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Not the sort of innovation we need

April 7, 2009 in College Media News, ethics

Update 2: another take from the Daily Cal.

The Daily Bruin at UCLA ran a “wrap” advertisement around their paper today. Ordinarily, I have no problem with “innovative” advertising ideas (well, except for those cursed roll-over web ads), but this ad went way beyond “innovative” and ventured into the area of “deceptive” and “unethical.”

Here’s the real Bruin front page:

bruin

And here’s the “wrap” that ran today:

fake front

Now, I don’t know about you, but, with the exception of the “Paid Advertisement” words below the flag, that’s a pretty close knock-off of the editorial design of the real Daily Bruin (the editorial staff did get the advertiser to change the font on the nameplate of the ad). All to market some kind of honey-related ice cream crap.

The student editors weren’t pleased, and said so in an editorial:

Many of us volunteered to forfeit our pay in order to ensure that the ad would not run, but because some of our staff members could not afford to use their paychecks to make a statement, we have been forced to go along quietly.

The reality of our financial situation is grim, and the fact of the matter is that we would have been forced to cut thousands of dollars from an ever-tightening budget if we had not run this advertisement.

We were forced to make a decision we find distasteful at best – and dishonest and unethical at worst – because of the ever-present and unrelenting reality of the economy and the downturn of the journalism industry.

Much of our staff, the members of this board especially, are invested in the Daily Bruin and the practice of journalism on a personal level, and nothing pains us more than to see the cover and name of our beloved publication sullied for the sake of survival.

Editor Anthony Pesce published an editor’s note on the real front page:

Today’s Daily Bruin was wrapped in an advertisement specifically designed by a clever marketing department to fool you into thinking – if only for a few seconds – that my staff wrote the content that appeared on the front page.

If you’re reading this, you have discovered our real front page, fully educated about the plight of the honey bee, and I’m glad you are taking the time to read our newspaper. I want our readership and our community to know that there will not be another advertisement like it for the rest of the year. We will not be selling these kinds of ads as long as I remain the editor of this newspaper – which is at least for another nine weeks. Many on my staff were vehemently opposed to this ad for a variety of reasons. Mostly, though, they were upset and concerned that our front-page news content was displaced, and that it was displaced by an advertisement designed to mislead our readers.

Apparently, financial pressures overruled journalism in this instance. I’m with the students.

Look, it’s one thing to place an ad around your content. It’s one thing to think up new ways to make money on innovative marketing ideas. Heck, I even applauded when the New York Times started running front page ads!

But this is just wrong. Shame on the marketers for concocting this sad little ploy to trade on the tradition of a 90-year-old journalistic enterprise, and shame on whoever it was who forced the issue to trade that journalistic tradition for a few pieces of gold.

In an age when newspapers are fighting for their lives and the credibility of the news industry is not that great, this type of “advertorial” is not a step in the right direction.

I welcome your thoughts.

Update: Please answer the poll question

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links for 2009-04-07

April 7, 2009 in industry news

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Daily Illini launches new site using Drupal

April 6, 2009 in industry news

dailyillini.jpg

The Daily Illini, just up the road from Eastern, has launched a new version of dailyillini.com built on the Drupal open-source CMS. The DI was formerly a College Publisher affiliate.

Former editor-in-chief Steve Contorno explains:

For the past several years, The Daily Illini has strived to be a leader in online journalism for college newspapers. Having received multiple national and state awards for our Web site, you might wonder why we’re not just sitting on our laurels but decided to transform completely DailyIllini.com into the new Web site you see before you.

In online journalism, the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” just doesn’t apply. It’s about staying ahead of the curve, trying and exploring new technologies and, most importantly, building a site that allows our readers the most enlightening experience possible. We think we did just that.

I will interject myself at this point to say that we’re not done, so please, pardon our dust. For the next few weeks, and probably months, we will continue to introduce new features, as well as improve the existing ones. If you have any suggestions or problems to report, visit the forums and let us know what you think. Your opinion is always at the forefront of our mind, so share your thoughts.

The new DailyIllini.com has been a project in the works for more than a year. When we first set out on this task, our goal was simple: create a user-friendly Web site that supported the newsroom’s efforts to be a 24/7 source for information.

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Advice from a few Pacemaker finalists

April 6, 2009 in College Media

Although the Pacemaker finalists for 2009 are by no means the only college news sites doing innovative things, they must be doing something right to merit the ACP’s “highest honor.”  The following are a few tips from web editors of the winning sites:

On print
An effective way increase online traffic is to promote your website in the print edition of your paper, and entice readers to additional online content not found in the print version. This has been fairly effective for us. -Raeleen Badham, Webmaster, The Emery Weal

On social networks
Use as many tools as possible and embed! Everything is done on social networking sites now and why should college publications be any different? Be where your readers are. They are on a lot of these sites using them and it always helps when they see you are too. -Emily Kostic, Web editor, The Whit

On free multimedia tools
We’ve recently begun dabbling in interactive graphics using a site called Dipity. We’ve previously used Flash to produce interactive graphics, but Dipity gave us another cost-effective way to serve our readers with innovative media. -Kristen M. Daum, Editor in Chief, The State News

On yearbooks
Yearbooks are seen, much like newspapers, as an outdated and dying media. We have created our site and our Facebook page to try and modernize, promote interactivity and drum up interest in the content of the book as we work on it. We hand code the site, offer a blog, and update Facebook religiously. We funnel users from Facebook back to our Web site with photos and blog content. We also run campaigns throughout the year to raise page views. -Megan Garner, Co-Editor, 2009 Razorback (yearbook)

On YouTube
Whenever a professor made the suggestion to create a YouTube account, I hit myself over the head. Duh! Everybody else is using it, why not news organizations? Also: From what I’ve seen maps and timelines are really popular, usually much more popular then the stories themselves. So I would suggest exploiting those avenues as well. -Chris Essig, Assistant Online Editor, The Daily Eastern News

On free services
There are a lot of great services available for free and experimenting is key both to this time in our careers but also this period in the field of journalism. Try as much as possible and stick with what works. -Jasmine Linabary, Online Editor, The Whitworthian

Full disclosure: I am the online editor for the Mustang Daily, which is also a Pacemaker finalist.

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CoPress on BlogTalkRadio

April 5, 2009 in CoPress

Just a tip: the CoPress crew is going to be hosting a live podcast tomorrow at 6 p.m. EST on BlogTalkRadio. Here’s the link. Join in if you can. The topic is new editors and technology changes for the new year.

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Don’t be afraid to let your staff leave comments

April 2, 2009 in Newsrooms

There was a time when I’d get upset at reporters and columnists who responded to comments on our news site. My rationale: It was unprofessional and nonobjective. But that was before I understood that the Web is a two-way conversation.

If done appropriately, reporters and columnists can use comments as a means of building credibility instead of diminishing it.

In 2007 I wrote to Poynter’s ethics guru Bob Steele to get advice about this very topic and he said via e-mail:

Most news organizations would not publish letters or online comments written by staff. An alternative is for a staffer to write a guest column but the editor has final judgment on whether it gets published. Your staff member has Freedom of Speech rights but that does NOT guarantee him access to your paper nor your website.

But even in two short years, those rules have changed substantially.

The dynamic of the Web (which has been emphasized in journalism through blogs and Twitter) allows readers to communicate directly with writers.

The discussion that can unfold between readers and reporters adds value to your articles, whether it results in fact-checking (commenters as “watchdogs”), a new angle, or the building of community. And really, why shouldn’t your reporters be able to respond?

Here are a few general guidelines about letting news staff comment on articles:

  • If a commenter presents a question about a fact or issue within the article, the reporter should clarify or answer the question when possible, even if it requires additional reporting
  • Reporters should not argue personal opinions in comments of a news article they wrote
  • Columnists or op/ed writers should, however, have the freedom to editorialize in comments and respond to counterarguments, as long as it doesn’t turn into personal attacks
  • For full disclosure, all members of your staff who respond in comments should clearly identify themselves as members of your news organization
  • All comments from your news staff should be professional and accurate; it’s not a medium for reporters to interject with speculation or rumor
  • Don’t let “professional” throw you off though– comments can  still be personal and casual. Let your reporters be the real people  that they are. Your readers will trust them more

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links for 2009-04-01

April 1, 2009 in industry news

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Budgeting your news organization for online tools

April 1, 2009 in College Media

Now that we’ve hit spring, most student media outlets are likely outlining their budgets for the upcoming school year. While most of the best online tools are free there are a few services worth paying for:

Soundslides

If your student media doesn’t have a copy of Soundslides yet, let this be the year. Whether you’re a newspaper, news site, magazine, yearbook, radio station, etc., audio slideshows can be an effective tool and an easy means of creating quality multimedia.

Price: $35.95 standard, $65.95 pro

Flickr Pro

If you’re using Flickr as your archive and photo-sharing system, the free account probably won’t be enough to sustain your demands. A free account only lets you upload 100 MB of photos each month, and with full-size photos off an SLR, that storage can fill up with one batch of uploads.

Price: $24.95/year

What you get: Unlimited photo uploads, unlimited video uploads (90 seconds max), HD video, view statistics

Vimeo Plus

For unlimited video uploads and HD capabilities, Vimeo is the best option. I only suggest Vimeo over YouTube because YouTube limits video duration to 10 minutes, which is inconvenient if you’re uploading a lengthy video from an event you live streamed, for example.

Price:  $59.95/year

What you get: 5 GB a week (free account is only 500 mb), priority uploading (convenient for breaking news), unlimited HD uploading/embedding

Year-long shopping cart total:  $120.85 (or $180.95 if you buy Soundslides Plus). Combine these tools with the countless free tools available (Google Maps, Facebook, Vuvox, Issuu, Twitter, CoverItLive, UStream etc.) and you’re looking at a cost effective, multimedia-driven site.

If you have any other suggestions for services worth paying for, let us know and we’ll add to the list.

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