If you can read to the end, you are not the problem

Before my 18-year-old grandson returned to his Australian university after a short visit, I pressed to his chest a 10-page magazine article and told him to read it. It was the cover story from the August issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The story’s title was “The Age of Reading is Over”.

Earlier, his 15-year-old brother had told me how his class received a synopsis of the plot of Macbeth to help them understand Shakespeare. I said I could accept that (because my late mother’s Junior School Shakespeare copy of The Merchant of Venice has a preface that fully outlines the plot). Nevertheless, I showed him her copy of Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and told him he should read that if the Bard’s blank verse and rhyming couplets were a problem. The bestseller retains as much Shakespearean language as possible while telling wonderful stories. A copy of it was waiting for him when he returned to Sydney.

My grandsons are children of the digital age. While my childhood was defined by the six inches by nine inches dimensions of a hardback book, theirs is defined by the size of the latest mobile screen they have been able to persuade their parents to buy – roughly half that of my childhood page. And, while they are adept scrollers, I am fairly certain they have never scrolled as far as I read as I consumed 285 pages of Charles Dickens’ close typed Tale of Two Cities.

Don’t get me wrong: My grandsons do read books, but their generation has been hardwired into screen-based information.

After reading Rose Horowitch’s deeply disturbing article in the Atlantic Monthly I felt I had to embark on a personal mission prove to her wrong…in some small way. The timing of my grandsons’ visit made them ideal targets. I thought I was off to a good start when the 18-year-old assured he would read the article on the flight home. Continue reading “If you can read to the end, you are not the problem” →

Large cracks in newsrooms’ critical path to the future

The warning sign over the future of newsrooms is the one found on the London Underground: Mind the Gap.

A future newsrooms study jointly undertaken by the Financial Times and the World Association of News Publishers surveyed 86 countries, including New Zealand. It found four interconnected gaps that are preventing newsrooms from turning plans about their future into a new reality. Many are falling short on strategy, audience trust, capabilities, and skills.

There is no shortage of ideas, and the direction of travel seems to be well understood, but translating that into action is proving harder than many imagined. In the introduction to the report, FT Strategies director Lisa MacLeod issued a stark wake-up call: “Our newsrooms are not well prepared for a disrupted future”.

She put it bluntly, saying that while there was talk of “a grand game about audience-first journalism”, actual workflows tell a different story. Almost two-thirds of newsrooms are still based on single-channel legacy structures. These structures are throttling transformation because content is still produced for a primary platform and then only adapted for other purposes that should have equal (or higher) priority.

Throughout the report there are recurring references to the audience-first journalism that, in most cases, is more a noble aim than a reality. There are exceptions, however, and New Zealand provides one of them.

The report highlights a service-oriented journalism initiative by Stuff that encourages readers to contact the newsroom with problems they want Stuff journalists to investigate. Since it was launched last September, the service has received more than 500 submissions from people who are ‘ticked off’ about something. Solving Stuff has investigated everything from fraud to missing suitcases. The first 10 stories generated more than 420,000 pageviews.

The feature is notable for both its direct reader input and its transparency. It explains the steps a Stuff journalist takes to investigate the problem and, if the problem isn’t solved, it says so. The result is a feature which gives readers a sense of direct involvement that is enhanced by a candid approach on the part of the Stuff journalists involved – Natalie Akoorie and Tony Wall.

It is one example of how audience engagement can work but the problems facing newsrooms are wider and more deep-seated than can be solved with a single initiative. The challenges demand a newsroom-wide end-to-end cycle that is similar to the concept-to-market approach used in product development. Editorial departments are not always good at that sort of thing. Continue reading “Large cracks in newsrooms’ critical path to the future” →

Next time you see a journalist, ask if you really matter

The books have simple one-word titles. I have finished reading one and am halfway through the other. Neither is about media or journalism, but both should send important messages to those who presume to report on our society. The titles of those books are Mattering and Noise.

Mattering is really a self-help book. Written by former CBS Sixty Minutes producer Jennifer Breheny Wallace, it is aimed at people who feel their relevance is unrecognised, slipping away, or (worst of all) non-existent.

Noise is an altogether different book. Written by three professors – Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, business strategist Olivier Sibony, and legal scholar Cass Sunstein – it is a deep analysis of what gets in the way of sound judgement.

After I finished Mattering, and was reflecting on yet another profound insight in Noise, it suddenly occurred to me that I was reading about things that are fundamentally important for the future of professional news media.

Let’s start with mattering.

At a personal level I am sure we have all, at some time in our lives, questioned whether or how much we matter to our friends, work colleagues, local community and society in general. The multitudes who have been made redundant at a point in their working lives invariably ask such questions. So, too, do people like me who are increasingly separated by advancing age from the occupations that helped define us. Even a change in personal circumstances may give rise to doubts about whether we matter.

However, mattering is not only a personal need. We are social animals and our sense of identity and worth are bound up with neighbourhood, community and country. Just as we need to know that we are significant to those who directly touch our lives, we also need to know that we matter collectively.

This raised in my mind a question that I invite you to ask yourself the next time you read your newspaper or tune in to a news bulletin. This question is this: “Does this tell me that I or my community matter?” Continue reading “Next time you see a journalist, ask if you really matter” →

Chair’s subtext contains key to RNZ audience revival

New Radio New Zealand chair Brent Impey has told every journalist who has interviewed him about his new role that he will not interfere in operational matters. He does not need to meddle because he has now made it abundantly clear where changes have to be made.

He told Colin Peacock on RNZ’s Mediawatch that there were four priorities. Audience numbers on RNZ National and Concert must improve. So, too, must the state-owned organisation’s level of trust, and the size of its various digital audiences. Finally, it needs to become country’s most popular digital news platform.

Earlier in the week he threw down the gauntlet to a principal target.  He told the New Zealand Herald’s Shayne Currie that RNZ was “coming after” the Herald’s NZME stablemate NewstalkZB. He also highlighted a point of difference between RNZ and the commercial network – 18 minutes of advertising to which RNZ audiences did not have to listen. That may have sounded odd coming from a man whose background was in leading a company that had fought hard for every advertising dollar it could earn. However, Impey’s experience as chief executive of MediaWorks for a decade taught him more about audiences than advertising.

That was clear from what Stewart Sowman-Lund reported in The Post. Impey told him young people were not interested in radio, which was the province of people over 50. And he acknowledged that the habits of this older audience were harder to shift. He told The Post that adding 28,000 to the listenership of RNZ National by the end of the year (a goal the broadcaster had set itself) was “actually quite a challenge”.

The over-50s may be harder to shift but they have already moved…away from RNZ. Continue reading “Chair’s subtext contains key to RNZ audience revival” →