Reunions & Events

Watch Video: Kimberley Porteous

The Odd Couple: Newspapers and the Internet—Will They Ever Get Along?

Gerard Ryle ’06 and his wife Kimberley Porteous ’06S—respectively, news editor and multimedia editor of The Sydney Morning Herald—delivered KWF’s first joint Hovey Lecture on September 10.

The Age of Restoration: An Online Prescription
—by Kimberley Porteous ’06S

Kimberley Porteous ’06S Photo by Phillip Dattilo

When was the last time a newspaper website (apart from The New York Times or The Guardian) thrilled you about the possibilities of journalism? Newspapers have failed to live up to their promise online.

How can newspapers regain their power and primacy and return to profitability? I offer a prescription: marketable solutions through strong web presence to make newspapers once again essential to communities, act as public watchdogs and help readers participate in political life. This can be an age of Restoration.

I develop and produce online journalism— within a newspaper newsroom. Journalism that echoes the values of our print masthead. To print editors, I champion multimedia for bringing stories to life and reaching new, younger readers. I explain ways to extend reporting via audio, interactivity and web documentaries.

Unfortunately, many online newspapers are substandard versions of their print mastheads. If newspaper publishers want to erect a paywall around digital properties, they need to provide a product worth paying for.

The first reason newspaper sites fail is that usability and reader experience is poor. Not much has changed since the 1990s, when newspaper sites were simply the print edition text shovelled onto a computer screen.

Where are the contextual links, where is the interactivity? Newspapers haven’t rethought how they can improve the reader experience.

The first problem? No flexibility in layout. Imagine putting out a newspaper every day with the same page template. Every story gets the same headline size, same newshole shape.

Templated web pages are our enemy. Also, multi-page stories presented in photo slideshow format force readers to click through to a new page after only one paragraph of text. It’s a shameless way to inflate page views—and it’s a huge turnoff. And some newspaper websites still insist on auto-play video and audio when you try to read a story.

Having great content isn’t enough. If a reader’s experience is less than great, they leave for another site. Can we afford to throw readers away?

Too many newspaper websites ignore two of the greatest strengths of the online medium: context and hypertext— links to stories or supporting information. Often readers can’t find other stories in a series, or the related comment piece. Newspaper sites should help readers follow continuous coverage of an issue.

The other strength newspaper websites ignore is interactivity. The hottest web properties involve interaction between readers sharing information, looking for restaurant informations or information about a local elected official. Newspapers have ceded this ground.

When technology and information intersect, when people can explore data, they go deeper into a story and understand it better. They’re more likely to be engaged and affected by it. It increases the time readers spend on websites, allowing advertisers to be charged more.

Until newspaper websites rethink their offerings, they can’t be said to be practising online journalism.

Problem two: the ‘race to the bottom’ tone. The push for page impressions and web traffic usually overrides journalistic integrity. There’s an obsession with continuously remaking the homepage so readers have something new to click on to. This buries the good stuff.

The continuous appetite for something new is fed by wire services, so each site ends up running the same stories on their homepages. It’s also fed by “churnalism”— fast rewrites without leaving the newsroom. For every exercise in “churnalism,” a story in our own backyard goes unwritten—a story that could have a big effect on the local community, but which would earn fewer clicks. When clicks are the new currency, guess which story gets published?

The third reason newspaper sites fail: editing by web analytics is dumb. Up-tothe minute data on which stories are being read, and by how many becomes the web editor’s crack. If readers are more interested in sex scandals or celebrity misbehavior, the temptation is to serve up more.

Lighter stories get the most clicks. That’s human nature. But just as governments shouldn’t make decisions strictly on populist sentiment, nor should news editors. Just because more people are reading about celebrity scandal than a controversial city-planning decision doesn’t mean they aren't also invested in that story. So give it to them. Run it high up on the site. Don’t demote it after 10 minutes when you check your stats and it isn’t in the top five. You have to back these stories.

If we’re going to continue our role as public watchdogs, we need to trust our professional news judgment.

Reason four: video is not the answer. It may help carry more advertising, but it won’t improve the quality of newspaper websites. Or at least, not its current form. Mostly, video sucks.

Video is given priority online because ads in a video are more lucrative. News site staff are pushed to place video on every page possible. The video is typically produced on the fast and cheap, or else lifted from TV or radio. It’s the online equivalent of filling your paper with poorly copy-edited newswire stories.

Why insult readers this way? Do you think they’ll stay loyal to your masthead if this is what you serve up? Do you think advertisers are happy paying for this?

There are exceptions, of course. We do see well-crafted storytelling, imaginative use of still photos and cinematic vision. But the imperative to produce video is commercial, rather than editorial. It’s mostly an advertising vehicle. Often it doesn’t help tell the story or complement the text. This doesn’t help the newspaper brand.

Unless you are producing high-quality video journalism or web documentaries, news website video is best used only for the two things it does well: either showing motion of an exceptional event or emotions between individuals.

The fifth reason newspaper sites fail is that they’re poorly integrated into the print newsroom.

Ideally, when a paper’s print and online departments merge, junior web staff are mentored by newsroom talent. News editing and story selection on the homepage improve. There’s an appropriate separation between church and state on the website—commercial interests don’t overrule editorial. And the entire newsroom is inspired by the possibilities of innovative and interactive journalism.

Unfortunately, what often occurs is that digital natives are pushed aside by mid-level print managers. Innovation slows down. And talented and visionary multimedia journalists are let go as the staff shrinks because new management doesn’t value their work and prefers traditional story forms.

At a time when innovation in journalism is critical, it makes no sense to cut back on interactivity and multimedia. So what about solutions? How can newspaper sites become great? Solution one: use the strengths of the online medium. Tailor journalism to it. Explore new ways of producing serious investigative journalism. Compile and analyze data and public records to create the new reporting possible when technology and journalism intersect. It’s datajournalism—computerassisted reporting taken to the next level.

Use interactive technologies to help readers understand complex issues and participate. Let communities grow, and host them on your site. If you let readers participate, they remain loyal to your newspaper.

Consider crowd-sourcing for certain stories—inviting the public to contribute data to your reporting. Use context and hypertext to serve your readers. Create packages of related stories and Wiki-style subject pages. Curate links of the best reads from around the web.

Produce web documentary—a hybridized form of reportage native to the online medium. It combines the best aspects of radio, television, photojournalism, graphics, interactivity, newspaper archives and the written word to create and present something fresh and utterly engaging. If your paper is working on an investigative piece, produce the web documentary simultaneously. Once published, this stuff has a life of its own, recommended by friends and shared through social media.

Charles B. Fancher, Jr. '82, Tom Hovey and President Mary Sue Coleman enjoy the Hovey Lecture. Photo by Phillip Dattilo

Solution two: redesign your user experience. Newspaper sites require a design overhaul, born from understanding how people read online, interact with technology to get information, and then share it.

Rethink the way you present news stories to give them context. Display multimedia and interactives better. Incorporate social media. Devise tools to improve readers’ lives, like event calendars they can sync with their own.

Solution three: print and web teams must collaborate smarter to bring about quality storytelling. There’s too much secrecy between print and online departments. Multimedia presentations and data-based projects are the future of newspapers. Developing these stories together is the only way to go.

Solution four: stop editing by analytics. Don’t be “click addicts.” If you can’t trust your editorial judgments, how can you expect readers to trust you? If your serious stories aren’t rating well, sell them differently for the web or repackage them. Good journalism shouldn’t be abandoned.

Solution five: develop a mobile strategy. Now. The convenience of news delivered to phones and iPads makes it marketable, so papers should consider charging for the app or for a subscription. At the very least, newspaper sites must be optimized for viewing on mobile devices.

In summary, it’s vital newspapers maintain editorial standards, no matter what the platform. Tailor reporting to capitalise on the web medium. Use technology to commit acts of journalism. Work together for a common purpose.

It’s not too late, yet. Our newspaper brands still mean something. We should be poised to grab back our authority, our quality. To restore our mastheads and our fortunes. But the time is now.