Editor & Publisher Digital Edition - February 2019

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A Section

Features

Departments

SPEEDING UP THE WRITING PROCESS

Rolling the Dice

CRITICAL THINKING

Transcribing app, Temi, gives time back to journalists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 10

2019 Mega-Conference Set for Feb. 25-27 in Las Vegas . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 36

Will robot journalism replace human journalists? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 21

NEW PAPER, SAME LOCAL JOURNALISM

When Numbers Lie

DATA PAGE

Taking on digital ad fraud is more than dealing with technical problems; it’s about transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 38

The future of voice, preferred news platforms in the U.S., rating the news in your community, native ad clickthrough rates by brand category . .p. 24

After her former paper’s office closed, an editor decided to start her own publication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 12

ON-THE-GROUND REPORTING Shoeleather is an online database that helps eliminate parachute journalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 18

FOR CURIOUS READERS Sonoma West Publishers introduces new feature to generate more audience engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 19

Popping the Filter Bubble How newspapers are navigating through social media bots, trolls and misinformation to bring readers the truth p. 46

Digital Trends to Watch As the media landscape changes online, what can publishers expect to see in 2019? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 52

A SHARED LANGUAGE

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PRODUCTION Newspaper production learns to navigate ‘whole new world’ in 2019 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 32

NEWSPEOPLE New hires, promotions and relocations across the industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 65

SHOPTALK

Bay Area News Group and Sacramento Bee work together to grow audience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 20

Are the media biased against Trump or is he being held to a lower standard? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 74

PHOTO OF THE MONTH Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun p. 22

Columns INDUSTRY INSIGHT

BUSINESS OF NEWS

DIGITAL PUBLISHING

Can newspapers survive another significant economic downturn? . . . . . . . . . . . p. 26

How the media ought to handle ‘apologies’ made by celebrities . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 28

When using social media photos in your stories, the best thing to do is ask for permission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 30

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editorial

All Bets are Off

T

he end of 2018 saw the best and worst of journalism.

Time magazine named journalists (“The Guardians”) as their Person of the Year, honoring murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, convicted Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, indicted Rappler editor Maria Ressa, and the Capital Gazette newsroom that was attacked by a gunman last summer.

For the Annapolis, Md. newsroom, it was a bittersweet moment. “We’d like to thank the journalists at Time for including us in their cover story, ‘Person of the Year: Killed and imprisoned journalists.’ It is a great and terrible honor,” the Capital Gazette editorial board wrote. “It’s great because we continue to do our job, despite the death of our colleagues on June 28. We’ve carried on…”

And they have carried on—by continuing to provide local journalism to their community.

On New Year’s Eve, a group of journalists—including some from the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and NBC News—helped drop the Times Square ball.

According to Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance, including the journalists was “fitting” and helped “celebrate free press and free speech as we reflect on where we’ve been during the past year and what it is we value most as a society.”

Around the same time journalists were being recognized as “guardians of truth,” a controversy surfaced involving German journalist Claas Relotius. Relotius, a longtime writer for Der Spigel, resigned in December after it was revealed he had fabricated many of the stories he had written for the magazine. Soon after, Der Spigel announced it was going to press charges against Relotius and suspend two top editors for failing to fact-check Relotius’s articles. “(‘Spiegelgate’ is) one of Germany’s biggest postwar journalism scandals, potentially spanning seven years and many dozens of articles,” Katrin Bennhold of the New York Times wrote. “Coming at a moment when public trust in journalism is already low, it 6 |

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E & P | FEBRUARY 2019

could hardly have arrived at a worse time.”

Although Der Spigel said it was going to conduct an internal review, the damage had already been done. Still, the scandal reminded us how important fact-checking is for a newsroom—and that no matter how well-written a story is, it must first be a truthful one.

As we enter into a new year, I predict truthfulness will be on the minds of many journalists, not only on the printed page, but also in the digital world. If people thought newspapers had a tough year, tech companies like Facebook and Google had a disastrous one dealing with privacy issues, security breaches, and Congressional hearings.

Like the leadership at Der Spigel, Facebook admitted they “failed to look and try to imagine what was hiding behind corners,” said Elliot Schrage, former vice president for global communications, marketing and public policy at Facebook, in an interview.

We may not know what is lurking in the dark, digital corners of 2019, but I hope this month’s issue will help shine some light there. Check out our feature stories this month on how newspapers can protect themselves and detect ad fraud, how editors are stopping the spread of misinformation on social media, and what digital trends to watch for this year.

Also this month, nearly 800 newspaper professionals are expected to attend this year’s Key Executives Mega-Conference in Las Vegas (see our preview story inside).

I find it fitting that Vegas is the location this year. At the same time high-rollers are blowing on their dice for luck and placing bets, newspaper leaders from the around the country will also be contemplating when to gamble and take risks as they sit through a program that offers an array of sessions from podcasting trends and subscriptions to fighting misformation and changing newsroom culture. In the past, newspapers weren’t known to be risk-takers, but that’s no longer true. Whatever risks these newsrooms make after visiting Vegas, I hope there is a big payoff.—NY

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comments ))) does not justify the withholding names and details of shooters (“Going Nameless and Faceless,” January 2019). If mainstream media starts censoring crime information this way, the information still will circulate through social media, cell phone videos and just ordinary word of mouth. More important, the public could be deprived of vital information about how schools, police and courts handle mass shootings.

In Florida, we just had a brief debate about whether police responded effectively to the Pulse nightclub shooting, which claimed 49 lives in 2016. Mostly the issue was swept under the rug with official comments like “still under investigation.” It wasn’t until the Parkland school shooting two years later that the public became more aware of delays in police response.

TOM BROWN

Submitted on editorandpublisher.com

By Speaking Out, Journalists Put Themselves at Risk

PHILIP S. MOORE

a news aggregator or an app on a cell phone (“Digital Publishing: Watching Your Media Diet,” December 2018). I bookmark a dozen or so newspaper and major magazine websites and CNN, and go straight to their homepages at meal times. These homepages are attractive and well-organized, and I am exposed to a wide variety of topics outside of my interests. News aggregators are ugly, and the experience of what I see with the New York Times website displayed full screen on my 27-inch iMac blows away what is possible on a relatively puny cell phone screen. The only advantage cell phone apps have is portability. But even then, I have a 9.7 inch iPad and use a browser when I am away from home. I do get a kick when using the Newseum’s newspaper app on my tablet. I can see front pages from all over the world and zoom in on the stories.

Submitted on editorandpublisher.com

ALLAN

“Will not somebody rid me of that meddlesome priest?” –Henry II (speaking to his court about Thomas Beckett, who was murdered the next day) Simply put, rulers will never welcome scrutiny or criticism (“Editorial: Words Matter,” December 2018). To speak out or write in opposition to government or leadership of any sort is to risk retaliation. However, to simply set yourself up as a committed resistance against a particular regime is not freedom of speech or the press. It is simply partisanship, and while it may serve the goals and agenda of a particular group, it does not represent the high ideals of a free press which earned its Constitutional guarantees of protection by telling the truth, “Without fear or favor.”

Submitted on editorandpublisher.com

News Reading More Enjoyable on Larger Screens The experience of reading the news with a web browser on a tablet or a desktop computer is so much more enjoyable than what I find is possible when using 8 |

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Withholding Shooter’s Name Deprives Readers of Vital Information Yes, reporters and editors should be aware of the contagion risk, but to me, this

Reporter’s Job is to Seek Out the Truth Acosta did what he’s supposed to at a press conference. The reporter’s job is to get the true story—and ask questions when it (isn’t) true—which is what he did (“Critical Thinking: After an Altercation with President Trump, Did Jim Acosta’s Behavior Play into Trump’s Anti-Press Narrative?” January 2019). Expecting him or anyone else to shut up and nod in agreement when any official goes on a “You’re fake news!” rant is not what the profession calls us to do. Acosta didn’t make himself the story—the unusual nature of Trump’s weirdness and the subsequent lies about the violence surrounding the intern and the mic did.

FELICIA HODGES

Submitted on editorandpublisher.com

Send us your comments nu.yang@editorandpublisher.com “Comments,” Editor & Publisher, 18475 Bandilier Circle, Fountain Valley, CA 92708 Please include your name, title, city and state, and email address.

Letters may be edited for all the usual reasons.

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the A section VOLUME 152

FOR THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY 2019

ISSUE 2

> Look Ahead

Speeding Up the Writing Process Transcribing app, Temi, gives time back to journalists

By Evelyn Mateos

T

he least alluring part of our industry is arguably transcribing. On average, journalists spend six hours a week transcribing audio. Jason Chicola, founder of Rev. com, reminds E&P that this adds up to about two lost business months. Instead of allowing this to be the norm, Chicola and his team (including PhD speech scientists, MIT engineers and product managers) sought a better answer and created Temi, an automated speech recognition engine that transcribes audio to text in just minutes.

Chicola serves as the company’s cofounder and CEO. Temi’s average turnaround time for a transcript is 1 to 5 minutes for a } Jason Chicola 0 to 30 minute-length file and 10 to 10 |

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13 minutes for a 90 to 120 minute-length file, and costs 10 cents a minute.

Currently, Temi only works with the English language, but the company hopes to expand to more languages in the future. The platform can, however, work with almost any type of audio or video file.

Temi can be used a few ways, and the website is a one-stop-shop for all of Temi’s features. Users can upload audio or video files or even drop in a link and Temi will return the transcript within minutes via email. Users can also edit, fine-tune and highlight important parts with the editor tool. Also available is the Temi app that allows users to record, store and submit files to be transcribed.

The online service was created in May 2017, and it was formally launched a month and a half later. A mobile app was launched in August 2017.

According to Chicola, the Huffington Post, New York Times, Bloomberg, CNN and more use Temi. He also shared that some journalists have found the program helpful in producing first drafts, saving ideas and transcribing meetings, allowing users to be present with coworkers and clients.

Temi makes collaborating simple as well. “It’s so easy to share transcripts with colleagues via a link generated right in the platform. Once accessed, collaborators can view the transcript and even make edits if given editing rights,” said Chicola.

Andrew Lewis, a freelance journalist, has been using Temi for a year. “It has become my go-to any time I need to transcribe interviews. It has saved me countless hours of time. I used to spend three hours transcribing a one-hour interview...(or) cherry pick the important parts I remembered to save time...It really takes a lot of the stress out of my job and allows me to focus on my favorite part—writing.”

Chicola agreed that stress is a recurring theme. “We often hear that Temi has alleviated work-related stress for journalists, who would be under the wire to meet deadlines, only to lose hours of that time to transcribing instead of writing strong stories...Temi gives the power of time back to journalists.”

For more information, visit temi.com.

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the A section

New Paper, Same Local Journalism After her former paper’s office closed, an editor decided to start her own publication

I

n early 2018, the town of Cloquet, Minn. in northern Carlton County was dangerously close to becoming a “news desert” after its local paper, the Pine Journal, closed its office doors and moved its operations to the Duluth News Tribune office 23 miles away. Both publications are owned by Forum Communications.

Reporters and sales reps continued doing their work (some at home and some relocating to Duluth), including editor Jana Peterson. But after about eight to nine months of working from home, Peterson said she started to consider creating a community newspaper of her own.

In September, Peterson resigned as editor and recruited Rose Chu, Peter Radosevich, Tim Franklin, Ivan Hohnstadt, Deb Zime and Ann Marksen to discuss the possibility of starting a new local newspaper.

Peterson said the bulk of the work to create their first issue was done in a month, and on Oct. 26, 2018, the first edition of the Pine Knot News rolled off the press.

“It’s been wonderful having a local office.” Peterson said. “There is a big difference between having an office that people can stop by when they want, versus working from home and people having to either ‘attend’ office hours at a public place or track you down via email or phone. Being part of the community matters.”

Peterson said the quick turnaround to launch the paper was due to the experience of their staff, and the fact that one of the

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 Pictured (clockwise from left) are Pine Knot News co-owners Tim Franklin, Ivan Hohnstadt, Rose Chu, Deb Zime, Ann Markusen and Jana Peterson during a visit from Santa Claus. Not pictured is co-owner Peter Radosevich.

(Photo provided)

co-owners (Franklin) also owned four other weekly papers. He set the new paper up with a place to print, and put them in contact with businesses to help launch a website (pineknotnews.com) and even to supply office equipment.

The Pine Knot News staff includes an editor (Peterson), advertising director, office manager and production director. The paper also has a publisher, which is an unpaid position. Peterson, Marksen and Radosevich, along with contributors, write for the paper.

Even with a small staff, the paper is able to produce a paper every Thursday and deliver it to subscribers Friday. Currently, Pine Knot News has about 700 subscribers, and prints 1,000 copies a week. The paper also sells about 200 copies a week in rack sales at 15 locations.

Overall, the establishment of the Pine Knot News reiterates that local news matters and that a local presence is important.

“It is vital to keep local newspapers going, especially in the age of the internet,” Peterson said. “We have lost that common narrative that used to be supplied by a local paper that everyone read or a news show that everyone watched.”—EM

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the A section Tornoe’s Corner

OF THE MONTH No more clipping coupons.

NCWV Media in Clarksburg, W.Va., has created a mobile wallet and digital coupon system that puts local advertisers in consumers’ smartphones. NCWV Media produces several publications in West Virginia, including the Exponent Telegram in Clarksburg, the State Journal in Charleston and Preston News and Journal in Kingwood.

The system was implemented last November with about 50 clients.

NCWV Media president Brian Jarvis shared with the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association that the idea was to find a better solution for demonstrating return on investment to print advertisers, No app is needed for this system.

Instead it works by running code numbers with offers promising a specific discount, coupon or gift found in local print ads, websites and even on window signs.

The customer simply needs to text the code to the number listed and the offer goes into the individual’s mobile wallet. The offer will remain in the wallet until it is used or has reached its expiration date. The advertiser can specify the terms and parameters of the offer.

Another benefit to using this system is that clients can reach their entire customer database without the need for a media advertisement. Messages can be sent to encourage the use of the different offers in the individual’s wallet, and if they are near a participating location, they will receive another push notification. —EM

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> Wise Advice “What are some important tips for new organizations to consider regarding digital discourse?”

News organizations should not expect audience members to police their own discussions or that social media platforms civilize public conversations either. Professional journalism may } Marie K. Shanahan operate on a code of ethics and a discipline of verification and intellectual fairness, but social platforms and the public do not.

News organizations should act as conversation leaders and “set the tone” for online discussions. Comments from the audience

create value when they meet basic standards of journalism.

Can’t commit to moderating comments?

Then don’t host any. News sites that are not attempting to pivot incivility into constructive dialogue are adding to the polarization problem.

Know that digital conversations about the news are happening whether news organizations are directly involved or not. A hands-off approach to digital discourse forfeits journalists’ ability to defend veracity, accountability, civility, democracy. Being an uninvolved bystander diminishes a local news organization’s ability to build community connections and win back the public trust.

Marie K. Shanahan is an associate professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut and the author of “Journalism, Online Comments and the Future of Public Discourse” (Routledge, 2017). She has more than 20 years experience as a reporter, online producer and digital news editor. editorandpublisher.com

1/18/19 1:24 PM

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the A section

35 The number of women who attended the first White House press conference for women reporters held by Eleanor Roosevelt on March 6, 1933. With only a few seats available, some women had to sit on the floor while they spoke and questioned the First Lady. Over the following 12 years, Roosevelt held 348 press conferences.

From the Archive

 Philadelphia Daily News employees use bundles of old newspapers to build a wall against flood water at the entrance to the newsprint storage. With the help of firemen, who provided auxiliary lights when the water short-circuited the newspaper’s electrical system, the newsroom was able to get the paper out the next morning 40 minutes late. This photo originally appeared in the Aug. 27, 1955 issue of E&P.

LEGAL BRIEFS Providence Journal Files Lawsuit Against Rhode Island Superior Court

believes that there are other impeding factors at play such as access to jury form. After several months, U.S. District Judge William E. Smith in Providence recused himself from the case and the trial was moved to New Hampshire. During the November hearing, U.S. District Judge Steven J. McAuliffe addressed that Rhode Island’s access to public records appears to deal with the matter as the paper can gain access to it by filing a public-records request. At press time, the lawyers were asked to submit written briefs and arguments from both sides.

Iowa Newspapers Battle Over Legal Notices

pers from Iowa Information, Inc. (the N’West Iowa Review and the Mail-Sun) were selected instead. In October 2018, Marcus News, Inc. filed another motion for reconsideration with the argument that the whole of O’Brien County should be found to be a single geographic area, that Iowa Information’s newspapers meets the standard to be considered one newspaper, the district should conduct a legislative purpose analysis, and that Iowa Information violated the statutory requirements and its subscriber list should be stricken. Judicial District Judge David Lester overruled the company’s motion in its entirety. Marcus News, Inc. has filed an appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court.

As reported in the Providence Journal, the paper has challenged the Rhode Island Superior Court and one of its judges, Netti C. Vogel, after a ban that they believed impeded on the post-verdict interview process. The paper first filed a lawsuit in April 2018 against Vogel, the state Superior Court and Jury Commissioner Eugene J. McCaffrey III after Vogel banned reporters from contacting jurors following a murder trial.

This issue has since then been resolved. However, the paper

According to the N’West Iowa Review, a judge has ruled against a newspaper company in the business’ lawsuit against the O’Brien County board of supervisors. In January 2018, Marcus News, Inc. submitted a request for its two newspapers, O’Brien County’s Bell-Times-Courier and the Sanborn Pioneer, to be treated as a combined unit and be named one of the county’s two official newspapers for publication of legal county proceedings for the year. However, the board concluded they should not be considered as one unit because they were not delivered to the same geographic area. Two newspa16 |

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Anne Kornblut, director of new initiatives, news partnerships, Facebook, will deliver a Tuesday afternoon “keynote” style talk focused on the latest investments and partnerships in local news — both on and off the Facebook platform. This will be followed by a 30-minute panel discussion (with audience Q&A) moderated

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the A section

On-the-Ground Reporting Shoeleather is an online database that helps eliminate parachute journalism

P

arachute journalism is somewhat of a controversial topic among reporters and publishers. While some newspapers like the New York Times makes use of a “When in doubt, go” principle, many news consumers have said they would rather read stories written by local reporters.

Sarah Baird, a freelance journalist from Richmond, Ky., is among the many that would like to say goodbye to parachute journalism, which is why she created Shoeleather, a national database of journalists from non-media hub cities like New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The database aims to connect publications, assigning editors and the like to writers in cities they are interested in covering, dismissing the need for parachute journalism.

The initial idea for Shoeleather had been percolating for some time before becoming a reality but in the summer of 2018, Baird, with the help of developer Cameron Decker, began to build the database. The database officially launched in November 2018.

Baird said the platform is easy to use. “Journalists fill out a (relatively simple) sign-up form and, after approval, are added to the database that’s searchable according to a number of factors, primarily focused on geographic location. Editors can then search for journalists by city and state, primary and secondary beats, and beyond. Editors then contact any potential writer through their profile.”

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However, Shoeleather does provide more than just writers.

Baird excitedly told E&P about the diversity of the database. “It’s an amazingly diverse group from all across the country: from 40year newsroom veterans, to budding radio producers, to freelance photojournalists, feature writers, breaking news experts and everything in-between.”

Baird said the response has been positively overwhelming and has “demonstrated just how much both editors and reporters have been looking for a resource like this.”

Currently, Shoeleather includes more than 1,000 journalists from all 50 states and the company is working to continue its growth of the U.S. database. When asked about the possibility of expanding, Baird said, “We recently added in U.S. territories due to an outpouring of requests. While we’re exploring international expansions in 2019, creating a Canadian version of Shoeleather would be first and foremost.”

In time, Baird also hopes to grow Shoeleather beyond a database and into a larger online community and resource center for journalists working outside of media hub cities. However, Baird’s main goal at the moment is to put an end to the well-known editor’s exclamation: “But we just don’t know anyone on the ground!”

To learn more about the database, visit shoeleather.us.—EM

Baird also hopes to grow Shoeleather beyond a database and into a larger online community…

editorandpublisher.com

1/18/19 1:24 PM

the A section

For Curious Readers Sonoma West Publishers introduces new feature to generate more audience engagement

L

ocal journalism and engagement has always been an important topic to news publishers and journalists, but recent reports have found that reader engagement is low and that most news consumers have little understanding of the journalism process.

Located in California’s Wine Country, Sonoma West Publishers, owners of the Sonoma West Times & News, Healdsburg Tribune, Cloverdale Reveille and Windsor

Times, recently partnered with Hearken to find a solution to this dilemma and launched Sonoma Curious (SoCurious) last fall.

Each publication’s website provides a box where news consumers can ask questions about their respective communities. After the paper has received several questions, they will allow readers to vote on which they would most like to see addressed. Journalists will then investigate to find the answer, and may even ask the inquisitor themselves to join in on the process if interested.

SoCurious will also be used to provide the papers with news and community topics

for live events and town-hall type meetings.

Rollie Atkinson, publisher and managing editor for Sonoma West Publishers, explained the purpose is to “deepen our current news conversation with existing readers and website visitors, plus attempt to reach new segments of our communities that we were not engaging previously.”

“SoCurious is dedicated to taking our journalism exactly where our readers want us to go,” he said. “Instead of sitting in our newsroom and staff meetings and making the same story assignments we’ve been making for decades, we are creating a ‘reader-powered newsroom.’”—EM

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the A section

A Shared Language Bay Area News Group and Sacramento Bee work together to grow audience

} Ian Swenson, McClatchy’s growth editor for the West/Northwest region (left), and Jessica Huff, McClatchy’s director of growth and loyalty, speak at a Table Stakes event last December.

T

wo northern California news organizations, the Bay Area News Group (BANG), which includes the San Jose Mercury News and the East Bay Times, and McClatchy’s Sacramento Bee, have embraced what may be the future for our industry: collaborative journalism.

Born out of the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative Table Stakes Program (a curriculum meant to help newspapers reach new audiences and better engage their communities as well as accelerate journalism’s shift from print to digital), the two organizations decided to work together due to their “shared language to begin the conversation,” said Lauren Gustus, editor of the Sacramento Bee and West region editor for McClatchy.

Gustus said in June 2018 reporters and editors from BANG and the Sacramento Bee met in the East Bay to work out the parameters of what would be shared between the newsrooms.

“The idea is to boost areas where our readers would appreciate additional reporting,” she said. “So Bay Area sports fans in Sacramento get more NBA, NHL and NFL coverage, and Mercury News readers get more from the Bee’s Capital Bureau.”

Although news stories are the primary content being shared, McClatchy’s five California properties can pick up any of BANG’s sports stories and BANG is allowed to use any political piece McClatchy produces.

Gustus said that sharing other aspects such as video is difficult due to file sizes, watermarks and the like. They have, however, agreed to share budgeting and documents (“at a reasonable in-

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“Local journalism is the heartbeat and future of any news organization.”

terval”) to permit planning.

According to a Better News article, the collaboration took them time to work out a daily communication system, but they do so now through a massive group email, and they are

subscribed to each other’s email alerts.

Neil Chase, former BANG executive editor, considered it a fairly easy process to share stories as both news organizations simply repackage from one site to another. He told the Better News website that the process could be time consuming as they have to “recreate all fields, add SEO, find photos, proof and publish.”

Yet, experiments like this may be worth the trouble as the demand for local journalism rises higher every day, but not one local newspaper can do it all—which is why it appears the days of neighboring newspapers competing with each other may soon be over.

“Local journalism is the heartbeat and future of any news organization,” Gustus said. “If (collaboration) frees up local reporting resources to do more and better local reporting, then in my opinion, it’s worth a conversation.” —EM editorandpublisher.com

1/18/19 1:24 PM

critical thinking

If you have a question you would like to see addressed, please send it to evelyn@editorandpublisher.com.

J-school students and industry vets tackle the tough questions

“As more news organizations use artificial intelligence (AI) to help reporters process masses of data, spot patterns and gain story leads, will robot journalism replace human journalists?”

A:

Despite the growing use of artificial intelligence to help journalists do their job more efficiently, AI will not replace human journalists.

The core of being a journalist is illuminating the human condition, which AI has the capacity to do, but lacks the main ingredient: human. Currently, Margaret High, 21 senior, University of North there’s skepticism of AI taking over Carolina at Chapel Hill human jobs, however that sentiment High is majoring in media is likely to change as we all warm up to and journalism with a conthe idea. Once everyone is okay with centration in reporting and a robot being an author, we might double majoring in modern European history. She is see more regular beat stories, such as set to graduate this spring finance reports or board meetings, be and hopes to pursue a career well-written by AI. in news writing.

However, the best pieces of journalism break conventions. A story by the Washington Post titled, “‘How’s Amanda?’ A Story of Truth, Lies and an American Addiction” gives a face to the disruptive opioid epidemic with powerful writing that breaks traditional news writing methods. Replacing human journalists with AI replaces the ability of stories like this to be written.

Additionally, AI isn’t the cure-all in pursuing unbiased journalism.

A study released by Cardiff University and MIT found that robots could develop prejudice—and perhaps with more ease—like humans. The computer science and psychology experts said “prejudice requires only limited intelligence and cognitive ability to develop and spread in populations of artificially intelligent machines.”

That’s concerning news and something that needs to be strongly considered if a newsroom wants to replace humans with AI bots. Human journalists have a moral compass; AI machines don’t.

There also is the example of Tay, Microsoft’s AI chatbot on Twitter, who quickly started to make racist comments after learning from interactions on the social media platform. That taught us AI isn’t immune to one of human kind’s ugliest traits.

Journalism also serves another important purpose: community.

AI journalists would severely hinder the ability of a media organization to foster community among their readership.

Human journalists have a moral compass; AI machines don’t.

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A:

AI is beginning to affect journalism in many significant ways marking the beginning of what will be a revolution in news publishing. However, the rise of the fully autonomous artificial journalist is still several qualitative breakthroughs in AI-technology away and thus beyond our current “event horizon.”

Kasper Lindskow, 37 The first significant impact of AI head of strategy and business development, Ekstra Bladet has begun already with self-learning (JP/Politikens Hus), Copenhaalgorithms that select what news gen, Denmark stories to serve in Facebook’s newsfeed Kasper holds a Ph.D. in straand Google’s search results. This has tegic design of digital business prompted many digital news publishmodels and has worked with strategic transformation of JP/ ers to prioritize stories that are “liked” Politikens Hus’ news brands by the algorithm. Similarly, many for roughly eight years. mainstream news publishers are now introducing the same types of self-learning algorithms to aggregate the news for each user on their websites and apps.

In the short term, this will not replace the human editor, as the intelligent algorithms will be relegated to select stories in areas that are less trafficked, and where newsworthiness is less important.

However, it does delegate power to an AI-editor and introduces a new element of competition in the news room in which the AI-editor is well-positioned because of its ability to optimize towards simple criteria such as traffic or subscription sales.

AI is also beginning to affect the production of news stories. While the use of AI-tools, such as machine learning to uncover hard-tofind news stories, is still relegated to special investigative teams at the margins of front runner news rooms, less sophisticated forms of automated journalism will have a major impact on mainstream news publishing.

In the medium term, automated and fact-focused news stories produced by “robots” will supplement traditional news stories in areas prone to standardization such as reporting on annual reports from firms and records of football games. Just as importantly, these types of robots will become available as customizable digital assistants to journalists offering first drafts of news stories, graphical illustrations and fact sheets.

The algorithmic editor, the robot-journalist and the AI-assistant are poised to evolve and play increasing roles in the years to come.

There are, however, significant limits to the AI-technologies that are available today which constrains the potential impact of AI on journalism.  FEBRUARY 2019 | E & P

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photo of the month

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editorandpublisher.com

1/18/19 2:55 PM

A LOST FRIEND  Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun Five year-old Amy Hayes’ doll lies in the street near police evidence markers where she was shot in West Baltimore, Md., Nov. 19, 2018. Amy was hit in the groin after being caught in the crossfire of a shootout, dropping the doll and the money she was carrying as she made her way to the corner store. Amy was sent to the hospital in serious but stable condition. The items remained on the street as detectives combed the scene for evidence.

Send us your photos! E&P welcomes reader submissions for our Photo of the Month. evelyn@editorandpublisher.com.

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data page The Future of Voice Based on 3,500 U.S. respondents When playing the news headlines from your smart speaker, which brand(s) do you hear?

Select all that apply.

CNN News

28%

NPR

28%

ABC News

26%

Fox News

23%

BBC News

22%

CBS News

17%

New York Times

16%

NBC/CNBC News

16%

Reuters/Reuters TV

14%

Washington Post

13%

Wall Street Journal

13% 13%

Local newspaper or TV BuzzFeed News

8%

Bloomberg News

8%

Update from local sports team

6%

Showbiz/entertainments briefing

4%

Tech briefing

4%

18%

of smart speaker owners access news updates daily

38%

of smart speaker owners access news updates monthly

27%

of news briefing users say they have changed their default provider

32%

of news briefing users say they have added additional brands

Source: “The Future of Voice and the Implications for News” report, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, survey conducted August-September 2018

Preferred Platform for News in the U.S. Based on 4,581 respondents Which of the following would you say you prefer for getting news?

2016 2018

Of those who prefer reading/watching/listening to the news…

Watching the news

75%

Reading the news Listening to the news

63% 52%

44% 46% 34%

28% 14% 12%

Television

Online

Radio

21% 7%

11%

Print

20%

20%

17%

10% 2% Television

Online

8%

Radio

3%

2% Print

Source: Pew Research Center, survey conducted July 30-Aug. 12, 2018

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Rating the News in Your Community Based on a survey of 4,854 public participants, and 88 journalists and 51 news sources in Macon, Ga., Fresno, Calif. and Kansas City, Mo. RATINGS OF LOCAL NEWS ORGANIZATION Ratings based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree.

4.6

4.6 3.4

3.9 2.9 3.1

3.0

3.6

Public

4.6

3.4

4.4

3.4

2.9

2.9

Credible

Accurate

3.7

3.3

2.8

2.8

2.7

3.1

Sources Journalists

2.0

Biased

Engaging

Trustworthy

Fair

Transparent

% of public, news sources and journalists that agree strongly or somewhat that the adjective describes the local newspaper Public

Sources 34.0%

40.9%

Biased Credible

22.2%

Accurate

20.0%

Journalists 9.1%

61.7%

96.6%

53.2%

97.7%

59.6%

Trustworthy

19.4%

Fair

17.9%

Engaging

17.7%

40.4%

Transparent

13.7%

44.7%

96.6%

54.3%

95.5% 78.4% 60.2%

Source: “How the Public, News Sources, and Journalists Think about News in Three Communities” report, News Co/Lab at Arizona State University with the Center of Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin; surveys conducted May-October 2018

Native Ad Click-Through Rates by Brand Category 1%

1.10%

1.10%

1.00%

0.90%

0.90%

0.90%

0.80%

0.80%

0.80%

0.80%

0.75%

0.70%

0.70%

0.65%

0.65% 0.50%

0.5%

Technology B2B

Health & Fitness

Sports

Automotive

Education

Business

Consumer Packaged Goods

Entertainment

Finance & Insurance

Home & Garden

Style & Fashion

Technology B2C

Travel

Family & Parenting

Food & Drink

Pets

0%

Source: “An In-Depth Look into the Current State of Native Advertising,” MediaRadar/ eMarketer editorandpublisher.com

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industry insight

Recession-Proofing Your Newsroom Can newspapers survive another significant economic downturn?

By Matt DeRienzo

T

he entirety of U.S. history tells us that it’s a question of when, not if, the next recession will hit. With a 10-year stretch in the 1990s as the only exception, we’ve never gone longer than eight years without one. And it’s been nine and a half years since the last recession.

It’s a precarious situation for the news business. A decade of economic growth and prosperity, in theory, would allow industries to invest in new lines of business, research and development. At a minimum, less or no damage would be done to their core product in the good times.

But newspapers have shrunk during this period of prosperity. With a few excep26 |

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tions—such as the Washington Post under Amazon’s Jeff Bezos—investment in the future has been lost in a scramble for survival. And vulture capital hedge funds have rolled up ownership of hundreds of daily newspapers in the U.S. in a strategy of selling off real estate and deeply cutting operating expenses for short-term profit.

If many newspapers experienced doubledigit annual loss in ad revenue during the good times, what will happen during bad economic times? If the product has already been cut below a point of minimum viability, where will they find the expense cuts to offset deeper revenue decline?

If our last recession is any guide, publishers should be on alert about any reve-

nue category that’s at risk of being disrupted by technology. They should see flashing red lights around the preprint category, for example. It’s the only thing keeping some small daily newspapers in business. Its fate is in the hands of a relatively small number of major retailers. Once a few of them decide to get out of the preprint business, there’s a chance the others will rapidly follow. And poor economic conditions will likely force change in a big budget line that seems overdue for a more digital approach.

Something will do to preprints what Craigslist did to classifieds.

So obviously, the more diverse the revenue mix, the more likely a news organization is to survive. editorandpublisher.com

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Newspapers’ recent push into digital subscriptions and other forms of reader revenue have to be part of that solution. But publishers need a gut check on whether there’s enough product left, and a deep enough relationship with readers, to make the case.

Relationships, above all, could be the answer. Not just with readers, but local advertisers and other community stakeholders.

What if news organizations entered a recession asking, “How can we help the community and local businesses survive?”

When the real estate market collapsed in 2008, I was publisher of a small daily newspaper that suffered badly from a corresponding drop in advertising. After talking to real estate agents about their pain, we came up with an advertising deal that would allow them to promote a specific home for sale at a flat, one-time price until the house was sold. It eliminated their

risk in an uncertain market. It shook loose real estate revenue for us that had almost completely dried up. And when market conditions improved, they remembered how we had helped them solve a problem during tough times.

Advertisers might value those kinds of local relationships more than ever. In 2008 and its aftermath, online platforms such as Craigslist, followed by a revolution in ad tech and the dominance of Google and Facebook, vacuumed up or eliminated the need for local advertising dollars that used to go to newspapers.

But after repeated scandals relating to ad tech fraud, privacy invasion, misinformation and manipulation of the big platforms, 2019 could be a year of backlash that could benefit trusted local media outlets that are deeply connected to local audiences.

If all else fails, or maybe as a natural progression of these strategies, news orga-

nizations could turn to partnerships or a mission-driven, nonprofit conversion for survival.

But there will be little chance of success if publishers don’t plan now for the inevitable “rainy day,” and start to build a model for survival. 

Matt DeRienzo is vice president of news and digital content for Hearst’s newspapers and websites in Connecticut.

He has worked in journalism as a reporter, editor, publisher, corporate director of news for 25 years, including serving as the first full-time executive director of LION Publishers, a national nonprofit that supports the publishers of local independent online news organizations.

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business of news

Sorry or Not Sorry How the media ought to handle ‘apologies’ made by celebrities

By Tim Gallagher

N

ewspaper editors have a responsibility to decide what’s sinister and what’s stupid. And nowhere is this discernment more important than the figuring out how to report and how prominently to play a story of a celebrity or politician’s comments made in their past.

Comedian and actor Kevin Hart will be watching the Oscars in his living room instead of hosting the ceremony this year after his tweets and nasty homophobic remarks from more than three years ago resurfaced.

He was already in his 30s and a father to young children when he made those remarks. The coverage and the reaction to those comments got so hot, Hart had to bow out of the lucrative hosting gig.

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On the other hand, Kyle Murray, the 2018 Heisman Trophy Winner, got unwanted attention just after receiving the award because of homophobic tweets he made when he was 15 years old. Most of the world moved on after he apologized and there are no repercussions for Murray.

That’s the difference between what’s sinister and what’s stupid. We must start applying this kind of news judgment to behavior, especially when we live in a world where most of what you thought, said and the way you acted two, five or 10 years ago is not difficult to find. (Just Google “When is a celebrity—or politician or public figure— apology enough?” and you will find pages of results.)

In my communication business, I re-

cently completed a case involving a school district superintendent who resigned after hurtful remarks he made about gay and transgender students in a church sermon years before he became superintendent became public. The episode caused a lot of reflection about how news media ought to deal with an issue that is certain to surface frequently. These are some questions you should consider when trying to decide how much to play such stories: How long ago was the remark, what was the age of the speaker, and who heard it? Look at the Heisman case with Murray. He was a teenager who should have known better, but most men (including your author) have made stupid, insensitive remarks as young people. You grow up, editorandpublisher.com

1/18/19 1:33 PM

hopefully get smarter, and abandon those harmful and hurtful attitudes. Murray’s Twitter followers likely included his high school friends. Certainly he was well-known in his social circles, but Hart is a popular comedian—and an adult—and had the ability to influence thousands of people with his comments.

What was the intent of the remark?

This is asking a lot of editors because it is difficult to know the speaker’s intent in each case. I would look at whether the person was trying to be funny. Were they trying to appease or appeal to what they thought was a private audience? Are the remarks in complete context?

Who is the target? Every journalist knows political figures are fair game, but there are individuals (the president’s children, for instance) who ought to be offlimits. There are certain “third rail” groups as well—groups that have been the object of scorn and oppression for centuries who now

are saying “enough.” Consider who is being targeted by the remarks and that person or group’s history of being pushed around.

Is the person’s behavior consistent with the remark? This was challenging in the case I handled. The superintendent’s remarks in the church were hurtful, but his actions as the education leader were exemplary toward marginalized people. He had brought in speakers and emphasized unconscious bias training. He was wellliked by groups and individuals all over the spectrum. The remarks were out of character with his behavior. That is something I would look at when deciding how to play the story.

Did the person apologize? I mean a real apology, not one of those “I apologize if anyone was offended.” You must own it when you screw up. No qualifications on the apology as Hart first attempted. I’d show more sympathy toward a person who didn’t try to excuse their way out of it.

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Did the person try to make amends? Does the subject take actions to rectify their remarks with the group or individuals they harmed?

The rules for reporting the past statements or actions of public figures are being written each day. Editors will be asked to thoughtfully assess each situation and I suggest they examine these questions before deciding how to report the story. 

Tim Gallagher is president of The 20/20 Network, a public relations and strategic communications firm. He is a former Pulitzer Prizewinning editor and publisher at The Albuquerque Tribune and the Ventura County Star newspapers. Reach him at tim@the2020network.com.

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FEBRUARY 2019 | E & P

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digital publishing

Blurred Lines When using social media photos in your stories, the best thing to do is ask for permission

By Rob Tornoe

D

uring a New Jersey wedding back in June 2017, Jonathan Otto snapped a picture of the new bride being congratulated by none other than the President of the United States, Donald Trump.

The photo of the serendipitous pop-in, which took place at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., quickly went viral after a relative of the bride posted it on Instagram. News outlets as wide ranging at TMZ, the Washington Post and CNN all rushed to cover the odd and historic moment, and used the photo to illustrate their news stories.

“President Trump Is the Ultimate Wedding Crasher,” was the headline on Esquire’s story, which ran the photo at the top of the page, giving credit to the Instagram account they acquired it from in the cutline.

It was obviously a newsworthy moment, with much of the coverage breaking down how President Trump continues to profit from his business properties while simulta-

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neously occupying the White House. But in the rush to cover the viral moment, editors at news agencies forgot to ask one simple question: Do I have permission to use this photo?

So often these days, the lines are blurred with what constitutes fair use, and what doesn’t. It’s often assumed that photos posted on social media sites like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are fair game to use, since individuals shared them there for personal use without compensation in the first place.

But in this case, Otto didn’t grant the news organizations permission to use his photograph and sued several news organizations for copyright infringement, including Esquire’s parent company, Hearst. Four media outlets ended up settling with Otto, but Hearst argued that using a personal photo to report national news was transformative.

U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Woods didn’t’t buy it and sided with Otto.

“Stealing a copyrighted photograph to illustrate a news article, without adding new understanding or meaning to the work, does not transform its purpose—regardless of whether that photograph was created for commercial or personal use,” Woods wrote in a 31-page decision.

When navigating fair use issues, it’s important to remember that all content put on social media is copyrightable. In fact, the terms of service of just about every social media website makes it pretty clear that the creator owns the legal rights to their content, whether it’s a photo, cartoon or video.

For example, here’s how Twitter spells it out in their terms of service: “You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services.

What’s yours is yours—you own your Content (and your incorporated audio, photos and videos are considered part of the Content).”

With most social media sites, creators grant a royalty-free license to allow plateditorandpublisher.com

1/18/19 1:39 PM

of your use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount of the portion taken, and the effect using it has on the creator’s market.

One clear case, where fair use laws line up in favor of news organization, is when the photo, cartoon or video is newsworthy on its own. Take for instance the case of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat from New York who resigned after naked photos he sent to an underage woman on Twitter were acquired and published by news organizations. Another example were the Muhammad cartoons published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which led to worldwide protests.

But other examples, such as photos of a local car accident or a new business posting their storefront on Instagram, aren’t as clear cut. While both examples likely wouldn’t’t lead to a lawsuit against a news organization, if permission wasn’t sought out by the owner of the photograph, both cases could technically be considered copyright infringement.

“A lot of editors play the odds, wondering what the real chance of getting sued by someone is,” said Daxton Stewart, a professor of journalism at Texas Christian University. “If I were advising a publisher, I would not be comfortable as a media lawyer

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banking solely on that first prong of fair use law, because the others line up on the side of the copyright holder.”

Playing those odds could land a news organization with a hefty bill. Statuary damages for copyright infringement can add up to $150,000 per image. Photojournalist Daniel Morel was awarded $1.22 million in damages—the maximum statutory penalty available under the Copyright Act—after eight of his photos of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti were used without his permission

by Agence France-Presse, Getty Images, the Washington Post, ABC, CBS and others.

So what can newsrooms do? Aside from simply embedding photos into your stories using the code provided by social media websites, the best advice is also the easiest to remember: Just ask for permission. 

Rob Tornoe is a cartoonist and columnist for Editor and Publisher, where he writes about trends in digital media. He is also a digital editor for Philly.com. Reach him at robtornoe@gmail.com.

THINK

OUTSIDE BOX

THE

forms to share the work while retaining ownership of the copyright themselves.

Facebook (which also owns Instagram) flatly states in its terms of service, “You own the content you create and share on Facebook and the other Facebook Products you use, and nothing in these Terms takes away the rights you have to your own content.”

In other words, it’s okay for news organizations to embed content shared on social media sites such as Instagram and Twitter. But it could be considered copyright infringement if you download a photo and upload it into your content management system to use it with a story online, or run it in the print pages of your newspaper or magazine without seeking permission first.

Just because a judge ruled against news organizations in the case of Trump’s wedding crashing moment doesn’t mean the issue is black and white. Woods himself noted in the ruling that a fair use analysis depends on the individual factors of a specific case, noting that “the use could be considered fair in another matter involving a news publisher’s incorporation of a personal photograph.”

How news organizations use content shared on social media fall under an increasingly gray area involving the four pegs of fair use law: the purpose and character

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production

BY JERRY SIMPKINS

TARIFFS, CONSOLIDATION, COMMERCIAL PRINTING Newspaper production learns to navigate ‘whole new world’ in 2019 32 |

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editorandpublisher.com

1/18/19 1:44 PM

D

epending on your perspective and where things have personally taken you, this past year has proven to be fairly eventful for our industry. Driven by the all too familiar newsroom layoffs, newspaper closings, cutbacks, broad range RIFs and consolidations, it’s been pretty much business as usual. But this past year truly hasn’t been just more of the same old/same old, and rolling into 2019 the landscape continues to change for many.

While last year may have seemed to some like just another year in the media industry, we also saw several new challenges take place. Some were similar to what we have been faced with in the past and others were new “surprises” out of left field.

Let’s take a look at some of them.

Newsprint Tariffs If you had asked anyone in our industry a year ago about the reality of newsprint tariffs, they would have thought you were dreaming.

Newsprint tariffs simply were not on our radar. In prior years the “game” seemed to be one newsprint vendor throwing out a $50 per ton price increase and then pulling it back when the other vendors didn’t follow suit.

Once in awhile, everyone jumped on the bandwagon and the increases stuck, but none of this had a thing to do with tariffs. But in 2018, tariffs impacted our industry more than any other increase in consumables for as long as I can remember.

When it came to light that these tariffs were actually going to happen, most media companies re-explored budgets and started looking for places to cut (sad but true). We’re still suffering from these cuts: jobs were lost that will never return; profit margins for some vanished; and I even have some compassion for the

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newsprint companies who, like us, after years of absorbing the higher cost of doing business are faced with yet another challenge brought on by something or someone they have no control over.

Now, going into a new year, we are faced with budgeting what is for some a 15 percent increase to paper expense. This is no small challenge for us to overcome. Several smaller newspapers will be making some tough decisions in the upcoming year—cutting workforces, reducing page counts, bypassing necessary production maintenance, looking for alternative outside print options or outright selling off to one of the larger media conglomerates.

In a previous E&P production article (“Are Newsprint Tariffs Protecting Production Jobs or Are They Just Another Nail in the Coffin?” May 2018), I wrote, “Those of you who know me well have probably never once heard much ‘politics’ come out of me (it’s not my style), but I wholeheartedly agree with a statement by The Daily Signal that ‘an America first policy is the one that supports the job-creating investment of a dynamic economy. Taxing newsprint is a backward-looking, America-last, investment-last, and jobs-last policy.’”

Going into 2019, I’m still scratching my head and trying to figure out how these tariffs have helped the newspaper industry. Perhaps someone much smarter than me could explain that to the small papers closing their doors or the journalist who is now out of work. Something needs to change on this front in 2019 or we’re going to simply dig into a deeper hole.

Aluminum Tariffs As if the newsprint tariffs didn’t hurt us enough in 2018, an import

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tariff of 10 percent was imposed on aluminum. A majority of this country’s newspapers and commercial printers rely on aluminum plates for their presses. If manufacturers in this country have to pay tariffs on imported aluminum, they will have limited choices on how to offset that expense. One is to reduce their profit margins.

While that is not likely to happen, our plate suppliers will in turn pass the price increases on to newspapers to offset this additional expense.

If American manufacturers elect to purchase domestic aluminum (we’re told the true purpose of these tariffs), vendors will most likely raise their prices to maximize profits because they will not have to be as concerned with competition; i.e. lower priced imported aluminum.

Either way, guess who pays? The additional expense for plates will be added to the inflated newsprint costs and in turn—you guessed it—additional labor reductions will occur in our industry in 2019.

While I truly remain bullish on our industry and hopeful for future growth, and while these additional tariffs may be seen as benefits to politicians, they will most certainly hurt the publishing industry as severely as anything that has occurred since the first newspaper rolled off Ben Franklin’s press.

The Labor Force When is the last time you tried hiring someone for a skilled position at your facility? Our country has seriously gained on unemployment in 2018. I’m tremendously pleased for those individuals who, after an extended period of unemployment, are now gainfully employed. The trouble is most of them are not coming to our industry.

When we jettison some of these very talented folks for the industry, they become frustrated and disenchanted that much more with newspapers. Often they move out of newspapers altogether and the talent that has taken us this far is lost forever. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard of a fantastic press mechanic who was let go due to budget cuts and subsequently moved on to work in another industry.

It should be no surprise to anyone in our business that trying to hire a press operator is next to impossible. We’ve all experienced the challenge of trying to fill this critical position and after months of looking, we settle on an unskilled individual who at least shows up to work most days, then the hit or miss training begins. The low unemployment rate in this country has brought a challenge to maintaining a skilled labor force like we’ve never seen before. Couple this with the fact that we don’t offer the stability and future growth opportunity we used to and the problem gets even worse.

And that’s just in the pressroom. Mailroom jobs (the same ones that we used to be able to fill easily) are now becoming more and more challenging to recruit for. Pay seems to be the major barrier here. Many of our mailroom folks see an increase in pay only when the minimum wage goes up. This is shortsighted on our part, and you’d think we would have learned by now that this area needs to be developed as much as other areas of the industry.

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I recently heard of a newspaper that conducted a job fair to fill mailroom positions. After a full day of recruiting, only a handful of people even showed up, all unskilled labor, and one unqualified individual even applied.

My point is we are no longer an employer of choice. We can’t—or choose not—to compete with others for qualified labor. Our quality suffers, our accuracy suffers, our margin suffers, and for some reason, we don’t seem to get why. We need to be willing in 2019 to up the ante and invest in quality talent.

When it comes to temps, I’ve discussed it with several publishers and operations executives many times. I’ve got nothing against good/quality minded and ambitious temps. Some temps can be very good and are just down on their luck—I’ll hire them all day long.

But for the most part, I find that temps simply don’t have the same company mindset that employees do. Ask most temps to load two pockets on an inserter, and then get ready to load them yourself because they’re not coming back from lunch.

In a property I was at during the Thanksgiving preprint rush, we needed to add additional hands to assist with pre-packing. My mailroom manager convinced me we’d need at least 10 temps. He also convinced me with past performance from the temp agency we needed to request more. Usually I’m fairly logical calling in temps, but with a huge project ahead, I went with what I considered a bit over-the-top approach. We split the need between two different agencies and ordered 15 temps from each for a total of 30. I was anticipating a total of 15 to 20 to show, but in the end, only six showed up between the two agencies. Of those six, over the next three hours, five of them bailed out; they were too tired; it was too much hard work; it wasn’t worth the money, etc. We requested 30 temps to help with our packages, but we ended up with just one person hanging in there all night.

In the upcoming year, we need to fill these mailroom positions with qualified, well-paid, hardworking employees, and then treat our employees like we honestly want to be an employer of choice. It may cost us up front, but I guarantee it will pay major dividends in the long-run.

Management is no longer the exception to the labor challenge.

Qualified and talented publishers and managers from other parts of our industry are exiting in search of greener pastures, moving out of our business, and finding alternatives in other lines of work. I believe that we have a serious labor crisis in the industry that needs to be addressed at an individual property level.

Closing Printing Sites/Consolidating Operations Shutting down a production operation is painful to some, while it’s all in a day’s work to others. In 2018, many organizations made the tough decision to shut down their aging presses and move their printing outside. I predict in 2019 this trend will continue.

I have been part of orchestrating such moves several times in my career. Last year, I was part of two major shutdowns that made financial and operational sense. I am thankful that each time I have

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been on the right side of those moves. Unfortunately, because these moves make financial sense, it still doesn’t make them any less emotional on those individuals who have been displaced.

Often the need to shut down a press operation comes from lack of maintenance on the press. Presses are very durable and while iron does wear, often irreversible wear comes from reductions of workforce resulting in lack of proper maintenance and lack of investments in the equipment. This normally comes from budget cuts, some which are critical to keep small shops afloat. Other times the internal expenses grow so out of control that it becomes less expensive to print outside. From there, the choice is easy to make.

In February 2016, I wrote an article for E&P (“Is Consolidation Right For You?”) detailing the advantages or/and pitfalls of consolidation. I recommend reading it over if you are considering moving print operations or consolidating in the near future.

Growing Commercial in 2019 In 2018, the trend of building commercial printing continued to grow at newspapers across the country.

The days of running a single daily newspaper are long gone, and at many properties, jumping on the commercial/outside printing bandwagon early in the game has turned out to be a tremendous benefit.

Printers who have made the commitment to calculate capital expenditures based on solid ROI’s, maintain adequate strength and quality in their workforce, and aggressively sell commercial printing have made options available and financially feasible for outside publications to move to their printing.

This trend is sure to continue and expand into 2019. Many newspapers have found greater margins in outside printing than in the daily newspaper itself.

Lessons we’ve learned in 2018 can transcend into the New Year and help us to grow and profit. The industry is in a whole new world and working under entirely new rules and challenges. With tariffs, budget cuts and an onslaught of never ending challenges eating away at our profits, we need to learn from our mistakes, capitalize on and benefit from our successes, and carry into 2019 what we know works, while accepting and letting go of what hasn’t.  Jerry Simpkins has more than 30 years of experience in printing and operations in the newspaper industry.

Contact him on LinkedIn.com or at simpkins@tds.net.

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Rolling the Dice 2019 Mega-Conference Set for Feb. 25-27 in Las Vegas

By Nu Yang

T

his year’s Key Executives Mega-Conference will have plenty on its schedule, including new programming tracks, and more workshops and sessions built around the theme of transformation.

Close to 800 newspaper professionals are expected in Las Vegas Feb. 25-27. The show is hosted by the Inland Press Association, Local Media Association, Southern Newspaper Publishers Association and News Media Alliance, in association with the Nevada Press Association.

“Growing digital subscribers is the top priority across the industry, but we know the reason is to reduce the risk of the declining print advertising business,” said Jay Horton, the show’s executive producer. “So our theme is the transformation from an advertising centric business to one focused on the subscriber. This will include dealing with cultural and technological challenges, as well as the declining trust that media garners from our communities. However, we won’t throw the baby out with the bathwater as there is still so much more we can do for our B2B business. People can expect to walk away with ideas and opportunities to improve and grow their local business relationships.”

Terry Egger, chief executive officer and publisher of the Philadelphia Media Network and E&P’s 2018 Publisher of the Year, will kick off the conference with the keynote address. From there, attendees can choose from a wide range of sessions.

“We’ll learn a tremendous amount about our potential digital subscribers from Jeff Sonderman of the American Press Institute

 The 2019 Mega-Conference will take place at the Paris Las Vegas. (Photo provided)

and how we build more and better relationships with these people in our communities,” Horton said. “Speaking of digital subscribers, Anne Kornblut, director of new initiatives, news partnerships at Facebook, will update the industry on how the leading social network is helping local publishers. You also want to tune in when Paras Maniar, president local, Gannett | USA Today Network, shares their strategy on how to win in the B2B space.”

This year’s conference will also increase its focus on the industry’s two distinct customers, said Horton.

w w w. m e d i a m e r g e r s . c o m We are looking forward to seeing YOU at Mega in Las Vegas in February, 2019!

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We would love to visit with you about your acquisition (or exit) strategies.

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“We have developed two tracks filled with industry leading best practices and solutions that will help our leaders develop their strategic approach, complimented with street level tactics that deliver,” he said. “Our first focus this year is for our B2C business and growing subscribers to our digital as well as print audiences. The second track will highlight best practices and opportunities to grow our B2B business across the entire landscape of local solutions that drive results for the entrepreneurs and business owners in our communities.”

Bonus Monday workshops will offer a deeper dive into these topics with interactive programming from Ryan Dohrn, founder of media sales strategy firm Brain Swell Media and the creator of the 360 Ad Sales System, as well as a separate session with teams from Facebook, CrowdTangle and TownNews digging into audience development strategies.

When they’re not in sessions, attendees can stop by the tradeshow floor and visit with vendors. } Close to 800 newspaper professionals are expected to attend this year’s show. (Photo “Attendees can walk away with actionable ideas and soluby Charlie Neuman) tions that can contribute to their business right away,” Hor“One of the best things about the Mega-Conference is the opporton said. “We have more than a dozen presenting on the solutions tunity to all be together, network and find out the latest and greatstage and dozens more on the floor.” est,” he said. “This helps make us all better each and every year.”

Horton anticipates this year’s show will be the biggest and best For more information, visit mega-conference.com.  one yet.

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WHEN NUMBERS LIE Taking on digital ad fraud is more than dealing with technical problems; it’s about transparency

By Peter Suciu

C

ybercrime continues to be a major problem, but to most people it involves stolen data like credit card numbers. A growing problem has been ad fraud, which is less well-known. However, it has reached a point where law enforcement is taking it seriously.

In November, the Department of Justice announced a 13-count indictment against eight men for various cybercrimes, including what the FBI has called the biggest-ever ad fraud investigation. The group, which has been dubbed 3ve (pronounced “eve”) include six Russian nationals and two Kazakhstani citizens.

The government alleged that the men stole tens of millions of dollars by using “sophisticated computer programming and infrastructure around the world to exploit the digital advertising industry through fraud.” This allowed the 3ve group to hijack more than 1.5 million IP addresses and redirect traffic to ISPs inside Russia or China.

While this has remained barely a blimp in the mainstream media, the FBI-led takedown force, White Ops, released a PSA on YouTube (youtu.be/eVvX0zqvUSQ) to help explain to the average user the dangers of ad fraud and its consequences.

Ad fraud has remained a serious problem because it can make it very difficult for publishers to generate revenue, while brands are cutting back on ad spending as they see little return on investment.

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WHEN NUMBERS LIE According to a report from Juniper Research published last year, advertisers lose an estimated $19 billion to fraudulent activities each year—equivalent to $51 million daily. More worrisome is that ad fraud could reach $44 billion by 2022. The bulk of the fraudulent ads affect video, but all content providers online, including newspaper publishers, are victims of ad fraud.

“The bad news is that ad fraud remains a challenge for publishers and brands because it’s obviously not helping advertisers reach consumers,” said Fran Wills, CEO of the Local Media Consortium, which represents 80 media companies and 2,200 news outlets across the United States and Canada. “The good news is that ad fraud and consumer transparency are a top priority for us.”

The problem has become so great that many brands are simply not investing the money in online ad campaigns.

“Procter & Gamble cut $200 million out of the digital ad budget and reported that it saw no change,” said Dr. Augustine Fou, an independent researcher who has studied ad fraud across multiple online platforms. “Fraudulent ads don’t drive any business outcomes, so the brands see no results.”

ADDRESSING THE BAD ACTORS One of the biggest issues with ad fraud is that many publishers don’t fully even understand what it is or how it works. As with much of today’s cybercrime it isn’t simply one thing, but is instead a blanket term for numerous illicit activities. These can include bots that generate fake traffic to fraudulent ads that take users to potentially dangerous websites containing malware—all of this makes stopping it very difficult.

“People ask me all the time ‘What’s the best way to fight ad fraud?’ which is a bit like asking ‘What’s the best way to stop all crime?’” said Maggie Louie, CEO of DEVCON, an Atlanta-based startup that offers anti-ad fraud solutions to digital publishers. “The truth is that criminals are exploiting the online ad ecosystem, stealing billions from the pockets of advertisers and publishers in so many diverse ways that it is really impossible to only think of this as ad fraud. We need to be thinking of this as cyber attacks being deployed via ad tech.

“This is a crime and there are numerous types of different ad fraud going on; the most talked about are ‘attacks’ that involve bots that generate fake traffic or inflate numbers, and this results in ads that weren’t seen by actual people.

“However, those are just the tip of the iceberg in a world of obfuscated code exploits able to hide and deploy every kind of attack from RATs (remote access trojans), to crypto-jackers to ransom-

ware, even enslaving a consumer machines to be the botnet,” she added. “These aren’t publisher or advertiser problems, these are cyber threats, and the publishers, the brands and the audiences are the victims.”

Ad fraud is now “lucrative” and easy to conduct, such that some cyber criminals have adopted it as an alternative to more traditional cybercrime such as stealing data. One reason is that unlike stolen credit card data from a security breach, it is unlikely to make the news.

“Outside of advertisers and publishers, few really feel the financial impact directly,” said Andrew Altersohn, CEO at AD/FIN. “Everyone in the middle still gets paid, but in the end it diminishes the impact of advertising so it hurts both brands and publishers.”

Executives at New York-based AD/FIN told E&P that the bad actors are now operating in Eastern Europe and often in the same circles of cyber criminals that had previously stolen and traded personal information including credit card data.

“It is hard to hold them accountable because governments aren’t seeing it as a threat, and until there is more of a financial cost little will be done to stop it,” said Matt DeLoca, AD/FIN chief revenue officer.

PROBLEM WITH PROGRAMMATIC It isn’t just fake traffic generated by bots. One of the biggest segments of ad fraud has been “malvertising”—as in “malicious advertising”—and it includes both online advertising that spreads malware and the ads themselves, which direct visitors to fake sites or show fraudulent traffic.

“The truth is that criminals are exploiting the online ad ecosystem, stealing billions from the pockets of advertisers and publishers…”

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According to Ian Trider, director of RTB operations at Centro, malvertising can enter an ecosystem when DSPs (demand side platform)—which are similar to AdWords in creating a digital ad campaign via a vendor-neutral RTB (real-time bidding) ecosystem—haven’t been properly vetted.

“To reduce malvertising on a network, publishers can do several things including working with only high end and reputable ad exchanges,” Trider said. “The risk of malware from creditable exchanges is low, but it can vary and the lower tier ones pose a serious threat for publishers.” editorandpublisher.com

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WHEN NUMBERS LIE Programmatic advertising, which relies on digital platforms, can increase the chances of digital ad fraud.

“There are certain things we can control in our space, but the other digital silos including programmatic mean we have far less control,” said Nhan T. Ngo, senior manager for digital sales and operations at the Baltimore Sun Media Group. “In our own ad space we’re pretty tight, but once you are out of the O&O space, you have to rely on the ad suppliers, and they’re relying on their own upstream. We have to trust these partners, but more importantly, we have to monitor the ads far more closely.”

This isn’t to say that all programmatic advertising puts a publisher at risk, but as Ngo noted it is crucial that ads be monitored.

“Agencies and brands alike need to ensure their programmatic advertising is delivered to humans in brand safe environments like local media websites so they get the most out of their investment,” said LMC’s Wills. “Local publishers are definitely at the forefront of combating fraud by using the latest ad fraud technology and continuing to create credible content on trusted sites that deliver real audiences.”

The large publishers are also ensuring that they protect readers from fraud as

} Dr. Augustine Fou, independent researcher

well, and Jason Tollestrup, vice president of programmatic strategy and yield at the Washington Post, explained that this includes ensuring that real humans and not “bot traffic” are responding to ads.

“Bots are integral to the operation of the internet, but advertisers want to ensure

} Ian Trider, Centro director of RTB opera-

tions

their ads are only displayed in front of humans, and we work with our ad server to blacklist known bots so that ads do not show on pages crawled by bots,” Tollestrup said. “Advertisers don’t want to pay for ad impressions that display to a bot. Therefore, keeping our bot traffic low helps us to prevent this from happening.”

FIGHTING BACK There are multiple factors in why ad fraud has grown so much, and one of the underlying reasons is that it is largely seen as a “victimless crime,” which it most certainly is not. Then, why have efforts to combat it been ignored?

“Historically any efforts to combat ad fraud were seen as a cost,” said Jed Williams, chief strategy officer at the Local Media Association. “Only now are publishers realizing the need to invest in technology to fight and correct it. This is a cultural challenge as stopping ad fraud doesn’t present a new source of income, and in the short term, it can cost money. In that way, it can be wrongly viewed as a cost center 42 |

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} Jed Williams, Local Media Association chief strategy officer

Our special sections help } Maggie Louie, DEVCON CEO

“Advertisers don’t want to pay for ad impressions that display to a bot. Therefore, keeping our bot traffic low helps us to prevent this from happening.” instead of a savings center.”

As newsrooms get smaller and budgets fall, only now is the impact great enough that publishers see the need to protect the revenue from advertising—especially as brands aren’t seeing that return on investment.

“Publishers weren’t sure how big a problem this was until recently,” Williams said. “Now the problem is being addressed, and today fewer people should be required to manage the technology to detect the fraud.”

This is where software such as that editorandpublisher.com

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offered by DEVCON could fit in, which has already been described as the “Norton anti-virus for digital ads.”

“You need some level of anti-adware/ anti-fraud software that is going to monitor and block these cyberattacks, as well as solutions to measure and block fake traffic,” DEVCON’s Louie said. “Another thing that will create defenses is greater consequences; i.e. prosecutions. Until recently, many people viewed ad fraud as a victimless crime, if they saw it as a crime at all. Any ‘script kiddie’ (or hacker) can engage in ad fraud. With more convictions,

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WHEN NUMBERS LIE

Political Ads and Transparency Last summer, eight newspapers that serve a Marylandbased audience, including the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post, sued the state of Maryland and challenged the constitutionality of the newly enacted finance disclosure law, known as the Online Electioneering Transparency and Accountability Act. The law, which was enacted as a response to revelations about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, banned foreign money from being used to pay for political ads and requires platforms with more than 100,000 monthly visitors to publish the names and contact information for any purchaser of a “qualifying paid digital communication,” as well as the price paid for the advertisement.

Newspapers have countered and argued that the regulations were too broad.

“While we agree that the best practice is transparency, this regulation took the issue too far,” said Nhan T. Ngo, senior manager for digital sales and operations at Baltimore Sun Media Group.

However, Maryland has found support from various political watchdog groups such as Common Cause, which suggested that these laws of full disclosure serve the public interest.

“Campaign finance law hasn’t caught up with the changes in technology,” said Paul Seamus Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause. “We need to refine the laws

like the one we helped win in March of 2018, and the more recent 3ve case, there will come lasting change.”

Clearly, those DOJ indictments prove that many do know this is a crime—and sadly a lucrative one at that.

“We are seeing that ad fraud is something perpetrated by small hackers to nation state actors,” Louie said. “The result is that it has also reduced the value of digital ads, which have gone from dollars to dime and thus thinning out the newsroom.”

Another form of malvertising has been the influx of digital pop-up ads, which users find annoying and often lead to greater use of ad-blockers.

“There is a misconception that publishers want to use those pop-ups, but that has been proven to be ineffective,” Louie said. “Publishers don’t want the consumer to have a bad experience, but these get in the ecosystem from programmatic ads

} Paul Seamus Ryan

to better keep up with the technology. The amount of money has grown in public advertising and much of it is spent on new technology, but the public should still know who is paying for this advertising. Transparency should apply to new technology and platforms.”—PS

and ruin that experience. That results in ad blocking, which for publishing is a bad thing.”

BLOCKCHAIN TO BLOCK AD FRAUD With the rise in cryptocurrency (notably Bitcoin), there have been discussions on how a blockchain— the decentralized ledger that keeps track of every

“We are seeing that ad fraud is something perpetrated by small hackers to nation state actors.”

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“Publishers like the fraud because it means more traffic and higher ad revenues.”

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transaction utilizing a digital currency—could stop ad fraud. Because there is no central database and the transactions are spread across multiple computers, a blockchain is resistant to modification of data.

“Blockchain tech is good,” said Fou. “And it could solve some of the forms of fraud—e.g. domain spoofing—by bringing transparency. The problem is that the parties that need to adopt it are the very ones benefiting from fraud, so they don’t want to adopt” However, even if it was widely adopted, blockchain may not be a miracle fix.

“We hear that blockchain could fit this, but we don’t think this is true,” said Ravi Patel, chief operating officer at AD/FIN. “In programmatic advertising, there are still billions of impressions and a blockchain isn’t fast enough to fix this in real time. It is far too reactive.”

While ad fraud utilizes technology, it shouldn’t be seen as a technology problem.

“It is an incentives problem, and middlemen like the fraud because it means more volume that runs through their systems,” said Fou. “Publishers like the fraud because it means more traffic and higher ad revenues. Even marketers like the fraud because it gives them more impressions to buy. If we solved fraud, it would mean less revenue and less to buy. So everyone is currently happy

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that the ad fraud detection companies tell them fraud is low and everything is fine, keep buying. Except that fraud is not low. It is just not detected or people don’t want to hear of it.”

A more simple solution could just be greater transparency.

“The good publishers are happy to show data,” Fou said. “The bad guys are using technology to make it look like they are free from fraud. So we need to separate the good publishers from the bad sites that try to skew the numbers.”

Marketers also need to understand how a good publisher won’t use traffic that isn’t real, and thus should avoid the sites that provide ads with unrealistic traffic numbers. If the numbers are too good to be true, it is because they are buying traffic that is coming from bots. 

Making quality digital marketing accessible to every business.

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Popping the Filter Bubble How newspapers are navigating through social media bots, trolls and misinformation to bring readers the truth

By Natalie Hope McDonald

E

ver since social media sites like Facebook and Twitter surpassed print newspapers as a main source of news for many Americans, editors have had to find new and creative ways of dealing with the digital elephant in the room. The issue has gained a bit more momentum after a new Pew Research Center report from December revealed that as many as one in five adults in the U.S. get their news via popular social media sites.

David Chavern, president and CEO of the News Media Alliance, said that despite some of the challenges that exist in this interactive 24/7 digital world, social media is actually a great way to distribute media content and engage with audiences. But one of the biggest challenges, according to Chavern, is that social media hasn’t yet proven to be a very useful way to pay for good content.

“Information may want to be free,” he said, “but it turns out that professional reporters and editors like to be paid. Free distribution of news via social media worked while there was something else paying the bills (namely print), but with continued sharp declines in print circulation, we are coming to a reckoning on the ‘free news’ era. Unless we make social media more of a monetary two-way street, then you are going to see more and more good content kept away from social media and locked behind high paywalls.”

The issue tends to be two-fold, with many media organizations using social media to encourage website clicks, while still having to negotiate the pitfalls of this medium, namely things like bots and bullies which can taint the experience for content creators and commentators alike. There’s also the issue of so-called “fake” news, information that is being widely shared from unknown or questionable sources.

If we can learn anything from the Facebook controversy in recent years, it’s that the proliferation of unchecked information can easily be shared widely with little to no real fact checking, something that professional news organizations have long used to set themselves apart as trustworthy. Facebook’s own trending platform even allows users (rather than professional editors) to essentially curate a short list of popular news stories, none of which are vetted in any crededitorandpublisher.com

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ible way. And yet the links are often clicked and shared millions of times across the app. The influence of what trends take root on social media can be significant for mainstream media, especially if you consider that Facebook alone generates as much as 20 percent of traffic to most of these traditional news websites, according to MarketResearch.com.

“It used to be very clear to audiences where information came from,” said Chavern. “Things in the newspaper were different than things on TV or talk radio, and those were all very different from your crazy uncle talking over dinner. The internet blender mixes all of those things up and puts a significant burden on readers to pay a lot of attention to where information actually comes from and what kinds of reporting standards lay behind it.”

He said the best thing that media companies can do right now is to help readers understand who they are, how they do what they do, “and how it is different from other things they may see in a news feed.”

Trumping Fake News Eric Carvin, the social media editor for the Associated Press, spends his days curating AP stories on sites like Twitter where breaking headlines make up the majority of news content. One of the ways he makes social media work is by using the platform not only to push content, but to mine for tips, sources and eyewitness media. It’s an effort that’s being embraced across the organization as reporters have to rethink the way they position and report timely stories.

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Popping the Filter Bubble skills widely around our team of journalists, integrating it deeply into our reporting work around the globe,” Carvin said.

He explained that the AP has had to strategize how and what content is streamed and when. There are some rules of thumb that have been developed to help make the process as equitable as possible. For example, Carvin said, “We’ve made it a priority to carefully and respectfully pursue rights for photos and video before we’ll distribute them to our customers, and to authenticate each piece of content to the highest possible standards. We even have newsgathering in mind when we use social platforms to tell stories or connect people to our content—yes, we want people to consume the news we report, but we’re even more eager to establish a social presence that will make people more likely to come to us with tips, ideas and content.”

} David Chavern, News Media Alliance president and CEO

} Eric Carvin, Associated Press social media editor

A quick look at the AP Twitter feed showcases a wide variety of headlines—everything from the latest updates about Syria to Lady Gaga at the Golden Globes. One might expect a trusted source like the AP to be able to sail through this sometimes-rough sea of spam and bots pretty smoothly. But challenges are persisting, said Carvin, especially when it comes to what he calls a very genuine “misinformation crisis.”

“The proliferation of inaccurate information and content online—whether to sow confusion, advance a political agenda or make a buck—presents an enormous challenge to an industry whose mission is to keep the public informed,” he said. “There’s so much false or misleading content on social platforms, users have become mistrustful of anything they see online or—worse—they’re being driven to make decisions about what to trust for the wrong reasons.”

Social media users, unlike people who digest other forms of media like television or radio, tend to trust online content largely because it’s shared by “friends” or because, said Carvin, “it confirms a preexisting belief.”

This is radically different from the way people got their news in the past. Social media has made it easy to curate what users digest based on their likes and dislikes (hello, algorithms).

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social and messaging platforms leads people to congregate with those who share their beliefs,” Carvin said.

The upside is that some news brands—whether globally or within a particular community—have managed to remain credible and authoritative to a large segment of the population.

“We at AP feel we’re in a good spot to stand out under these circumstances,” Carvin said. “Amid the clutter of misinformation and partisan vitriol, the news appetite pendulum is swinging back from opinion and rhetoric to facts, expertise and original reporting.”

Carvin believes that ultimately a great, well-researched and reported story will always trump the bots and trolls that seek to influence the narrative. In addition, the AP has taken steps to push back against the glut of misinformation, like having the fact-checking team work with experts throughout the news organization to sepa-

} Gina Cole, Seattle Times engagement editor

rate fact from fiction, especially when, for example, a public figure makes a statement or when questionable content appears online.

“But the best tool we have in our bag is our ability to investigate, to hold the powerful to account and to share stories and visuals about news that affects people’s lives around the world,” Carvin said.

He added that news organizations need to be willing to invest in the right tools for the job. At the Associated Press, Carvin uses a tool for managing social output, and another for spotting online trends and still another for vetting public content.

“A successful social content strategy depends on knowing your audience and how they consume content on various platforms,” he said. “And we’ve found it’s increasingly important to have the right workflow and tools in place around story planning. The better our shared understanding of the newsgathering and output plan for a given news item, the better we’ll be able to prepare and schedule social content that’s optimized to help tell the story.”

To that end, it’s critical for any news organization with an online presence to make stories work well on social platforms, as well as on popular messaging and news apps (think: phone alerts).

“That means strong visuals, modular story forms and modern delivery mechanisms that allow news organizations to use our content as building blocks for their own,” Carvin said. “We certainly do want to showcase our most important journalism on major social editorandpublisher.com

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“In the social media and messaging app maelstrom, it’s become harder to identify the source of news content…”

The American Legion 2 0 19 F o u r t h E s t a t e Awa r d

platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and to grow the audience on AP News, our own news site and app. But above all else, our presence online is a success if it helps our customers bring critical news development to their audiences.”

Tools and Tips For the past few years, Gina Cole, the engagement editor at the Seattle Times, has been using CrowdTangle to help monitor the paper’s social media presence. The platform—which helps to manage and track posts, trends and social referrals—provides a real-time dashboard that curates content from millions of other social media accounts.

Cole said by using the software, she can see what the local competition is doing and what users are talking about on social media platforms. This is especially helpful given the sheer volume of content she and others at the paper are managing on any given day.

“We post, on average, about 30 times a day on Facebook and 50 to 60 times a day on Twitter, paying constant attention to what works and what doesn’t work on each platform,” Cole said.

In addition, photo editors have built a strong Instagram presence by spotlighting images exclusive to the Seattle Times.

“Last I checked, we have the biggest IG following of any Seattle media account,” said Cole. “We’re using Instagram Stories to point that audience’s attention toward our marquee enterprise journalism, in addition to using the native features like polls and questions to get a better sense of what’s on their minds.”

Cole also keeps a pretty close eye on local subreddits, primarily to track what people are most interested in reading and discussing (issues like housing, transportation and data stories are big, she said).

“We’ll show up a couple times a year to do AMAs on those topics and/or with reporters whose work gets shared on Reddit a lot,” Cole said.

For the paper, being on social media has become an important way to engage with audiences. Cole said there’s an advantage to being able to meet audiences in the spaces where they already exist.

“The environment and vibe of each social platform is a little different,” she admitted, “and if you can master each one, you can earn a lot of goodwill—it shows you speak those users’ language, understand their norms and respect their time (in that their interaction with you feels seamless among their other interactions on the platform).”

Overall, Cole said that the Seattle Times has been able to connect

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Popping the Filter Bubble more deeply with specific audiences on social media than they may have otherwise. An example she gave was the paper’s Education Lab team starting a closed Facebook group where they could facilitate ongoing conversations among educators and parents of students of color about the unique experiences those students have in the city’s local schools.

Despite the successes, Cole said there were certainly ever-evolving challenges to the fluid platform.

“On any social platform, you don’t control the means by which you reach people. That relationship is mediated,” she said. “So in order to show up on your intended audiences’ screens, you’re often beholden to algorithms cooked up by companies whose goals don’t necessarily align with yours.”

Cole said these challenges are making it important to diversify across platforms. Many news outlets that “pivoted to video” to succeed in the Facebook news feed, she said, have now discovered “it’s risky to put all your eggs in one social basket.”

Ultimately, each social media platform works a bit differently. “On social media, and on Facebook especially, the posts that get the most interaction—reactions, comments and shares—tend to be the ones that make people feel something. It can be joy, outrage, hope, sadness, surprise, warm fuzzies, whatever.”

In terms of algorithms, the Seattle Times has an organic/paid combo-platter strategy when it comes to maximizing posts’ reach and growing its online following. In the newsroom, it’s just about telling great stories in the right formats, varying post types and experimenting a lot to see what works.

“Growing our audiences on social media sites is important for a couple of reasons,” said Cole. “There’s the obvious: more eyeballs on our stories, more paywall hits and thus more subscription conversions, wider brand awareness, etc. But there’s also the fact that as your social media following grows so do the chances that the right post might reach the right person, that a callout might show up in the news feed of someone who’s affected by something you’re reporting on, or that an investigation might be seen by someone with the power to right the wrong you uncovered.”

In other words, the greater the reach, the greater the potential for impact—something that’s nothing new to media organizations.

“We also meet weekly to look at what’s working and not working and discuss what we can do better,” said Cole, which is paying off. Last year newsroom staffers, as well as product and marketing folks, all worked together to create the Seattle Times social media playbook, something Cole describes as a “living document that covers a bunch of social media topics, including ethical considerations, photo and video policies, helpful tools, how to reach out to readers on social media, how to keep the conversation going and deal with criticism, examples of good replies to people who complain about our paywall, etc.”

The playbook has been shared with everyone in the newsroom starting two years ago, and Cole said ever since then, she has been keeping it up to date with the most recent guidelines as well as training every new employee on its contents.

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“I expect news organizations will have to adjust to people moving their sharing behavior to more private spaces.”

What Happens Next?

As the very fluid future of social media poses important questions about how to reach audiences with smart and compelling content, the media’s love/hate relationship with the platform is likely to ebb and flow too.

“I expect news organizations will have to adjust to people moving their sharing behavior to more private spaces,” said Chavern, especially “as the public grows increasingly (and understandably) weary of the abuse, harassment and partisan rancor that too often comes with an open online presence.”

Chavern predicted that a lot of the users that media organizations are accustomed to reaching widely through public posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter may start to spend more time in private Facebook groups, taking advantage of the new “close friends” option for Instagram Stories, or even relocating entirely from social platforms to messaging apps.

“This makes audience development work more challenging,” he said, “and there’s a risk that the ‘filter bubble’ problem will worsen as people congregate privately with like-minded people.”

It’s also a lot harder to combat misinformation when it spreads within private networks, which is why media companies need to engage more directly with their audiences, Chavern said.

“While it’s not a great way to distribute content, it is a wonderful mechanism to talk to your readers about that content,” he said.

Media organizations are, in many ways, the last refuge for facts in a digital landscape riddled with a whole lot of fiction, something that is not far from the minds of most editors in 2019.

To this point, Chavern’s been monitoring media companies about whether there could be an advantage to banding together to negotiate social platforms collectively, and to ultimately create a much bigger presence. Rather than introducing a form of federal control, something that’s also being widely discussed, he said it could be “a wonderful, light touch way for the government to make a big difference for the future of news.”

But will it be enough to combat Trump’s tweets, trolling and bots while still maintaining enough revenue to do the actual work?

Chavern sees a lot of potential for media organizations in the social media landscape.

“I think that social media will continue to prove to be a great way for media companies to engage and talk to audiences,” he said. “Without some changes, however, it will not be a great way to distribute and pay for the creation of content.”  editorandpublisher.com

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Digital Trends to Watch As the media landscape changes online, what can publishers expect to see in 2019?

By Evelyn Mateos

N

owadays, with so much technology available to us (and in the works), it seems like we are closer than ever to living the futuristic life the Jetsons once portrayed on TV—and this year will certainly follow suit as we see new technology trends gain traction or perhaps see old trends make a second appearance.

It is important for newspaper publishers to stay on top of these trends and use them to reach wider audiences and engage readers. To assist them, E&P has put together a list of digital trends to watch as we move further into 2019.

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1

THE PIVOT FROM VIDEO TO AUDIO

In 2018, the rise of the voice assistant continued to gain traction from the previous year, with more than one in 10 U.S. adults regularly using a smart speaker, equating to about 34 million people or 17 million homes, according to the Reuters report “The Future of Voice and the Implications for News.”

Last year, we saw more tech companies hopping on the bandwagon and others already in the race releasing more smart devices: the Google Assistant, Apple’s HomePod, Amazon’s 12 new smart devices, including the Auto Echo, and Facebook’s Portal.

While Amazon already includes several news organizations on its news briefing feature called “Flash Briefing,” there are still a few wrinkles to iron out if more newspapers are to hop on board and create personalized content for the

platform. The Reuters report found that news publishers lack things, such as a clear path to monetization and data to guide development.

However, Google announced last December it would be developing an open audio news standard for the Assistant and partner with several media companies like CNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post. It is also putting out a call in hopes of recruiting other English-language publishers. Using the same technology behind the artificial intelligence on Google News, the Assistant will generate a playlist of stories based on the listener’s interests.

With the rise of the smart speaker in the home, it is not surprising that news publishers have taken an interest in voice. With other legacy media companies guiding the way, it shouldn’t be long until others follow their lead.

With the rise of the smart speaker in the home, it is not surprising that news publishers have taken an interest in voice.

2

TRACKING THE IMPACT OF STORIES Patrick Butler, vice president of programs for the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), said recently in Nieman Lab, “News organizations have gotten very good at measuring things like impressions, reach, and engagement…What we don’t do well is measure why our content matters.”

In April 2018, ICFJ Knight Fellow and Brazilian journalist Pedro Burgos was already formulating an answer. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, he launched a public version of Impacto, a project backed by Google News Initiative that aims to help newsrooms and journalists track, understand and demonstrate the impact of their reporting on communities and society. Essentially, instead of news organizations searching manually for mentions of their work or combing

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through social platforms, blogs and new sites, journalists can search the database for impact measurement and analysis of a story.

For Impacto, the premise is that tracking the impact of a story will inevitably aid in winning the battle of trust in the media, which became a much bigger theme in 2018.

Since providing communities with local journalism was also a constant theme throughout the year, news organizations may begin to look at the impact that this shift in focus has had on their communities.

With the kind of artificial intelligence being developed today, the use and creation of tracking tools, such as Impacto, can be expected to increase this year.

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Digital Trends to Watch

3

MISINFORMATION MOVES TO SMALLER PLATFORMS Social media has been under fire for some time, and following the 2016 presidential election, companies like Facebook and Twitter have taken steps to combat the spread of fake news and misinformation on its platforms.

These changes continued to occur in 2018. For example, when Facebook engineers discovered suspicious evidence that Russian activity was linked to the platform, the company announced major changes to the news algorithm, which prioritized content from friends and family. Both Facebook and Twitter put systems in place to prevent the spread of fake news prior to the 2018 midterm elections as well.

This crackdown on monitoring news in turn has led to various misinformers getting banned from these platforms.

In turn, we can expect fake news and misinformation to make the shift to smaller and/or ephemeral platforms.

According to Daniel Funke, who covers fact-checking and online misformation for Poynter, misinformers around the world are already “migrating to private groups, chats and fringe sites to avoid detection by journalists and tech companies.”

As such, we can expect many new fact-checking tools to pop up.

Monthly podcast listeners increased about 9 percent between 2017 and 2018.

The shift in focus and resources to podcasting is sure to become more apparent this year.

Edison Research’s annual Infinite Dial report discovered the number of monthly podcast listeners increased about 9 percent between 2017 and 2018. Streaming platforms like Pandora and Spotify joined the podcast market last year, helping with its popularity by reaching a wider audience.

This wider audience also happens to be diverse. VoxNest’s “The State of the Podcast Universe” report noted “podcasts (can no longer be) seen as by-white-male, for white-male medium.”

The report also stated that 2018 “marked the year when the demographics of podcasts audi Podcast listeners have increased in the last year by 9 percent, and as a result, podences nearly mirrored the demographics of the casters continue to create new content to satisfy demand.

United States overall, at least for gender and ethnicity.” released a 20-minute podcast titled “Today in Focus.”

News organizations took notice of the increasing popularity According to the VoxNest report, there are currently of podcasts and several released new podcasts. Although the 619,000 podcasts on Apple Podcasts alone—the demand for Washington Post already produces a library of 14 audio shows, podcasts has steadily been rising and the supply will surely 2018 saw its most ambitious show yet—“The Post Reports,” a follow.

20-minute daily news podcast. Similarly, the Guardian also

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SHUTTERSTUCK IMAGE

4

PODCASTING CONTINUES TO GROW

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5

THE MEDIA AND GDPR

FACEBOOK IMAGE

Hands-down, one of 2018’s most talked about subjects was the implementation of the GDPR, a regulation meant to protect the people’s data and impose strict rules on the processing of personally identifiable information.

This new regulation could affect a multitude of things and companies; however, big tech giants have every reason to be wary. The regulation requires that companies processing data have appropriate security and must notify their data protection authority within 72 hours of a breach as well as reserve the right to fine  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discusses the company’s 10-year road map at the F8 conference in May 2018. companies 4 percent Facebook came under heavy scrutiny in 2018 for privacy and data issues. of global revenue or 20 million euros (whichGDPR is Mozilla. The company developed the Firefox Public ever is larger).

Data Report, an anti-tracking browser feature.

In an article by The Next Web, the head of communicaAccording to The Next Web article, Data Protection Acts tions for the Irish Data Protection Commission, Graham are doubling their staff, thus enforcing the new regulations Doyle said it’s clear that the new regulation has already that are sure to come. We can soon expect to see tech compahad an impact as breech notifications and complaints have nies adapt—perhaps by creating new tools to comply, or else doubled since last year. they will reap the consequences.

One company that has shown initiative in adapting to the

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Digital Data Trends for 2019

Trust in Companies with Personal Data Based on 1,004 respondents WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING COMPANIES DO YOU TRUST THE MOST WITH YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

27.2%

Amazon

Google Microsoft

Facebook Twitter

Amazon Uber Google Lyft Apple

Microsoft

Tesla

0.7% 0.6% 0.6%

Snap

0.3%

Netflix

Uber Lyft

8.0% 7.7% 7.1% 6.1% 5.9% 4.5%

Twitter

4.6% 3.8% 0.7%

Netflix

39.6%

Facebook

12.1% 11.3% 11.0%

Apple

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING COMPANIES DO YOU TRUST THE LEAST WITH YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

Snap

Tesla

27.1%

None of the above

4.2% 1.8% 1.3% 0.9%

None of the above

13.1%

Source: Recode; Toluna survey conducted Dec. 8, 2018-Jan. 8, 2019

Podcast Listening Trends % OF PODCAST LISTENS BY OPERATING SYSTEM Data collected November 2018

1

Brazil

2

New Zealand

3

Ireland

4

Netherlands

5

Japan

6

Hong Kong

23.7%

7

Australia

8

Turkey

9.5%

9

Mexico

iOS Android

55.7%

Windows (Desktop) Apple Watch Mac (Desktop) Other & N/A Smart Speakers

4.0% 3.5% 2.3% 1.38%

TOP 10 FASTEST GROWING MARKETS

10 United Kingdom Source: “The State of the Podcast Universe” report, VoxNest, January 2018-November 2018

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Average Time Spent Per Day by U.S. Adult Users of Each Digital Medium Based on adults ages 18 and over; hrs:mins

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

Digital video*

1:44

1:53

2:01

2:07

2:13

Digital audio

1:31

1:37

1:41

1:43

1:46

Social networks

1:08

1:15

1:17

1:19

1:21

Pandora

0:44

0:45

0:45

0:46

0:46

Facebook

0:40

0:41

0:40

0:40

0:40

Instagram

0:22

0:25

0:26

0:27

0:28

Snapchat

0:24

0:26

0:27

0:28

0:29

*excludes time spent with video via social networks

Source: eMarketer, October 2018

2.2B

Top 10 Social Media Platforms

1.9B

Based on the most popular social media platforms ranked by active users worldwide

1.5B

1.3B 1.0B

Facebook

YouTube

WhatsApp

Facebook Messenger

WeChat

1.0B

Instagram

803M

QQ

548M

500M

431M

QZone

TikTok

Weibo

Source: Statista, October 2018 editorandpublisher.com

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Digital Trends to Watch Story continued from page 55

6

7

DEVELOPING BLOCKCHAIN JOURNALISM Despite the quick rise and fall of Civil, the industry can expect more of blockchain technology in the months to come. In the words of WAN-IFRA’s director of insights Dean Roper: “There appears to be widespread agreement that blockchain is well-suited to intellectual property (IP) protection.”

Civil, one of the better known projects aiming to master blockchain, is a media platform and community–owned journalism network that uses blockchain tech to “ensure every newsroom and journalist has public, immutable and permanent proof to ensure total ownership and control of their data and content,” according to its website.

Civil is meant to function off their cryptocurrency, which allows buyers to become shareholds. In September 2018, the company held a token sale, but fell short of its minimum number of tokens it aimed to sell by more than $6 million, according to the New York Times.

The trouble seems to be that no one really had a complete understanding of the technology or the how Civil worked.

So while there is widespread interest in the technology, there is also agreement that it is complex and underdeveloped.

However, this isn’t stopping the company or ConsenSys (the company’s main investor). In fact, it gave Civil an additional $3.5 million for funding to try again. Meanwhile, Larry Ryckman, editor of the Colorado Sun, an online news site founded by former Denver Post staffers and a Civilfunded newsroom, told alt-weekly newspaper Westword, Civil’s failure to sell tokens didn’t affect their future.

“It’s really not a huge event for us one way or the other,” he said. “Subscriptions are a much more stable source of funding for any organization, and we realize that’s where our future is—in serving subscribers.”

Only time will tell if Civil will succeed the second time around (which is set to launch sometime this month), but one thing is for sure, if they do succeed, our industry can expect to see a lot more of blockchain-based publishing.

THE BATTLE FOR NEWS CONSUMERS

SHUTTERSTUCK IMAGE

In the last decade or so, social media companies have treated news as only an add-on feature for consumers. The Pew Research Center reported that in 2018, one in five U.S. adults received their news via social media, compared to the 16 percent that got their news from print newspapers.

In a recent article for the New York Times, columnist Jim Rutenberg reflected on the convergence of technology with media. “As newspapers fall, leaving important local issues uncovered, the social media companies contributing to their deaths are helping to fill the content void with unverified, and at worst patently false, information. Solutions are not coming fast, though smart people are working on it.”

Though that may be true, will it be necessary? Pew also reported that adult Facebook users have either taken a  Last year, the Pew Research Center discovered that one in five U.S. adults receive their news via social media. break from checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more (42 percent), or have deleted the Facebook more than 4 million subscribers total in 2018. app entirely from their phone (67 percent).

As more news consumers seek out truth and facts, it seems Recent headlines such as “How to Delete Facebook” and that the unruly and wild nature of social media is driving “Why You Should Delete Facebook” have cropped up. This them into the arms of trusted news organizations. Will digital seems to be the reaction to the number of issues the platform subscriptions continue to rise for media companies, and how is fielding, including privacy concerns and the spreading of will it affect the social media platforms that depend on their misinformation. content and their audiences? It should be interesting to find Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that the compaout.  ny hit more than 3 million paid digital-only subscribers and

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SURPRISE INSIDE

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CHRISTMAS

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ATTACKS TARGETING POLITICAL KEYWORDS INCREASED 20,000% THE EXPLOIT DEVCON DUBBED “PARTY CRY” ATTEMPTED TO HARVEST CONSUMER DATA

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By participating in the program, LMA members will use the DEVCON platform to immediately detect any incoming ad fraud activity while contributing the data discovered by the platform to the comprehensive study. The joint study is the first of its kind in the news media industry, leveraging the experiences of more than 3,000 news entities across a variety of mediums. To learn more about the study and signup for pre-release copy of the whitepaper visit: ADHACK.ORG or LOCALMEDIA.ORG

Making The Best Better “We are helping local media take back their audience” begins Bill Cummings, CEO of NERUS Strategies, LLC when talking about what this boutique style firm is doing. “I spent years in the industry looking for intelligent, creative, effective, efficient ways to engage audiences and deliver a good digital experience but could never find the solution.”

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NewsPeople

Kelly Dyer has been named publisher for the Oklahoman.

Most recently, she served as the newspaper’s editor and vice president of news and will continue those responsibilities in addition to her new title. Fry has been a part of the Oklahoman for years and worked various jobs there since 1994. She has also served on the board of Associated Press Media Editors and was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 2014.

Michael Duffy has been named acting deputy editorial editor for the Washington Times. Previously, Duffy spent 33 years with TIME as deputy managing editor, nation editor, Washington bureau chief and editorial director of Time Inc, among other roles.

Robert J. Dickey, president and CEO of Gannett Co., has announced his retirement.

Dickey first joined Gannett in 1989 and assumed his current role in 2015. In the past, Dickey worked as the president of the company’s local publishing division, senior group president of Gannett’s Pacific Group and president of Gannett U.S. Community Publishing. He has agreed to stay with the company until May, during which Gannett will conduct a search for a successor. If a successor is editorandpublisher.com

+E+P Newspeople.indd 65

found before that date, Dickey will serve as an adviser.

Titus Workman has been named publisher and advertising director of the Times West Virginian in Fairmont, W.Va. Workman began his career working for a paper in Fayetteville, N. C. before becoming advertising director for the Dominion Post in Morgantown, W.Va. Workman also previously served as a publisher for the Daily Herald in Roanoke Rapids, N.C. John Hale has been named publisher of the Herald-Star and the Weirton Daily Times in Steubenville, Ohio. Hale is a 33-year veteran of the newspaper industry, having worked as a circulation director for newspapers in several locations including Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Hale succeeds Tammie McIntosh, who held the post for two years.

Daisy Veerasingham, senior vice president for the Associated Press, has been promoted to chief revenue officer.

She joined the AP in London in 2004 as sales director for AP television news, where she was responsible for content licensing and services for broadcasters internationally.

Later, she became vice president of sales for Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australia, where she was responsible for AP Photo

AP Photo

Ron Nixon has joined the Associated Press as international investigations editor. He will be located in Washington and manage a global team of reporters as well as work closely with colleagues around the globe to conduct investigative and accountability reporting on various topics. Prior to assuming this role, Nixon worked as the homeland security correspondent for the New York Times Washington bureau, data editor at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the training director at Investigative Reporters and Editors, and environmental and investigative reporter at the Roanoke (Va.) Times.

revenue from clients across all formats and business units.

Jim Lewandowski has been named CEO of Times-Shamrock Communications. Lewandowski currently serves as the company’s chief financial officer and will assume the new role on April 1. He will oversee all the media businesses, located in Pennsylvania, which include The Times-Tribune, The Citizens’ Voice, the Standard-Speaker and the Republican Herald. In addition, Don Farley, chief operating officer, has been named the company’s president and will oversee all media operations across the U.S., including print, radio, outdoor and digital.

Julie Moos has been named executive director of the National Press Club Journalism Institute.

Moos joins the Institute from McClatchy, where she served as managing director of news. Prior to that, Moos spent 11 years at the Poynter Institute overseeing Poynter.com and before that, she worked at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C. for seven years running WRAL.com.

Chris Carr has been promoted to assistant managing editor for sports for Star Tribune Media Co. in Minneapolis, Minn. In his new role, he will oversee all newsroom sports coverage. He succeeds Glen Crevier, who had been with the company for 20 years. Previously, Carr led the development of the Star Tribune’s digital sports strategy in 2016.

Chris Reen has been named president of the Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo. He will oversee the newspaper’s advertising, FEBRUARY 2019 | E & P

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NewsPeople circulation and marketing operations in this new role. He will also succeed current publisher Dan Steever after he resigns in May. Previously, Reen held advertising positions at several East Coast newspaper locations and served as vice president of sales and marketing at the Oklahoman, where he later served as publisher. He has also worked as an executive vice president with The Oklahoma Publishing Co. and president of The Oklahoman Media Co. Monica Nieporte has been named president and executive director of the Ohio News Media Association. She joins the association from the APG Ohio Media Group in Athens, Ohio, where she served as president and publisher. Prior to that, she worked as a city editor at the Zanesville (Ohio) Times Recorder and as publisher of the Logan (Ohio) Daily News.

David Zeeck, publisher of the News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., has resigned after 24 years with the paper. He also served as the publisher for the Olympian and the Bellingham Herald, both in Washington as well, and was responsible for the daily print and digital business operations of the community weeklies in Gig Harbor and Puyallup.

Previously, Zeeck spent 20 years at the Kansas City Star as a reporter and editor.

Rebecca Poynter, who serves as the vice president of local sales for McClatchy’s West Region as well as publisher of the Idaho Statesman and oversees the Tri-City Herald in Kennewick, Wash. has assumed Zeeck’s responsibilities.

Peter Banko has been named editor and publisher of Georgetown Communications, Inc., which includes the Georgetown Times and South Strand News in South Carolina. Previously, he worked as 66 |

E & P | FEBRUARY 2019

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ACQUISITIONS

M. Roberts Media has acquired the Tyler (Texas) Morning Telegraph from the Clyde and Bothwell families. The paper has been in publication since 1929, but its roots go back further to 1877 when brothers, L.M and J.P. Green established the weekly Courier which was later converted to a daily newspaper in 1882. In 1906, the consolidation of the Daily Courier and another newspaper called the Weekly Times created the Tyler CourierTimes. Four years later, a fire destroyed the production facility and attorney Tyler and T.B. Butler acquired the newspaper, which began the recent family ownership. M. Roberts Media is also family-owned and operates the Longview News-Journal, Marshall News Manager, Panola Watchman and the Victoria Advocate in Texas.

Adams Publishing Group has purchased two Wisconsin papers: the Watertown Daily Times and Dodge County Independent News from James M. Clifford. The Watertown Daily Times is published Monday through Friday and the Dodge County Independent News weekly. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The Clifford family had owned the Watertown Daily Times since 1919. The Adams Publishing Group owns 30 daily newspapers and more than 100 non-daily newspapers operating in 20 states among other enterprises, which include outdoor advertising, radio, wine and more.

Paxton Media Group has purchased the daily Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville and four non-daily newspapers including the twice-weekly Times Leader in Princeton, weekly Journal Enterprise in Province, weekly Dawson Springs Progress and the weekly Eagle Post from Kentucky New Era Group. The sale terms were not disclosed. Paxton Media is a family-owned company headquartered in Paducah, Ky. and owns more than 35 daily newspapers, a television station and numerous weekly publications.

W.D. Hoard & Sons Co. has sold the newspaper division of the company to Adams Publishing Group. The Daily Jefferson County Union and the affiliated Hometown News Limited Partnership publish 13 community newspapers and shoppers stretching across six counties in south central Wisconsin. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The Daily Jefferson County Union was founded in 1870 by William Dempster Hoard.

the managing editor of the RepublicanHerald and the Standard Speaker in Pennsylvania. Banko served a total of 22 years with the company including stints as metro editor, news editor and copy editor for the Times-Tribune in Scranton, Pa. In addition, John Cioni was named Georgetown Communications, Inc. advertising director.

Robert O. “Bob” Rolley Jr. has been named publisher of the Williamsport (Pa.) Sun-Gazette.

He succeeds Bernard A. Oravec, who left to pursue an executive management position. Rolley first joined the paper in 1981. He began his career

delivering the newspaper and later landed an internship followed by a promotion to reporter covering governments, business, industry and more. He became executive editor before heading to the Sun-Gazette’s sister publication, the Express in Lock Haven as publisher, where he will continue to serve.

Brent Miller has been named publisher for the Jackson County Sentinel in Scottsboro, Ala., He returns after operating his own photo studio for the last several years.

Previously, he served the paper as an advertising salesperson and ad director.

editorandpublisher.com

1/18/19 2:24 PM

NewsPeople Brandon Cox has joined the Paxton Media Group as publisher of the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville, Ky. Cox has worked for the Paxton Media Group in the past, first as a graphic artist doing advertising design and editorial page design with the Messenger-Inquirer in Owensboro, Ky., and then moved to advertising sales and later became advertising director at the Courier-Times in New Castle, Ind. Prior to that, Cox worked at the Southern Newspaper, Inc. as publisher of the Bay City (Texas) Tribune and the Jackson County (Ala.) Sentinel.

Bobby Rice has been named general manager for the Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News. Rice joined the newspaper in July 2018 as advertising director and will continue to serve in that position. As general manager, he will be involved with all of the newspaper’s operations. Rice previously worked for papers in Florida, Texas, Alabama and Louisiana, including the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser and the Dallas Morning News.

AP Photo

Ed Choate, executive editor of the Muskogee (Okla.) Phoenix, has been appointed publisher and editor of the McAlester (Okla.) News-Capital.

Choate began as a city editor at the Phoenix and during his 12-year tenure rose to city editor, where he directed the news operation. Prior to that, he worked for 20 years in the sports departments at the Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth

editorandpublisher.com

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(Texas) Star-Telegram, Orlando Sentinel, New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Greenville (S.C.) News.

Maud Beelman has been appointed the founding executive editor of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the Arizona State University. In her new role, Beelman will hold the faculty rank of professor of practice and will lead the new Scripps Howard Foundation-funded institute at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Most recently, Beelman served as an U.S. investigations editor for the Associated Press.

Fernando de Yarza, president of Henneo Group in Spain, has been appointed vice president of World Associations of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

De Yarza also serves as the chairman of Taller de Editores, president of News Media

Anna Johnson has been named the Europe/Africa news director for the Associated Press. Prior to her new role, Johnson was news director for the U.S. West. She joined the AP in 2004 as a reporter in Chicago. From 2006 to 2009, she worked as a reporter and editor in Cairo, where she traveled throughout the region covering the Iranian election and the Iraq war, among other stories. Johnson also has previous experience as an AP editor and newsroom leader in U.S. as well as the Middle East.

Europe, the association of European publishers and vice president at the Association of Media and Information (AMI). In addition, Michael Golden (USA), Lisa MacLeod (Tiso Blackstar, South Africa), Paul Verwitt (Mediahuis, Belgium) and David Callaway (The Street, USA) will form the new presidency of WAN-IFRA until the incoming board elections, planned for June 2019.

Joe Sciacca has been named regional editor-inchief for Digital First Media’s Northeast Cluster, which includes seven daily newspapers in Massachusetts and New York. In addition to the Boston Herald where he has served as editor-in-chief since 2010, the newspapers under Sciacca’s watch now include The Sun of Lowell and Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg in Massachusetts and the Daily Freeman in Kingston, The Record of Troy, The Saratogian of Saratoga Springs and Oneida Daily Dispatch in New York. Sciacca has four decades of daily newspaper experience as a reporter, political columnist and editor, starting out as a correspondent for the Lowell Sun and reporter for the Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, Mass., before moving to the Herald.

Karen Magnuson has stepped down as executive editor of the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y. after accepting an early retirement package.

Magnuson joined the newspaper as managing editor in 1999 and was promoted to editor and vice president of news in 2001 before being named the USA TODAY NETWORK’s state editor for New York and Vermont. Prior to that, Magnuson served as managing editor of the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle and held key positions at several California newspapers. Scott Norris, the newsroom’s digital leader, will oversee the paper until a successor is named. In addition, Dennis R. Floss, director of client strategy, will take over as site leader.  FEBRUARY 2019 | E & P

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We’re Looking for the Future Generation of Newspaper Leaders Please help us by nominating a newspaper Editor & Publisher wants to recognize the up-and-comer (or yourself) for our “Pubnext generation of newspaper publishing lishing Leaders — 25 Under 35” feature arleaders, and we need your help. We’re ticle that will appear in E&P’s April issue. talking about people who are young, bright and capable of tackling whatever editorandpublisher.com Nominations are open to men and women age 35 years and younger. Candidates may the changing newspaper climate throws at them. People with business acumen to lead through be publishers, editors, advertising executives, circulatrying times and vision to implement bold, new strate- tion managers or other newspaper leaders. Nominees must own or work for a print or online newspaper. gies to move their newspapers forward.

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AD DIRECTOR/GENERAL MANAGER: The Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, a 5 day a week multi-media publication in northeast Oklahoma, is looking for an Ad Director/General Manager to lead an experienced staff, including an award-winning newsroom. This is an ideal steppingstone for an advertising manager that wants to take the next step in executive management.

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EDITOR - SPECIAL SECTIONS: Idaho Business Review is Idaho’s leading business news source. Our integrated platform includes the weekly Idaho Business Review newspaper, daily news and leads at idahobusinessreview.com, daily IBR email updates, targeted special business lead publications such as The Book of Lists, and several business-focused events throughout the year. We are looking for a self-motivated, social media-savvy Special Sections Editor to work as a member of IBR’s year-round business awards events and publication team. Our ideal candidate has top-notch writing skills and the samples to prove it, as well as excellent people skills. He or she has the genuine curiosity of a good journalist, and the independence and drive to learn more about Idaho businesses and the professionals behind them. The Special Sections Editor is responsible for every aspect of coordinating and writing more than a dozen high-quality annual publications and for coordinating seven awards programs. The editor also co-creates and supervises the creation of editorial and video content and carries out other tasks as assigned. The candidate should have the proven ability to work independently, to meet an array of challenging deadlines, and to find and work with freelance writers and photographers. Idaho Business Review is located in fast-growing Boise, Idaho, an area nationally known for its high quality of life and low cost of living. Please include a cover letter along with writing samples or a link to your writing samples. We offer competitive compensation and a comprehensive benefits program. To apply visit apply-a2n5qetjt3w4@applicantstack.com.

BridgeTower Media and all subsidiaries are Equal Opportunity Employers and value diversity in our workplace.

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR: The editor of The Catholic Telegraph is retiring. We seek his replacement. Visit: www.catholiccincinnati.org/jobs/editorial-director/ Relocation assistance is available.

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Help Wanted

Help Wanted

FINANCE DIRECTOR: North of Boston Media Group. North Andover, Massachusetts.

The North of Boston Media Group seeks an experienced, high-energy, team player to manage its accounting department and related operations.

The finance director will manage the current reporting processes, drive automation of manual chores, and support CNHI’s overall financial strategy to consolidate business operations to North Andover. This person will oversee accounting and human resources functions for numerous print and digital publications located in multiple states. This individual will communicate financial results and forecasts to senior managers.

The finance director will participate in the development, implementation, and testing of financial software upgrades or installation projects. This individual will partner with our internal technology group to create and maintain documentation of processes and practices.

Candidates must have a four-year accounting or finance degree, four or more years’ experience working with business applications like Navision and TM1, as well as a background in accounting and financial reporting. This person must possess excellent technical skills with strong computer aptitude and advanced MS Excel skills. A background in human resource management is required. Experience in the media or advertising industry is a plus. Also essential are strong organizational and communication skills and a proven track record of management success.

This person must be willing to travel as needed.

North of Boston Media Group produces eight newspaper publications, which include four daily newspapers – The Eagle-Tribune, The Salem News, Daily News of Newburyport and Gloucester Daily Times – multiple magazines and award-winning websites. For more information on NOBMG, visit www.nobmg.com.

Located in the Merrimack Valley region in northeast Massachusetts, North Andover is just 25 miles north of Boston. The Merrimack Valley has a wealth of history and cultural opportunities to experience and enjoy. Historic attractions of Greater Boston, the beauty of the White Mountains and Lakes Region in New Hampshire, and the sand and surf along miles of the Atlantic coast are all a short drive away. North Andover offers world-class health care facilities and superb higher education institutions. The area is rich with easy access to shopping, recreation, entertainment and diverse dining.

Interested candidates should email a resume and cover letter to Group Publisher Karen Andreas at kandreas@salemnews.com.

The North of Boston Media Group is owned by CNHI. CNHI is a leading provider of local news and information, offering a wide array of print and digital products in more than 130 communities in 22 states. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, CNHI is a Raycom Media company.

For more information about CNHI, please visit www.cnhi.com.

EMPLOYMENT ADVERTISING SPECIALS! Up to 100 words in print for 1 month PLUS an online ad of any length for 5 weeks

$125.00 Additional ad copy: $20.00 per 35 words

Run any classified employment ad and get an additional classified ad in any category for 25% OFF! Call 800-887-1615 or email classifieds@editorandpublisher.com to place your ad today!

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Fax: 866-605-2323

Help Wanted

Help Wanted

GRAPHIC DESIGNER: The Half Moon Bay Review, an award-winning community weekly newspaper with a circulation of 4,500 on the San Mateo Coastside.

Basic Function: Newspaper page layout, special publication layout and print ad design.

Major Duties and Responsibilities: • Page layout of weekly newspaper • Ad design • Design and layout of special publications • Design of spec ads, as needed • Upload newspaper to website • Other duties as needed Experience: Thorough understanding of page layout, print design, typography, and brand/style guides. Newspaper experience and/or a strong portfolio in print media preferred.

Grammar, punctuation and attention to detail are key. Experience working with Creative Cloud Libraries also a plus. Top candidate will be fluent in InDesign and Photoshop. Most importantly designer must work well with a team and under deadline pressure. Familiarity of print process is a big plus.

Education: College degree in graphic design, typography or related field preferred. Proficiency in Adobe inDesign, Photoshop or Illustrator.

Other Qualifications: Newspaper or previous publishing experience is preferred, but we will consider qualified, including entry level, candidates.

To apply email barbanderson@hmbreview.com or call 650-726-4424x 303.

GROUP ADVERTISING DIRECTOR/ASSISTANT PUBLISHER: A Newspaper group in Kansas, has an opening for a person who can fill the role of Group Advertising Director. We are looking for a person who can successfully lead staff and sales teams in multiple locations.

This person will oversee sales of daily and weekly newspapers covering communities in Emporia, Abilene, Chase County, Madison, and St. Marys, Kansas.

Key duties include: managing and motivating an inside and outside sales team with an emphasis on generating profitable revenue from our print, magazines, and digital products; helping to develop marketing programs. Developing budgets, setting goals and achieving them.

This person must have the ability to work productively in a team setting.

The person must be aggressive and adept at setting priorities and reordering them as needed, particularly under deadline pressure or as circumstances change. The person should have strong selling skills, and experience with multimedia and social media selling. We use all mediums to tell our stories and reach customers.

Send cover letter, resume with references to Publisher Chris Walker by e-mail at walker@emporia.com (put Sales Director in the subject line), or by mail to 517 Merchant, Emporia Kansas 66801 or fax at 620-342-4841.

SPECIAL PRODUCTS EDITOR: The Rochester Business Journal / The Daily Record of New York are Western New York’s premier source for general business and legal news. We are seeking a full-time special products editor. The ideal candidate must be able to interact seamlessly with all departments at both publications, including editorial, advertising, marketing and events.

This position is responsible for working with the sales department, editorial department and outside freelancers and customer contacts to create and edit more than 30 special products a year including event magazines, client publications and various other special products. The Special Products Editor must be skilled at project management with excellent organizational and written and verbal communication skills and the ability to juggle both short-term and long-term deadlines. A great attitude and positive energy are a must. The Special Products Editor also must be able to interact with the public at The Daily Record and Rochester Business Journal sponsored events, networking events and as the contact for marketing and custom publications completed for clients statewide. Excellent copy editing skills and knowledge of AP style are a must. We offer competitive pay and a generous benefits package. To apply visit apply-a2n5qetjfmm0@applicantstack.com. BridgeTower Media and all subsidiaries are Equal Opportunity Employers and value diversity in our workplace.

What is the worst that can happen when you don’t advertise??

NOTHING!!!

Call 800-887-1615 and place your ad today. editorandpublisher.com

1/18/19 2:36 PM

shoptalk /commentary Are the Media Biased Against Trump or is He Being Held to a Lower Standard?

By Kathie Obradovich

A

re the national mainstream media obsessed with criticizing President Trump to the point of blunting their impact on voters?

Or are White House reporters so numbed by his relentlessly outrageous behavior that he’s getting gentler treatment than past presidents would have received for doing the same thing?

Some top national reporters offered their thoughts on the question during a forum last November at Iowa State University. On that same day, Trump had raised the idea of creating a government-run, worldwide television network, basically as another expression of his contempt for CNN. Jennifer Jacobs, who covers the White House for Bloomberg, said Republicans tell her that the media’s fixation on being “hyper-critical” of Trump actually backfires because it causes GOP voters to tune it out.

Jacobs was careful not to criticize her colleagues in the White House press corps.

She called them “amazing at weeding out the unethical behavior and all the things that are happening behind the scenes that this administration doesn’t want you to hear about.”

But, she noted, White House officials have told her the mainstream media could be more effective if “we were a little less biased and hard-news reporters stayed in their lane and didn’t express any opinions.”

“If we were to just play it straight down the middle, our coverage of Trump would be very, very damaging to them,” Jacobs said. “And so, they almost like the fact that they can come at the media for being biased because if we played it straight, it would hurt Trump because there’s so much damaging information that we could unearth about him.”

The New York Times’ national political

“The coverage would be much, much, much tougher if this president was treated like past presidents.” correspondent, Jonathan Martin, pushed back at that assessment.

“If we played it straight every day and covered this president like we did past presidents, every day would be full of banner headlines, breaking news alerts, breathless coverage in print and on TV because no president has conducted himself this way,” Martin said.

If former presidents George W. Bush or Barack Obama “spent the first four or five hours of their day watching cable TV and tweeting back what they were seeing on TV, there would be stories from here to friggin’ Seattle and back about what is going on with the president of the United States,” he said. “They’re watching cable TV for hours on end and they’re on the internet like yelling at the TV? The coverage would be much, much, much tougher if this president was treated like past presidents.”

Jeff Zeleny of CNN said the creation of a state-run media network would run counter to the foundation of American democracy.

“The great thing about the First Amendment in this country is people can choose their news outlet and there is certainly one cable channel in this country that agrees with the president virtually all of the time,” Zeleny said. “So the idea of creating a staterun news service I think would be a march toward a very different time in our democracy than the forefathers intended.”

Here’s my 2 cents: People on both sides of the aisle need to understand that an independent media protects their interests, even when the tone or content of the coverage seems to run counter to personal political opinions or preferences. If we allow partisanship to erode press freedoms, our democracy will suffer. As Zeleny pointed out, if you’re a Trump supporter and think creating a federal-government propaganda machine is a good idea, think about how you’d feel if a President Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton did the same thing.

At the same time, I have cringed at the sideshow spectacle that White House media briefings seem to have become, with some reporters grandstanding instead of using the time to best serve the public. It’s generally not the government’s role to restrain or police the media—we have to hold ourselves and each other accountable.

This frank discussion from these well-respected journalists should help us understand that this is not an easy job. The right thing to do isn’t always obvious in the heat of the moment, and these folks are often their own harshest critics. I hope those of us who rely on their eyes and ears will take a minute to reflect on what our country would be like if the only news we had from our government was what people in power wanted us to hear.  Kathie Obradovich is the opinion editor of the Des Moines Register. She has been a reporter, editor and columnist in Iowa for more than 30 years. This article originally appeared in the Des Moines Register in November 2018. The Register has granted one-time use of this modified version to E&P for the February 2019 edition of its print and online magazine.

Printed in the USA. Vol. 152, No 2, EDITOR & PUBLISHER (ISSN: 0013-094X, USPS: 168-120) is published 12 times a year. Regular issues are published monthly by Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc., 18475 Bandilier Circle, Fountain Valley, CA, 92708-7000; Editorial and Advertising (949) 660-6150.

Periodicals postage paid at Fountain Valley, CA 92708, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Please send address changes to: EDITOR & PUBLISHER. P.O. Box 25859, Santa Ana, CA 92799-5859. Copyright 2019, Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Subscription Price: U.S. and its possessions, $99.00 per year, additional postage for Canada & foreign countries $20.00 per year. Single copy price $8.95 in the U.S. only; Back issues, $12.95 (in the U.S. only) includes postage and handling. Canada Post: Publication Mail Agreement No. 40612608. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 682.

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