Mar 15, 2010

Putting hyperlocal advertising into context

While I crack the mystery of financing my next hyperlocal venture, allow me to enjoy the distraction of its potential selling point: contextual advertising.

In the parlance of mainstream media, contextual advertising means partnering an ad with a related piece of content, Kathy Best, managing editor with The Seattle Times, described last month during a NewsU.org webinar. For example, an ad for a cruise line might appear with content on travel, or a restaurant might advertise alongside foodie content.

The most exciting thing about contextual advertising is this: News consumers respond more strongly to advertisements that have a local spin to them, Best found in consumer surveys. For instance, a local travel agency’s ad may get more attention in the travel section than one for a big cruise line. In this case, context has more to do with location than content. Score one for hyperlocalists!

But to make local (and hyperlocal) ads successful for sponsors, context must be coupled with customer service, Best indicated. The ad must do more than just announce the sponsor’s presence in town — it’s got to connect the consumer directly with the sponsor’s services. An advertisement might encourage consumers to order goods immediately via phone or online. Or it could promote a weekly special, giving the ad context in time (double booyah).

Best’s recommendation supports something that CUNY J-school’s Jeff Jarvis suggested previously, that local businesses aren’t interested in advertising their presence to consumers who likely already know they exist. Instead, contextual and service-oriented ads allow local advertisers to build on existing customer relationships by offering more (or at least different) services.

It’s a strong sales argument for why the local dry cleaner (the one who’s been around for twenty years and whom everyone knows) should advertise with hyperlocal media. Even if the advertisement provides only the dry cleaner’s telephone number, it’s one more extension of customer service that can drive repeat business.

There are some dangers to contextual advertising, Best warned, mostly having to do with the placement of ads with hard news. A media outlet shouldn’t place a politician’s campaign ad alongside content about his or her rival, unless one’s goal is to draw that outlet’s objectivity into question. Instead, contextual ads fare better when paired with soft news — food, travel, sports, and news that won’t strike a nerve, Best suggested.

Shuffling ads with content may get cumbersome for small outlets, especially for online publishers who rely on fixed templates. However, there might be tools available to help with that. (I’ll explore that in a future post.) And if an advertiser’s location and the timing of special offers are emphasized, then perhaps the ad’s coupling with relevant content might not be so important.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user FadderUri.

Feb 17, 2010

On being and nothingness in journalism

Yesterday, I had two terrific conversations on what it means to be a reporter. The first happened on this blog with Rockville (Md.) Central’s Cynthia Cotte Griffiths, who pointed out that community bloggers and journalists serve similar but not identical rolls in the hyperlocal news landscape.

The second transpired on Twitter with Gannett reporter Chris Serico, who shared his thoughts on sportscaster Bob Costas. Serico finds Costas to be a “smart and self-effacing” announcer, whereas I believe Costas is a babbling egomaniac who’s strayed from his roll as a sports reporter.

Both discussions got me thinking: What is a reporter? Is it someone who abandons the self for the sake of objectivity? Is it someone who incorporates or even projects the self as an act of empathy? Is there a happy medium between mensch and übermensch? What is happiness anyway?

Of course, some of these questions may never be answered or even understood. But I’d like to take a swing at the first one, on being a reporter, with an emphasis on hyperlocalism. Here goes nothing:

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a reporter is someone who works for a newspaper, magazine, or television company to gather, report and broadcast news. Throw in organizations like radio companies, press agencies and websites, and I’m cool with Merriam-Webster. But the dictionary (and I) distinguish reporters from journalists, those whose writing is characterized “by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation.”

Can community bloggers be considered reporters? If they offer new information that’s relevant to the community conversation, then yes. They should be extended all the courtesies and credentials available to the mainstream press. But are community bloggers journalists? No, not if they participate in news creation or inject opinion into their content.

(The same can be asked of Bob Costas and other mainstream content producers. Are they reporters, journalists, commentators, columnists, or what?)

The distinction between reporter and journalist does not diminish the former’s importance in delivering vital information to the community. However, editorializing can be a dangerous thing for both, especially on the hyperlocal level. On the business end, it can alienate potential advertisers and sponsors. But even worse, it can lead news consumers to question motives.

There are some damn good community blogs out there digging up dirt that mainstream media won’t touch, and they’re definitely worth reading. But as far as practice goes, I’ll stick with journalism.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user jef_safi.

Feb 16, 2010

What’s the frequency, Kenneth?

Here’s a nice little victory: Hyperlocal news sites and blogs are stimulating more citizen discussion on local policy issues than mainstream news outlets, according to a publicly funded study conducted in Portland, Oregon. I’m talking on the order of four and a half times more discussion. Booyah!

The marketing group that conducted the study didn’t explain the difference, but Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab chalked it up to the ability of topic-specific sites to reach target audiences, versus the watered-down mainstream coverage engineered to speak to the masses.

And there’s this theory from fellow hyperlocalist Cynthia Cotte Griffiths, with Rockville (Md.) Central: “Bloggers are on the front line producing story ideas. We’re free to interact,” she said via Twitter. “Reporters are often restricted.”

Um, no and yes. While bloggers and hyperlocalists are “on the front line,” so are mainstream reporters. Newspapers still break most stories, which bloggers then regurgitate, a Pew study found (in Baltimore, anyway). In that sense, reporters not only occupy the front line, they bring the beer and chips. Bloggers (83 percent of them, according to Pew) just nibble on the crumbs.

I agree that reporters are “restricted” somewhat when it comes to their level of interaction with readers. Good practice requires them to stay out of the fray, to maintain objectivity. But that shouldn’t prevent journalists from eliciting conversation from readers, from “interviewing” them and moderating discussion strings in online comments sections.

Perhaps the bigger problem lies with the institutions that manage mainstream media and the agendas they put forth. Some of the country’s best known publications — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Harper’s Magazine, to name a few — are managed by billionaires who jump into the news business primarily because it gives them access to the powers that be, Advertising Age’s Simon Dumenco posted last week.

“Much has been written about the death of journalism, blah blah, as the margins at once-great publishing companies vanish. But something else is vanishing too: the old black magic that drew deep-pocketed backers to media ownership because media (specifically newspapers and magazines) offered them ample other rewards (regardless of the state of the balance sheet). Like, prestige. A place at the table. Access to the halls of power.”

That’s not journalism for the sake of civic discourse, quality reporting or even business. That’s just journalism for the sake of ego. And if a news outlet operates only to stroke the egos of aloof billionaire backers, then there’s no room left for average news consumers to share their thoughts.

Mainstream media insists on talking to people. Hyperlocalists understand that it’s about talking with people. Until traditional media changes its mind frame, it will continue to circle the drain. No new technology or novel distribution system will reverse that trend.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user bbaltimore.

Feb 15, 2010

There’s graphic, and then there’s gratuitous.

There are times when video news footage is best left in the delete folder. For NBC Sports, that time was last Saturday morning, when they first aired footage of the accident that killed Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili at the Olympic games in Vancouver.

My objection to the video’s airing is twofold. First, it was too graphic for my taste, but that’s my hangup. More germane to this blog, the video added nothing of value to the news story.

Media outlets had already reported Friday that Kumaritashvili lost control of his sled during a practice run, flew over a track wall at about 90 miles per hour and then slammed against a metal beam. Some outlets, like The New York Times, also ran still photos of Kumaritashvili airborne before the final impact, with his sled still on the track.

Between the textual description of the accident and the still photography, it was easy to piece together a complete story of how the 21-year-old athlete lost his life. Very much like a motorcycle accident, he was thrown from his vehicle at high speed and ultimately crashed into a hard object. The (tragic) end.

And NBC’s video footage of the accident showed just that — stuff that was already known to those following the story, and nothing that wasn’t described in sportscaster Bob Costas’s preface. It offered no new details or insight on how or why the accident happened. It was gratuitous.

The knocks that NBC took for the video should serve as a lesson to multimedia journalists. Puffing up a news piece with extraneous content has the potential to devalue one’s credibility with news consumers. It shows laziness on the journalist’s part for posting graphic detail without considering its informative value or its usefulness to the overall civic conversation. To some extent, it also insults the consumer’s intelligence, as if bloated content would so easily impress.

Going graphic is especially risky for hyperlocalists, whose consumers tend to take greater ownership in the content. I’ve had to defend my use of certain language and photographs when readers found them too disturbing or offensive, though in my editorial judgment, they were proper vehicles for delivering information and were not gratuitous. Someone’s always going to take offense at something.

Ultimately, the hyperlocalist must decide whether pissing people off does good for the community conversation. If going graphic means doing good, just be prepared to roll with the punches.

Photo of the Olympic cauldron in Vancouver courtesy of Flickr user Marcin Chady.

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