I had the distinct privilege of listening to some lady from The World Company talk to some small newpapers at some conference. I don't recall her name (I'm very bad with those) nor what exactly the name of the conference (or whatever that was, I was only present for the last talk. I think they called it a symposium.) or who that family was that sponsored it. She was telling them about how to stay relevant in the digital age. Obviously, it was about the internet, and part of it was a suggestion to partner up with your local radio or teevee station (thanks, The World Company, why didn't you go ahead and tell them to buy the local internet service provider too? I mean, to complete the model copy) to make a website. She also told them how important it was to have comments on the site, how blogs help, etc.

They were hesitant in many cases.

Commenting, they were worried, would allow trolling and flaming (though of course they didn't know the term). Wouldn't aggregating and linking stories from other places on their site make the other sites mad, or take away traffic from their own site? If someone writes something bad about a company, won't that company not want to advertise with you any more? Where will the money to maintain a website come from?

It's like they're unaware that there are already models for most of this. It was difficult for me to keep quiet. I thought about www.fark.com, and how I wouldn't even know Wichita had a "Daily Eagle" or whatever it's called were it not for the occasional stories linked there from fark. I thought about how newegg, IMDB, youtube, and slashdot all have comment rating systems which help separate the wheat from the chaff. I thought about how there's an entire gods-damned site about how bad (and good) various companies are (consumerist.com) and realized I don't know if they have advertisers or not, because I use adblock plus. I thought about how instead of partnering with just the radio and television stations, they could all submit and aggregate to one site and split revenue there (or even charge for the aggregation site) and how nobody mentioned how useful subject tagging by writers and editors can be in conjunction with internet news stories. I thought about the cartoon I have on my door at work in the journalism building (http://www.marriedtothesea.com/061209/indoor-windmill.gif) and how the answer was the same here.

These guys are doomed. It's not entirely their fault, but the hole keeps getting deeper. They have too much competition from individual peoples' blogs. I'm a linguistics major, my connection to the journalism department is strictly technical, and even I can see how poorly they're handling this. "Oh no, we'll have to spend money on an IT guy." Well no duh. Either that or learn it yourself. Don't say it like it's a big shock because it's part of doing business in the 21st century. I was pleased to hear about one ljworld feature coming, but progress from newspapers is on the whole a little slow.

Also, the advertising subscription model they were discussing was strange to me. I wondered how it was that they're afraid of losing advertising when a site like 4chan can find advertisers despite the fact they produce nothing of value and run into constant legal trouble because it is the darkest, seediest underbelly of the internet. Or, as the great Sir Alec Guinness said "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany." Of course, they're also trying very hard to court the largest segment of the population. That's not my demographic, it's my grandfather and parents. Here's a surprise for you guys: My parents and grandfather have facebook accounts. If I had one, and I saw an interesting local news story, and I posted a link to it on facebook, there's a good chance you'd get unique hits from that. They won't subscribe to your paper, no, that is true. You'd get advertising moneys, you'd get more if you end up on fark because something weird happens or you say something very insightful or incendiary. So put one of those (very common) toolbars that shortcut submission of a story to fark, reddit, stumbleupon, facebook, and anywhere else.

This really shouldn't be so hard for those guys, and I don't understand why they're scared. Then again, my dad didn't fight in WWII.

Comments

Shooting yourself in the foot to death

America doesn't know computer good. I think it is one factor that will severely hinder growth and progress in this country. But Obama's death panels should take care of the ones that don't want to learn, since they are all old people.

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• Posted by antigonesrevenge on November 13, 2009 at 8:02 p.m.
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