Ryan Thornburg, Author at Future of News

More on the N.C. Online News Audience

UPDATE: Since my original post, I’ve received some new information from Dan Barkin, The News & Observer’s senior editor for online, about traffic to newsobserver.com. He — and others today — have pointed out that audience counts really depend on how you define your market. Statewide audience really doesn’t matter to ad buyers. Agreed, but I think it does matter in terms of editorial impact on issues of public affairs.

In an e-mail, Barkin said that “Some recent Media Audit numbers showed that WRAL.com reaches 51% of Triangle adults. Newsobserver.com (net of all of our sites) reaches 41.5% of Triangle adults.”

He said newsobserver.com reached about 50 percent more people in July and August of this year than the same months last year, but he also noted that page views had jumped only about 15 percent in those two months.

Original Post (12:55 p.m.):

Following up on my interview that aired earlier this morning on WUNC radio, I just got off the phone with Matt Tatham, the director of media relations for Hitwise. His company provided the data for the WUNC story, and I wanted to know more.

And, once again, the care that needs to be taken when talking about online audience numbers becomes apparent. According to Hitwise, WRAL clobbered The News & Observer online during August, but I think the clobbering was done in a manner that is slightly different than the one emphasized in the story.

As they say on Marketplace, let’s do the numbers …

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What Drives Local News Traffic

In an interview with WUNC radio this morning, I share some anecdotal information I’ve received from my visits to online news operations at the papers in Asheville, Fayetteville, Gastonia, Greensboro, Raleigh, Shelby, and Wilmington. The four things that are really driving page views at local and regional papers are:

crime
weather
traffic
high school sports

The full audio of the report is here. Leroy Towns comments here. More TK on this subject.

Don’t Forget to Report the Web

Most often, when I’m talking with folks about online journalism the conversation centers around online publishing. But a quick hit last Friday in The News & Observer’s Under the Dome blog reminds us not to forget about using the Web as a reporting tool. David Ingram used LinkedIn to research a former Wachovia lobbyist, and found a misleading profile of the lobbyist. And, of course, there’s the New York Daily News’ recent use of MySpace to cover the story about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy.

Here’s a quick rundown of some prominent social networking and user-generated content sites and how to research them.

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A New Profession of Trail Blazers Who Find Delight

While working today on a chapter for a new edition of Reaching Audiences, I was re-reading the 1945 Atlantic Monthly article in which Vannevar Bush lays out his concept of the hypermedia world we’re now building. In it, he not only envisions a new method of storing and sorting information but a new industry of people who do so.

“There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.”

Perhaps I have a perverted perspective, but MAN does that sound like a sexxxy job description — pioneering, democratic, joyful. If these qualities stir your heart, then you’re a journalist in any medium.

Newsroom Skills: The Bosses Speak Out

(After years of watching CNN with envy, I finally get to use the verbose phrase “speak out” in a headline.) Writing and overall computer skills are the most essential skills for newsroom reporters, according to a survey of 259 top editors at daily newspapers in the United States. The survey, which was posted this morning, … Continue reading “Newsroom Skills: The Bosses Speak Out”

(After years of watching CNN with envy, I finally get to use the verbose phrase “speak out” in a headline.)

Writing and overall computer skills are the most essential skills for newsroom reporters, according to a survey of 259 top editors at daily newspapers in the United States. The survey, which was posted this morning, ranks multimedia skills and data analysis skills at the bottom of the list of five choices that the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism gave editors in the survey that was conducted earlier this year.

The full table …

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Reaction: Survey of Online Journalists

The survey of journalists working online at North Carolina newspapers has begun to receive some insightful feedback from others, both on this site and around the Web. It’s a good time to summarize some of the responses here. I’m looking forward to hearing from more people, especially if you have a question that the data I’ve collected might help answer. For me, two big questions remain:

Can we come up with a somewhat standardized set of job titles and descriptions for online newsrooms circa 2008?
Is there a way to look at newsrooms skills and organization structures to determine “the best” way to structure an online news operation?

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Your Assignment for Today Is …

I’m speaking today at two seminars at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication: the Chuck Stone Program for Diversity in Education and Media and the Institute for Midcareer Copy Editors. For a white guy who can’t spell, this is an intimidating day.

Thinking about what to say to these groups, I began to think about how important it is for each journalist who lives in a world of accuracy and accountability to personally venture in to the uncertain waters of online social networks and user-generated content. Among other things, it is a journalist’s job to give voice to the voiceless and to hold powerful people accountable. Wikipedia and Facebook are two places where the voiceless are stretching their vocal chords and where accountability is taking on new methods. If a journalist is to perform his or her job above a minimum standard of competence, it’s important to dive in to these worlds and understand how they work.

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Journalism Programming: Supply and Demand

One of the reasons I’m so struck that online journalists in North Carolina have such an emphasis on traditional skills and duties is that it starkly contrasts with the skills I hear editors at top national sites tell me that they are looking for in recent j-school grads. The Knight Foundation believes that programmers are in such high demand in newsrooms today that they gave Northwestern $638,000 to fund nine full-ride scholarships for programmers who want to get a master’s degree in journalism at Medill.

One of the scholarship recipients, Brian Boyer, writes about his career prospects over at the MediaShift blog.

Listed below are the job titles he thinks are available to him. He’s most interested in becoming a “applications developer” or a “hacker journalist.” Are any of these jobs available in North Carolina?

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Traditional Concepts Most Important to Online Journalists

Once again in my survey of online journalists at North Carolina newspapers, we see a return to tradition. They say that news judgment and the ability to work under time pressure are the concepts that are most important to their jobs, while community management is far and away the least important of the 10 choices I gave them.

Also bringing up the rear of concepts that online journalists said were important to them: the ability to learn new technologies and awareness of new technologies.

And, interesting to note for those of us who teach students that it is more important to get it right than to get it first, the online journalists in my survey said that ability to work under time pressures was more important than attention to detail. As a group, they gave deadlines a higher average importance than details. As individuals, 63 percent of the respondents ranked time pressure more important than accuracy.

Oy vey.

At this point in my analysis, I have to conclude that one of two things is happening here:

EITHER There is wide disparity between the skills, duties and concepts that I personally think should be emphasized in online newsrooms and in the skills, duties and concepts that are perceived as the most prominent and/or important in actual online newsrooms at North Carolina newspapers.
OR This survey is totally FUBAR. Perhaps I asked the wrong questions of the wrong people.

To help me sort this out, I’m going to turn to a panel of experts — both in survey methodology and in online newsroom leadership. And, of course, your comments below are always helpful.

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Journalism Education: Training the Trainers

Earlier today I wrote about the duties of online journalists. One of the underlying purposes of my survey is to find out how journalism schools can better prepare students for the near future, and there were two popular duties that stood out as “soft skills” that are not emphasized in classrooms — teaching and training other people in the newsroom, and “project management.”

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