers and iPads which rely less on the general Web browsing and more on specific applications which deliver specific content.

Specialized content delivered in a specific package? Sounds dangerously close to a newspaper to me.

And here’s the real kicker: As of right now, the newspaper industry would have the chance to still be ahead if they embrace mobile deeply now. Being ahead means you can have a better plan in place for when the real growth hits. Have a plan in place, you can probably make actual revenue.

As far as I can tell, there are three key dates news organizations need to note as far as smartphones go:

January- Indications are this is when the iPhone will become available on Verizon in addition to AT&T. As much as I love my Android smartphone, the iPhone is still the iPhone in our culture, and there will be a big surge in smart phone growth once Mr. Jobs’ little toy is available on more than one wireless network.

Q3 2011- This is when, according to Nielsen research from Q4 2009, the number of feature phone users and smart phone users will draw even with each other. I don’t know if this date will change with an iPhone launch.

2013- Gartner predicts this is when mobile phones will become more common to access the Web than PCs.

However, there’s some things to consider. First, being ready to build mobile revenue is going to require some serious risk-taking by newspapers, and I haven’t seen a lot of newspaper sales departments that are willing to be risky.

Second, it might still be too late. This is the feeling of many. Newspapers are too far down the track for hit the brakes and prevent going over the cliff. A friend of mine said just last night (after telling he had put in two weeks’ notice at his newspaper job) that he believes even if mobile makes money, newspapers have too many other costs associated with print and legacy for mobile to save the industry.

Yeah, maybe. But at least trying is better than doing nothing except sitting on the train and saying “Did we go over the cliff yet?”

Cross-posted from my Mid-Valley Notebook blog:

Comments on the mugshot of a women arrested for suspicion of meth possession: “meth made her hawtt” “People in their 50s + dealing and making drugs is pathetic. Hope they rot in prison.” and “Well at least net 5 got some more dirt off the streets, 2 down 50,000 more to go!!!!”

Response to a woman supporting California boycotting Arizona over the immigration issue and saying she was a “proud Hispanic”: “Good for you, we don’t want you in our state… stay away!!”

Another comment on immigration: “Arizona and California borders are being overrun by cartels, criminals, and other illegal aliens. WE are infiltrated with hundreds of thousands of illegals destroying our welfare, hospital, and school systems…It is going to get much worse with entire communities taken over. WE need leaders who REALLY see what is happening on the borders. WE need some new political heroes willing to help Arizona…Remember the Alamo!”

Story on a murder conviction: “Death penalty? Too kind. Make their stay in prison suck so badly they wished they were dead.”

And that doesn’t include comments that have been deleted for inappropriate language and blatant racism.

It’s really unfortunate non-anonymous comments can’t have civil discussion on the Internet.

Wait, non-anonymous? Don’t I mean anonymous? That’s where all the problems come from, right?

Nope. Those comments aren’t from anonymous website commenters. All the above comments were posted to the Appeal-Democrat’s Facebook page, which include the name of the commenter right beside it. Go take a look around and see for yourself.

OK, I will note the possibility that somebody has typed in a fake name on Facebook. But that’s still making up a small portion and Facebook does make efforts to weed out fake names on accounts (though not always perfectly) So more likely than not, we’re talking about people posting commentary beside their true, actual names.

There’s a strong line of thinking among many in newsrooms that ditching anonymous commenting is the way to go. The belief there is that if people are forced to put their names behind what they say, they’ll be nicer.

Us folks on the Web side generally argue against that, and I think the recent uptick in comments on our Facebook page is proving that whole theory moot.

The real fact of the matter is this: In America, you have the right to be a complete moron if you so choose. Some people, no matter what, are going to be morons, whether it be for personal prejudices, a desire for attention, a want to “lash out” against whatever frustrations in some form, or just because they’re bored. The Internet allows people to broadcast their spew to a large audience much easier than in earlier eras. The newspaper has been the traditional sounding board and generation of conversation of a community, the opportunity to comment on newspaper websites is just the Web 2.0 extension of this.

Forcing people who are hell-bent on being jerks to use their real name won’t “cure” them. There isn’t really a cure, they’re going to do it no matter what. And the tyranny of the minority shouldn’t be allowed to ruin things for the vast majority that handle website commentary responsibly.

But troublemakers can be quarantined by giving the online community as a whole some self-policing responsibilities and regular newspaper staff engagement and interaction online. That, at the very least, separates those who deep-down desire civil interaction and those who never will.

Mandy Jenkins, formerly of the Cincinnati Enquirer and now with the TBD news project in D.C., posted similar arguments to what I’m making here a few months ago, except she did it much better. I’ll also link to this piece in last week’s Boston Globe by Jesse Singal.