“Technology” Items

Review of Local Websites, 1999

In 1999, the PAFET group did an important information sharing project. Each group reported on their web site strategy and methods used to execute that strategy, marketing implementations, measurement of success, content mix and traffic.  Among the newspaper sites that reported was:

  • The Arizona Republic, AZ
  • Dallas Morning News, TX
  • Providence Journal, RI
  • St. Louis Post-Dispatch, MO
  • News & Observer, NC
  • The Press Enterprise, CA
  • Sacramento Bee, CA
  • Star News, IN
  • Star Tribune, MN
  • Town Talk, LA

There is also a table that compares all of the website traffic among PAFET members.

Electronic Newspaper of the Future, 1992

One of the more innovative folks in the design universe was a professor from Spain, Dr. Juan A. Giner.  Giner was at the School of Journalism  at the University of Navarra. In 1992, he asked several folks for their thoughts about electronic newspapers.  This is before the Internet.  I think he was using some of the information for a research paper and for a presentation at the Summit Meeting of Editors and Publishers, a European conference, I’m guessing.

Here’s what I wrote, the conclusion of my thoughts, sent via FAX:

They have information to sell, regardless of the form it takes to reach the reader. Unfortunately, only a few see the road ahead; too many are looking behind at the road they have just traveled.

If the current leadership fails in understanding the market place or fails to adjust to the needs of the news consumer, then the consequences will be two-fold:

• Many more companies will go out of business.
• Many more companies will be bought by those who understand the needs of the marketplace and replace those publishers and editors who do not.

The future will belong to the quick and smart. Be neither quick nor smart and you’ll be out of the game.

It was fun to think about the future.

Looking to the Future: 1986 to 2001

In the past, journalism conventions serving management and editors, such as the Associated Press Managing Editors conference, were major events.  Hundreds of participants, dozens of panels and speeches.  So important that the APME published what the called the “Red Book.”  This was a record of the proceedings so those who could not attend would learn what was discussed.

In 1987, the Red Book reported on a panel held in Cincinnati, OH, on “Newspapers After 2001.”  The panel was tasked to look ahead 15 years.  Among the participants:

  • James K. Batten, president, Knight-Ridder, Inc.
  • Louis D. Boccardi, president and general manager, The Associated Press
  • John J. Curley, president and chief executive officer. Gannett Newspapers
  • Katherine W. Fanning, editor, Christian Science Monitor
  • Jeff Greenfield, media critic and columnist, ABC
  • James Hoge, president, New York Daily News
  • C.K. McClatchy, president, McClatchy Newspapers
  • Burl Osborne, president, Dallas Morning News
  • Eugene C. Patterson, chairman and chief executive officer, Times Publishing Company, St. Petersburg, Fla.
  • William O. Taylor, chairman and chief executive officer. Boston Globe
  • Chris Urban, Urban and Associates 

Reading over this edited transcript of the discussion, I was struck how little the panel got right. In fact, I think most of them missed the speeding “technology bus” that was about to crash into their newsprint based business and scatter their profits and employees to the wind. There was discussion about the declining readership — one panelist suggest the industry encourage literacy — and the fragmented advertising market. There were a couple of notable mentions of technology.  Here’s one from Kay Fanning:

We’re being increasingly bombarded by trivia and through the progress of technology it will get worse and worse. With all the world coming to our back door in terms of satellite communications and transportation, the link-up of the global stock market, all aspects of computer networking, newspapers will need a content that offers the citizen a pathway through this hail of trivia. That content will require more substance, more quality, offer more understanding rather than just a lot of information. I believe in the simple bromide of the better mousetrap. If we have a quality that is relevant to the citizens and to the public interest we can easily raise the numbers from 40 to 60 percent. 

I did like the comments from John Curley about improving the visuals of newspapers to make them more appealing:

Presentation is part of it too. Color, graphics, and our ability to do more in that area will be important. I don’t mean to pick on the Cincinnati Inquirer, since we own it, but in yesterday’s paper we went 11 pages in the Life Section without a graphic or photo. and a lot of the contents suggested that there could have been some there. I don’t think that is atypical of most newspapers, and it’s a weakness in a lot of our newspapers too.

Curley was the first editor of USA Today, hence he knew about color and graphics. USA Today was launched four years earlier, in 1982. in 1988, the American Press Institute had a major design seminar looking at the future of newspapers. It was called Design 2000.  Details are elsewhere on this site.  Lots of graphics and color in those prototype newspapers.

TV News’ Future

Also at the convention was Lawrence Grossman, president of NBC News. He gave a talk on “Television News After 2001.” He was sort right when he said:

My thesis is that if you look 15 years ahead to the year 2001, it will be much like what we see now in television news, just as when you look back to 1970, television news was basically like what you’re seeing now.

But take that out a few more years and he was very, very wrong.  He got a few things right.  It was an interesting read.

Electronic Photo Workshop, 1990

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, digital photography equipment was rare [and expensive].  I’m not just talking about cameras, but also all the equipment needed to process those digital files into a format that could be used in daily newspaper production. Learning to use these digital photographic tools was the goals the National Press Photographers Association‘s Electronic Photo Workshop.

In November 1990, the EPW was in Tempe, AZ and I served as “Executive Editor.”  The real work, however, done by the workshop co-chairs: John Cornell, Newsday, and Bill Hodge, Long Beach Press Telegram. There were more than 90 participants [see page two of the PDF] and more than two dozen vendors, including Adobe and Apple. 

The published work from the conference was a 32-page tabloid that has photos and stories about life in Arizona. Each story used different combinations of equipment.

I liked what I wrote for the introduction to the publication:

This newspaper is living classroom experi­ment. Our purpose is not to highlight one program, camera, or other piece of hard­ware against its competition.

To the contrary, we wanted to bring to­gether the technologi­cal marvels of our time with the trained eye of journalists using cam­eras. Only by explor­ing technology will we learn how best to use the computer software and hardware that have greatly influenced our newsrooms.

Readers need to !mow of the almost superhuman efforts undertaken by both vendors and participants to publish this newspaper, and the great sense of pride in attempting to capture images that communicate information.. Despite the lure of the hardware and software, the primary purpose of the pages produced here was to communicate.

…

Content was our overall goal. Content married with technology.

There are some other articles that are worth a historical read.

Michael Bloomberg on Newspapers

Michael Bloomberg, president and founder of Bloomberg Financial Markets gave a keynote speech at the International Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 1997.  His speech was about the future of electronic devices and he spent a lot of time talking about newspapers and whether there’s an electronic solution that would make consumers give up on print. [That’s why I’m posting his speech]. An excerpt:

And if we are going to build consumer products, if our businesses are going to grow and let electronic devices replace newspapers they are going to have to provide the same functionality. Now another answer to the problem would be don’t let radio and television become the substitute for newspapers. But find some way to make newspapers more valuable, more economic. And if you think about it, it is a very easy thing to do. Right now we go and we chop down an awful lot of trees in Canada, we haul them to the mill, we grind them up into paper, we put ink on it, we deliver it to the comer newspaper stand or the newspaper boy or girl throws it on your doorstep. You read it once and you throw it away. It is a phenomenally inefficient thing screaming for a technological solution.

Bloomberg also so the coming of streaming television:

No matter how many times people tell you that broadcast is here to stay, the feet of the matter is it is not here to stay. It is so compelling to be able to get what you want, when you want it, independent of everybody else that we are going to give you video on demand no matter what it costs and no matter who’s axe gets gored and people will try to protect their industries. They will try to protect their jobs, but the feet of the matter is, if you look at the public, the public has the interest in getting a movie they go to Blockbuster, they want to see it when they want to see it. The public even goes to the comer movie theater to see it when they want to see it. The public wants to be able to jump over commercials, which is going to be a very big problem. Who is going to pay for all of this? The public wants to be able to stop that football game for two minutes when the phone rings or when the diaper needs changing. And we are going to have to deliver those kinds of products, those facilities, those attributes for television.

His speech had some good visionary moments.

The Future: Embracing Change

In 1999, the Society for News Design published a handbook for editors about dealing with pagination and technology. I was asked to write a chapter about “the future” and embracing the changes new technology would bring.

Some of the things I got right:

  • Working at home, even doing newspaper design
  • Always connected to a network
  • Using databases to edit and present content
  • Constant feedback on what consumers are reading

Here’s the opening to the chapter:

Firing up her monitor with a verbal “log on” command, Kate gets ready for the daily meeting with her fellow editors and a managing editor at The Republic.

Almost instantly, her monitor is on the “virtual network” and eight images of her co-workers start to appear. Three are at home; two are at remote or shared offices. One is on the road with his team covering a live event. The rest are at the paper’s head­quarters building.

After discussing reports from the teams that worked the previous “info cycles” – each cycle is four hours and there are teams working around the clock – Kate and her fellow editors start the business of producing material for The Republic.

She doesn’t have a computer in her house, only a 27-inch flat-screen that is about one inch thick and connected to The Network. Everything is on The Network: broadcast entertainment signals, written communications and voice messages.

It was a fun assignment.  Thank you, Olivia Casey.

Founding Memos for PAFET

The technology consortium was the brainchild of James Rosse, chief executive officer of Freedom Newspapers, which owned the Orange County Register. His idea, which he pitched to fellow CEOs, was to gather similar sized organizations to discuss and share information about the technology that was affecting the newspaper industry. The first meeting of this yet-to-be-named organization was on Nov. 8, 1993 at Freedom Newspapers’ office in Irvine, CA.

Here’s how Rosse saw some of ways the various companies could work together:

List of Possible Forms  of Collaboration
This list has been prepared by Jim Rosse solely to stimulate discussion and is not intended to represent a proposal for joint action. The items are ranked roughly from those requiring the least to those requiring the most collaboration.

  • Comparing notes on technologies in which we are individually involved or interested.
  • Creating a technology newsletter internal to the Consortium with production costs shared among members.
  • Hiring a specialist (consultant? more than one?) to work for the Consortium whose job it would be to scan emerging technologies, collect information about them, and report it succinctly to us according to our individual needs
  • Negotiating a Consortium membership in the MIT Media Lab or similar group or participating in the Knight-Ridder effort in Colorado.
  • Representing Consortium members in dealing with third parties regarding Consortium interests in new ventures
  • Facilitating joint ventures in new technology projects among two or more Consortium members.
  • Creating an entity to carry out investment  activity  in new technologies on behalf of the Consortium.

Eventually the consortium would do most of what Rosse envisioned.

In this file are follow-up memos, including a discussion about the group’s name:

I am writing to let you know what has been going on to take Pafeot to its next stage of development. I have talked with several of you, but time has not permitted nor did I think the matters justified extensive consultation. It seemed less important that we dot all of the i’s and cross all of the t’s than it is just to get started with something we can shape as we go along.

You will be pleased to know that the acronym “Pafeot” now has an alternative interpretation – Primarily Affiliated For (the) Exploration Of Technology. Now if we can just think of an easy way to explain its pronunciation (“paf” with the a spoken as in “hat”, and “fet” for feat with the e spoken as in “set;” in combination, “pafet.”).

Eventually the word Primarily would become Partners

 

1995 Online Service Research Study

In early 1995, PAFET conducted a consumer online market research survey to establish baseline information in order to measure the development of the consumer online market. This document summarizes the goals, approach and results of that study.

[PAFET stands for Partners Affiliated for the Exploration of Technology. In 1994 six media companies [mostly a bunch of newspaper companies] created this research consortium to learn about and evaluate technology that could impact media and support the creation of new businesses and services.]

Some of the highlights of the study:

• The level of familiarity with online services among PC owners and online subscribers is lower than expected. Despite online services’ aggressive subscriber acquisition efforts and heavy media attention given to these services, almost 1 of 4 PC owners considers themselves to be “not at all familiar” with online services.
• Current online users still represent a niche market, that can be characterized as young, affluent, highly educated, and predominantly male. However, improved presentation of online content (via graphical and multimedia technology), faster transmission speeds, better content and lower prices are attracting more mainstream consumers.
• The demographic profile of online subscribers using the Internet and those who do not is very similar.
• Accessing or subscribing to multiple online services is not uncommon among current online service users. One of four online service users reported regularly accessing at least two online services.
• “News and information” remain the top reason non-online users subscribe to a service. The research results showed that, among current online users, the primary reason they chose their current service was for “news and information.” Among those who canceled a subscription within the past six months, “lack of use” and “lack of information” were cited most often as the reasons for the cancellations.

The study’s questionnaire and research methodology were designed by Maritz Research (Los Angeles, CA), PAFET Operating Committee members, and market research directors and managers at each of the newspapers included in the study.

Also included with this post is the presentation made by Maritz Marketing.

A Blueprint for Building Online Services, 1995

Where to start? That was the question many newspaper publishers were asking in 1995. At least when it came to creating a digital / electronic version of the print newspaper.   The Newspaper Association of America’s [NAA] New Media Department published what they labeled as the first in a “series of executive strategy reports” to help companies get “on-line.”

From the opening section:

Where to start in choosing an electronic newspaper publishing platform depends in large measure on the company’s broader goals. With that in mind, and in deference to the non-wired, there are several valid goals that may propel news operations into interactive media.

The report was titled “Opportunities in Anarchy: A blueprint for building online services”. It is an interesting look at recent history.  There are examples from some of the newspaper digital pioneers. And there is a list of newspapers that were on the World Wide Web as of May 25, 1095. The list fit on a single page.  It was authored by Melinda Gipson and overseen by NAA New Media Department Director Randy Bennett.

Looking at the Local Marketplace Providers, 1996

The PAFET group [see item about its founding] commissioned the technology consulting group, the Yankee Group, to look at competitors in local markets. In other words, look at who could compete against newspapers for viewers and advertisers. Here’s a touch of the overview:

PAFET has asked the Yankee Group to research the variety of institutions providing localized, Web-based consumer information services.  The firms were researched from two perspectives: investment opportunities and partnership opportunities.

  • Local content/city-based
  • Enhanced Yellow Pages
  • Other (combination of both camps/directory services)

On-line services such as AOL’s Digital Cities and Microsoft’s Sidewalk were not covered in this effort. 

We evaluated these companies on a series of criteria which were in turn weighted according to strategic importance. These criteria included positioning in four main categories:

1. brand/marketing/sales,

2. corporate and competitive,

3. content and services, and

4. technical

 

The report gives a snapshot to the time when newspaper companies knew there was danger ahead. How much they were willing to act is another matter.