Academiatrics: Tampa Bay Newspapers

Thursday, July 14, 2011

The In's and Out's of this Study of Second-tier News Media and Education Policy: Part Three

Nope. I didn't forget where this discussion was headed.

It's just so easy to get diverted onto side trails and to wander among Elysian Fields of anything but education policy. Not that I'm not enjoying this excursion into the quagmires of policy and legislation. But, hmmmm, quagmires vs. Elysian Fields should say something.

So -- back to the in's and out's of this study of second-tier media. We've issued a cautionary caveat about the tangled web of media ownership. And we've noted what's out as far as this study is concerned: obvious first-tier national and local news organizations, local news organizations without a Web presence, other-than-English news outlets, and one online blog about local education but written by reporters for a first-tier local news organization.

So what's in?

In order to answer that question -- we're getting there, I promise -- we need to look at how the news media landscape has shifted over the last several years. Specifically, we need to look at some upstart new players.

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism issued its annual report on American Journalism recently. The State of the News Media 2011 made note of a couple of very interesting developments in the area of online news sources which, to no one's surprise, continue to claim a larger percentage of news followers.

The changes are two-fold. First, the players are changing. It's not just traditional news organizations putting up Web sites and sharing news from print to Web and back again. Second, the delivery substructure is changing so drastically that the relationship between news organization and news consumer is convoluted and tenuous.

In fact, the Pew report said, "It may be than in the digital realm the news industry is no longer in control of its own future."

Why?

Mainly because the behind-the-scenes online conduit components are not owned by the newspapers themselves. Print newspapers print their own papers, or hire a printer to do so, and hire delivery people to drop them on people's doorsteps or to fill vending machines. News broadcasters generally broadcast over frequencies owned by their company.

But online distribution is more complicated. As the Pew report points out, device makers, software developers, news aggregators, and social networks each have their own platform requirements and rules. And, while the end user, i.e. the news consumer, doesn't usually pay for news except when he/she buys a new computer (not seen in the same light as buying a news subscription), each of these links in the distribution news chain cost news organizations money.

Of more concern, the news consumer may access the news by clicking on a link on a social networking site -- but the link may have originated with a friend of a friend of a friend in Outer Mongolia. Indirect links make it almost impossible for news organizations to track audience data, which they use to target content and advertising to specific audiences and which is the commodity they sell to advertisers.

The results? The Pew report says, "Financially, the tipping point also has come. When the final tally is in, online ad revenue in 2010 is projected to surpass print newspaper ad revenue for the first time. The problem for news is that by far the largest share of that online ad revenue goes to non-news sources, particularly to aggregators."

Here's the kicker. Those news aggregators -- Yahoo, AOL, Bloomberg, and others -- are developing their own news organizations. Some of them can be considered second-tier news organizations -- for the time being, at least. Another ten years and, who knows?

(See, I told you I hadn't forgotten where we were headed!)

So -- here's what I'm including in this particular review:

Second-tier national media sources:

Second-tier state and local (Tampa Bay area, i.e., Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties) media sources:

Second-tier online newbies:

Whew!

Who are all these people?

Stay tuned!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Second-Tier News Media and Education Policy Discussions

Say 'news media' and most people think of the biggies: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, etc. People living in the Tampa Bay area of Florida might think of the St. Petersburg Times, the Tampa Tribune, and various local television stations.

But those news media organizations are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Floating just under the surface of instant name-recognition status are a larger mass of smaller news outlets. Some of them are owned by the same companies that own the biggies. Tampa Bay Newspapers, for instance, which publishes several weekly newspapers covering mid-Pinellas County, is owned by Times Publishing Co. Others, like Creative Loafing, cater to other types of audiences.

Still others are not official news outlets at all, but they still serve to disseminate information and to provide a forum for discussion. Often, these types of sources, such as Saint Petersblog, are online blogs.

Then there is a third type of news source that studies news in general, such as Poynter.org, or that comments on news coverage about a particular topic. The Media Bullpen, operated by The Center for Education Reform, critiques education coverage by media around the nation. Poynter.org, by the way, is produced by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which owns Times Publishing Co., which owns the St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Bay Newspapers and a few other publications.

And who funds and runs The Center for Education Reform?

Good question.

That and other questions about the role second-tier news media outlets play in discussions about education policy will be the topic of the next few postings -- with maybe a random post or two thrown in for good measure.

Stay tuned.