I was looking at the Wall Street Journal blogs, which might be pretty good, I’m just looking at them for the first time. And I saw this ad:
I realized after I did the screen capture, I’ve let you into my life a little. The main point is that the Times is advertising on the Journal’s website, which is a bit strange to me.
Surely you’ve heard that newspapers are withering. And as they go, so goes the rest of the journalism trade. Naturally some disagree.
Last week Richard Siklos painted a cheery picture saying that newspapers would be fine, they’d just operate with slimmer margins. I’d say I agree with what he is saying, but I’d add that many newspapers will be contraced. In Mr. Rupert Murdoch’s words, “globalization and digitization,” are going to negate the need for many papers and news sources.
Of course, no one thinks it will actually happen to them. The big guys say, “The little guys are in trouble.” The little guys say, “The big guys are in trouble.”
I spoke with Greg Sterling, a media analyst and he said the smaller papers are going to have revenue trouble as they move to the web.
I called The Courier Post, a south New Jersey paper with circulation a little over 76,000 on weekdays and close to 92,000 on Sundays. I spoke with their online sales manager, Clark Perks who, in spite of having a website that lists all his personal information, still seemed surprised that I called him.
He had no worries about selling ads in an all free Internet world. He said, “People are still going to come to us because they want to read about local news. They want to know how the high school football team did last night. And while they’re reading about it we can put an ad with that article for a local business.”
I asked if he wasn’t worried that people were less interested or responsive to online ads.
He responded, “Advertising has been the same for thousands of years. The caveman that held a sign saying ‘Cabbage, two for the price of one’ is no different than the grocery store advertising its sale on our website.”
Perks additionally said that the big national papers would be in trouble because they’d be competing against each other for national ad dollars.
I agree to an extent with what he says. However, as I’ve said I think the whole industry is undergoing a market correction. And this is troubling for me, as I am an aspirant journalist, who occasionally likes to think of himself as a writer.
One of the few companies that is thriving is Bloomberg, a company described in Business Week thusly:
“The expectations were ridiculous,” says a former Bloomberg reporter. “Ten-hour days without a break were routine. A journalistic sweatshop could be an accurate description.”
I’ve heard good things about Bloomberg from Scott Soshnick. He loves it. But I was once by someone else told that you are not a writer at Bloomberg. You cover events and churn out information, not prose.
In the age of expediency, writers can put similes and metaphors in their diaries. I don’t necessarily think this is a problem. Who am I to say I can tell a story? I can churn, it’s like math. Cover the event–X leads to Y because of Z. Boom. Ten minutes later its the next thing.
It’s not romantic, but it’s better than most jobs.
There are other organizations, non-news-wire jobs, where there is room to flap creative wings, but they are dissipating. And when there are fewer places to places paying writers, the competition for those jobs increases.
Ten years ago it was harder make inroads, but the proliferation of blogs has rejiggered the scheme. A Wall Street Journal editor said we should all have blogs and there is no reason not to be published.
David Carr of the New York Times reinforces this idea saying we should be building our brand, establishing ourselves as writers.
There is a great piece in the NY Observer about this topic. Not everyone thinks branding of journalists is so great:
For Robert Boynton, director of the magazine writing program at New York University’s journalism department, the language of branding is inherently galling. “Marketing, to me, always assumes the product is fine, we just have to figure out how to get people to buy it,” he said. “With journalism, the product isn’t fine! The idea that everything’s okay, we just have to figure out a better way to penetrate the market—no! We have to train people to be thoughtful and suggestive, creative writers.”
Why can’t we both be thoughtful, creative and suggestive as well as salesmen of our own brand? Its better to be all things all at once, as long as you can handle it. And punching out a blog should be simple for a journalist. Does a real journalist ever get tired of espousing his or her opinions? Of course not, they-soon to be we-are a bunch of blowhards. To be a journalist you’ve got to be arrogant enough to believe people care what you think.
I’m not trying to build a brand, I’m just trying to vet the thoughts that don’t fit or work elsewhere. I think brand building is a great idea though. As Carr said at my graduate orientation, building your brand and yourself is the easiest way to gain leverage in a shrinking industry.
With no barrier to entry, there is no reason not to have a blog.
So here I am.
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