March 11, 2011, noon Pablo Boczkowski: The gap between what reporters write and readers read threatens news orgs’ future

Niemanlabs reporting 11.3.2011:
...Here, Pablo talks about a series of studies he’s done looking at the gap between the kind of journalism that news organizations produce and the kind of journalism that consumers consume. He’s gathered data from a number of different countries and time periods to see how those interests match up (or don’t). I think we found a few interesting points of disagreement — it’s worth a listen.
I’ve posted a transcript below of both Pablo’s comments and my own (but omitting the very interesting Q&A which followed, which is also worth a listen). For anyone wanting to skip ahead, Pablo’s talk begins at 7:50 in; my response starts at 37:10; the Q&A begins at 57:45. (And if anyone wants an MP3 version for their morning commute, here’s the link.)
... So this book — News at Work, as Jason just said, is a story about the increasing role of imitation or copying or replication in news production — the idea that more and more and more, we have the same news across different outlets...
actually there is a huge mismatch, as I say here, between the supply of information and the demand of information.
Basically, that means that the stories that news organizations consider to be the most newsworthy ones, the most important ones at any given point in time for any day or hour — the stories that are above the fold in print newspapers, or at the top of the hour in the television newscasts, or that they are in the top screen of the website — those stories that are the most important ones for them are not necessarily the stories that consumers consider to be the most important ones.
And this ties back to a long-standing debate between journalists and scholars about the stories that journalists say we need in order to function properly in a liberal democratic tradition, as citizens of the polity — information about national news, international news, business, economics, et cetera — versus the stories that often times we want to read, that are stories usually about sports, crime, or entertainment — that are not necessarily uninteresting or unimportant stories...
...So basically, just to summarize a lot of interviews, people consider political news or public affairs news anxiety-provoking, demanding a lot of cognitive effort. And they feel somewhat unprepared to interpret it. All of that moves them away from this information. So we have two very different cultures and two very different logics here...
...
Third, the Washington Post finding is, in part, an interesting one for me, the reverse nature of the gap, because it tells us that the niche sites, the sites that have a specialty, are siphoning interest from the generalist sites. People who are in St. Louis or people who are in Seattle who are interested in politics go to Politico or the Washington Post — they don’t go to their local news organization.
So the bundled product strategy, the generalist strategy that dominated the industry for a long while, actually might no longer be so feasible.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/03/pablo-boczkowski-the-gap-between-what-reporters-write-and-readers-read-threatens-news-orgs-future/

Hyperlocal Execs’ 2012 Predictions: Webster, Tolles, Priebatsch and More…

Street fight reporting:
As 2011 draws to a close, it’s clear that it’s been a pretty momentous time for hyperlocal businesses. Between Patch’s rapid expansion, the explosion of the daily deals industry, Groupon’s IPO and the demise of Gowalla (to name a few), there have been plenty of intriguing developments and big stories since Street Fight launched in April.
Looking toward next year, we asked a few hyperlocal luminaries to weigh in on what they think will be the biggest story in 2012. 
Seth Priebatsch, CEO, SCVNGR/LevelUp
2012 will be the year of the transaction. Broadly speaking 2010 was the year of the check-in. 2011 was the year of “beyond the check-in” — where companies focused on richer forms of engagement; photos, filters, information about the places, adding game elements, location-based deals, etc… 2012 will be all about the transaction. The companies focusing on location-based interaction are going to drive to connect the engagement they can create with the register. Doing this both drives, and tracks, true financial value-add. I don’t think it’ll be all about mobile payments, or POS or NFC or deals or any one concept at all, but rather a global movement to get all LBS interaction as close to the transaction as possible.
Nihal Mehta, CEO, LocalResponse
In 2012, I think more and more consumers are publicly publishing to the web via social media and LBS — Zuckerberg’s law realized. To date, only 5% of adults are actively engaging in LBS, but I believe this number will go up 10-20x, especially with greater realization of “passive” check-ins, where consumers need not actively open an app, select a venue, and “check-in.” These passive platforms include apps that are always geoaware and running in the background, carrier geofencing, credit card transactions, and point of sale/NFC proliferation...
http://streetfightmag.com/2011/12/26/hyperlocal-execs-2012-predications-webster-tolles-priebatsch-and-more/

New Rules for the Ways We Watch

NYT reporting/David Carr:
Yes, competition is storming out of every device and connection, and consumers have choices and leverage they never dreamed of. But network television continues to waltz along, attracting advertisers in big numbers. Cable had a great year, and media octopuses like Time Warner and News Corporation continue to find plenty of profits. Big media companies still rely on huge, well-entrenched assets that include brands, distribution and capital.
But even if the sky is still aloft, there are visible, portentous cracks appearing. The inertia that has kept consumers from bolting from traditional content providers is beginning to erode as a new generation remakes media in its own image. Device companies and search outfits are intent on manufacturing their own content. And the migration of movies, music and video to the cloud could change the weather in a hurry.
Even as some of the old truisms in media still obtain — content wears the crown and strong brands break through clutter — a few new rules are taking shape.
A SCREEN IS A SCREEN Steve Jobs taught us a bunch before he exited, but one of his most current lessons could be the one with the most far-reaching implications. Content has a price tag, which is reassuring, but the old dividing lines between television, radio, Web and print disappear within the four corners of a tablet. That means, for instance, that CNBC and The Wall Street Journal are not in different businesses anymore, and in fact The Journal is adding hours of live video with each passing month. The BBC and Al Jazeera are no longer regional curios, they’re here. Every cable channel with two nickels and more than a few digital enterprises is financing the kind of narrative television that used to be available only at a certain time on a certain network.
NEW NETWORKS EVERY DAY On Christmas Day, a lot of people took the ribbon off a Web-enabled flat-screen television, and now the fight for real estate on all those enhanced television screens will be fast and furious. Cable providers will try to keep people from downloading the products of insurgent Web “broadcasters,” but they can’t stop what’s coming. They will have to win by providing value that trumps the now-infinite channel universe of the Web.
The $27 billion that traditional media just paid to the National Football League is a hedge, not an answer. So-called virtual operators — Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Google and Apple — have none of the legacy or infrastructure costs. Google has unleashed $100 million to seed new programming on YouTube, and Netflix is financing a series by the director David Fincher. That gaming device your children are playing with? That too is a network in the making. Traditional networks and cable providers have the content, but if they hold on too tight, they will miss out on vast new avenues of distribution and revenue.
THE REMOTE AS BRICK The iPad is a screen on your lap that makes it easy to navigate toward a completely personal experience. That screen on your living room wall is going to have to perform the same way to remain relevant. As it has in many other areas of technology, the smartphone will point the way. Our phones — and now tablets — are always on and poised for action...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/business/media/rules-for-the-new-ways-of-watching-david-carr.html?pagewanted=all