To begin, let’s look at some statistics. Since February 2007, AngryJournalist.com has had 607,129 page loads, 323,185 unique visitors, 244,455 first-time visitors and 78,730 returning visitors.

For a site that started as a concept executed over a weekend and grew by simply sending an e-mail to a few friends, posting a link on Facebook and Twitter and word-of-mouth marketing, I’m proud of my little experiment and it’s exceeded any expectations I originally conceived.

While I originally started the project to see if others had the same feelings about journalism that several friends and myself shared and to compare notes with a fantastic study by Prof. Scott Reinardy (then at Ball State University, now at the University of Kansas), the site began to take on a unique life of its own and it’s been quite an interesting journey to watch it grow.

The Drudge Report picked up on an AFP article profiling the site, which momentarily turned it into a battleground between angry journalists and those angry AT journalists — leading me to implement harsher comment approval standards.

Recently, one commenter mentioned they were contemplating suicide, which led to me tracking down the commenter’s identity — something I never imagined I’d have to ever do, nor did I want to have to do — and reporting it to the police. Fortunately, things turned out OK.

I hope the site’s acted as a form of stress relief for journalists in what continues to be an extremely challenging — if not bleak — environment. Despite not working in the industry anymore, I do empathize with those still grinding away under a Sword of Damocles. With 86,800 losing their jobs in the print media industry alone during the past 12 months (not including broadcast and online), it’s hard to find optimism.

I don’t have any special knowledge or answers of what will “save journalism” or when the industry will finally hit rock bottom. All I know is that journalists continue to post on the site, day after day, about their struggles. The burnout described by Reinardy will probably continue and I doubt at this point we’ll ever see that reversed.

But there’s the case of Angry Journalist #10,000, who is one of the few to leave their frustrations behind and lucky enough to find a promising opportunity:

I’m cautiously optimistic right now. I just started what seems like a dream job, getting a decent wage to write what I want for smart people. I’m just looking back on the place I left, a family-owned daily run entirely – without exception – by gibbering idiots. Seriously. And I think that situation may be replicated at many papers, contributing greatly to the industry’s mess.

At my old paper, the idiot son of an idiot son inherited the business, and demonstrated his idiocy by hiring drunks, cowards and pompous dimwits for all executive positions. The competent people are all at the bottom of the totem pole, and struggle mightily to put out something credible every day. If the top half-dozen people at the place were fired, the paper would only improve – and the budget would be cut in half. Literally.

At how many papers are half the resources sucked up by people who contribute nothing? I’m willing to bet it’s a lot. If we could all shed that parasitic weight, I think we’d be doing just fine.

I wish Angry Journalist #10,000 and the rest of them the best. They sincerely will need it.

Previous posts about AngryJournalist.com by me:

• Announcing AngryJournalist.com
• Two weeks later, reflecting back at the AngryJournalist.com experiment
• Why I won’t run advertisements on AngryJournalist.com
• More notes on AngryJournalist.com
• On reaching Angry Journalist #5,000
• AngryJournalist.com word cloud

Almost a year ago I wrote about the need for publishers to tackle comment identity and filtering if they desired for their online communities to be successful.

Since then, I’ve come to a few conclusions about comments on Web sites:

• Comments are a form of content on a publisher’s site.
• Comments should be treated with the same level of care as the original content that it’s paired with.
• Bad comments (ie: “stupid” comments) are the equivalent of bad content.
• Like all bad content, bad comments bring down the value of your product and/or service.
• Publishers shouldn’t allow bad comments and should use moderation/filtering techniques. Or maybe not allow comments at all.
• If you allow bad comments on your site for the sake of increasing traffic and page views, then you really don’t care about your site’s content, users or overall value.
• As your site scales, the amount of bad comments typically will be exponential.
• If you allow one troll to post a bad comment, then you’ve established a precedent for an infinite amount of trolls to post an infinite amount of bad comments.
• Bad comments increase the amount of junk inventory on your site, thereby increasing the amount of page views you must fill with remnant advertising, which only adds more bad content to your site.
• Creating good comments — and therefore more value — is hard and takes more work than most publishers want to bother doing.
• Very few sites building traffic upon page views that allow bad comments are successful financially, simply because advertisers recognize bad content from bad comments.

I used to be completely in favor of allowing comments on news sites for the sake of increasing dialogue, debate and openness on the Internet between publishers and readership, however, I’ve since changed my viewpoint dramatically.

There are very few sites whose comments I read. And there’s even fewer sites at which I’ll post a comment. I’ve found that most of the time when I’m tempted to comment, I rarely have anything of value to add beyond the original post or it’s not worth my time to refute/debate with the post’s writer. I think if more people took this approach, we’d have a lot less comments and higher value in the discussions that did take place.

The good thing about Twitter, Facebook and other sites that focus on personal thoughts on shared media is that we’ve now outsourced and begun to silo commenting to separate sites away from the original content. I think this is a good thing and hopefully will be encouraged. A “tweet this” link is better than “post a comment” in most cases. A “reblog this” link, however, I feel is even better. A StupidFilter would be best.

Here’s a list of recommended reading that’s helped frame and shape my thoughts on the subject of comments:

• NYT: Comment is King
• Howard Owens: If you’re not doing comments right, you shouldn’t do them at all
• iA: Kill blog comments?
• Ryan Sholin: Why commenting on news sites still stinks
• Paul Graham: Trolls
• Shawn Blanc: Blog comments are like cash
• Marco Arment: Comments
• OJR: How a 1995 court case kept the newspaper industry from competing online
• Joel on Software: Learning from Dave Winer

And here’s a few humor-related links on the topic:

• CollegeHumor: We didn’t start the flame war
• xkcd: Listen to yourself
• Penny Arcade: Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory

I went because I’d hoped there would be some substantive discussion and brainstorming about how to actually make money using the Internet. I wanted to see if anyone out there was really innovating on that end, because in the end journalism organizations need money. If the cash isn’t there, then the craft won’t continue in a vibrant and robust form.

Unfortunately, the discussion didn’t center around this idea, or at least viable ideas for making money. The topic of micropayments came up and was extremely popular among both several panelists and audience members that seemed to think this was the magic bullet. I wished that the panelists had done their homework and done reading on the topic — a good place to start would be this blog post which lists almost every article on the paywall and micropayment debate — before they were given the microphone to advocate for it.

I had no intentions of actually wanting to stand up and talk to the room. I was quite content to live-tweet the event (#chij — also see #cjth), but interestingly enough Eric Zorn noticed my tweets criticizing the micropayment model while sitting on the panel and asked for me to speak.

I took the opportunity to point out that Web sites for both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times offer really poor advertising solutions for advertisers, which means they’re not going to get high advertising rates and therefore not capitalize on the vast amount of ad inventory they have but can’t sell. In turn, they’re forced to run remnant ads, which have very low CPM values and you end up with ads that feature belly fat and mortgage rates (yes, I’m aware that’s a link to an Onion story, which rightfully mocks those ads for the trash they are: bad content on your site).

I added that sites should take a page from the Gawker Media playbook, which offers very robust advertising solutions that attracts advertisers, ads value by getting more reader attention and doesn’t interfere negatively with user experience. I would also add that there should be less clutter on the front page, which distracts from the advertisements and causes banner blindness. To me, Gawker Media founder, Nick Denton, nails it about what news organizations should be doing:

“Forget about the writing — the most important thing we do is creative services,” in which Gawker Media helps agencies produce glossy advertisements. (MarketWatch)

Love or hate Denton’s sites, I think he’s got a lot of credible ideas. Just read his 2009 media plan or interviews he’s given. And while Gawker Media’s shuttered a few titles, sold others and had its round of layoffs like everyone else, I think the approach taken to giving advertisers customized advertising solutions should be a priority. Your advertising product should be as good as your editorial product, if not better.

Beyond offering better advertising solutions, I have a few other ideas that I think are worth mentioning and all of them involve somehow offering a better product that might generate revenue. I give these all away for free — unless you’re one of the people at the Chicago Journalism Town Hall who believes in micropayments, in which case you can e-mail me to find out how you can send me your spare change for this wonderful essay I’ve written.

• Sports Insider: Think of ESPN Insider, but go on a local team-by-team basis. Charge a subscription fee ($10+ per month) for sports fans to get complete, in-depth coverage about the Chicago team of their choice. Offer in-depth stats, analysis, locker room interviews, press conference interviews, live data, gossip, anything. Make it a Chicago Cubs, Sox, Bears, Bulls, Blackhawks dream site to satisfy their thirst and fandom. Build a community and discussion board around each piece of content. Offer a chance for fans to connect, live, during games. Aggregate in fan photos, videos, blog posts, tweets, etc. Dominate the conversation for local sports fans. Streamcast games (although, I understand there might be a broadcasting rights issue here) and live blog them. Sell merchandise. Create affiliate links with other online retailers. Host exclusive, members-only parties, events, signings, etc.
• Microsites and niche titles: Generally speaking, there are a lot of things about Chicago that aren’t being covered by anyone with the intensity of a blog that aggregates the current blogosphere and mainstream media coverage of a certain topic and supplements it with original reporting. I’ve noticed that the Tribune has started a few microsites already — breaking news and best blogs — but these aren’t really focused around a specific niche. I can think of lots of ideas for microsites in Chicago that could benefit from the brand recognition of the Tribune or Sun-Times that could flourish on their own with a top-level domain and freelance writers that get paid by pageviews. Here’s a list off of the top of my head:
  • Stand-up and sketch comedy (We have so many celebrities that come from here, it’s time to chronicle the next generation of stars.)
  • Local music scene (hip hop, DJs, house music, etc.)
  • Wine (bars, tastings, pairings, etc.)
  • Small businesses
  • Food, broken down into categories (pizza, subs, ethnic, etc.)
  • Architecture
  • Art (all kinds, each with their own microsite)
  • Bars, nightlife, party photos (absurdly easy)
  • Advertising (people see these ads all the time on billboards, the El, etc. Talk about what people are seeing! This is 100% advertiser friendly!)
  • Interviews from random people on the street (Market this as “faces of Chicago” from all across the spectrum. You could use strong profile writers/interviewers here.)
  • Photography (Why isn’t there a Chicago-local version of The Big Picture?)
  • Tenant issues (Get the scoop on good and bad landlords and be service-y for readership!)
  • Pets (Look at the success of LOLcats and tell me that people don’t want to read a blog about their pets.)
  • Start-ups (Lots of great ideas are being explored here. It was amazing how many people didn’t realize that Pitchfork and Ars Technica were based in Chicago. Why is no one following tech culture here?)

  This is just what I can think of off of the top of my head in 15 minutes. Will they all be successful? Will they all have great success with advertisers? Maybe, maybe not. But what can it hurt to try? You spend $10 on a domain name, set up a server and get some ad sales reps to hit the phones and sell local ads on these sites. Your costs are low because you’re paying local freelancers that know the beat and have an inside knowledge and are passionate about the topic. Some of these blogs won’t be able to sustain a reporter on a full-time basis, but you’re still planting a flag in the ground and dominating an area locally on a niche topic that no one else can grab.

• Local aggregation: A lot of people were upset at the Chicago Huffington Post for “stealing” (ie: fair use excerpts and linking) their content. What no one seems to get is that any news organization could do the same thing and leverage their brand for a traffic advantage. Where’s the Tribune or Sun-Times version of Chicago Huffington Post? What’s keeping you from being the ultimate local aggregator? You have someone grabbing market share and traffic, why not fight back? Don’t complain, compete.
• Build better online communities: I’ve written about online comments before. Stop allowing comments that are inflammatory, outright lies, flamebait and generally bring down the value your site offers. Bad comments are bad content. Encourage good comments and a sense of real discussion. I know this isn’t easy to do. But, if you want to build a vibrant community on your site, you need to take this seriously. And remember, if you don’t build a community, then a future competitor will (or already has). News organizations shouldn’t fear comments because they’re wild and off the cuff, they should fear them because they can drive advertisers away.
• Build brand name bylines: Take a page out of The Politico’s playbook and start viewing everything you do in terms of whether this will drive traffic and will get your stories out in front of many people as possible and linked to by as many people. Get people excited that a reporter’s byline is on a story and be the reason that they want to read a story. Remember: Royko was a great journalist, but he was also a brand.

Well, I think I’ve exhausted my abilities to come up with new ideas for the moment. But hopefully someone will read this, think about it and act on it. There’s so much that can be done and a lot of areas to exploit. It’s frustrating to see journalists grasping at straws, clinging to bad ideas and ignoring economic realities. Innovation has to come from the business end, thinking of new avenues for revenues.

I want to see Chicago news institutions survive. Honestly. We need investigative journalists and reporters that serve the community’s best interest. But that can’t happen until there’s an acknowledgment of weaknesses and willingness to change rapidly with a determined focus on bringing in money.

There’s no magic-bullet solution here. You’re fighting so many monsters in multiple wars. You have to attack back with a multi-faceted plan that uses your remaining resources efficiently and maximizes the potential for returns on your investment of time, energy, talent and capital.

I don’t want to say that I have answers. I have ideas though. Please, use them.

Additional resources (I will be constantly updating this list as I find more people who have written about the event. Feel free to send me a link!):

• Chicago’s shifting media landscape: An essay I wrote about Chicago media’s future in June 2008.
• WBEZ live blog of the Chicago Journalism Town Hall.
• Community Media Workshop blog post
• Diane Aden Hayes blog post from the Post-Tribune
• Jesse Greenberg blog post
• Discussion at The Windy Citizen here and here
• Geoff Dougherty of the Chi-Town Daily News talks about $100,000 journalism salaries and a more realistic $2 million newsroom employing 26 people on an annual budget (also a roundup of links)
• Craig Kanalley blog post
• Ryan Blitstein blog post
• Panelist Barb Iverson blogs her thoughts at Poynter, on her personal blog and also presents her list of 8 models of news operations
• Chicago Tech Report blog post
• Panelist Michael Miner posts some reactions at News Bites
• Rich Miller gives his take at The Capitol Fax Blog
• Steve Rhodes of the Beachwood Reporter posts his thoughts
• Conservative political blog Illinois Review has a write-up
• Time Out Chicago blog post
• Full audio of the event from Chicago Public Radio: Part 1 and Part 2
• Karl Klockars blog post

Everyone is wondering, “What is killing newspapers?”

Here’s your answer: “A lack of money.” Yes, it’s really that simple.

It’s not the loss of social currency, it’s not about why newspapers can’t reinvent the news industry. Time shouldn’t be wasted with blaming the economy and technology for the downfall of newspapers. Nor should time be wasted with journalists blaming themselves. At this point, who gives a damn?

The focus should no longer be about the details, but instead about the big picture: The loss of advertising dollars. This is the immediate problem journalism faces. The bread and butter revenue stream is about to hit new lows and there is no solution to replace that money right now.

Forget everything else. This should be priority number one. And here’s why.

Early warnings of a newspaper advertising drop

At the beginning of 2008, the American Journalism Review wondered if the salvation of newspapers could be found in online advertising. I want to emphasize the need for you to read the entire article if you truly want a full understanding of what online revenue means to newspapers, especially to get a picture of what the situation was before this economic crisis happened.

It offers some early warnings about how the vast supply of content online drives prices down and how most mid-to-small sized newspapers are seeing audiences flatten, meaning stagnant revenue instead of growing revenue from traffic.

But this particular section offered a chilling prediction that should sound alarms in everyone’s heads:

But even if the newspaper industry continued to lose about 8 percent of its print ad revenue a year and online revenue continued to grow at 20 percent a year – the pace of the first half of 2007 – it would take more than a decade for online revenue to catch up to print.

Journalists, or indeed anyone with an interest in journalism, had better pray that doesn’t happen. Because online revenue is still relatively small and will remain so even at its current pace, this scenario implies years of financial decline for the newspaper industry. Even a 5 percent decline in print revenue year after year might look something like Armageddon.

I bring up this particular article from nearly a year ago because within the past week or so, I’ve seen a growing number of articles about online advertising’s immediate future because of Wall Street’s troubles.

Putting it simply: it looks bleak. Better get ready for that Armageddon.

Here comes the hurt in newspaper advertising

Forget a 5 percent plunge in print revenues, try 17.68 percent freefall in print advertising, according to Alan Mutter at Reflections of a Newsosaur, a must read blog for anyone who wishes to understand the actual business of newspapers. Industry-wide, Mutter predicts a 16.5 percent drop, with a 1 percent drop in online advertising from the year prior.

If these projections are correct — or even close — then newspapers will truly be facing a financial crisis unlike any they’ve seen for quite some time, let alone planned for.

While Mutter has previously pointed out that it’s not simply just the economy and really also part of a larger trend, the economy will still act as an accelerator on the downslope.

Even in June of this year, The New York Times called said newspapers faced the worst year for advertising revenue. But at the end of the article was this nugget that offers much reason for fear:

The industry will not bottom out for another three or four years, analysts predict. The question, Mr. Appert of Goldman Sachs said, “is how far things will fall before then.”

In other words, there’s plenty of room for things to get worse — and it probably will.

Online advertising hopes fade from black to red

As for the possibility of an online advertising salvation, that won’t come anytime soon. No one can foresee a real winner in this climate (except maybe Google).

For quite some time, you couldn’t read a journalism blogger who wasn’t cheerleading all the Web 2.0 startups that gave power to “citizen media” and griped that newspapers just weren’t “getting it” when it came to the Internet and providing cool new tools for their readership. These startups were put on a pedestal and called revolutionary and it wasn’t an uncommon thought that newspapers ought to take their cues from technology companies.

I’ll admit I thought this, too. But, looking back, the praise was all about new types of content and new ways to share it. There was virtually no (or not enough) discussion about how any of this would make anyone a significant sum of money.

Even big social networks were hurting for advertising dollars before the economy went bust and it’s not going to get much easier for other Web 2.0 startups. Both The New York Times and Advertising Age reported how growth was slowing as CPMs were falling:

The New York Times:

The price advertisers are willing to pay for ad space online is down 27 percent this year, according to a PubMatic report released Wednesday.

Advertising Age:

That’s the new reality filtering down to start-ups: If advertising was your panacea, better think of something else and quick.

GigaOm reported on the UBS analysis of the future for online advertising, which was nothing short of bleak. Here’s the big takeaway:

“We see no business model based on advertising or consumer spending that will be immune to a downturn.”

And then Silicon Alley Insider gave its own in-depth look at the online advertising display advertising in 2009, predicting it could fall anywhere from 10 to 20 percent and even more in 2010:

Hundreds of startups counting on advertising as a business model will be flattened. Yahoo, CNET, AOL, and other big display-ad properties will get hammered. Legions of me-too video sites will croak. Ad networks, the “hey, let’s just start an Internet company!” flavor of this second dotcom boom, will get decimated.

If things are this bad for Silicon Valley and Alley, then imagine what newspapers — which don’t have a a hype-filled “cool” product for users to play with — have to look forward to.

Supply and demand: an enemy of newspapers

It turns out that online salvation will not come, according to The New York Times, where online display advertising for newspapers has slowed to a crawl, following the trend.

But the problem isn’t merely limited to just the economy itself, or the overarching trend of declining revenues for newspapers. A contributing factor continues to be the paradox of newspapers expanding online, only to find diminishing returns for their efforts.

As The New York Times article explains quite well, although it only focuses on it for the latter half, newspapers continue to expand the number of online offerings to their inventory for advertisers to buy. But this can cause problems.

On one hand, more pages with more content means — in theory — that more people will visit your site because you simply offer more. This drives traffic up and presents you with an advantage with advertisers.

But on the other hand, this can hurt you as well. You can end up with a lot of unsold advertising inventory, which means there’s simply no ads on those pages. Or you give the inventory over to “remnant” advertisers, which are basically trashy ads worth bottom-barrel rate CPMs.

As newspapers continue to create more, they add to an almost impossible to fill and infinitely growing inventory as a whole on the Internet. And the competition is absolutely fierce with the dawn of user-generated content Web sites that provide free content that’s also competing for attention, traffic and money.

In the end, you have prices per impression going lower and lower. And in a slumping advertising market, prices only get lower.

It’s the perfect example of the Long Tail Theory, coined by WIRED editor Chris Anderson (if you haven’t read his book, this Long Tail article provides a great primer). There will be a few winners, or “hits,” that get a bulk of the dollars, but there’s a very long tail of those who will get pennies (or parts of pennies). Odds are that most newspapers’ Web sites will be the tail, not the head.

And in the end, display advertising might be completely useless and something that advertisers abandon in the near future. GigaOm reported this shocking tidbit from Jakob Nielsen that users ignore display advertising online and have developed a sort of “blindness” to these types of ads. Imagine how tough an online sales rep’s job will get once that becomes common knowledge.

Everything is now on hold — unless it makes money

Newspapers won’t be around long enough to reinvent news, right now they need to reinvent how to make money — and here’s a hint in case you haven’t gotten it yet: advertising-only revenue streams aren’t the answer.

If you’re looking to change the news business, then start thinking about how to find new ways to make money from content or paid services that haven’t been done before in newspapers.

No longer does “building cool shit” count as worthwhile. The focus should be on “building cool revenue streams.”

What’s the point of doing webcasts, breaking news video, using Twitter, networking on Facebook, adding user comments, putting up photo galleries or whatever “cool shit” you just did if it’s not adding to the bottom line? At best, you’re building traffic, but that’s not a guaranteed way to increase revenue.

Innovation is a great thing, but right now you’re only draining one of your newspaper’s precious resources — your time — if it’s not helping keep the company ledger out of the red ink.

The bar’s been raised: develop ways that advance editorial and financial missions of the newspaper at the same time. Both sides need each other now more than ever and should be working in tandem. This means finding ways to diversify revenue streams and creating a product that is more efficient at fitting consumer demand.

The threat is immediate and there’s no bailout for the industry. If things don’t turn around fast, then we can look forward to more layoffs than ever before. Frankly, it’s time to fight to save your journalism job or get the hell out.

On that note, here’s “How to (voluntarily) become an ex-journalist” and a place to start to develop your Newspaper Escape Plan.

Idea from 10000words on Twitter. Visit the 10,000 Words blog.

1.) I had a blast spending time with the WIU faculty. They were all really nice and it was great to be around educators who understood the need for students to get themselves motivated and working to develop the skills they’d need to be competitive. Also, I was pleasantly surprised to find that several of them read comic books, too!

2.) Meeting with the student newspaper staff of the Western Courier highlighted a problem that I recognized while working at the Daily Illini: recruiting students from the journalism school to work at the student paper. It continues to shock me how many journalism students completely ignore one of the easiest ways to get experience on campus and never pursue this opportunity.

3.) Not enough students realize how difficult the job market is, or why it’s so competitive right now. A few students did mention that what I had to say was an eye-opener to get motivated to learn new skills as a leg up.

4.) I need to improve my public speaking skills and get more confident with my delivery. I don’t think I did a poor job, but I definitely didn’t hit it out of the park either. It’s really tough to gauge an audience’s reaction, especially when your presentation tends to bring up facts that are pessimistic about industry the students intend to enter and that they’ll have to work hard to be successful. I worried that I’d sound too much like their parents, but hoped to provide a level of honesty they might not hear elsewhere.

5.) There are still students who want to do journalism as a career. The passion is still there, but it’s unfortunate the industry they’re about to enter isn’t as welcoming. Every round of layoffs and buyouts isn’t inspiring confidence. Newspapers need to prove to students that a future does exist by finding ways to stay in business that doesn’t involve cutting staff.

6.) When I asked for suggestions and advice journalists would give to students to include in my speech, a lot of it surrounded the topic of wages. I put an emphasis on this during my presentation, breaking down how far a $30,000 salary goes each month after you subtract expenses. This seemed to surprise the audience the most and I think is something that needs to be more openly discussed. Going into debt in college to only go into debt further when you start a job doesn’t make sense. I don’t believe enough students have thought about this seriously.

7.) Macomb’s downtown layout was really cool. It was a courthouse surrounded by stores in a square. The sense of a small-town community was there and I really wish the suburbs copied this model. I think a lot of suburbs lack personality in this way.

8.) I need to get personal business cards printed with my personal e-mail and Web site on them.

9.) Smartphones won’t kill the newspaper. While traveling on the Amtrak train, it went through several deadzones. Until every inch of this country has broadband mobile technology, newspapers will be around. Mobile technology infrastructure still has a long way to go (and so does rural broadband for that matter).

10.) I was told later after my presentation that one of the students who asked a question had previously asked his instructor why he should come to listen to what I had to say. I’m glad he attended and hope that he took away something valuable, but this got me thinking: In everything we do, we should provide value either for ourselves personally or for others. Personal time management is important, but we also have to respect the time we expect others to pay attention to us — especially if it’s something we expect to profit on.

“Journalism school graduates: How to increase your chance of finding a job and decrease your chance of having to vent on AngryJournalist.com”

Throughout the day I’ll be meeting with journalism students and faculty and at 3:00 p.m. I’ll be speaking at the Union Sandburg Theater.

I’m rather excited to be speaking to journalism students, as I was a student not long ago looking for a job. Currently, I’m polishing up my presentation, hoping that I don’t become one of those boring people with a PowerPoint.

At the same time, I’m soliciting advice from the crowd for journalism students at AngryJournalist.com, and if you have thoughts you’d like to contribute please do.

I worked under Chambers as reporting intern while I was in the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois in Springfield. He had great enterprise ideas, was brutally honest with me and taught me a lot about Illinois government that only his years of observing and reporting could have given him. He never backed down when discussing an issue with you and wasn’t afraid to question sources intensely. When it came to editing my stories, he helped hone my work and made me stress double-checking the details before I showed him a draft. And he became — and still is — a friend.

Chambers is a hell of a reporter that did some damned fine work at the Capitol, and he certainly doesn’t need anyone to vouch for him, especially not a former intern. He’s got the articles, columns and even a blog to prove it. So, that’s why I was disappointed to read this in the story bylined by the Register Star’s executive editor:

The newspaper also closed its Springfield bureau today, a step that had been considered five years ago and again 18 months ago.

“We kept the bureau open through some previous tough times,” said Linda Grist Cunningham, executive editor. “Frankly, I made a choice between the bureau in Springfield and local news in the Rock River Valley. It’s a loss, but losing another local reporter would have been worse.”

I have to take issue with the idea that losing a so-called “local” reporter would be worse than shutting the bureau down.

Even before hyperlocal newspaper chain GateHouse bought the Register Star from Gannett, the articles coming out of the bureau were hyperlocal. I know from experience that any story I did had to have a Rockford focus to make it relevant to the local readership, otherwise the editors wouldn’t consider it.

This was more than just quoting the local legislators. This meant cold-calling through a phone book to find some “real person” to quote in the story about how an issue affected them. When most bureau reporters could have tied off the story, extra time was spent localizing, even arranging for photographs to be taken so local art went with the piece and gave the story a better presentation.

At times, this was maddening to do, but if you’re looking for an example of how to make statewide, government and political issues local, I can’t think of a better example.

And this brings me to my disagreement with the executive editor’s statement. If you goal is to only cover Rockford in a geographic sense by having reporters only physically in your town, then you’re failing at hyperlocal. There are things happening across the state that will resonate in Rockford, especially when it comes to legislative action at the Capitol.

Simply dismissing the Springfield bureau’s work as not “local” either means you weren’t paying attention to the actual content of the articles and packages produced or you failed to communicate properly what you wanted from the bureau.

This isn’t the kind of coverage you can replace with one-size-fits-all articles from the Associated Press. I know for a fact during my internship of several stories, big and small, that would have gone unnoticed if the bureau didn’t constantly have a presence at the Capitol. State government is a complex and nuanced beast that’s difficult enough to sort out when you’re at the heart of it, let alone hours and miles away.

I’m well aware that layoffs happen (see Paper Cuts or Mark Potts’ coverage) in the journalism industry, especially this year, and will probably get worse. But it makes no sense to cutback on the bread and butter of what journalism is supposed to be: being the fourth estate acting as the watchdog of government. If anything, that should be the last coverage to go.

Hyperlocal doesn’t mean physically constraining yourself to the city limits. It means presenting information in a context that’s relevant to your audience. There is a vast array of issues facing Illinois that the government is directly involved in that residents in Rockford will probably want to know (or, at least, should know about). It’s simple to see that a news organization and its readership would benefit from is someone who has the experience and institutional knowledge of working a beat for several years on the scene.

To let that go is a damned shame. If you’re trying to build a quality product for your consumer, then you don’t shed valuable resources. Instead, you should consolidate around your core product. In journalism, that’s public affairs coverage. And if you don’t see a bureau dedicated to covering state government as valuable in the news business, then what do are you providing of value?

UPDATE: I checked the Rockford Register Star’s homepage and also this page listing their staff blogs. Neither of them link to Chamber’s state government beat blog. And I know for a fact that his blog used to be linked off of the homepage. I hope they don’t delete his blog, as it is a great resource of information for a person who may not know the ins and outs of state government’s inner workings. Plus, this year’s PAR intern had some great posts on there as well.

The project actually came from a tweet by Jay Rosen, who wanted to know if a list of 20-something year old journalism bloggers existed. To my knowledge, none existed at the time.

I set out to create a definitive — but ever expanding! — list of young journalism bloggers and just provide it as a simple resource. But then I got to thinking that maybe I could do more than just a list.

(Clarification: I am accepting blogs to be added to the blogroll from anyone of any age. There’s no age limit to be included on the site.)

So, I bought the domain name “journalism.me” and went to work building a list of not just young journalism bloggers, but a more general list of personal blogs by journalists who blog about journalism. Yes, I’m aware of how meta this is.

My criteria eliminated blogs written in an official capacity for a newspaper or news organization. The point here was to find personal blogs, not work blogs. I also didn’t include blogs that were basically resume/clips sites that copy/pasted one’s work. I’m more interested in what people have to say about their jobs and the field itself. I also would not be including group blogs, blogs from journalism institutions or news blogs.

So, what you end up with is a collection of individual voices discussing journalism all focused in one place. Hopefully, the site will drive traffic to their blogs and connect them with each other.

To do this, I took the RSS feeds from each blogger and fed them through Feed Informer. The problem with Feed Informer is that it only lets you compile 15 feeds into one digest, however, you are allowed six digests. So, I could have up to 90 feeds in six digests. Right now I’m using three digest feeds and taking those and putting them through Yahoo! Pipes.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Why didn’t you just start with Yahoo! Pipes?” The answer is complicated. That’s what I originally did, but ran into some problems with the RSS feed it spit out. It wasn’t valid and I wasn’t able to embed it into the site unless I used their badge widget. Unfortunately, the Yahoo! Pipes badges don’t display properly in Internet Explorer 7 (Firefox 3 and Safari were OK).

After feeding the three Feed Informer digest feeds into Yahoo! Pipes, I took that Pipes output feed and fed it back to Feed Informer so I could format/style the final feed and put it on Journalism.me as it currently looks now. Talk about a work around! Now, I’m sure there are ways to avoid this complicated mess, but for now it works and I’m sticking with it.

In addition to the main feed, I’ve also started a del.icio.us account to follow a number of these bloggers and see what bookmarks they are sharing. Del.icio.us automatically combines these bookmarks when you add users to your network and spits out handy feed, which I also used Feed Informer to embed in the site.

That’s about it! If you have a personal blog, please e-mail me at kiyoshimartinez@gmail.com and I’ll add it to the network. Also, if you add user journalismdotme to your del.icio.us network, I’ll add you in return and your bookmarks will be shared, too.

Enjoy and spread the word.

Huffington, who rocks not one but TWO Blackberrys, doesn’t just see her city-specific sites covering politics like her current effort does. Somewhat surprisingly, she intends to mimic the newspaper model, the Guardian reports:

Huffington said the Chicago site would aggregate news, sports, crime, arts and business news from different local sources as well as contributions from bloggers in what will be the first of a series of projects in “dozens of US cities”. The Chicago site will initially be curated by just one editor.

“We are aspiring to be a newspaper in that we want to covering all news, not just the political blogging the way we began,” said Huffington, speaking at Guardian News & Media’s internal Future of Journalism conference.

While I don’t believe the Chicago version of the Huffington Post will spell the end of the Chicago Tribune or the Chicago Sun-Times, I think the decision to target this city in particular shows a shrewd familiarity of the weaknesses of the two daily papers and their online properties. It seems almost paradoxical that at a time when two newspapers face financial turmoil, one of the largest news and political sites decides it’s a good time to move in.

Some people still remember when Chicago used to be a town with four daily newspapers, including the Chicago Today American and the Chicago Daily News. Also gone is the Chicago City News Bureau, which is legendary for the term “if your mother says she loves you, check it out.” And now the city has two papers on the brink of collapse.

The struggling Sun-Times

And now the Sun-Times just went through layoffs and other suburban papers are laying off employees and merging. Even the copy-editing desks are being merged together into one location for the suburban papers.

Frankly, it doesn’t look much better for the Sun-Times as Crain’s Chicago Business reports that more cuts are still ahead:

Raymond Seitz, chairman of the publishing company, blamed a combination of declining advertising revenue and a shift in information gathering habits for contributing to a “difficult year” for the company.

“The Sun-Times itself is the most widely read in Chicago . . . and yet we continue to struggle,” Mr. Seitz said. “We will work hard on these problems in the year ahead.”

Sun-Times CEO Cyrus Freidheim, Jr., said the company has enough “cash to weather the worst storms over the next two to three years,” but you can can’t help but wonder if things really will get better in the 12-18 months he’s expecting the economy to turn around. Newspapers aren’t declining just because of the economy — they’re just declining faster.

Of course, the Sun-Times is looking for a savior, too:

Cyrus Freidheim Jr. said at the annual meeting of Sun-Times Media Group Inc. that it is reviewing offers from potential buyers and would consider a transaction that takes the publicly traded company private. Such a deal could be structured so that some major shareholders retain an ownership stake.

Freidheim noted that the company has some financial advantages compared with other media operations. Sun-Times has no debt except for an unresolved tax liability and has about $120 million in cash.

But getting a buyer probably won’t be easy. After all, buying a newspaper isn’t exactly something everyone’s lining up for these days.

Why ‘hyperlocal’ GateHouse would be a disaster for the Sun-Times

Buying a newspaper company means taking on more debt for an existing company. A potential buyer could be someone like GateHouse Media (GHS), known for buying up bunches of hyperlocal newspaper properties, clustered together geographically. The company’s already picked up a lot of smaller weeklies and shoppers in Illinois, along with mid-size metros in Springfield, Peoria and Rockford. On the surface, they appear to be a logical choice and the Sun-Times clusters of suburban papers are certainly attractive to their business strategy.

However, they’ve got their own debt problems. In fact, their debt problems could be the end of them as 24/7 Wall Street speculates:

At the end of the last quarter, Gatehouse had a little over $10 million in cash. Its long-term debt stands at over $1.2 billion. Goodwill is at just below $700 million.

During the last quarter, GHS lost $29 million on revenue of $170 million. Debt service was $24.4 million. Gatehouse has a huge dividend which it will almost certainly have to eliminate, taking away the sole reason for holding the shares.

Watch for GHS to be broken up before the end of the year or to enter Chapter 11.

And GateHouse has taken a huge hit. The company’s stock keeps hitting 52-week lows, they’re in “junk bond” status and the Motley Fool’s placed them on their list of 5 Deathbed Stocks. While they might have unloaded Copley’s Illinois papers and Gannet’s only Illinois paper, GateHouse probably can’t afford to take on much more debt.

GateHouse wouldn’t be a good solution for the Sun-Times News Group papers. Sure, a buyer is a buyer, but what’s the point of being bought by a company that’s already in fiscal trouble? No point in joining a ship that’s already heavy enough to sink.

Debt: an Achilles heel for newspapers

Earlier this year, Alan Mutter wrote about the fall of the Journal Register Co. (JRCO) and it’s a textbook example of what may become of other newspaper companies:

In addition to leaving JRC with some of the leanest-running newspapers in the land, [CEO Robert Jelenic] also left the company with the hefty $628.4 million in debt that now threatens to force it into bankruptcy. Most of the debt results from one bold, but less than successful, acquisition he undertook in 2004 in an effort to keep the company’s sales, profits and stock price growing.

Not only did the transaction prove over time to be a serious miscalculation, but a steep drop in JRC’s sales in the last two years has made it increasingly unlikely that the company can generate enough profits in the future to service its ponderous debt.

Mutter also produced a two-part series of questions and answers about debt and newspapers you can view here and here. While it’s not the most exciting topic in the world, it’s definitely a large part of the problem journalism is facing as an industry.

Mutter is quoted in Editor & Publisher’s special report on debt and the newspaper crisis:

But newspapers didn’t realize they were living in a historical aberration, says Alan D. Mutter, the San Francisco-based newspaper and new media consultant. News- paper profit margins were at historical highs, and credit was readily available.

“There was this impetus during the credit bubble to load up on debt, and amass more assets to somehow get better,” he explains. “It’s happening in other industries, too. Delta is a bad airline, and Northwestern is a bad airline, so lets put them together and somehow we’ll get a good airline.” The high debt wasn’t seen as a problem, Mutter adds, because it “was premised on an extraordinarily high level of profitability that is not sustainable.”

And that’s the crisis in a nutshell. All of this debt with no promising revenues in sight to pay it off. And with no new money comes the pressure to cut.

The troubled Tribune

The Sun-Times might hope they would fare better under private ownership. After all, that was the thinking behind Sam Zell’s purchase of the Tribune. While the Tribune was bailed out by Sam Zell, known for saying “fuck you” to his new employees and providing plenty of colorful quotations, the company is still facing a bevy of problems.

To Zell’s credit, he’s been the opposite of boring. Press releases from the Tribune have offended some, coming off as downright sexist. He’s brought in executives that issue memos with crazy ideas to innovate newspapers with the grace of a mind on too much caffeine (Steve Outing muses if we’re watching a train wreck in the process at Tribune headquarters). And there’s a redesign coming to the Tribune’s metro papers, including the Chicago paper — which already had a front-page tweak and a less-than-impressive overhaul of its Web site.

But the question is how much of this will actually help bring down the Tribune’s mammoth $13 billion debt? Probably none of it.

Back in April, there was already speculation the Tribune will default on its debt in 2009:

Tribune has nearly $4 billion in debt and interest payments due by the end of 2009, according to Gimme Credit analyst Dave Novosel, making it all but certain that the company will be forced to sell more marquee properties and make deeper cost cuts to avoid violating debt covenants.

“Tribune is a big microcosm of issues across the industry, and Sam Zell made an unfortunate bet, if you will, jumping into a business he knew nothing about,” said veteran newspaper analyst Miles Groves.

And now, in June, news breaks that the Tribune’s taken to counting bylines and inches produced by reporters in the printed product and aiming for a smaller newshole while trimming page count. The headlines were dominated with the news:

In discussing the company’s efforts to alter its cost structure in the face of rapidly eroding industry conditions, Michaels said in a conference call that Tribune is “actively pursuing a plan to right-size” the newspaper operation. – Tribune

The editor of the Chicago Tribune issued a memo Thursday to prepare her reporters and editors for drastic changes in content and painful reductions in staff. – Sun-Times

Tribune Company newspapers like The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune will quickly cut costs — by printing fewer papers and employing fewer journalists — top company executives said on Thursday. – The New York Times

With top man Sam Zell weighing in, cutbacks in staffing and number of pages in the papers were also put loudly on the table.

Michaels said of the changes, “This is going to happen quickly.” Zell added: “I promise you, he’s underestimating the level of aggressiveness with which we are attacking this whole challenge.” – Editor & Publisher

There’s only one thought that came to my mind when I read this: “More with less.” And I think that American Journalism Review’s Rem Rieder put it much better: “Sam Zell wants to destroy the village in order to save it.”

But if all you’re bringing to the table is mindless ax-wielding, why bother? There’s no way drastically weakening your product in a bitterly competitive media landscape is a recipe for success.

In-depth, hard-hitting enterprise efforts are one of the key offerings that differentiate good newspapers and their Web sites from their numerous competitors. They are an important component of the brand.

Indeed, it seems that so far Zell hasn’t been the savior of the Tribune. More than a year ago, Jason Calacanis predicted Zell would lose billions because of a comment Zell made about Google to the Washington Post:

“If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?” Zell said during the question period after his speech. “Not very.”

As Calacanis points out, Zell has no idea how Google works and how it actually benefits the Tribune’s papers to have Google’s bots index their sites.

And while Zell might stand to lose billions in his latest venture, Chicago stands to lose a lot more.

‘Will newspapers survive?’

Even Chicago’s own journalists aren’t exactly optimists. On June 12, the Chicago Headline Club and the Northern Illinois Newspaper Association met and Chicago Reader’s Mike Miner described them going through the stages of dying.

You can see video of the discussions here and here. To be quite honest, the tone seems somber — at least for newspapers. The most excited the panelists seem to get about the printed product is the trashy, free commuter rag, RedEye, as being a consumer success. Not exactly the most encouraging thing for hard-news, shoeleather journalists to hear in a city filled with endless stories about politics, corruption, crime and public affairs. It’s like knocking over Royko’s tombstone to hear that RedEye is the city’s fastest growing publication.

But the problem’s not just the quality of the content in newspapers. It’s also a business problem.

TechCrunch reports that the top 100 advertisers shifted more than $1 billion away from TV and newspapers to online, which can only accelerate the decline of the daily in Chicago.

While that shift wouldn’t be so bad for newspapers if the revenues went directly from print properties to online properties of newspapers, that’s simply not the case. Online advertising opportunities are more abundant with more sites clamoring for advertising dollars. And with total advertising dollars remaining somewhat level, that means the more advertising money shifted online means more of it is distributed across a larger number of properties. In other words, newspapers get less because the Internet is more competitive for advertising sales.

And this is an industry-wide fear, as reported by The New York Times, when advertising revenue slips in greater numbers than ever before. As the audience shifts online, the money follows the audience. With an online marketplace, however, the choices are greater and the revenues are harder to get for companies in this intensely competitive environment. Frankly, newspapers aren’t suited to do battle with the Internet giants that understood from the beginning how to make money online. And newspaper companies mostly don’t have the financial resources to invest in themselves to be even remotely competitive.

To answer the question, if newspapers will survive, the answer seems to be a vague answer of “no.” But in Chicago, I’m willing to bet that there’s a distinct possibility that neither the Sun-Times or the Tribune will survive the next decade.

This isn’t to say these dailies don’t produce good content, or that the journalists working there are somehow subpar. In fact, I don’t believe that’s the case at all. There’s obviously talent there. But talent alone can’t turn around the financial situations of these institutions, nor can it change the advertising climate the Internet’s created.

If the Tribune can’t make its debt payments, they’re screwed. If the Sun-Times can’t find a willing buyer, they’re screwed. And in general, they’re all screwed because they’re both tied too deeply to advertising revenues. The numbers don’t add up in their favor.

The shifting media landscape

The Huffington Post local site will probably work. With one employee solely dedicated to merely aggregation, it’s hard to not be profitable with that low of an overhead. Obviously, there will be the inevitable cries from both the Tribune and Sun-Times that the Huffington Post site is merely piggybacking off of the hard work of journalists at their papers. And that’s a legitimate criticism, but it ignores the larger question: Why hasn’t either paper started up their own news aggregation site?

What Ariana Huffington is proposing isn’t anything particularly special or complicated. She’s just put money behind an idea that’s potentially lucrative because no one’s bothered to do it before. And here’s the reason why her site will do it better than the Sun-Times or Tribune ever will: Hyperlinks.

Rarely does the Tribune or Sun-Times link outside of their Web site to local bloggers or other Chicago-media sites (i.e.: EveryBlock, Chicagoist, Gapers Block, Chi Town Daily News). Nor do they embed YouTube videos, make use of Flickr, be active on Twitter or actually understand the concept of creating a community on their Web sites through commenters. And we haven’t even talked social networking yet.

Instead, they build walled gardens, which defeats the philosophy of the Internet. Making things worse is that most of their new media content, such as videos, cannot be embedded to a reader’s blog or shared easily. And the Tribune removes its articles from the public view after little more than a week, meaning that search engines can’t index it and send them more page views and more revenue.

I’ve got a gut feeling there’s a whole lot of room to exploit Chicago’s weak online media scene. There’s plenty of room for niche blogs where a handful of writers can make a living covering just a narrow set of interests. This is how Gawker Media has been able to be successful (along with a good sales staff). Once others wise up to what Ariana’s doing, I think you’ll see more single-topic properties pop up in Chicago. It just takes an investor, a workhorse writer and some simple marketing to get it to work.

Some ideas I see becoming popular quickly would be professional sports, improv theater, music and food. If a writer could be financed for a year to completely own one of those topics and had a decent sales/marketing staff behind him/her, then I think you’d start to see this shift away from the daily papers.

The question is who will pony up the money and take the plunge?