I kept having this one thought during the recent  Inland Press Association’s Mobile and Social Solutions Conference  --- why aren’t there more people here? 

As legacy news operations have shrunk, so have the conferences that bring journalists together to exchange ideas and discuss what’s new in the industry.  Used to be I would build my yearly work and vacation calendar around the SPJ, ASNE, NAA, NABJ and NAHJ conferences.  Not anymore. I stopped doing so years ago, as conference attendance began to dip as fast as circulation numbers.

But Inland keeps plugging along. The Chicago conference, with roughly 40 attendees from small to mid-sized publications, attracted an all-star lineup of speakers worthy of a conference 50 times the size  (that's why you won't believe who was there). Among them (and I apologize upfront for those that I missed): Alan Mutter, the author of the widely respected Reflections of a Newsosaur;  two social media experts at the top of their field, Shannon Kinney, the founder of Dream Local Digital, and Toby Bloomberg, the president of Bloomberg Marketing; Charles Laughlin, the senior vice president of BIA/Kelsey; Christy Oglesby, the Managing Editor for Engagement at Cox Media Group; Erin Dougherty Foley, a partner in Seyfarth Shaw; and Rich Forsgren, the chief technology officer at Times Publishing Company. (For the record, I spoke as well).

Among the subjects covered --- eight tech trends changing newsrooms; the content challenges publishers face in the digital world; how to use video to increase audience; new ways of showcasing content; a vendor showcase that highlighted some cutting edge digital work (I found Matt Voight’s Saambaa and Tony Wills’ Local Yield Mo presentations fascinating); and much more.

 Inland (and its partner, the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association) are filling a huge void in the industry by providing valuable low-cost training and conferences to its members. And it bears repeating --- Inland brings in speakers who are the top of their game, speakers who could demand fees just for showing up, but don’t.  That’s a testament to Patty Slusher, Karla Zander, Mark Fitzgerald and the rest of the Inland staffers who have built strong connections throughout the industry and have a wealth of experts they can call on to help educate their members.

Inland, SNPA, and other small associations are showing that you can help your members thrive during tough industry times. They’re not flashy, and that’s a real good thing. They just do good work, and it would behoove publishers to support them.

Why? We all know associations are in trouble.  Dues and memberships are often the first budget items slashed, and even if they’re not, there’s no travel budget to pay for transportation and hotel (often the most expensive parts of any conference).

But staying away falls under the penny (un)wise, pound foolish. Yeah, it costs to attend, but you’ll learn more in two days that you will all year. And really, it’s incredibly economical. You can’t get all of these experts in one place and have a chance to pick their brains. Yeah, you can save a few pennies now, but that won’t help you in the long run.

You can get more information about Inland and SNPA at:

www.Inlandpress.org

www.SNPA.org

The American education system will soon undergo the type of disruption legacy publishers have already been though.  

We all know the college debt crisis is crippling our economy and placing an overwhelming burden on recent graduates. The numbers tell the story --- $1.2 trillion in total college debt, with seven of 10 students carrying an average debt of nearly $30K. That’s the average debt. Students who go to higher-priced colleges, or go for advanced degrees, carry a much higher debt load.

The combination of a tough job market and stifling college loan payments means 36 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 31 are living at home. That’s the highest since 1969, when the U.S. Census Department started tracking that data.  We haven’t even touched on the stranglehold private lenders have on borrowers, or the cost of serving the debt, or how that debt means graduates have less money to help fuel a consumer-based economy. Just a mess all around.

Then, I read this piece about nano degrees. In short, AT&T and Udacity are teaming to offer online courses in basic programming skills for entry-level positions as a data analyst and other like positions. AT&T it setting aside 100 jobs for these trainees, and Udacity is working with other partners.

Oh, the AT&T program costs $200 a month. Yeah, two hundred.

Now, some may dismiss this as an online trade school that has limited applications. I disagree. Think of all of the skills that can be learned online. In addition to almost anything programming based, English, journalism, math, social work, criminal justice, and marketing are just a few of the classes that can easily be taught outside of a traditional classroom using the same method. I’m not talking about online institutions that teach many of those classes and charge tens of thousands annually. I’m talking about the kind of “targeted education” being pioneered by AT&T and Udacity.

Those companies are showing us all the future of education, and this roadmap can be replicated by others. A public relations group, for example, could partner with the largest employers in its networks and offer a low-cost option for those interested in marketing work. A journalism organization could do the same for legacy media. Technology companies could ban together and offer similar programs with similar benefits.

OF course, this won’t work for all degrees. Aspiring neurosurgeons or bio-chemists need lab time and hands-on training. But there’s a whole swath of educational training that can be done, and it can be done a lot cheaper while maintaining quality.

A university simply offering online courses --- at its existing rates --- won’t be enough to compete. It could be those institutions will have to target what they offer and gear their business (yes, education is a business) aligned with specialized fields, especially in medicine.

This targeted education is the wave of the future, and higher educational institutions should start thinking about how they’ll deal with the disruption that will occur.

Old-school journalists have been trained to be unbiased in their reporting and objectively report both sides of an issue. That creed has been eroded by the Fox and MSNBC’s of the world, which have ushered in the age of polarization by sticking to conservative or liberal agendas that pander to a specific audience.  

There is, finally, a news organization that is leading the way in meaningful explanatory journalism with limited bias (more on that later).

Vox has been around for just a few months, and it’s already one of my three daily must-reads (behind the New York Times and now just ahead of the Verge). Ezra Klein and his crew have so far done a masterful job writing for the digital age. It’s a model all writers should look at closely.

It’s really a simple plan that old schoolers (like me) have scoffed at for years: Take the most interesting issues of the day and explain them --- don’t just tell me about them.

I find myself going there to read the analysis of some very smart people. The “explained in two minutes” feature is tailored for the time-pressed, limited attention span generation that wants everything fast and now. I sought out Vox when I wanted to know more about the Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS) and the current crisis there. Same when I wanted to know more about Boko Haram. I looked for information on Vox.

I sought out Vox because I knew I would get context --- a missing element in most legacy journalism writing today. People just don’t want to know that something has happened. They want to know why and what it means, and they want the information in an easily digestible format. Regardless of what you think of BuzzFeed, it has shown us the wisdom of lists. Vox has picked up on that.

Earlier, I said Vox is achieving its goals with “limited” bias. I don’t think you can write in an explanatory way without your own biases --- conscious or otherwise --- seeping in. For example, in an excellent explainer on health care, the author noted one out of every six dollars is spent on healthcare, and “that’s a lot of dollars.” Well, maybe some people don’t think it is, or maybe it’s just right.

But that doesn’t bother me. Vox, it seems, is smart enough to realize that non-bias and objectivity have always been a journalistic fantasy. It’s something that legacy journalists strive for but is rarely attained. Just check some of the wording and cues in news story sentences. Journalists often write that an incident is horrific, dumb, questionable, etc. That’s certainly leading.  Vox also realizes its audience is smart enough to form its own opinions, despite what it writes. Vox’s job, it appears, is to explain and inform, and then let its audience make its own decisions. Love that approach.

Vox is not perfect, and no one should expect a venture so young to be even close. For example, I could do without the opinionated headlines (Israeli’s occupation of the West Bank is wrong), but hey, maybe  that’s an experiment. I generally ignore that anyway.

The Vox way is something that all legacy newsrooms should pay close attention to. Don’t just tell your readers that something has happened. Tell them why it did, why it’s important, and why they should care. Otherwise, your audience declines will accelerate as other digital platforms mirror Vox’s model.

Check out this interview with Ezra Klein for more information on his vision for Vox. For the records, I don’t know anyone associated with the publication

In my latest blog post, I wrote that core media is now niche --- and that caused a bit of a stir. But it’s really a very good way for legacy operations to view their business because doing so will help them survive long term.

Let’s take newspapers. It the glory years, newspapers were fat with page count and large staffs that could bring readers all types of news --- national, international, local, sports, lifestyle, entertainment, health --- and list went on and on. Of course, in those pre-internet glory days, the competition consisted of other legacy media outlets operating in, more or less, the same way.

We all know that things have changed and had a devastating impact on legacy media. (The latest big story --- Time Inc., the once-former publishing powerhouse, has been spun off into a stand-alone company that some analysts are questioning can survive long term.)

Meanwhile, there are dozens of excellent digital publications staffed by seasoned journalists that, from all indications, are doing extremely well. In my view, Politico has surpassed the Washington Post as the politics must read inside the Beltway. Vox is showing legacy companies why explanatory journalism is the future, Fivethirtyeight.com’s data brilliance is pioneering is changing how journalists look at data sets. River Avenue Blues combines insights, sarcasm, and excellent reporting and is now the must read in a competitive New York media marketplace. These are just four example of hundreds of sources that have found the Holy Grail --- they are relentlessly focused on one topic area, reporting the hell of it, and gaining readers and fans by the boatload.

So what can legacy media learn from this? First, admit no newspaper, TV or radio newscast can be all things to all people. Those days are long over. Think about how people consume news nowadays. Looking for sports, entertainment or health information? There’s SI.com, TMZ and WebMd, and hundreds more specialty sites where those came from.

Each legacy media company needs to really understand what its community hungers for, and use its full-time staff to exclusively focus on those limited topics.  And, knowing what the community wants goes far beyond marketing surveys that are by in large still given by phone. Guess what? One in three Americans don’t even have landlines, and not everyone that has one even uses it. How can such a survey even approximate a reliable result with actionable information?

No, legacy companies need to go beyond those calls and employ a number of different methods to really understand what their communities want them to be.  Focus groups, social media-based surveys, online metrics analytics are all parts of the survey landscape. When they really know that, they can begin the process a building a business that has a chance to succeed. It’s clear, from the continued drop in audience and profits, that the constant cutting and tweaks isn’t working.

The much discussed NYT innovation report brings into focus what still ails publishers, nearly 20 years (!) after the dawn of the internet revolution. It’s not that the revelations in the Times’ internal look at its operations is at all earthshattering. For example, an internal memo says:

"The report concludes that the masthead needs to make further structural changes in the newsroom to achieve a digital first reality, including having a senior editor focused on audience development, another group focused on analytics and an advisory strategic arm." 

That’s no great shakes. Any publisher not doing those basic things isn’t pay much attention to the future viability of its business. But when the Times speaks, people listen. In this case, that’s a good thing.

The NYT report clearly shows the challenges of attempting to move a traditional, core business into a full digital operation that can be as nimble and as focused as BuzzFeed, Vox, Upworthy and the hundreds of others that have quickly changed the digital content landscape. What the Times report does is bring to light an important issue not bring discussed in a meaningful way:

Those media upstarts are becoming the new traditional media in the digital realm. The old guard --- your local newspaper, or electronic newscast --- are becoming niche.

Think about that for a second. These new media companies have a far better understanding of how people consume news, when they consume it, what they want, and what makes them read it. The have a more advanced understanding of metrics and new technologies that help them drive their business. They have identified coverage areas they can own, and they do so relentlessly and deeply. Their audience tells them what they want, and the new media companies deliver.

Meanwhile, the old guard has a group of editors or producers who have daily news meetings that determine what they think is important to their audience. Those declining circulation and ratings numbers show they’re not guessing right.

Over the course of time, I plan to write quite a bit about what the old guard can do to stay relevant and maintain a thriving and profitable business. Here are my first thoughts:

Look at different metrics. We must stop taking about page views, uniques, circulation numbers and GRPs.  Focus exclusively on audience engagement. Upworthy is spot on in this regard --- it’s far more important to understand how many people are actively engaging with your content, and for how long, than to simply say someone tuned in, or turned a page, or looked at your site. The metrics train has left the station and most old guard companies are not fully onboard.

Be obsessive about metrics: It’s not good enough to simply say we pay attention to metrics. We have to obsess about them. Old guard media needs people who are relentlessly focused on every nuance of every piece of copy, and utilize the best available tools to the fullest extent. Now, we’ll hear that’s impossible because newsrooms produce so much copy. And therein lay the problem. Most old guard news sites are jammed with stuff few care about. Pare back and focus on what’s driving audience, not what someone from a news meeting thinks might do well or believes needs to have a digital home.

Perform A/B testing until your eyes bleed: One thing these new digital companies have taught us: They A/B test like crazy until they find just the right headline or phrase. Testing just a couple of headlines isn’t good enough. Testing dozens on a story might get you where we need. Check this out:

 For each piece of content, Upworthy curators create at least 25 headlines. The managing editor chooses four of those and tests them to see how readers respond. Upworthy has learned that a good headline can be the difference between 1,000 or 1,000,000 people reading or viewing a story. When it tests headlines, Upworthy sees a 20 percent, 50 percent, and even 500 percent difference between headlines for the same story

 There’s no such thing as a story anymore: Sorry, but stories don’t cut it. It doesn’t matter how important someone thinks a story is. A story needs to be a package with interesting elements that holds readers attention. It needs to provide context and analysis so readers learn something and stay interested in a subject. I’m an old-school journalist who has been saying this for 15 years --- simply reporting the facts isn’t good enough anymore, That is not what this generation of readers want, and it’s not what they expect.

Acknowledge the homepage is dead: Referrals send people to content, not to a homepage. People come to a homepage --- and leave. They don’t go deeper into the site. Putting so much effort into a page that, if we’re lucky, accounts for 30 percent of your traffic is a waste of resources. You can make much headway by focusing on the other traffic-driving avenues that pull in far more eyeballs.

My blog has had stops and starts over the last few months. A Fulbright Fellowship took me away for a while; preparing for retirement from Cox Media Group also diverted attention. Now, I hope to be able to devote more time to writing about subjects I’m passionate about.

Ray Marcano is President/CEO of Canis Digital, a consulting a digital consulting firm that specializes in digital audience growth, project management and market analysis. He can be reached at canisdigital@gmail.com; linkedin (@raymarcano), or through his website, www.canisdigital.com