Bargain Basement Convergence or Real New Media

Crazy times. The debt laden Tribune Company is combining its two Hartford television stations with the newspaper it owns, The Courant, and making the TV stations' general manager publisher of the paper in addition to running the stations. Tribune management touts it as the future of media. It may be the way of the future but it will become a roadmap to disaster unless the company pays close attention to the details and the journalists who create the content.

As we watch General Motors attempt to reorganize, with great pressure from the government, you might enjoy David Brooks' take on it. TV stations risk fates similar to the automakers, because of short sighted business models that focused on cutting not building. Fear was a big motivator along with an aversion to risk. I fear that anyone who thinks you can just combine web, newspaper, and TV assets, doesn't understand the unique nature of each medium. I believe they are correct in combining certain resources but a poorly conceived joint operation will weaken them all and diminish the reasons users, readers, and viewers choose a particular website, paper, or station. They have to overlap and converge but cannot just become different platforms for identical or barely indistinguishable content. With all deference to the great McLuhan, they have to understand that each medium is its own message. The point is that they are doing what they are forced to do. There is no high concept or added value for viewers in what I read from the Tribune news release.

The successful convergence model will take advantage of pooled resources but must be built on the talent and creativity of journalists who understand the different media they serve. One size journalist doesn't fit all. The common qualities of newspaper writing and text articles for the web overlap to the greatest extent. But how you populate a website is a task much different from producing a newscast. The basic facts of news stories may be constant across platforms, but how you make that content meaningful on television requires a different set of skills and approach for the web, or radio for that matter.

The leaders of converged journalistic enterprises need to be symphony conductors, synthesizers who recognize that the gifted video editor may not be the best writer. And the on-camera communicator who addresses television viewers, may not be as effective on the small screens of smart phones and smaller devices that require more intimacy and less formality. These nuances will make the difference between meaningful content that matters and simply filling time, space, bandwidth.

As we become inundated with content and information, the journalist's most important role will be to sort through it all and make sense. In the old days news professionals saw themselves as "gatekeepers". The gate is wide open now, with blogs and applications like Facebook and Twitter. Today's journalist must be a sense maker who understands the different tools available to reach the public and how to use a particular set of tools well. The basic skills and traits that made a news man or woman good at a particular craft will serve them well in the future. But the money folks will have to understand that in order continue making money and creating value, investing in talent will pay the biggest dividends. When cutting costs becomes necessary it is even more critical to invest wisely in content that stands out and offers messages consistent with the particular medium on which it appears.

As Tribune consolidates in Hartford, how the merged media handle the "sense making" will be critical to the success of each entity. All generalists with few specialists will not give the audience a reason to read, watch or surf Tribune's newly combined operations. To get a piece of the Long Tail that fuels new media success stories, unique content well suited and particular to presently underrepresented areas must be nurtured and developed. Then this new approach can offer content and media that is creative rather than destructive, and actually will grow revenue; more important, it will serve its audience by helping make sense of our challenging moment.

Bailouts and Bonuses

The spectacle continues, failed executives reaping not what they have sown, but the benefits of bailouts and stimulus in form of bonuses from our taxes. President Obama tells Sec. Treas. Tim Geithner to get it back and the congressional financial services committee chair, the usually frank Barney, expresses outrage and threatens action. It’s a bit rich—the pun obviously intended—to expect anybody, just looking for a job, to be anything but outraged.

Maureen Dowd invokes the words of her father who cautioned against barricading a door with a boiled carrot. We’ve had a bit too many soggy vegetables and not enough real roughage in the Washington diet of late. AIG replaces the bankers and automobile geniuses as poster child of the week in the ongoing tales of “don’t these guys get it?” After a dressing down from the commander in chief, AIG chairman Liddy now says the AIG bonus babies are going to give half back; bravo! As one teacher I know once said, while explaining the cliché that truth is stranger than fiction, “you can’t make this stuff up”.

So send in the clowns. The only place to go these days for a dose of sanity is your favorite comedian. Whether it’s Stewart or Leno, O’Brien or Letterman, Maher or Colbert, they seem to be the only sane ones around. And they make us laugh. So when President Obama sits down with Jay Leno this week, maybe we can get past the cooked carrots and find out if there is something a bit more solid on the menu when it comes to calling out the malefactors who are raiding the treasury. Maybe some of those millions might find their way to job seekers and businesses that really need it.

Information vs. Wisdom & A Fundamental Paradox

Wisdom continues to be in short supply these days, even as we are overwhelmed with information. The task of sorting through the information at our fingertips, in order to find meaning, serves a useful purpose. For many years this was the job of journalists. As we've seen, lately, with the demise of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Denver's Rocky Mountain News, we'll have fewer traditional journalists helping us find meaning out of all the information available. TV news rooms have also shrunk. In several markets stations are pooling resources to save money, which means that fewer folks are out there gathering the news. As newspapers fail and TV stations--at least some in several markets--get out of the news business, social media in the form of websites like Facebook and Twitter offer more streams of information, but little more in the way of wisdom or meaning. The formula for a future with more wisdom and meaning in our lives has to include the best of journalism using the tools of the 21st Century, including social media and the evolving technologies of tomorrow. Where corporate newspapers and television stations have failed, entrepreneurs must emerge to fill the gap.

Understanding a fundamental paradox may help to navigate the economic obstacles blocking the best in journalism from finding its way with new technologies. Simply stated, contract and simplify to grow and thrive. To understand complexity we need simplicity. The hierarchies of traditional newspaper journalism were created to service large organizations requiring printing presses and distribution networks. Likewise, TV newsrooms needed big cameras, transmitters, and teams of people with different skills to produce all the material that fills a newscast.

For the individual journalists with entrepreneurial know how, the future is filled with opportunities. But the scale of organizations must be manageable and focused. Being the biggest can get in the way of being the best. Clearly, there will be large media organizations that continue to thrive and offer timely and meaningful content. The networks, a few national papers and magazines serve the public in important ways. But the days of five or more stations doing TV news in every market of reasonable size will certainly change. And as we're seeing with large daily newspapers starting to crumble, that era is over, too.

So back to the fundamental paradox and who will pay for the nimble entrepreneurs creating all this meaningful content? A few models of success come to mind. The West Seattle Blog was started by TV journalist Tracy Record and her husband Patrick Sand. Frustrated by the lack of good hyper local coverage of their neighborhood, the blog evolved into a business that makes money from advertising. Another local success story is The Voice of San Diego. It follows a non-advertising model, relying on donations from members, similar to how PBS and NPR stations raise revenue. And right now there are a number of new entries getting ready to launch including the San Diego News Network, and a web only version of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

To remain vital, these new media enterprises will have to continue evolving. As we've observed over the course of many years, technological innovation precedes the way content providers adapt. Sometimes it happens very fast. In the case of TV and newspapers it has been a slow, and now painful, evolution over the course of more than a decade. The advantage newer media entries share is their smaller scale allows them to change quickly. After all, it's much easier to steer a sports car than an 18 wheeler; of course, both require skill.

50 Years On Broadway, Just Down The Street

Just a block and a half apart, in the heart of New York’s theater district, two outstanding shows span 50 years and much more than time. They are In the Heights, reigning Tony winner for best musical,and a new revival of West Side Story. Named for the Manhattan neighborhoods in which they are set, Washington Heights and the West Side (Hell’s Kitchen?), they present particular views of Latino life in a city of dreams.

In the Heights offers optimism tempered with street smarts delivered with upbeat music set to literate lyrics in the form of resonant rap. It all works. The neighborhood is in the middle of a heat wave. The lights go out; they are powerless. But the real power is not the electrical current. It is in the lives of the neighborhood, a community built on caring for each other as they struggle and strive for something better, only to realize that in this little barrio they have all the important comforts of home.

West Side Story’s saga is more familiar, the Romeo and Juliet inspired forbidden love between a Puerto Rican girl and an Anglo boy. Maria and Tony fall for each other but prejudice and hate turn their attraction into tragedy.

One of the innovations of the current revival is that actors use Spanish for scenes where it would naturally be spoken, unlike previous versions where English was substituted. Translations will be available for the audience members who need it. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the music and lyrics for In the Heights—and starred in the original production—is helping out with the new West Side Story to make the English and Spanish flow seamlessly, as it does during In the Heights.

Each show, in its own way, captures the spirit of its time. For the Jets and Sharks of West Side Story, tragedy is the only means for change, the mistrust and hatred run so deeply. But 50 years later, life in Washington Heights is hard but filled with hopefulness. The barrio’s smart girl is off to Stanford, and neighborhood businesses struggle but survive; and there’s always the Lotto. All you need is paciencia y fe (patience and faith).

The music and lyrics for both shows sparkle. The styles are quite different but appropriate for the times in which they are set and the tales they tell. Bernstein and Sondheim have a worthy successor in Miranda who started writing In the Heights while a student at Wesleyan University.

During these trying times we need a lift. The movie industry thrives while much of the economy continues to crumble. I’m fortunate that I visit New York often and get to the theater regularly. Few shows I’ve seen in the last ten years rise as high as In the Heights. It is a rousing diversion during this troubled chapter in history. That its creator is helping with West Side Story’s revival, just down the street, serves as a fitting footnote to a fifty year journey of just a few blocks.