Mack the Flack

Newspaper print advertising is down, according to the 2012 State of the Media Report.

The financial crisis for newspapers is not a viewership crisis. It is a revenue crisis.

That’s one of the points raised in a webinar this week that featured Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Centre’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The webinar, hosted by thePoynter Institute, discussed the findings of the 2012 State of the Media Report.

Let’s not go into lengthy detail to discuss the report, but instead, here are some of Rosenstiel’s interesting remarks:

• This is Year 16 of the digital revolution.

• People are accessing more news from news media sites as a result of mobile devices.

• People access news sites more frequently and longer on mobile devices than PCs.

• Newspaper websites see a spike in traffic between 10 p.m. and midnight, as viewers take a longer, more in-depth looks at news stories.

• Tablets like the iPad provide us with more of a print experience.

• Online subscriptions are gaining traction, with the New York Times boasting 400,000 subscribers.

• The high cost of printing and circulation will result in many newspapers offering online-only issues during the week and just one print issue on the weekend.

• 15 newspapers a year vanish.

• Online advertising is not growing at the rate print advertising is declining. As a result, newspapers are trading print dollars for digital dimes.

• The number of people who consume news using social media is low.

• Companies like Yahoo and Google could start becoming news content producers as traditional news media newsrooms shrink.

To learn more about digital journalism, enrol in the New Media Journalism Certificate program offered by Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies. Click here to register for a June 23 information session on the program.

We are one of the most governed nations on earth. Federal, provincial, regional and municipal governments spend millions every year on Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that offend the average person’s intelligence. This winter, governments offered such “nanny state” advice as:

· “When shoveling snow, push, don’t lift”

· “Exposed skin will freeze in seconds at -20C.”

· “High mountain pass; use snow tires in winter.”

On March 20^th, at 5:14 am spring arrived in Canada. Called the March equinox in order to remove the Northern Hemisphere bias about spring, the event marks the arrival of a whole new crop of expensive PSAs:

· “This is how you wash your hands…”

· “Don’t dive head first into unknown waters!”

· “Avoid climbing high voltage electricity transmission towers!”

Mack understands the idea behind such PSAs – to save lives, reduce illness and injuries. But really, wouldn’t it more effective to focus scarce public dollars on school health programs rather than a national hand-washing campaign in a first world country?

Learn about effective public service advice and announcements.

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The Vancouver Sun is 100 years old this year. One of its columnists gave a recent interview saying he thinks print daily newspapers will survive and thrive in the future. Yeah, right.

Can you think of anyone under the age of 50 who reads a daily newspaper (giveaway commuter dailies such as 24 and Metro don’t really count)? For analog media such as the Vancouver Sun it’s getting tougher to stay relevant in our progressively digital world.

Conversely, while online newspaper sites are popular, their owners continue to struggle to make money, as online ad revenue is but a fraction of what print ads bring in.

Newspapers across North America are closing. According to The Wired Reporter 111 US newspapers folded last year and another 20 shut news bureaus to cut costs. While 201 newspapers did start up the same year, only two were dailies.

Learn new media relations in SFU’s  Public Relations Certificate Program

Two ways to access the web when you're mobile. The first method requires regular visits to the chiropractor.

The Pew Research Centre’s 2012 State of the Media Report has been released and the highlight for digital journalists is the public is consuming more news, more often and for a longer period of time. However, they’re using mobile devices (iPhones, smartphones and tablets) to do so.

So should we be praising Apple Inc. for selling wonderful web-serving mobile devices which, you could argue, kicked off the mobile web revolution?

Perhaps, but credit should also go to news organizations for realizing the importance of the mobile web. Most prominent news media outlets now have a mobile app or mobile-optimized website so smartphone and tablet users don’t have to zoom in and out to read headlines and articles. Traditional media have been leaders in recognizing the future dominance of the mobile web and quick to embrace it.

They know that by 2013, people will spend more time surfing the web with mobile devices than desktop and laptop computers. We’ve seen the shift coming as smartphones now outsell PCs.

So… the moral of the story for news outlets that haven’t caught on yet: get mobile or get left behind.

To learn more about digital journalism, enrol in the New Media Journalism Certificate program offered by Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies. Click here to register for a June 23 information session on the program.

When large groups of people use social media and mobile devices to assemble suddenly in a public place to protest something (smart mobs, sometimes called flash mobs), they run the risk of public failure.

One recent mob, to protest acrimonious negotiations between 41,000 public school teachers and the BC government, is prime example.

Students, mainly from Vancouver high schools, organized the smart mob event on Facebook, other social media and their mobiles. The plan was to have thousands of students walk out of school early to assemble in downtown Vancouver in support of their teachers.

“Students skipping school under the guise of a political protest – how could it fail,” thought Mack. But largely it did. Of the more than 17,000 students signed up to protest on Facebook, barely 500, or less than 3%, actually showed up downtown.

While some technology organized protests, such as Tahrir Square in Cairo, are successful, not all mobs, smart, flash or otherwise, rise to the same level.

Learn how to get better results out of social media. Learn more about our Public Relations Certificate Program

In the words of Star Trek's Borg: "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated."

Let’s face it, traditional journalism is giving way to digital journalism. So if you hope to get a job as a journalist today, you must know how to tweet, post on Facebook, shoot digital photos and video and post them on to YouTube and Flickr. Reporters also need to understand the audience for each social media platform and how they use it.

In many ways, being a digital journalist is more demanding. For example, suppose you’re assigned to cover the annual teddy bear picnic (believe me, every reporter gets these cheesy assignments once in awhile), instead of just collecting quotes and info for a 12-inch story, you might also have to shoot video and stills, record digital audio, tweet live (pics and text) and post content to Facebook and your newspaper’s website.

When you get back to the newsroom, your job is to write the feature, post it and the photos to the website, edit and post your video clip, create a slide show using your photos and the digital audio….

You get the idea. Simply put, today’s digital journalist is telling stories in a variety of different media.

So what about all those traditional journalists? Can those old dogs learn these new tricks?

An article I read this week at Poynter.org gives the impression that it’s unlikely, describing the relationship between old and new as “toxic.” That print-versus-digital animosity is also evident in the documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times.

But things are never so black and white and not all old dogs are digital stranglers. In my experience, many traditional journalists have led their newspapers into the digital age – even pushing the agenda when management hasn’t kept up. And if I could use myself as an example, my journalism career spans from paste-up to social media and I find new media fascinating because it offers many channels for telling stories and reaching audiences.

So to the journalists who abhor digital journalism, take the advice of the Borg, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”

To learn more about digital journalism, enrol in the New Media Journalism Certificate program offered by Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies. Click here to register for a June 23 information session on the program.

You blog, tweet, update your Facebook status and even upload your amazing skiing wipeout accident on YouTube. You’re a social media maven and a digital native, but now you need a paying job.

Digital technology has been a huge boon to many fields, including public relations. As one of Mack’s students recently put it, “Social media and PR are all about relationships -no wonder they hooked up.” Ouch.

Blog copywriters, social media specialists, social media strategists, social media content writers and social media marketing managers are well-paying, PR-related jobs that hardly existed two years ago.

But, while the digital revolution has been good for PR, it has destroyed and is threatening industries that were once thriving:

Learn digital skills in SFU Continuing Studies’ PR Certificate Program

It used to be that only columnists and editors represented news organizations. They became the personalities the audiences related to because they were allowed to have opinions and their mug shots regularly appeared in the pages of newspapers.

Today, of course, social media has changed all of that. Once invisible reporters often tweet and blog on the news they cover using their individual social media channels. And it is advantageous for news outlets to encourage this. Readers, viewers and listeners begin to identify even more with the media organization.

But there appears to be limits, as some television networks and newspapers have created social media policies for their news staff to abide by.

Here’s an article that looks at how this issue is creating conflicts and offers some solutions.

Learn more about how journalists can use social media by enrolling in the New Media Journalism Certificate program at Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies.

A screen shot from Walt Disney's adaption of The Three Little Pigs.

Did you know that the fairy tale Three Little Pigs was popularized during The Great Depression. Walt Disney released it as an animated short cartoon in 1933 and it became a lesson to live by for those suffering through the tough economic times.

The Depression-era public saw the wolf representing the hardships people faced. The pigs who made their homes out of straw and sticks were examples of laziness and lack of success. But only through hard work and dedication, illustrated by the pig who made his home out of brick, could we keep the wolf (strife and hardship) away from our door and eventually succeed.

The Guardian newspaper in England has a new twist on the tale and the Three Little Pigs video they produced was posted onYouTube Feb. 29. For digital reporters, perhaps the lesson it teaches is how instantaneous news has become.

Learn all about the rapid changes being made in digital journalism by enrolling in the New Media Journalism Certificate program at Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies.

Got a question that needs answering? Just go to Wikipedia.

But is that sloppy journalism?

The questions of who to trust and what is a reliable source is being raised as more and more journalism is done online. WithWikipedia, we want to trust it. After all, each entry is scrutinized by Wikipedia’s editors and all entries require references and external links, preferably newspaper articles.

Unfortunately that’s not entirely true. There are 3.89 million entries in the English version of Wikipedia and not all have been scrutinized by editors, who are mostly volunteers.

As digital journalists we must revisit issues such as reliable sources, ethics and attribution because of changes in the way the craft is practiced. Check out this article posted on the Online Journalism Blog where they provide answers to some of these issues.

Join the digital journalism debate by enrolling in the New Media Journalism Certificate program at Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies.