January 21st, 2008
The Only Way For Journalists To Understand The Web Is To Use It
Reading Colin Mulvany explain how he’s come to understand the dynamic nature of online content distribution through his own experience blogging, and Howard Owens advocating that this is why every journalist should start a blog, I realized that the problem isn’t just a lack of understanding about blogging, or social networking, as Colin frames it.
The problem is, framed more broadly, an inability to understand what I like to call “web-native publishing” — but let’s just call it web publishing, because complexity is the root cause problem here.
Here’s Colin’s aha moment:
I now understand. I have been a producer of web content for years on a creaky CMS that only partially takes advantage of the Web 2.0 tools available on any WordPress blog. I just didn’t see the big picture of why this is important for all of us in the newspaper industry to grasp. If I didn’t get it, then how will my non-blogging co-workers, who are already apprehensive about change, ever understand?
If you haven’t already, my advice is to get an education in Web 2.0. Start a blog. Feed it. Share it. Our very survival as an industry will be predicated on how well we interface with this expanding social networking universe.
The fundamental different between print publishing and web publishing is that print distribution is a linear process, while web-native publishing is dynamic and non-linear, particularly when publishing on a web-native CMS like a blog:
Linear Print Publishing
- Article gets sent to layout/design
- Article gets sent to print production
- Article gets sent to the press
- Article gets put in the mail or on a delivery truck
- Article arrives at subscriber business or home
- Subscriber reads article
- Maybe a letter to the letter is generated
Dynamic, Non-Linear Web Publishing
- Post appears on web page, readable by anyone on the web
- Post appears in RSS feed and is fed into dozens of different feed readers, read by subscribers
- Post gets links from other blogs and other websites, yielding more readers and more links
- Post gets submitted to social news sites, e.g. Digg, StumbleUpon, or Reddit, yielding more readers and more links
- Post gets bookmarked on social bookmarking site, e.g. del.icio.us or ma.gnolia, yielding more bookmarks, more readers
- Post gets shared on social networking/communication sites like Facebook or Twitter, yielding more readers, more sharing
- Post gets emailed or sent via IM — more readers
- Post appears on news aggregator like TechMeme or Blogrunner, encouraging more links, and more readers
- Post gets indexed by dozens of search engines, starts to appear in search results — more readers, more links, more sharing
- Readers comment on post, encouraging click-throughs from RSS, adding content for search engines to index, and spurring conversation and more linking, more sharing
- Tags are indexed by Technorati, more readers
- More readers subscribe to blog RSS
- Blog is added to blogrolls, more readers
- Links generated by post increase search authority, generating more traffic, more readers, more links, more sharing
All of these processes feed each other and interconnect. The best posts will start to snowball, driving a huge traffic spike and increased activity across all of the above.
So here’s the real reason why people like Howard Owens keep encouraging journalists to blog. Print publishing is easy to explain and understand. Web publishing, in contrast, is counter-intuitive — it’s multi-faceted and complex.
The only way to really understand web publishing intuitively is to DO IT.
But it’s not just about blogging. Colin’s post is about web distribution of video and multimedia. Twitter is a form of web publishing.
So it’s not about understanding one format, it’s about understanding the WEB. It’s about understanding that putting content on the web isn’t just putting content on a page, same as a printed page — it’s putting content on the NETWORK. It’s understanding that, unlike print publishing where subscriptions control distribution, on the web PEOPLE and LINKS control distribution.
The only way for journalists to “get” the web is to use the web.
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Thanks for the link, as always.
I think you’ve articulated well what I’ve been trying to say.
Thank you Scott,
You explained it far better than me. It is complicated, but once you understand how web publishing really works, you realize the potential of connecting your content to a much wider audience. As newspapers look for ways to monitize their websites, they need to really understand how the social media universe is evolving. Then they need to be apart of it.
Colin Mulvany
[…] Must-read post from Scott Karp, who articulates very well why journalists need to learn self-publishing tools. time savedtime […]
Terrific post. I for one will be forwarding it to a lot of people.
Scott, I think you can usefully extend the argument beyond journalists to all authors/publishers and beyond print vs. blogs to Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0.
For most, publishing is still seen as something some other department/company does for them - ie even if it’s on the web it is still largely a linear activity. (I’m talking about useful content here, not facebooking or twittering.)
Thank you…I love the end:
“So it’s not about understanding one format, it’s about understanding the WEB. It’s about understanding that putting content on the web isn’t just putting content on a page, same as a printed page — it’s putting content on the NETWORK. It’s understanding that, unlike print publishing where subscriptions control distribution, on the web PEOPLE and LINKS control distribution.”
Amen!
Scott -
Great post which I am going to share with the newsroom. I have adopted this metaphor when explaining the problem:
Our ‘readers’ have learned a new language - ‘digital.’ In order to stay relevant as journalist - you need to learn to speak it as well.
You can try and learn it from a book but as with any language, immersion and constant practice is the only path to success.
That could mean starting a blog, using Twitter, having Flickr or YouTube accounts, whatever. Just do something. You get a lot of credit for at least trying and learning - and NO credit at all for forcing your audience to speak analog when dealing with you.
Damon
excellent analysis - finally someone managed to put across publisher’s thought than bloggers..
I’ve said as much myself in a link I’ll shove on the end of this comment.
A crumb of comfort. Darwin didn’t say it was the strongest or even the first who survived - it was the most adaptable. One thing is for sure, you cannot adapt to survive in an environment unless you are living in it.
Here’s one further thought. Journalists are the last people to blog because they are trained to answer all the questions they raise. That is not a conversation.
A blog is.
That link in full: http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2007/09/dont-just-witness-network-be-part-of-it.html
Beautiful post. I wish some of the people criticizing me would read this.
We can’t teach people to understand something unless they go out there and use it. If more journalists used Web 2.0 products and understood the Web, news organizations would be doing a lot better.
I’d add not just journalists. I was a reporter and editor for 24 years until our business went to hell and I moved to the dark side. It’s the same issue: if pr/marcom types don’t engage with the tools, they’rein trouble as well.
For the journalist though, there’s one other reason I’d add to Colin’s point: if you don’t venture online and learn the tools, you’ll never get a sense for the potential because your IT department will never tell you. The web is open-sourced and poised to be incredibly modularized. This threatens thousands of IT jobs, but it also puts power back in the hands of reporters and editors.
(http://greeleysghost.blogspot.com/2007/11/will-center-hold-part-2.html)
Scott, keep up the good work. Yours is one of my favorite media blogs.
Cheers,
BF
Terrific post, Scott. I for one will be forwarding it to many journalists and editors.
I’d suggest one more incentive/traffic source for web publishing: ‘Link gets picked up by headline aggregator’, such as the mighty Google News, which considers some blogs to be honest-to-goodness news operations.
Not one for every blogger perhaps, but writers blogging regularly for their print publications might be in with a chance.
[…] in a more detailed and experienced opinion on print versus Web economics, you should read Scott Karp’s Publishing 2.0 blog - I’ll leave it there for […]
I was telling my colleagues at large newspapers this very same thing three years ago. Trouble is that they don’t understand it until they start doing it. It’s a chicken and egg situation. More understand it now, but not enough. And I understand that sentiment because that’s the way I used to think until I left the Financial Times and started Silicon Valley Watcher in mid-2004.
I agree that journalists should understand the web. I heard about a website http://www.pressmart.net which presenting the print publications through online, RSS, pod cast, blog, etc. by digitization. Most of the publishers using the features of pressmart.net
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We wrote something in italian about your post here: http://ilcalzolaio.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/per-i-giornalisti-lunico-modo-per-capire-il-web-e-farne-uso/
I hope you’ll do a follow-up post:
The only way to understand your web reader’s user experience (and desires and expectations) is to use the web.
In other words, the flip-side of starting a blog is being an avid reader of blogs, being someone who has at least a passing familiarity with the mechanics and UI of other sites, being someone who at least has a Digg / Reddit / Clipmarks / Twitter / Stumbleupon account.
Too many media sites violate basic tenets of good user interface design while leaving out basic features. Many organizations lack the IA folks to really bring these to fruition, and at our newsroom, at Scientific American (sciam.com) a lot of this innovation is driven by the journalists themselves.
Non-linear dynamics of the free paper:
* Picked up at train station: more readers
* Left on bus: more readers
* Man draws moustache on president’s face
Etc.
The point of the above parody is that there is not much non-linearity in the distribution model you describe.
The non-linearity would come from quoting and commenting. [How many blog posts are rewritten based on feedback? Not that many, although follow-up posts are more common.] This definitely enriches the end product that the reader consumes, but how does it affect the writer’s job?
When you sit down to write your blog posts, what do you think of to increase the potential for a non-linear snowball of distribution
1) Obvious comment and link-baiting
2) Write a well-written, interspersing, relevant post
Writers already think about number 2, or should. Is number 1 the lesson? Well, they already kind of do that only it’s writing stories to attract advertisers rather than readers.
The big lesson that could be learned is that the story is never finished… you are creating a dynamic article rather than a finished end product. But that’s a lesson that many bloggers need to learn too.
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Hi Scott:
Great advise to all of us long-time printer reporters. I’m more of a hybrid since half my freelance clients are Web-only and half are print publications with a Web presence. I liked this post so much I blogged about it today in a post on the changing newspaper business. When it comes to blogging I’m a rank beginner, but I know I gotta learn. I’ve also posted it to FreelanceSuccess.com, a subscribers-only newsletter and forum for freelance magazine writers and other professional non-fiction writers.
Michelle Rafter
http://michellerafter.wordpress.com
[…] segues nicely with Scott Karp’s piece on “The Only Way For Journalists To Understand The Web Is To Use It“. Seems […]
[…] Just found this great article by Scott Karp about how journalists need to better understand the web. Thought it […]
Maybe by understanding the process of Web publishing, journalists will be able to take more kindly to blogs and bloggers everywhere. Maybe erase a bit of the bad blood? But I’ve read somewhere that some journalists do read blogs in order to help them come up with an angle for a story. And I must admit that I also look to news for inspiration on my blog topics.
[…] The web doesn’t have to be harder for journalism — it can be much, much easier — it’s just a matter of learning how to use the web. […]