24/12/07

[...] Good follow-on post from Zac Echola. time savedtime [...]

31/12/07

[...] found a new blog by a Zach Echola recently when he joined in the short video production debate. He linked to Howard Owens and this blog, and stated his support for Howard’s idea that [...]

01/01/08

[...] hate to sit here constantly defending Howard Owens but here we are again. Howard recently posted a great little MBO plan to turn Luddite reporters [...]

02/01/08

I kind of agree with what you are saying but be careful of throwing terms like craft away when you are not really talking about video content but really talking about targeting traffic for product.

Craft is not nonsense. A craft is something you learn. Even Howard has talked about (crafting a disruptive video strategy) As you suggest it can be, perhaps, learned on the job (with some of our mistakes on show) rather than trying to get all the skills in place before producing anything.

But along with craft comes an element of pride in the job. I think many, half-baked, attempts to implement a disruptive policy forget this.

Getting video on the website is not just about getting it right with an audience or with advertisers (note the not just, I’m not saying they aren’t important). It’s also about getting right with your staff. They are the ones who may be going home moaning to their wives like you did.

You’re right, they may only matter to them. But telling them that they have to just ‘get over that’ doesn’t cut it. And unless you expect this ‘crap’ just to appear from that little hole below the long tail, I would imagine they are a group of people that are worth keeping sweet.

I know that isn’t the way disruptor’s like Howard are doing it. Like those advocating the quality approach, training and an investment in hearts and mind stuff are the key here. But in your defence, why not give a little grace on the other side.

I don’t think that anyone is advocating doing video for the sake of video unless

a)you count the disruptive model as a video for the sake of amount of traffic approach or

b) you are expanding your approach to have two definitions for video - video (the stuff you see on the website) for the sake of video(that over produced craft stuff that videographers go on about)

I get the impression you would advocate neither.

People are getting a bit wound up over trying to have some form of identity in a very fluid market. It has to be more than audience and traffic in the first instance. Shouting ‘wake up and smell the marketing coffee’ isn’t going to help build confidence or help develop a strategy.

02/01/08

What I’m saying is that ‘good enough’ is good enough right now.

Rarely can I think of reasons to stay on the scene for video longer than what it takes to tell the who, what, where, when and why.

You can craft great videos in short periods of time. Videos that tell (or supplement) the story and look good to your users. I never said we should have video for the sake of video. For the most part, that’s stupid. Take lots of pictures instead.

The point is that ‘hits’ do very little in the long run for a newspaper.com. Most news items have an extremely short shelf life before interest tapers off. Until newspapers produce video that is compelling over long periods of time (which would also mean killing registration, paid archives and building better filtering tools like search), there’s not enough ROI to sustain these high production values.

I’m not a cheerleader for morale. I’m a cheerleader for successful Web sites.

02/01/08

And these successful websites build themselves how?

Good enough may be good enough right now. I buy that view but what do you do when right now is finished? What do you do next? More importantly, who will do it for you? Where is your ROI on your staff because is sure has hell sounds like your not investing in them right now?

I think you’ll be spending your time managing staff churn with that attitude. But hey, maybe if you put enough staff through your website you’ll get a long tail benefit.

I appreciate you didn’t say that you should do video for video’s sake. My point was that no one was and assuming that anyone that isn’t getting the version of p&s disruption is. Well it serves your point but it doesn’t reflect the truth.

And since when did hits do nothing for newspaper.com? When you do all this long tail video, which has nothing other than the who, what where and why - very sticky stuff btw that - what does that result in. A warm fuzzy feeling to sell to the ad department? Just what does do lots for newspaper.com in the long run?

02/01/08

They build themselves through the magic power of search (and other forms of long tail filtering). Without sufficient content for search, you’re up a creek without a paddle.

And I think you’re misreading what long tail video should be.

Long tail video absolutely should be the good video, the well-crafted video. But that video has to stand up against time. When newspapers artificially devalue your content by hiding it behind paywalls (and thus the magic power of search) it’s ROI drops dramatically. All that time invested for few people to see it over the course of a week or a month and then it’s locked out of public view.

The quick-production videos give you two things:

First, right now, they give your readers immediate video that has high value before it falls behind a paywall or interest in the subject drops off. More immediate videos means more immediate value.

Secondly, it gives you a wide range of videos to search. When those paywalls come down (and they eventually will all come down), you’re going to need a sufficient catalog of content for searchers. Otherwise, what’s the point of searching? And if you don’t have a wide search inventory, you’re not going to woo advertisers looking to buy targeted ads based on search or tags or any other kind of filter.

You’re right. Almost all newspaper sites are running purely off ‘hits’ right now because they can’t leverage long tail filtering (and it’s their own fault).

Most people don’t want to transact $1.95 or whatever for an article or an old news video. It’s ridiculous to charge for archives.

But look at how truly powerful the long tail has been for companies like Google.

As blogs and a million user-generated content sites sites continually produce more content for anyone to find, they’re going to dominate the search market and peel away your readers’ attention.

Producing lots of stuff now keeps you competitive against other sites right now. Opening up the archives, and all that content with it, keeps you competitive in the long run.

And like I said, I’m not a cheerleader for morale. If you want to produce lengthy documentaries, get private funding and go at it. If you want to serve a likely small and targeted readership produce faster, more relevant videos.

03/01/08

Why is the pay wall relevant wrt the points you made about video? Everyone knows pay walls are a bad idea (especially for your model). Of course people won’t pay for an old video who said they would? Maybe people have said that the long tail would be better served with the story based video they produce as appose to the quick fix approach. But that’s just your goal with a different strategy.

Your not prizing open any management oysters and showing pearls of wisdom when you say that opening up an archive without a pay wall, properly optimized, will attract traffic to the site.

Thats what the debate is about here. Which type of video best serves the strategy. But i feel a merry go round starting here.

Look, I’m not saying that you get better morale by letting people produce long documentaries. That’s like me saying you believe that you don’t need journalists to produce a newspaper website - an over simplification.

To be frank quick video works for me just as well as ‘doco’ style. I don’t actually care. I would rather it was right for the story, audience and organisation just as much as right now.

I am saying that which ever route you take there are people who need to be managed and managed well. Not just search but Hearts and minds.

But you seem pretty clear that isn’t a priority for you.

Your view seems top be that if you generate enough stuff now, fill the site with crap as you put it, that will some how build up a critical mass of content that will suddenly become self-sustaining - a kind of perpetual motion machine of news.

So let’s cut to the chase. Let’s put video strategy to one side. Let’s say that your depth and understanding of the inner workings of the newsroom has won me over. Because you have obviously got the whole thing worked out.

So how about answering the question. Who is going to produce all this content?

03/01/08

You asked what the long term strategy was. I told you. It involves dropping the pay wall and having a large video inventory.

The answer to the “which type of video best serves the model” is both, but obviously with more focus on lots of video. Lots of content in general. I think you’re confusing success on the Web with arbitrary standards of quality. Clearly that’s not the case in a long tail, search-powered market. Quality videos are worthless if they aren’t relevant to the users.

And to answer your last moving goalpost question: You are going to produce the video. Everybody in the newsroom, every reporter, every producer and every editor should be capable of pointing a video camera at something and cutting some simple edits. At the very least. I honestly don’t give two shits if a reporter doesn’t want to do their job (whatever that may now entail). I’m not saying that to be a jerk, I’m saying that because I’m sick of lazy Luddite reporters. We simply have no room for them any longer. The fact of the matter is that we’re bleeding readers to the Web and not making up for that loss at all in advertising or in editorial strategies.

And yes, I understand that a lot of newsrooms are stretched thin and a lot of reporters produce a lot more than they used to. That’s a management problem, but only insofar as mangers don’t know how to manage for both the Web and the print product, it’s often too lopsided towards print which in turn just turns the Web sites into digital versions of the print product. They are wholly different media. I’ve made this argument dozens of times on this site. Publish to the database first and cull the best stuff for your other products. The database should be your front end system and your priority because the database doesn’t care about the medium.

I don’t know how I can make this any clearer before I have to write an entire business proposal and show you the math.

03/01/08

I give in. Mercy.

I obviously don’t get it.

I though that when you pushed a strategy forward that it was important to at least try and manage the expectations of the people you expect to, at least start, the process. If you lose some to ‘professional differences’ well that happens.

But obviously not.

It seems that all you need to do is just push all the content you have in to super database and then rock up and tell all the lazy ludditte journos who can’t do their job that they better put up or shut up.

I’m sure they can do the maths on that plan

07/01/08

[...] strayed perilously close to being a bit of a troll this week as I got in to a comment discussion with Zac Echola over a post he made defending/expanding Howard’s view. I though Zach was missing a point with [...]