How are newspapers handling the transition from just a newspaper to a newspaper with a Web site? What are the biggest challenges and some of the successes a typical daily may have? What are the current issues?
I talked with Matthew Wolfe, the Multimedia Editor at The Desert Sun, a Gannett newspaper in Palm Springs, California to see his views.
Wolfe, who has been with The Desert Sun for more than three years, is involved daily with all aspects of the digital side of the paper, from Web site architecture, to coordinating video and audio production. He also leads the paper’s social media taskforce.
The Desert Sun (NUMBERS) covers Palm Springs and the surrounding areas. The biggest events in the area (NAMES) are Coachella, the music festival, the Palm Springs International Film Festival, and Stagecoach, a country music festival. Other events include an LPGA major golf tournament. Also the paper covered Phish Festival 8 from XXXXXXX
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If everyone is getting their national news online, should papers even have national news anymore, or international news?
Yes and no. I think the reality is that it shouldn’t be our crutch. At the same time, what i think the newspaper does, much like a newscast does, is it’s a digest. For lack of a better term “shit you need to know.” And that’s what I think the paper packages nicely. And thats why it’s great that it has a collection of several departments. If you’re off doing whatever in the wilderness all day, you are going to know everything you need to know … and national and international news falls into that. Does that mean every single national story? No.
For example, (President) Obama (Date) addressing the nation about Afghanistan, how do you not recognize that this happened in our nation?
Look at when you look at MSNBC XXXXXXX or Yahoo! and you see the major headlines, yes we need to have those headlines …. absolutely. I think sometimes we just go a little too deep into it.
XXXX If those headlines are on MSN (XXXXX) and Yahoo! and Google and everwhere else as we move into digital and as we wrestle with our paper’s future.. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
If your looking at our Web site, you are literally a few clicks away from any other Web site where as opposed to the paper, you may not be near anything else, technological or physical to get the information.
I think the newspaper is different. It’s almost like a recap of yesterday that’s brought to your door everyday.
I also asked Wolfe about the mix, both in print and online, between information that readers want to know and what readers need to know.
XXXXX I asked him which type of information golfer Tiger Woods represented. TigerXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
I think Tiger Woods is a little bit of both. Tiger Woods is one of those things that … how can we be a newspaper and not mention what is going on with Tiger Woods? I mean, it’s the biggest story that’s going on. Unfortunatly, it’s bigger than Afghanistan.
I think people want it, but it’s also something they need to know. It’s our job to deliver news … and that’s the news. Personally, I don’t care, but our customers deserve to have that information in there.
XXXXX Wolfe is also in charge of creating and monitoring the paper’s social media accounts on Facebook XXXXXX and Twitter XXXXXX as well as helping to post on those accounts. XXXXX
I asked him about the paper’s digital experience with the Coachella music festival, a three-day outdoor concert featuring up-and-coming bands as well as known headliners. The headliner in April was Paul McCartney (XXXXXXXXXXX).
In 2006, the paper had limited coverage online, but Wolfe helped jumpstart the coverage in 2007, his first Coachella with the paper.
XXXXX How had the paper covered Coachella digitally?
My first year here we became a little more aggressive. We had seen that the traffic performed well in ‘06. We realized the potential. We had more photographers out there, more reporters. Much more of a live presence out there, more blogging, many, many photo galleries.
Coachella is by far the highest trafiic performer for us every year. But specifically that year, it was through the roof. It was insane.
XXXXX So you’re saying 2007 was better than 2008 and 2009? Why is that? (Laugh)
Because of Twitter and Facebook. And blogs. A one point there was reallyonly one way to follow the Coachella experience. It was through rock magazines, really. Or a paper like ours. Or any festival, it don’t want to say just Coachella. But obviously, in the last three or four years, beacuse of music blogs, Flickr and Twitter and Facebook and the portalbilty of devices that can capture really great photos, that information is spread now all over the internet. As opposed to, at one point, we were one of the only place where you could to see what Coachella was like. Now you can turn anywhere and see what it is like … at any event.
And beyond the amatueristic form of the information delivery, I mean without a doubt, we’ve seen more of a journalistic presence there.
XXXX What did you do in ‘08 that was different than in ‘07?
In 2008, we went a little harder with some of the off-site events that happen (surrounding Coachella). There are all these VIP celebrity parties that are going on. And they draw tabloid-esque clebrities to their parties. That was a pretty good hit. Obviously, it didn’t trump the main coverage of the festival itself, but it was a good supplement, without a doubt.
XXXX What did you do differently in ‘09?
‘09 was our first year we were using Metromix ((((XXXX)))) as our main outlet for photos. We did actually go to even more parties, which performed very well.
XXXXX Is it right to assume that everything in ‘06 and ‘07 was based off the Web site? What about Facebook, etc.?
I would say even this year (most of the coverage was on the Web site). But we were tweeting at Coachella this year. In fact we gave away a iPod. The way we did it was we gave clues throughtout the festival, like where we would give it away, what time and what they would have to do to obtain said iPod. All those clues were given out through Twitter.
XXXX What did they have to do?
This person had to meet us at this robot arm that picked up a car. They had to meet us there at 7 p.m. and be screaming Metromix. There were a few people there … and we gave one of them the iPod, the first one we heard screaming “Metromix”.
XXXXX Metromix PS Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
We have barely scratched the surface (with Twitter at Coachella). But Twitter didn’t really break out until after thoses event. Those events were in April, Twitter broke out this summer.
It will change the shape of how we cover those events in 2010. I think people got a sneak peek of that if they saw our coverage of Phish Festival 8.
XXXX I remember that you guys tweeted a lot for Fest * Xxxxxxxxxxx.
We did somethinga little different. I was thinking ‘How do I make sure that people get to see some of these amazing photos that we were taking.’ What I was doing when the photographers were coming back for photos, Obviously my first priority was to get them back here for print. And my second was I have to get these online? How do I let people see these?
Twitter played such a huge role in how people enjoyed that festival. People were tweeting setlists live as they were happening, There were Twitter aggregators all over the place. And so you would go to these sites and it was litterally a real-time stream of the event. Which is great. You are watching the conversation happen in front of your eyes.
And I thought ‘how do we become part of the conversation’? It just clicked in my head. I thought right there on the spot we should tweet individual photos through twit pic. I would upload one photo and then put in a link to our galleries. bit.ly/fest8day1
What we say were people, of course reacting to the individual photos we were posting, but then also saying “Oh, you have some great photos up.” It was instant gratifciation. I felt so good to see all that.
And we say a major traffic boost because of it. It outpreformed Stagecoach, which is a very major accomplishment. Stagecoach is one band. Here it is, this one band, who outperforms a whole multi-artist festival. And we got about 35% of our page views from Twitter. And we have the capability to see exactly where they come from.
XXXX What are you planning for Coachella in 2010?
I think what you are going to see is a lot less of a delay between when things happen and when it’s available for you to see it. And that’s the real advantage of Twitter.
XXXX So with all these people looking at your web site, what does that mean for The Desert Sun as a business? Getting them, capturing them, having them come back every year for Coachella, etc. How does it turn into a money-making business?
I’ll answer in two parts. Personally, I don’t care if they come back. I have no control over people’s desires and behaviors. What I can do is make sure we are doing the best job of distributing information. And I think we champion some events like Coachella and Film fest.
I think that as soon as I focus to “how do I turn this reader into a long-term subscriber,” I’m paying attention to what my real job is … that people have access (to news).
But there are two sides to the business, and I’m not a part of the other side. I actually enjoy that we keep those two sperate, because the moment you make news decisions based on a long-term business strategy is when we fail our readership.
XXX Ultimately if some of those customers aren’t turned into dollars in some form, you are not going to have a job. So how do you think some of those customers could be turned into dollars?
I think what we are facing right now is that our business model is build model is built on selling eyeballs. We have a product, which is news, which attracts lots of eyeballs. We attact ads along with that information that people want beacuse those advertisers feel that that exposure will give their brand “X” amount of return, what ever that is.
For some reason, and I don’t know why, people place much lower value on digital exposure than what they do to print exposure. For the life of me, I cannot understand that.
You have no idea how many people paid attention to your ad in the newspaper, at all.
XXXX But online, they are assigning some value to it, like a click count.
Exactly. Just to give you some perpective, I’ve bought all types of media (Wolfe has also worked in television). And it’s all measured by audience. It’s all potential exposure.
From the digital side, you have much more physical proof … 10 people clicked this ad … and went to your site. To me, there is a major perception problem in how online advertising is valued. I think the value lies somewhere between where print is now and where digital is now. I think it’s worth more than what people are paying for digital right now.
(Newspapers) are in trouble because of that perception. And your right, just because we have people visiting, it doesn’t mean we have the business side of the operation covered. I don’t know how that’s going to get fixed. Maybe there are other ways of monitizing the operation. I pay $10 a month for some of my magazines, and there are still ads in there. So, I don’t know why some hybrid of that couldn’t exist online.
XXXXX So what you’re talking about are subcriptions, or paywalls?
Yea, why wouldn’t you pay for access to your local paper if you really wanted that information?
XXXX Do you think paywalls are necessary, do you think they will work … and do you think they need to be cheap?
Well, they absolutely have to be cheap because right now, we are giving the information away for free. So how do you tell someone what you were just giving away for free is worth a $100?
It’s going to be a difficult experiment to figure out if it will work. Going back to magazines, and newspapers, I don’t understand how all of a sudden when our information went into a computer, that all of a sudden it became free.
We have no problem paying 75 cents a day for a paper, but there is no access to (older) news. But on our web site, you can be gone for 30 days, you could disappear for a month and come back and look at 30 days of news.
XXXX But do you think paywalls will work with all the other information sources out there? Do you think papers will survive if some of them have paywalls and some of them don’t?
No, I think it has to become an industry standard. Without a doubt. Just like buying a daily newspaper became an industry standard. You can’t just have one or two that do it. It has to become the norm.
I would imagine that people should desire some accountablity. They should have a stake in what they are reading.
What other site is going to cover (local news)? I know CNN exists and Sports Illustated exists, but they don’t cover those things.
So what I think people need to realize, as much as they think “well, I’m not paying for that.” Well, the price your really going to pay in the end is you are not going to get the information. Because if a business can’t survive financially to provide that information for you, then you are just not going to get it.
Or you’re going to get it from a mishmash of blogs and Facebook posts, and I’m telling you, and I don’t say this just because I work in a newsroom, that is not where you want to get your information.
That is not what you want your objective news source to be. If you want information you can trust, you want it to come from a real organiztion where people are trained to get it for you. It’s not that we know how to do it anything better than anyone else, it’s just that … this is a machine. And one person can’t duplicate that.
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Going back to magazines, and newspapers, I don’t understand how all of a sudden
when our information went into a computer, that all of a sudden it became free.
Matt Wolfe
Multimedia Editor, The (Palm Springs, Calif.) Desert Sun
*********************************************************************************************
In Working with Social Media, I’ll interview journalists to get their ideas on the changing face of news.
Volume One: Matt Wolfe, Part 2
This post is the second half of an interview with Matt Wolfe, the Multimedia Editor at The Desert Sun, a Gannett newspaper in Palm Springs, California.
Wolfe is involved daily with all aspects of the digital side of the paper, from Web site architecture, to coordinating video and audio production. He also leads the paper’s social media task force and is in charge of the paper’s social media accounts.
For his digital efforts, Wolfe on Thursday won The Desert Sun’s year-end award for innovation. I recently talked with him about content, Tiger Woods and how newspapers can survive the transition to an online-focused world.
Question: The current scramble for news growth, online and in print, is focused on local news. If everyone is getting their national news online, should newspapers even have national news anymore, or international news?
Yes and no. I think the reality is that it shouldn’t be our crutch. At the same time, what I think the newspaper does, much like a newscast does, is it’s a digest. For lack of a better term “shit you need to know.” And that’s what I think the paper packages nicely. And that’s why it’s great that it has a collection of several departments. If you’re off doing whatever in the wilderness all day, you are going to know everything you need to know … and national and international news falls into that. Does that mean every single national story? No.
For example, (President) Obama (on Dec.1 ) addressing the nation about Afghanistan, how do you not recognize that this happened in our nation?
Look at when you look at MSN or Yahoo! and you see the major headlines, yes, we need to have those headlines … absolutely. I think sometimes we just go a little too deep into it.
If those headlines are on MSN and Yahoo! and Google and everywhere else online, how do papers strike that balance of what should go in the paper and what should go online?
If you’re looking at our Web site, you are literally a few clicks away from any other Web site, where as opposed to the paper, you may not be near anything else, technological or physical to get the information.
I think the newspaper is different. It’s almost like a recap of yesterday that’s brought to your door every day.
*******
I also asked Wolfe about the mix, both in print and online, between giving readers information they want to know and what readers should know. I was interested in his thoughts on Tiger Woods, the golfer who is currently in the middle of a sex scandal.
Which type of information does Tiger Woods represent? Do readers need to know everything he’s doing now? And is that “news”? Or do readers just want to know?
I think Tiger Woods is a little bit of both. Tiger Woods is one of those things that … how can we be a newspaper and not mention what is going on with Tiger Woods? I mean, it’s the biggest story that’s going on. Unfortunately, it’s bigger than Afghanistan.
I think people want it, but it’s also something they need to know. It’s our job to deliver news … and that’s the news. Personally, I don’t care, but our customers deserve to have that information in there.
*******
I talked with Wolfe about Coachella and other Palm Springs-area music festivals, and how social media has dramatically boosted page views for the paper’s Web site. (See Part One of this interview).
With all of these people looking at your Web site, what does that mean for The Desert Sun as a business? Getting them, capturing them, having them come back every year for Coachella, etc. How does it turn into a money-making opportunity? Or does it?
I’ll answer in two parts. I don’t know if this matches the company viewpoint on this … personally, I don’t care if they come back. I have no control over people’s desires and behaviors. What I can do is make sure we are doing the best job of distributing information. And I think we champion some events like Coachella and (the Palm Springs Film Festival).
I think that as soon as I focus on ”How do I turn this reader into a long-term subscriber?” I’m not paying attention to what my real job is … that people have access (to news).
But there are two sides to the business, and I’m not a part of the other side. I actually enjoy that we keep those two separate, because the moment you make news decisions based on a long-term business strategy is when we fail our readership.
Ultimately, though, if some of those customers aren’t turned into dollars in some form, you are not going to have a job. So how do you think some of those customers could be turned into dollars?
I think what we are facing right now is that our business model is built on selling eyeballs. We have a product, which is news, which attracts lots of eyeballs. We attach ads along with that information that people want because those advertisers feel that that exposure will give their brand an “X” amount of return, whatever that is.
For some reason, and I don’t know why, people place much lower value on digital exposure than what they do to print exposure. For the life of me, I cannot understand that.
You have no idea how many people paid attention to your ad in the newspaper … at all.
But online, they are assigning some value to it, like a click count.
Exactly. Just to give you some perspective, I’ve bought all types of media (Wolfe has also worked in television). And it’s all measured by audience. It’s all potential exposure.
From the digital side, you have much more physical proof … ten people clicked this ad and went to your site. To me, there is a major perception problem in how online advertising is valued. I think the value lies somewhere between where print is now and where digital is now. I think it’s worth more than what people are paying for digital right now.
(Newspapers) are in trouble because of that perception. And you’re right, just because we have people visiting, it doesn’t mean we have the business side of our operation covered. I don’t know how that’s going to get fixed. Maybe there are other ways that we have to monetize the operation.
I don’t know if people are willing to take part in a subscription model to get their information. You know, they pay for magazines … I pay $10 a month for some of my magazine subscriptions, and I get one issue every single month, and there are still ads in there. So, I don’t know why some hybrid of that couldn’t exist online.
So you’re talking about paywalls?
Yeah, why wouldn’t you pay for access to your local paper if you really wanted that information?
Do you think paywalls are necessary, do you think they will work … and do you think they need to be cheap?
Well, they absolutely have to be cheap because right now, we are giving the information away for free. So how do you tell someone what you were just giving away for free is worth a $100?
It’s going to be a difficult experiment to figure out if it will work. Going back to magazines, and newspapers, I don’t understand how all of a sudden when our information went into a computer, that all of a sudden it became free.
We have no problem paying 75 cents a day for a paper, but there is no access to (older) news. But on our Web site, you can be gone for 30 days, you could disappear for a month and come back and look at 30 days of news.
But do you think paywalls will work with all the other information sources out there? Do you think papers will survive if some of them have paywalls and some of them don’t?
No, I think it has to become an industry standard. Without a doubt. Just like buying a daily newspaper became an industry standard. You can’t just have one or two that do it. It has to become the norm.
I would imagine that people should desire some accountability. They should have a stake in what they are reading.
What other site is going to cover the La Quinta City Council (or other local news)? I know CNN exists and Sports Illustrated exists, but they don’t cover those things.
So what I think people need to realize, as much as they think “well, I’m not paying for that.” Well, the price you’re really going to pay in the end is you are not going to get the information. Because if a business can’t survive, financially, to provide that information for you, then you are just not going to get it.
Or you’re going to get it from a mishmash of blogs and Twitter and Facebook posts, and I’m telling you, and I don’t say this just because I work in a newsroom, that is not where you want to get your information. That is not what you want your objective news source to be.
If you want information you can trust, you want it to come from a real organization where people are trained to get it for you. It’s not that we know how to do anything better than anyone else, it’s just that … this is a machine. And one person can’t duplicate that.
Fly on the news
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