This is the Sound of a Scared Newspaper
Confession: I love newspapers. We still subscribe to our local paper, and we’ve taught our kids to read the paper every morning before school. My post-college career began at a newspaper (the Los Angeles Daily News). I want newspapers to succeed because I think they have a critical role in society.
But this really makes me angry: The inside scoop: What’s new for newspapers?
It’s an editorial published today by my local paper, the Tri-City Herald, and written after a visit by the CEO of McClatchy Newspapers, the paper’s owners. The visit apparently was all about the future of newspapers and probably included some kind of pep talk for the troops. And the paper turned that talk into an editorial that compares online news, bloggers, and everyone else to the BP oil spill. Here’s some of what the Herald published:
The internet is great. But it’s a gusher — not unlike the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Once you get it started, there’s just no shutoff valve … and no filter … and no retraction button.
And once it’s on the web, those rumors become a lot more believable for a lot of people. “I read it on the internet” is the new excuse for just about everything.
But buyer beware. It is often impossible to know if anyone has verified the material that’s on the internet or whether anyone is held responsible for rumors, misinformation or outright libel.
That uncertainty is working in newspapers’ favor. People are turning to newspaper websites as a trusted source.
Certainly, we’re guilty of sins of commission and omission — but our mistakes are made in the context of striving to present a complete and accurate report of events.
We have plenty of detractors, and hear from them regularly, but newspaper websites dominate internet traffic in virtually every market — usually attracting 70 percent of the audience or better.
It makes sense. Aside from credibility issues, few bloggers have the resources that a newsroom commands. There are serious journalists in the blogosphere, of course, but without newspaper reporters gathering facts and publishing first-hand accounts, few bloggers would have anything to talk about.
For all the painful changes at the nation’s newspapers, no one else reports on the communities we serve with the same depth.
It takes a newsroom to cover the city council meetings, disseminate the police logs, follow the court case and file the open records requests.
That’s the sound of a scared newspaper. Let’s look at some of these claims:
1.) The Internet is like the BP oil spill. Oh, grow up, Herald. The problem is that your day-late print publication can’t keep up with the speed of news that the Internet facilitates. It makes you obsolete. And you, with your annual cutting of thousands of trees, are a lot closer to the environmental damage happening in the Gulf than any online news outlet.
2.) It’s impossible to verify material online. It’s no more difficult to verify online news than it is to verify what you publish. On our real estate blog, I just broke the news that Charter Cable has bought out the local cable company; big news in our little town (that you still haven’t reported). And to help people verify the news, I scanned and posted the complete letter we received from Charter. What tools do you give me in your articles to help verify them? But all news should be read with a critical eye, whether it comes from a newspaper or a local blog. In fact, I dare say that if someone were to verify the news you print … they’d go online to do it. Jealous, perhaps?
3.) Our mistakes are made in trying to present a complete and accurate report. Yes, like when you completely failed to report that Dino Rossi, a well-known Republican who twice this decade came close to winning the governor’s seat, had declared his candidacy for U.S. Senate. You didn’t publish a correction the following day (to my knowledge), but an online news site would’ve quite easily amended such a mistake by posting the news when a reader like me asked about it.
4.) Newspaper web sites dominate Internet traffic with 70 percent of the audience or better. And how am I supposed to verify a stat like that when you don’t bother sharing a source? Online bloggers would’ve linked to their source.
5.) Without newspapers, few bloggers would have anything to talk about. Oh, KMA Herald. Your reporters use the Internet for research as much as anyone. Here’s a study that says 89% of journalists use blogs for research. (Notice how I included a link there so you can verify the datum?) And if you’re complaining that local bloggers steal your stories, remember that goes both ways. (Another link for verification!)
6.) It takes a newsroom to [cover local news]. I don’t run a local news blog, but I know a lot of people who do. And they do it from their homes just fine, thank you. In Seattle, they do it so well that the Seattle Times has been partnering for about a year with several local news blogs to help the paper cover stories it couldn’t cover otherwise. There are similar newspaper-blog partnerships happening all over the country, at least in cities with forward-thinking papers.
So, really, Tri-City Herald … stop sounding so scared. Even though you cut staff in 2008 and then cut more staff and lowered wages in 2009, there’s still hope. Embrace the future. Online news, hyperlocal blogs, and citizen journalism is here to stay. You can’t wish it away via defensive editorials like this.
New Hyperlocal Experiment: Topic Pages
You may have heard of the phrase “topic pages” already — it’s a fairly popular idea these days in journalism circles. The idea behind a topic page is that, rather than have multiple articles or posts about the same thing all competing with one another for attention, you collate them on a single “topic page.” For examples, see how the New York Times has created dozens of topic pages.
The goal is that the topic page becomes the authoritative resource for information about the topic. And generally, by “authoritative,” we mean it’s the page that earns and holds most of your search rankings about that topic, and the page that you can always refer people to when they need information. They’re kinda like Category pages, but not quite. I’ll explain the problem I hope a topic page will solve for one of our blogs, and show how we’ve setup our first topic page below.
What Problem Does a Topic Page Solve?
Primarily, it solves the problem that — for some topics — your hyperlocal blog might have lots of great information spread across multiple articles. Secondarily, some of those articles may be old or outdated and it becomes a challenge to keep them updated for new searchers who land on them via Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
My Specific Problem
In West Richland, there’s an annual event called Hogs & Dogs that attracts more people to the city than we have residents. It’s that big. We’ve been covering it since our blog launched in 2008, and we now have more than a dozen posts about Hogs & Dogs — some from 2008, some from 2009, and some from this year.
People come to this event from all over the Pacific Northwest, and they find our blog after searching online for information. But sometimes they hit a 2008 post, sometimes a 2009 post, and rarely a current post because the new content doesn’t always rank as well as the older stuff. So, we’re forced to go back and try to update all the old posts with links to the new content, like this:
That doesn’t really scale. You can’t keep going back and updating all the old posts (the ones that get search traffic) with links to all the new posts. So, our hopeful solution is the topic page.
Creating a Topic Page
Here’s how we’re doing this:
1.) Not a post, but a page. Rather than create a new blog post, we’ve created a WordPress Page. You can see it here: Hogs & Dogs. It’s somewhat bare right now, but we’ll add more content about the event as we get it. The theme we’re using (Canvas by Woo Themes – aff) allows us to create pages without having them show up in the page navigation, which is nice.
2.) Permanent URL. Although the content will be updated each year, Hogs & Dogs information will always be available at the same URL: http://westrichlandrealestateblog.com/hogs-dogs/.
3.) SEO & human-optimized content. We’ve created this page primarily for human visitors, but with the understanding that most of them will find it via search engines. The keyword is in the URL. I’ve optimized the page title. And we mention “west richland” and “hogs and dogs” several times in the page content.
4.) Evergreen, easy-to-update content. The page title says “2010″ but I can update that easily when the 2011 event rolls around. The page also lists date and time info, plus this year’s big raffle prize. All of that is evergreen content that I can easily trade out next year.
5.) Link to it often. No doubt we’ll be writing new blog posts as the event gets closer, but each new post will also link to this topic page and position it as the ultimate resource about the event.
Final Thoughts
The Hogs & Dogs event doesn’t happen until June, and even though people are already searching for information now — search traffic won’t really spike until the week before the event. We basically have about two months to get this page ranking for the terms that people use on the main search engines. I’ll let you know how it goes after the event has come and gone. If it works, we’ll be doing more of these on all our hyperlocal blogs.
Your turn: Are you using topic pages on your blog/site? Are they working? If you’re not, is it something you’d consider creating? Comments are open, as always.
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UPDATE, APRIL 26: For an update on this, please see Update: Topic Page Experiment.
4 Tips for Small Businesses with Hyperlocal Blogs
As I type this, Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends is hosting an Intuit webinar called Get Fiercely Local Customers Close to You. (You can see the Twitter conversation on the #IntuitSMB hashtag.)
Anita invited me to share some tips for small business with local blogs — tips that answered this question/topic:
How to use a blog to enhance loyalty with existing local customers
That was a tough assignment because I wanted to customize my advice depending on the type of small business, and maybe even its location. But I eventually shared this list of four specific strategies/tactics that I think could apply to a lot of small businesses with hyperlocal blogs in any location.
1. Blog = Community Kiosk
Think of your business blog as the community kiosk, the place where locals go to find out what’s really happening around town — not just what’s happening at your business/store/office. You will create loyalty by becoming a trusted resource for local information.
2. Open Your Blog to Others
Don’t think of it as your blog; think of it as the community’s blog. Yes, you’ll share company news and information on occasion, but to create real local loyalty, you need to do more. You need to open up your blog to others.
Let your blog be the voice of community groups that don’t get attention from traditional media. Invite and publish guest posts from non-profits, local organizations, event organizers, etc. They’ll tell others about what you’ve done and become evangelists for you and your blog.
3. Be Visible Offline
I’ve written before about how posts on local events are some of the most popular content my wife and I write on our local blogs. What I suggest is this: Write about local events before they happen, but also attend events and then blog about them afterwards with photos. Show people what they missed. Be their eyes and ears at local parades, community concerts, etc. If you can’t blog about a big local event, find someone to be a guest blogger for you. (See #2 above.)
4. Avoid Negativity/Controversy
All this talk about being a community resource is fine and good, but it’s still a business blog that you’re running. You don’t have to blog about everything going on in town and risk alienating potential customers. I’d avoid politics on a hyperlocal business blog. I’d avoid being too critical of local groups, organizations, other businesses, and really just about anyone. You don’t have to be the town’s cheerleader who presents everything as Super-Duper Awesome, but you should skip the controversial stuff if you’re trying to build loyal local customers.
Your turn: I don’t know how many local business bloggers read this, but if you’re one, I’d love to get your thoughts on these tips — as well as your own tips for successful hyperlocal business blogging.
Manage Your Hyperlocal Blog with RustyBudget
I’d like to introduce you to a hidden gem of a tool that I think most hyperlocal bloggers could use in some way to make blog management easier. It’s called RustyBudget and I’ll get the disclaimer out of the way up front: My friend and Search Engine Land co-editor, Barry Schwartz, created the tool. (Well, his company did.)
But more importantly, this is the tool that Search Engine Land uses to manage its daily news coverage, and I’ve recently started using it to manage content on my blogs (Hyperlocal Blogger and Small Business Search Marketing, my wife’s main real estate blog, and our four hyperlocal community blogs.
How RustyBudget Works
I think the first thing I’ll do is show you the dashboard for my wife’s and my blogs. It might help if we start with what the final product looks like. (You can click to see a larger version on Flickr.)
Legal Resources for Bloggers
It was just a month ago that Dan Slee made this prediction about bloggers and the law:
“At some point I’m convinced someone will lose their house in the not too distant future over an internet blog post. It’s potentially that serious.”
With that in mind, I’m compiling this list of Legal Resources for Bloggers. My hope is that it’ll be a living document, and I’ll gladly update this with new links as I discover them, or as you send them to me. (Use the contact form or just leave a comment below.) I also hope this is beneficial for all bloggers, not just our hyperlocal crowd.
Legal Resources for U.S. Bloggers
EFF: Blogger’s Legal Guide
Based on my somewhat limited research, this is the pre-eminent resource for bloggers about the law. Lots of read and research.
Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP)
Its mission is “to provide legal assistance, education, and resources for individuals and organizations involved in online and citizen media.” It offers a searchable legal guide.
Online Media Legal Network
A project of the CMLP (above), it “connects lawyers from across the country with online journalists and digital media creators who need legal help.” Participating lawyers will “provide qualifying online publishers with pro bono and reduced fee legal assistance.”
Media Bloggers Association (MBA)
Founded in 2004 by several well-known bloggers. Since its creation, the MBA “has provided a wide range of legal support services to hundreds of bloggers facing legal threats related to their blogs.”
Center for Internet and Society (CIS)
Information resource from Stanford University
CyberSLAPP.org
Created by “a coalition of civil liberties and privacy groups (listed below) who have come together to protect the right to speak freely and anonymously on the internet.”
Media Law Resource Center (MLRC)
The MLRC is a non-profit that was formed “to monitor developments and promote First Amendment rights in the libel, privacy and related legal fields.” See below for related links.
MLRC: Libel and Related Lawsuits Against Bloggers
The MLRC offers a list of cases (with links) in which bloggers have been sued.
MLRC: Legal Actions Against Bloggers
This is a blog from the MLRC that seems to serve the same purpose as the link above. It may be a replacement for that link.
Chilling Effects
A project that “aims to help you understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to your online activities.”
100 Free DIY Legal Resources on the Web
A big list of links.
Legal Resources for U.K. Bloggers
U.K. bloggers are invited to send in links for this section. For now, I’ll link to a few blog posts I’ve found that address legal issues for bloggers.
Talk About Local: Libel, defamation – keeping it legal
Philip John: Getting serious about hyperlocal, part 1: Legal issues and MA Online Journalism: Law for bloggers and journalists with Paul Bradshaw
Dan Slee: BE LEGAL: Six things a hyperlocal blogger really should know about the law
Paul Bradshaw: Presentation: Law for bloggers and journalists (UK)
Legal Resources for Bloggers: Other Countries
This one’s all yours. Please send in any links which may be appropriate.
Thanks to all who’ve helped collate this resource in some way, whether you know it or not!
Turn Your Blog Into a Newspaper with Zinepal
Think of all the people in your neighborhood/town that are sitting in a doctor’s office reading magazines every day. Or sitting in the waiting room at the car repair shop. Or at the salon. Wouldn’t it be great if they were reading your blog instead of Ladies Home Journal or Sports Illustrated?
They can be reading your blog — without needing a laptop or smartphone — thanks to Zinepal.com, a service that takes any online content and turns it into a fairly customizable and printable publication. Before looking at how it works, let me show you what the final product looks like: Read more
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