On Sunday, the Daily Telegram in Adrian, Michigan became the first newspaper to run a story — two stories, in fact — they found using News Exchange.

On a business page featuring a syndicated columnist and wire stories, the editors ran a pair of stories from DailyFinance.com.

Using a free newswire from this online-only financial news site, the Daily Telegram brought their readers relevant, quality stories that mattered to Michigan.

Here’s what Special Projects Editor Erik Gable said about the decision on Twitter:

“We will be augmenting our Sunday print edition with the @Publish2 News Exchange for the first time this weekend.”

What could your newspaper do with Publish2 News Exchange?

See for yourself. Register now at Publish2.com or log in with your existing account today to find great stories for your print edition.

Questions about how to get started? Find us at contact@publish2.com anytime.

]]> http://blog.publish2.com/2010/06/07/publish2-news-exchange-stories-in-print-dailyfinance-in-the-daily-telegram/feed/ 1 http://blog.publish2.com/2010/06/04/spotlight-on-stories-three-national-news-sources-available-in-publish2-news-exchange-today/ http://blog.publish2.com/2010/06/04/spotlight-on-stories-three-national-news-sources-available-in-publish2-news-exchange-today/#comments Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:36:26 +0000 Ryan Sholin http://blog.publish2.com/?p=1230 We’re turning the spotlight on three news sources in Publish2 News Exchange. These are online-only news organizations distributing their stories for newspapers to run in print — free in exchange for attribution.

First, Politics Daily:

Here’s what Melinda Henneberger, Editor-in-Chief, says about Politics Daily’s reporting style:

“What PoliticsDaily.com offers is effectively counter-programming; instead of attempting to dominate the 10-second news cycle, our goal is to offer a thoughtful take on events. We value writing at a moment when the conventional wisdom says that nothing could matter less.”

And here are a few examples of Politics Daily stories in News Exchange today that any newspaper could run in print tomorrow:

Obama, Jan Brewer Talk Immigration, Promise Cooperation
White House correspondent Alex Wagner covers President Obama’s meeting with the Governor of Arizona.

Louisiana Congressman Launches Petition to Fire BP CEO Tony Hayward
Patricia Murphy’s story covers Charlie Melancon’s online petition and the response to it so far.

Brian Sandoval, Sharron Angle Lead for GOP Governor, Senate Nods in Nevada
Bruce Drake covers the latest polls in Nevada’s election races.

Subscribe to the Politics Daily newswire and connect your News Exchange subscriptions to your print publishing system via authenticated feeds or FTP to easily bridge the gap between the Web and your print edition.

Next, in-depth coverage of health policy from the independent nonprofit Kaiser Health News newswire:

Laurie McGinley, Executive Editor for News at KHN, spent 27 years at the Wall Street Journal, and was part of a reporting team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for AIDS coverage.

Here a national story your newspaper could run in print, for free, tomorrow morning:

Obama’s Health IT Leader Says Doctors Will Embrace Change
Irene M. Wielawski (another Pulitzer Prize winner, from the Los Angeles Times staff that covered the 1992 riots and 1994 Northridge earthquake) talks about Electronic Medical Records with the Obama administration’s National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Subscribe to the Kaiser Health News newswire now, and run this story in your print edition for free tomorrow.

Finally, The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit news organization based at Columbia University focusing on in-depth education coverage:

Richard Lee Colvin, Editor at The Hechinger Report, has reported on education for the Los Angeles Times, Oakland Tribune, Hayward Daily Review, and the Associated Press.

Here’s a Q&A on a controversial issue with a member of the State Board of Education in Texas:

Q&A: Texas board member says ‘the Founding Fathers would be proud’ of controversial changes
The Report interviews David Bradley, a Republican member of the board from Beaumont, Texas, about the board’s decision to approve a social studies curriculum that encourages high school students to question the concept of the separation of church and state.

Subscribe to The Hechinger Report newswire today, and run this story in print this weekend as a sidebar to your local coverage of education, politics, or religion.

Ready to get started? Log in now at Publish2.com and search for newswires that suit your news organization’s needs.

Want to syndicate your own content, or share it with partner newspapers in your state and across the country? Create your first newswire and give your subscribers and partners permission to subscribe to it today.

New to Publish2? Register now. Publish2 News Exchange is the easiest way to share and distribute content for print and Web publishing.

Here’s an overview of some of the first reactions to what we like to call P2X:

Publish2′s News Exchange Aims to Help News Outlets Cut Ties to AP
Poynter | June 1, 2010

“If his service does what he says it does,” said [Roger Plothow, editor and publisher of the Post-Register in Idaho Falls and one of the more vocal would-be AP dropouts], “I’ll be lining up for it and so will a lot of other people.”

While the AP may be the great white whale for new media enthusiasts, it will keep swimming around the ocean for some time to come. But credit Karp and company with a well-aimed harpoon.

Publish2′s Ryan Sholin: “We did not set out to kill the Associated Press”
Nieman Journalism Lab | May 28, 2010

What the News Exchange and its creators do want, Sholin said, is to broaden the ecosystem of access when it comes to the wire content available to newspapers.

Publish2 Wants To Disrupt The Associated Press With An Online News Exchange
TechCrunch | May 24, 2010

Publish2 is taking a swing at the newswire mammoth – they un-lovingly call it an inefficient monopoly – by launching a platform that allows newspaper publishers and other media organizations tap the vast amount of quality content already available for free on the Web (we don’t mean to brag, but TechCrunch was one of the examples cited by the startup on stage).

Publish2 takes a swing at the AP with News Exchange
Romenesko | May 25, 2010

Publish2 is launching a platform that allows newspaper publishers and media organizations tap the vast amount of quality content already available for free on the Web.

Publish2′s News Exchange offers great promise for journalists
LoganMolen.com | May 24, 2010

After using News Exchange for a few days — and quite a bit today — I can safely say it brings a whole new mindset to how media organizations can share, pursue and purchase content. I’ve worked with Associated Press content and tools since I was a college student in the 1980s and my first impressions of News Exchange last week were, “Wow, this is a game changer.”

Publish2 News Exchange launches: Competition for AP’s market?
Knight Digital Media Center | May 27, 2010

If this technical integration actually performs well, that’s pretty important. Many news organizations face increasingly constrained options because they rely on entrenched, large, hard-to-update, print-focused content management systems. These systems are typically very picky about content formats. It often takes time and effort to integrate content produced by more modern CMSs into these systems—at least, if you want to run that content in print, rather than online only.

Buried in a local paper: a glimpse of the future of journalism
The Independent | June 12, 2010

Is this kind of exchange the key to reshaping the newspaper industry and putting it on a sounder footing? I think so.

Finally, A Smart Alternative to the AP
Breaking Media | June 8, 2010

In 2010, it’s pretty clear that the real associated press is comprised of thousands of strong credible voices breaking news and doing sharp analysis on any topic you can name.

Publish2 wants to take content distribution away from the AP
VentureBeat | May 24, 2010

Rather than purchasing content from the AP, the Publish2 News Exchange connects web publishers with print publishers to distribute content to anyone at anytime. The web publishers benefit by having their brand syndicated in print.

Publish2: Another Online Threat To AP
MediaPost | May 25, 2010

The News Exchange expedites the process by handling the logistics of file transfers, graphics and tailored story formatting. It can also automatically import syndicated digital content to the print editions of newspapers.

Publish2: pivoting, thinking big, and identifying the enemy
Darryl Siry’s posterous | May 25, 2010

I like this move for a couple of reasons. Publish2 is thinking really big. Of course thinking big comes with skeptics who will ridicule the ambitions of the startup, but that is the nature of startups that ultimately disrupt the big incumbents. They are never viewed as a threat when they are starting out.

ClaraJeffery: Congrats to our friends @publish2. They make good things happen.

jayrosen_nyu: You know what Publish2′s News Exchange is, really? An extension into print of “do what you do best and link to the rest.”http://jr.ly/3tvz

erikgable: Intrigued by @Publish2 News Exchange and its potential for making our content-sharing agreements more effective.

Publish2 Aims to Oust the Associated Press
Mashable | May 27, 2010

The News Exchange enables newspapers to replace AP content subscriptions with web content, and in exchange web producers are able to showcase their brands in print. As Karp points out, print publishing and distribution still drive newspaper operations, even its web production, which sometimes is nothing more than a dumping ground for stories from the day’s paper.

emilybell: More inventive than a paywall? @scottkarp on a new model AP http://bit.ly/bueqaD

Publish2 Takes on the Associated Press with News Sharing Service
Folio Magazine | May 25, 2010

According to CEO Scott Karp, News Exchange gives publishers a legitimate content sharing alternative to the AP, a cooperative he calls an “obsolete inefficient monopoly, ripe for disruption.”

stephromanski: Passing on Publish2′s newswire announcement to my publisher.

Publish2 News Exchange Takes Aim at AP
MediaBistro | May 24, 2010

OK, perhaps the new Web-content aggregator’s stated goal of “disrupting the Associated Press monopoly over content distribution to newspapers” is a bit lofty, but hey, might as well aim high, right?

Publish2 aims to supplant the Associated Press, reinvent the news exchange with ‘P2X’
BrianManzullo.com | May 25, 2010

The more I think about it, the more intrigued I am about this development. Why? Not necessarily because of how much money it could save news companies (although that’d be a huge plus, if P2X can develop a thriving web of news organizations and blogs). Instead, I’m thinking about how much more efficient content sharing can be between news organizations, and how much more vibrant their products can be because of that.

jdcoffman: @rbole the Publish2 release today looks to be absolutely perfect for #pubmedia public affairs needs — truly amazing.

Publish2 bids to disrupt content syndication with News Exchange service
eMedia Vitals | May 26, 2010

One feature of News Exchange that fell under the radar at TechCrunch is a story ideas database – basically an RFP for story assignments. Editors can post a request for coverage; other members can respond with an existing article or a commitment to write something.

catecorcoran: Add a payment system, and Publish2 could be a price discovery mechanism for original reporting #sm #media #tcdisrupt

mrosas: I absolutely adore what @publish2 is doing for news … disruption indeed http://tcrn.ch/cQb3PY

This Week in Review: Facebook’s privacy tweak, old and new media’s links, and the AP’s new challenger
Nieman Journalism Lab | May 28, 2010

It’s rare that we see such a bold, explicit attempt to take down such an established news organization, so this will doubtless be a project to keep a close eye on.

***

Thanks to everyone who has asked us great questions and offered their feedback so far.

We want to know what you think! Find us here, on Twitter, or at contact@publish2.com for more information, to send your feedback, or to fire off a few good questions.

New to Publish2? Register here to get started.

Sometimes all you need is a few Tweets, a bunch of links, and some like-minded pioneers.

That’s how a quiet revolution began in Washington state Wednesday. Four journalists spontaneously launched one of the first experiments in collaborative (or networked) link journalism to cover a major local story.

But it gets better. Those four journalists weren’t in the same newsroom. In fact, they all work for different media companies. And here’s the best part: Some of them have never even met in person.

“The whole thing came together on Twitter yesterday morning,” Elaine Helm, new media editor at the Herald in Everett, said in an email Thursday.

The story was crazy rain in western Washington: evacuations, flooded and closed highways, avalanches, a breached levee, the whole deal. Elaine (@ehelm on Twitter), put a call out for local Twitterers to adopt a common hashtag for flooding coverage. Paul Balcerak (@paulbalcerak), assistant editor of dynamic media for Sound Publishing, suggested #waflood, which they agreed on and posted for their Twitter followers to see.

As Paul described it in an email, Brianne Pruitt (@briannepruitt, Wenatchee World web editor) and Angela Dice (@adice, Kitsap Sun web editor) picked up on the hashtag, “and it snowballed.”

That would have been innovation enough, but Paul went a step further: He saved links to flood coverage through Publish2, tagging each with “waflood,” and posted on Twitter that he was doing so. Soon Elaine, Angela, and Brianne were also adding links to Publish2 with a “waflood” tag.

They then put Publish2 widgets on their news organizations’ sites that displayed the links they were collaboratively gathering, greatly expanding their sites’ coverage of the flooding.

Here’s the Herald’s link roundup (which is also linked on the Herald’s homepage);

Kitsap Sun’s (inset in a story at left, linked on the homepage at right, and on this full page of links);

Wenatchee World’s (see inset box at left);

and the one at Sound Publishing’s pnwlocalnews.com (see “Washington state flooding” at the bottom).

Voila — instant collaborative link newswire!

The collaborative spirit of journalism’s future

This collaboration is remarkable in all kinds of ways.

First, you can tell by the Twitter timestamps how quickly everything came together. Second, with a link newswire fed by multiple news organizations, there’s a danger that everyone might add only their own stories to the mix. But this group added outside sources as well (including the News Tribune, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Times, Yakima Herald-Republic, the Daily Record, and more). Third, all four independently and instantly “got” what the others were doing, which shows how much the ideas of collaboration and link journalism (and even the term itself) have spread.

Lastly, did I mention the four journalists work for different media companies? The Herald is owned by the Washington Post Co., Kitsap Sun by Scripps, Sound Publishing by Black Press (of Victoria, B.C.), and Wenatchee World is independent/family-owned. Paul hasn’t met Angela or Brianne in person, and has met Elaine briefly once. Yet none of that was an obstacle.

I asked Angela in an email whether she knew the others in non-Twitter life. Here’s her wonderful answer:

I used to work with Elaine at the Sun and talk to her regularly, and she’s one of the reasons I joined Twitter. While I’d never done any project with Brianne before, she had made it a point to visit other papers around the region and introduce herself when she became the Wenatchee World web editor, which is how I started following her on Twitter. I met Seth Long [Sound Publishing's new media director] on Twitter, which is how I met Paul, neither of whom I’ve met in person. They both, however, work with a former co-worker and friend of mine. It’s a small, small online journalism world in Western Washington.

How refreshing is that? Forget walled gardens — this is the spirit of journalism’s future.

In some ways the networked linking process is an extension of how newsrooms collaborate with traditional wire services, but I think the Washington project is more than that. Papers using a traditional wire service aren’t really collaborating. They’re primarily trying to a) extend the reach of their stories, and b) get access to material they can’t afford to produce on their own.

The dynamic on display Wednesday, and the relationships Angela described in the quote above that allowed for this collaboration, seem more organic — a mental leap forward. They even emphasized the collaboration in the widget descriptions: Kitsap Sun’s says “Stories are chosen by news reporters and editors from Washington news organizations,” while the Herald’s says “Below are news stories that journalists around the state have selected to post using a service called Publish2.”

I asked Seth Long (@greenergrad) about a similar project he and Angela had worked on in December to round up links to snowstorm coverage. (For future Wikipedia articles on link journalism: To my knowledge, theirs was the first example of networked link journalism across media companies.)

He noted that “Her newspaper is a direct competitor with a group of our community weeklies.” In the old world, that would have made collaboration a non-starter. But today readers rightly come first. As Seth said, “My perspective is that our job is to serve our communities as best we can.”

Innovation that’s easy, popular, and cheap

The Washington link projects should serve as models for the entire news industry. They show that collaborative linking draws readers, is easy, and costs nothing more than time (and not even much of that).

Seth said the December snowstorm link roundup was on the homepage for three or four days — but it was the site’s most-trafficked story for the entire month. (This tracks with Knoxnews.com’s success with a popular football link roundup.)

Angela described some of the other benefits of collaborative linking:

I think it’s especially useful in situations like these, where events affect a large region. I can also see it being used as a way to track things like state government news, or any broad-reaching issue that your readers will be talking about.

Having a group of people adding the links just makes your job that much easier. As both a reader and a web editor, I can keep updated on what’s happening on a particular topic without opening and slogging through a dozen web sites.

This is the power of collaborative news networks. By forming a network, newsrooms can discover not just a greater volume of news, but a greater volume of relevant, high-quality news than one person, one newsroom, or one wire service could alone.

Compare the Washington group’s great waflood link roundup to a Google News search for “Washington flood” — I know which one I’d rather have as a resource if I lived in that area.

Doing this isn’t complicated. In an email, Brianne described the extent of her planning: “I follow the others on Twitter, and they had started a hashtag, #waflood, and then mentioned using the same tag for publish2 links.”

That’s it! Any group of news organizations can do this, even if they’re not Twitter-friends.

A good way to start is to set up a Publish2 newsgroup and invite other journalists (as Angela did with a Northwest News newsgroup in December). Collaboratively save links about a couple of non-breaking-news subjects to get a feel for it, and try publishing feeds of those links. Then when a big story breaks, it’s a simple matter of choosing a common tag and alerting everyone in the newsgroup.

Don’t get hung up on worries about sinking a lot of time or money into this. As Angela said, “There’s a perception that with some tools, it’s a lot of extra work, but — I’m specifically talking about the Publish2 model — when you realize how little time it really takes to bookmark a page you’re already reading, it’s a wonder you weren’t doing it before.”

As for money, when the technology is free all you need to invest in is smart journalists. Here’s what Paul had to say Wednesday:

I think it’s worth pointing out that everything we did today cost us $0.

That, too, is the spirit of journalism’s future. I can’t wait to see what this innovative crew cooks up next in that spirit — and who will be the first to follow their lead.

But nothing may pose a greater struggle, at least on a journo-existential level, than the Nude Britney iPod Conundrum.

This is the well-known problem of how to balance journalism’s civic and intellectual responsibilities with the fact that stories or headlines involving “nude,” “Britney,” and/or “iPod” are the surest route to high Google rankings and traffic. (I’m coining the term after “Nude Britney iPod” became a kind of catchphrase at an SPJ conference panel last weekend.)

And, now that I have optimized my search potential, I’ll start referring to the problem by its most common metaphor: broccoli.

Howard Weaver addresses the Broccoli Problem in a recent post:

I had a discussion like this in Tacoma once, when I mentioned that it’s hard to make a living urging people to eat their broccoli when the guy in the next booth is selling curly fries. Editor Karen Peterson raised her hand to remind me, “Howard, they giving away the curly fries over there.”

And so they are. But if all you eat is curly fries, you die young and fat, clutching your heart. We need to be sure we are selling not just broccoli but balance, nutrition, longer life. Many people want that. We can sustain our mass audiences by finding ways to serve that impulse, with time for dessert along the way.

I like the direction Weaver is going, but I want to take the idea a little further. It’s not enough just to reframe boring news as important — to say, “Yes it’s broccoli, but sometimes you need it. Even if you hate how it tastes, smells, and feels, not to mention how the little green seed thingies always get stuck in your teeth.”

We need to realize that the kinds of stories newspapers typically run often make “important” news boring or hard to understand — and that we have to make this news relevant and interesting again. More importantly, we need to realize that interesting, more approachable coverage of these topics already exists. In fact, it’s within our reach — if only we could change our way of thinking and linking.

In other words, the choice shouldn’t be broccoli vs. curly fries. It should be limp steamed broccoli vs. crispy Thai chicken with broccoli and red pepper in chili jam sauce.

It’s not a matter of pulling a Jessica Seinfeld and tricking readers into reading the healthy stuff. It’s a matter of finding the stories on weightier topics that people might actually find relevant and engaging.

Think the Georgia-Russia conflict deserves coverage? One approach is to treat the newspaper like a required-reading textbook in a college course.

This was the strategy, for example, of 79 of about 350 English-language papers whose front pages appeared on the Newseum’s website on Aug. 20. (Yes, I have weird hobbies; and I’d link to these 1A’s, but the Newseum doesn’t archive front pages.) These papers all put Russia-Georgia on the front page — 12 days after the fighting started, by which time the “news” for days had been a stream of false cease-fires, unfulfilled pullout promises, and warnings from NATO.

Of those, 27 were full stories (one with a local angle; three with varying degrees of context or analysis; and the rest incremental news of the day); 48 were text or small photo teases; and four were centerpiece photo teases. Many of the headlines loudly announced the lack of news, like this memorable tease hed: “No action from NATO on Georgia.”

Another way to cover that story would have been to realize these articles help few readers understand or want to read about the conflict. Instead, a paper could have told readers something like this:

“Russia invaded Georgia X days ago. Like many of us, you probably haven’t thought about Georgia since, um, ever and may not even know where it is. Nonetheless, this is actually a big deal. To help explain why, we’ve compiled links to the best and most interesting stories on our website.”

On its site, the paper could have linked to pieces like The New Republic’s useful primer and Q&A with a former State Department official who now teaches at a university in Georgia; the Times of London’s context-heavy analysis; and Fred Kaplan’s Slate column about the Bush Administration’s response to the conflict (before and after the fighting started). These would have been infinitely more useful to readers than two weeks of incremental-update wire copy.

Or take the subprime mortgage crisis. Instead of day after day of the same old basic story (more foreclosures! more bad mortgages! more shady lenders! yes, you just read this story last week!), a paper could have simply directed readers to This American Life’s “The Giant Pool of Money” special.

This mentality can also lead to better coverage of less-serious topics. Instead of running PR-driven celebrity puff interviews and box-office numbers, for instance, papers could link to the Onion A.V. Club, Best Week Ever, and Bill Wyman’s hype-puncturing Hitsville blog.

Getting these kinds of stories into print may be difficult, but that’s no reason to keep bombarding readers with unhelpful news because of vague notions of tradition (i.e. “this is what we’ve always covered”), duty (“we can’t just give people Nude Britney iPod”), and historiography (“we’re the first draft of history”). Newsrooms should either get creative and figure out how to incorporate new sources into print, or concentrate on local news and voices in the paper and leave the rest for the web site.

Either way, there’s no excuse for force-feeding readers soggy-broccoli news when so much crispy-Thai-chicken-broccoli coverage is just a link away.

And isn’t pulling together the threads of a story what journalists do?

For example, this weekend it snowed in Tennessee — in March — not exactly a common occurrence. It’s a great old fashioned human interest story. Knoxnews.com published a news story with the facts about the storm. But what about how it’s affecting people in the community? Traditionally, that would mean sending a reporter out to do interviews and a photographer to take pictures… in the snow. Or it would mean making do with some wire copy and photos.

But the beauty of the web is people in the community were already posting their thoughts and pictures online. So all Knoxnews.com had to do was link to them (using Publish2, of course).

And what do these links capture? How the community experienced the storm, why it’s significant, and… pictures:

Finally! | shoutingforha

A miracle has happened! It is snowing in Tennessee… in March no less. Just when I thought Spring was right around the corner, Winter has made a comeback. I am practically giddy about it.

You may be wondering why I am so excited. After all, snow is a regular part of Winter, right? Well, if you live in Tennessee, snow is almost non-existent. According to my very scientific calculations, Tennesseans will enjoy a significant snowfall (minimum 2 inch accumulation that stays on the ground for 2 or more hours before melting) every 4.5 years. How pitiful is that?

Snow | Shoot The Moose

I know others snicker at our reaction to snow in middle Tennessee – I do not care. This is magic, every minute to be savored.

Snow of any measurable amount, around here, is fleeting and rare. For places north and west, by this time of year there is a snow-weariness; a been-there-done-that kind of attitude. To be honest, I wouldn’t blame a northerner for feeling that way.

But not here. The whole town seems to be wrapped up in a breathless giddiness. The television news reporters, ever since last night, have seemed like they were going to burst with anticipation. It’s like a million people, all at once, were filled with the joy and anticipation of a night before a big trip to Disney World. Laugh at us, if you will – but when was the last time you and all of your neighbors felt giddy? Could heaven be like this?

Biggest Snowfall in Five Years | From Where I Sit:

It snowed steadily all evening. When Gail and I went to bed it was still snowing—big beautiful flakes. I woke up at 6:30, scurried outside, and snapped a few photos before anyone spoiled the thick white blanket with foot prints.

I realize that these modest snowfalls make northerners laugh. But when you live in the south, you take what you can get. This is the latest snowfall we have had since 1996. It is also the biggest snowfall we have had since 2003. My guess is that we had about three inches in Franklin.

SNOW! | The Schlog

I took these pictures at 9:30 tonight…the kids wanted to go outside “right now!” We have about 2 inches so far…not bad for middle Tennessee. We have the snowpants, boots, socks and gloves all ready for a morning in the snow!

MORE SNOW!!! | Ridley

We got about 4 or 5in. of snow last night here in Ashland City. I dont think Nashville got near this much. That is what we get for living north of Nashville!! Well, I tried to find a sled all day yesterday but didnt succeed, so I had to “redneck it”, which I am not ashamed to do!! Lucy is sledding on a Tupperware lid! She didnt really like it but looked too cute! Jason says she looks like a gay leopard in this jacket!

Sure, this was just weather, but if you read through the blog posts, you’ll see that it really touched people deeply — and it was a shared community experience.

Newspapers should aspire to be a hub for shared community experiences — and that’s what the link journalism piece on Knoxnews.com did, by presenting as a shared experience what would otherwise be disconnected blog posts. And it was a perfect complement to the reader comments posted on Knoxnews.com’s news piece on the storm. (Some people post on Knoxnews.com — others post on their own blogs.)

Who else is going tie all these threads together? It made perfect sense for Knoxnews.com to do it.

There’s so much opportunity on the web — it’s just a matter of seizing it.

So how can the web make LESS work for journalists rather than more? Which weekend assignment would you have rather had?

Write human interest feature on the storm from scratch, call up people to annoy them for quotes, and then run the AP photo

OR

Read the stories and browse the compelling images already being posted across your local blogosphere, and create a quick link journalism piece to capture it

The web doesn’t have to be harder for journalism — it can be much, much easier — it’s just a matter of learning how to use the web.

What I realized is that, actually, it’s NOT free. To read the New York Times or any other newspaper online, I have to be connected to the internet — and that, in most cases, is definitely NOT free.

Broadband internet access at home is still in the $40-50 range. I pay Verizon extra to access the internet on my Blackberry. I pay extra to use my Blackberry as a tethered modem. Traveling to the New York the other day, I paid for WiFi access in TWO different hot spots because my tethered modem kept dropping the connection (not a coincidence I think). Companies pay for high speed lines for their employees. And we of course pay a lot for the computers and handheld devices that we use to access the Internet (e.g., iPhone).

I realized as I kept pulling out my credit card for public WiFi access that it’s the ISPs who now wield much of the monopoly power once enjoyed by newspapers. I read the New York Times everyday — and I still pay for the privilege. It’s just that I’m not paying the New York Times.

This is the fundamental flaw in the thinking about the future of news — the assumption is that newspaper subscribers used to PAY for NEWS, and online they get it for free.

But the reality is that newspaper subscribers didn’t pay for just for news — they paid for DISTRIBUTION. They paid for a highly useful package of information to show up on their doorsteps every morning…which was the ONLY way to get access to that information. That package included news, and many subscribers valued that part of the package, but they also valued:

• Movie listings
• Employment listings
• Real estate listings
• Cars for sale listings
• Comics
• Sports scores
• Style section
• Coupons
• FSIs
• Ads for sales at retail stories

Everyone is thinking about the shift in the economics of content in terms of paying for content, but what publishers are really facing is a shift in the economics of distribution. We’re still paying for a bundle of information to be delivered to our homes — it’s just that now that bundle is traveling via fiber optic cable rather than newsprint.

It’s not that “content wants to be free” — it’s that Internet access ISN’T free, and now that distribution and content have been unbundled, people are reluctant to pay TWICE — once for distribution (i.e. internet access) and again for content (paid subscriber wall).

So as news organizations seek new models to “pay for news” — to staff the newsrooms that do the reporting that create the news — they need to stop asking why consumers won’t pay for news anymore. Because they ARE paying to access news.

What needs to be reinvented is the economics of content CREATION, which has been cut loose from the economics of distribution. Fewer and fewer people are paying news organizations to distribute news — so they need to find a model that pays strictly for the creation of news.

That is…unless news organizations can once again become hubs of distribution — a destination for consumers to access a rich package of information. Right now, most news organizations are merely offering the same package of information online that they do offline — but the web is much, MUCH bigger than that.

That’s why search engines like Google, along with ISPs, have taken over the information distribution business — search offers people the whole web, while news organizations still offer the same old finite package.

It’s time to get out a clean sheet of paper.

Or perhaps more apt — a new Wiki or Google Doc — figuring this out is going to be a collaborative effort, like Jeff Jarvis’ Networked Journalism Summit.

Jeff is right to focus on the network. The new economics of news won’t be based on monopoly distribution channels — it will be based on networks.

Mark Potts makes a strong argument for why newspapers shouldn’t give up on the paid content model, but it belies the principal reason why they should:

But the delight about the end of TimesSelect is misplaced. While the “content needs to be free” crowd hails it as a victory, the fact is that TimesSelect was the right idea, badly executed. Simply put, the Times put the wrong content behind its $49.95 pay wall. Columnists and opinion? At a time when the blogosphere is all about debating the very issues those columnists wrote about? Cutting Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd et al out of the conversation just wasn’t very smart. And the syndication of those columnists made the Times’ decision to restrict access even more ridiculous—the only place you couldn’t get them for free was the Times site itself. Oops!

TimesSelect could have been so much more. It could have been a high-end subscription service for in-depth coverage that wasn’t otherwise available, for supplemental reporting and blogs and Web-only content in specific vertical topics that would have been valuable to the Times’ core audience, and worth 50 bucks a year. As it was, the Times’ decision to include almost unlimited access to its archives in TimesSelect was a smart move all by itself. Surely a broader, deeper for-pay product could have been built around that core. Alas, we may never know.

Mark is right that cutting off Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd from the conversation didn’t make sense, but cutting off “in-depth coverage” and “supplemental reporting” from the web’s link ecosystem doesn’t make sense either.

When the New York Times publishes unique, high-quality content, and when that content is free and open, it typically gets many links from blogs and other sites that refer traffic via those links. So, being free, that content reaches beyond the more limited TimesSelect audience, not only to regular readers of the Times who weren’t TimesSelect subscribers, but also to a broader audiences that reads the Times “opportunistically,” i.e. only when referred.

Which gets to the other key benefit, which overshadows these traffic referrals in the short-term — search.

When Times content is free and open and LINKED, it gets A LOT of search traffic. But not just in the short-term — search is FOREVER — or rather as long as that content continues to rank for keywords with any search volume, which in many cases is a gift that keeps on giving.

Newspapers — and all original content producers — need to think about the “lifetime value” of their content when monetized through fees vs. when monetized through advertising. Only a finite number of paid subscribers will ever realize the value of content at the time it is published and in the archive. But through search, the potential audience for that content, to be monetized through advertising, is many (MANY) times greater.

The New York Times understands this, which contributed to the decision to tear down the pay. This is from the NYT press release:

Since TimesSelect was launched in 2005, changes in the way people find news and opinion on the Web have altered the online landscape. Because of online users’ growing reliance on search in order to navigate the Web, NYTimes.com expects to see a substantially increased number of unique users referred to and accessing the site once the pay wall is gone. Due to this anticipated growth in traffic, the TimesSelect subscription revenue model will be replaced by one that is based on advertising.

“TimesSelect brought new commentary and voices to the site, as well as an influx of subscription revenue. But the increasing dominance of search and other forms of referral have changed the equation. Allowing unfettered, free access to our opinion content and recent archives should enable us to drive readership and advertising.”

Here’s NYT CEO Janet Robinson from her presentation at the Newspaper Association of America 2007 Mid-Year Review:

Currently the Times Company is the 11th largest audience aggregator on the Web, with 43.8 million visitors in May, up 11 percent from May of 2006. We expect to grow this audience through continued application of search engine optimization to expose our world-class content to search engines and other forms of Internet distribution, as well as new products.

The TimesSelect experiment notwithstanding, the New York Times is one of the savviest newspapers — and one of the savviest content sites generally — when it comes to realizing the value of premium content by opening it up to the web’s link-based economy. They have come to the realization that the web has fundamentally changed the economics of content.

Other newspapers and content producers would be wise to follow their lead.