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Essay
News Investment
By the Project for Excellence in Journalism
If online news increasingly appears central to journalism's
future, the question of newsroom investment becomes critical
in looking ahead. Indicators in 2004 suggested that if organizations
are investing at all, they are doing so cautiously.
First, in the spring of 2004, the Pew Center for the People
and the Press and the Project for Excellence in Journalism
conducted a survey of American journalists, including members
of the Internet press. Among online journalists, 62% said
the size of their newsroom staff had decreased compared with
three years earlier. That dwarfs the 37% of national print,
TV and radio journalists who reported the same thing.
Second, anecdotal evidence suggests that companies that invest
are doing so by downsizing in some areas and expanding in
others. At Reuters, for example, executives are putting their
money into the processing of online news as opposed to the
gathering of it. Those are very different elements, the first
an investment in equipment and the second an investment in
staff.
Tom Regan, executive director of the Online News Association,
says his work with people in the industry has convinced him
that the number of bodies in online news organizations is
fewer than it was during the boom of the late 90s. That despite
the fact that online news is now becoming profitable and serves
a much larger audience. The software has developed to a point,
he explains, where fewer and fewer people are needed to write
code and get the stories up on the Web.
Howard Finberg of the Poynter Institute agrees there are
fewer bodies, but sees greater cause for concern in the substitution
of automated technology for people.
Finberg also thinks that online news media need to invest
more in the way people use the Web rather than just becoming
a replica of newspapers. He and Regan agree that one of the
obstacles to growth is that online producers in general still
don't think "intelligently" about the Web and its
potential as an information tool.
Web Video and Other Technology Investment
One area where there has been some development is Web video.
Over the past few years, it has become more sophisticated
and user-friendly, particularly in the amount of time required
to connect, buffer time and rebuffer time.
And considerable percentages of young people feel the quality
of Web video has caught up with or even surpassed television.
In September 2004, the Online Publishers Association conducted
research that showed that two thirds of people 18 to 34 years
old (67%) said watching a short video clip online was the
same as watching highlights on television, or better.
Much of that video, moreover, is journalism. A study by AccuStream
iMedia Research, which conducts studies on interactive broadcasting
and streaming media, shows that news captures 18% of all streaming
video, second only to music videos at 34%.
One of the biggest developments heading into 2005 is the
emergence of search tools for video, a move that could have
a wide impact on online advertising and copyright law in particular.
Media companies will surely lobby Congress to adopt a more
muscular position on protecting copyrights for movies and
television. Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft were all developing
new search tools for digital video. How the story develops
in 2005 could be critical in the online media universe.
A leading online newspaper in using Web video is The News
Journal in Wilmington, Delaware. Because Wilmington has no
local broadcast stations of its own, The News Journal has
begun providing local breaking-news footage to Wilmington
residents online. The site runs a three-minute newscast, produced
by the paper and featuring an anchor from the paper's staff,
twice each day. The paper is considering doubling the number
of newscasts, adding sports coverage and even offering a live
stream. According to the paper's vice president of new media,
traffic to the site has been growing 20% each week.
The New York Times began using its Web site in 2004 to run
video created by the columnist Nicholas Kristof. The Times
even broadcast the political conventions live on its site,
which made it a competitor of the television networks. As
a BusinessWeek Online editor put it, "Publishers now
have to think of themselves programming in day parts, which
is much more like TV than magazine publishing."
In late November 2004, The Wall Street Journal Online launched
"The Wall Street Journal Video Center," which houses
video clips of both breaking news and financial information
from Journal analysts and from partners like CNBC.
Some papers are using the Web to create more transparency
in their operations. When the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial
board sat down with the mayoral candidates in the last election
- a proceeding that is normally closed to the public - the
paper took advantage of its site, sfgate.com, to post unedited
video of the meetings. In the three days after the videos
were posted, 35,000 page views were recorded. The site also
included information on how the editorial board made its endorsement
decision.
Smaller papers, too, are finding ways to invest in technology
to provide additional content. When a fire threatened Carson
City, the 17,000-circulation Nevada Appeal created a blog
to keep track of the fire's movement, updating it every 10
minutes. As a result, Web traffic jumped to 15 times the norm.
The blog ended up costing the paper only about $2,000 in overtime
pay for staff members.
During the hurricane season of 2004, blogs became a critical
source of information for delivering the news when the hurricanes
shut down the normal capacity of newsrooms. The Sun Herald
in Biloxi, Mississippi, used a blogger to post frequent storm
updates from staff people out in the field, who filed using
laptops and cell phones.
For now, those are examples of the potential of the medium,
and they probably represent exceptions, not the norm. A University
of Texas study found that more than half the papers they studied
updated their Web sites occasionally from their print editions
(aptly called shovel-ware).
Economic Pressures
The Pew survey also suggests that online journalists detect
increasing influence of advertisers on the kinds of content
they produce, perhaps more so than in other media. Online
journalists were more than twice as likely as the mainstream
press to say they have been pressured to do a story because
it related to an owner, advertiser, or sponsor - 35%, versus
15% of national mainstream journalists.
When asked to name the most important problem facing journalism
today, online journalists most frequently say the quality
of the coverage (32%) and economic and business pressures
(32%). Among national mainstream journalists, 41% cite the
quality of coverage and 30% the economics.
Most Important Problem Facing Journalism Today, 2004
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Survey of national and local journalists
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When we break down the 32% of online journalists who say
the most important problem is economic or business pressures,
10% say declining audience or attracting an audience, 7% say
lack of resources and financial cutbacks, 9% say too much
of a bottom-line emphasis. Another 6% identify corporate ownership
and consolidation, and 6% indicate staffing problems or putting
ratings ahead of quality.
More generally, online journalists feel many of the same
bottom-line pressures as those in the mainstream press. In
the Pew survey, 63% of online journalists said bottom-line
pressure is hurting journalism while 34% said it is just changing
it. Those numbers compare quite closely to national mainstream
journalists: 66% hurting and 29% just changing.
One other finding is worth mentioning as well. There may
be growing acceptance of the value of online journalism in
traditional newsrooms, instead of fear that the new medium
is a bastion of rumor and lesser standards. Fully 60% of national
mainstream journalists say "the emergence of the Internet
has made journalism better." That is nearly identical
to the 63% of online journalists who feel that way.
Convergence Doesn't Mean Fewer People
One other point in trying to assess trends in news investment
involves convergence, the merging of operations of different
media, such as print, Web and TV, into a more integrated newsroom.
Will convergence lead to further cutbacks, as news operations
try to avoid duplication but fail to recognize the impact
on quality of asking people to do more? There was some evidence
in 2004 that convergence does not necessarily mean fewer people
in the newsroom doing more work. The Tampa News Center, housing
the Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV and TBO.com, had more journalists
in 2004 than in 2000. This is also true for salespeople, since
space still needs to be sold on different media.
Whether the workload has still increased, giving people less
time to produce and edit stories, deserves further attention.
Local-TV Web Sites
Because of the difficulty of producing a profitable local-television
online site, many stations are outsourcing the building of
their sites to companies such as Internet Broadcasting Systems
or WorldNow. While those companies have helped stations get
off the ground, Mark Glaser of the Online Journalism Review
noted in 2004 that they may ultimately hinder stations' ability
to do the most with their sites. IBS uses a few standard designs,
so many sites may look the same. IBS also has some control
over the stories that appear on the site outside of those
produced locally.
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