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High Cost, Low Quality Plague Newspaper Video Efforts
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Not all newspaper video efforts fail
Posted by Jim Alred 11/3/2009 5:56:23 PM

I'm a little late to the conversation, but thought I might add something.

I was on the production crew for both Studio 55 and Prepzoneplaybook at naplesnews.com, both precursors to Rob Curley's efforts in Vegas.

I then brought my knowledge to a small circulation newspaper, 18,500 daily, in Rome, Ga.

Since December of 2006, we've produced close to 3,000 online videos, including our Emmy-nominated high school football show Gridiron Central.

No. We don't make millions of dollars, but we've found a great advertising niche in the football-crazy Deep South.

While we don't currently use pre-roll, we're just about to roll out, pardon the pun, that capability.

And while others are packing up shop and shutting down efforts, our videos continue to drive great traffic and yes even revenue, allowing us to branch out with even more video offerings.

The key I've found is to embrace your community and cover events people want to see. And don't forget that if you try to emulate television news, you'll lose every single time.

Instead, shoot your way and don't do fancy talking heads but let the voices from your own stories tell the stories.

And as far as videos integrated in story pages, our content management system has it built in to allow this on any story.

In fact, our success in video is allowing us to talk of launching a few more video projects in 2010.

So don't give up hope newspapers, because we're proving you can do it with a small stuff and practically no budget.

Jim Alred

Great video article - here's a couple more points
Posted by Chris Kouba 10/22/2009 12:40:16 PM

Great article, Ken - nice overview of the many lessons being learned across the industry.

We didn't talk specific numbers, so it might be easy to get the wrong impression about the HamptonRoads.tv timeline. I don't think I'd call the staff cuts "huge" - of 6 staff at the time, 2 were laid off (with severance), 3 were assigned to different departments but continued full-time video, and one was re-assigned to other online duties. I was one of those let go, but I wouldn't call 2 layoffs huge compared to the overall layoffs that the Pilot and many other metro papers had to make during the recession.

Sure, HamptonRoads.tv was early and aggressive/optimistic in trying to build a standalone video business - and we didn't expect to achieve that yet even without a recession. From the outside looking in, I'd say the Pilot continues to be relatively active in experimenting with video and other forms on online journalism and advertising.

Speaking of advertising.... it can be hard to tell who's running pre-roll if they're not doing it with every single video. And I wouldn't recommend that. We found that selling every possible pre-roll position stopped traffic growth; users just didn't accept it. YouTube is clearly leading the online video race and is conservative in the ad-to-video ratio: I saw some numbers recently where someone estimated they were running ads (not necessarily preroll) every 7th video.

Looking into it...
Posted by Steve Myers 10/21/2009 10:56:31 AM

Hey folks,

Thanks for registering your complaints. I'll look into the issues you raised and figure out if anything should be changed.

Steve Myers
Poynter Online

please, Ken, fix your mistake
Posted by Spencer Soper 10/21/2009 7:32:50 AM

I'm going to try to be as precise as possible, here, Ken. This is the paragraph I have a beef with:

Smaller newspaper sites like the themorningcall.com in Allentown, Pa., rarely sell pre-roll advertising. Perhaps that's why Spencer Soper is allowed to be so irreverent with his year-old, consumer-oriented video series: "On The Cheap."

Your point is quite clear: On The Cheap has been allowed to continue because it doesn't have preroll, based on your one-time look at one Tribune site.

I'm frustrated that you never asked me about preroll. Had you, I could have filled in some rather large gaps in your quite narrow observations.

Now that I've informed you Tribune websites around the country run On The Cheap with preroll from such advertisers as the NFL, Chevron and a movie studio, your response was to put this on your blog several grafs below your faulty assumption:

(Soper also points out that other Tribune sites that do have pre-roll advertising carry his "On The Cheap" segments.)

So you're saying, hey, remember that web video item I suggested has been allowed to continue because it doesn't have preroll ads. Well, guess what, it actually has preroll ads.)

I'm not taking issue with the overall point of your blog, so please stop insisting the overall point is correct and the details don't matter. I'm taking issue with a particular point you got wrong. And accuracy still matters to some of us, Ken.

Acknowledge that you made a false assumption and mischaracterized On The Cheap in that paragraph. Correct the wording of that paragraph so it is not misleading. Don't make your readers keep navigating through the story to find a paranthetical correction to a mistake they read several paragraphs earlier that hasn't been changed.

I really hope you take your mistake seriously, Ken, and fix it, especially since this is on a site dedicated to improving journalism.

And no hard feelings, here. I really have enjoyed your other posts.

Denial of error makes it worse
Posted by Bradley Fikes 10/21/2009 2:49:10 AM

Ken, you made a factually inaccurate statement about On The Cheap not having preroll ads:

"We actually have preroll ads. On The Cheap runs on Tribune websites throughout the country. Preroll advertisers appearing before the videos include Chevron, the NFL, Imagi Studios (promoting their film Astro Boy), and several other regional companies in such markets as NYC, Philly, Seattle and Houston. On The Morning Call site, we've had a local cable company and Applebees post preroll. I actually didn't realize we had so many preroll advertisers until I was forced to do Ken's fact-checking for him today."

The preceding statement was Spencer's, reprinted since you seemed to have glossed over it the first time.

You wrote:
"I observed that there is currently no pre-roll advertising on your site, and have observed the same thing about many other sites of similar size over several years."

Since several other Tribune Web sites use On The Cheap, you needed to take those sites into account. But you didn't, because you falsely assumed it only ran on The Morning Call. And so you gave readers a false impression of the video.

You wrote:
You seem aggrieved with the premise of this analysis, which is, in general, that producing high quality video is expensive, and low quality video typically doesn't gain enough traction to be financially viable.

There's a factual error in your description of On The Cheap. That's what's wrong with it.

You are entitled to your own opinions and premises. You are not entitled to your own facts, or to make misleading statements to advance your premise.

All reporters make mistakes. When good reporters make mistakes, they correct them and apologize, without fuss or evasion. They don't play word games, or wilfully misconstrue the objection. And that holds double if they write for a site that aims to teach good journalism.

Feel free to disagree
Posted by Ken Sands 10/21/2009 12:03:41 AM

Bradley and Spencer:
I appreciate your passion about the subject. This analysis of the state of video in the newspaper industry is based partly on interviews and partly on observation. I observed that there is currently no pre-roll advertising on your site, and have observed the same thing about many other sites of similar size over several years.
It is my opinion, based on those observations and what Spencer said later, that pre-roll is "rare." Feel free to disagree with that opinion. But I fail to see where there's a factual problem. There currently is no pre-roll on your site. In contrast, washingtonpost.com, for example, always has pre-roll.
You seem aggrieved with the premise of this analysis, which is, in general, that producing high quality video is expensive, and low quality video typically doesn't gain enough traction to be financially viable. (Whether or not a site has pre-roll is not as important as the overall traffic for video.)
Again, respectfully, you are free to disagree with the premise. After all, it is only my opinion. But opinions are not "correct" or "incorrect."
I realize there are going to be exceptions, such as the one pointed out by Mark Potts. Some of David Pogue's pieces on nytimes.com get a huge amount of traffic. But, so far, there's only one nytimes.com and only one David Pogue.

Uncorrected Error Plagues Ken Sands' story
Posted by Bradley Fikes 10/20/2009 10:36:52 PM

Hardly a "great post;" it's factually inaccurate reporting one wouldn't expect from a journalism training institute.

Ken Sands made a false statement writing about the On The Cheap videos of my old colleague Spencer Soper:

Smaller newspaper sites like the themorningcall.com in Allentown, Pa., rarely sell pre-roll advertising. Perhaps that's why Spencer Soper is allowed to be so irreverent with his year-old, consumer-oriented video series: "On The Cheap."

Not true at all. Sands just made it up. Spencer tried contacting Sands, then posting the facts in the comments, in the as-yet-vain hope of getting a correction.

The Morning Call does in fact sell pre-roll. But Sands never even asked Spencer about it. And when Spencer pointed out the error, Sands still didn't remove his falsified speculation. (BTW, I'm one of those who first saw the story and told Spencer, not knowing how it had been mangled).

I wonder what Nelson Poynter would have thought of someone who blows off an error like that.

High Cost, Low Quality Plague newspaper video efforts
Posted by Bill Demarest 10/20/2009 9:43:21 PM

Newsrooms ( or information centers to some of us) too often are handcuffed by having equipment that's too complicated and video editing software that's too technical. Keep it simple; use low-cost gear and get it in the hands of as many people as possible, and then centralize the editing of the video as it comes in.
Newspapers all too often just don't have enough interesting video content (beyond local sports) to keep readers/viewers interested. By making everyone on the team part of the video effort, even small organizations can produce enough interesting video for local news programs.
We also shouldn't be shooting to duplicate what TV and cable news stations do. Our advantage has always been having people constantly in the community. Our disadvantage, however, is that newspaper management almost always ties itself to big "systems" that are expensive and lack flexibility. If the gear we use takes weeks of training and only a few people have access, what's the point?
Keep it simple.

Video: A Shiny New Toy
Posted by Mark Potts 10/20/2009 7:44:01 PM

Great post, Ken, with some hard truths. I think a lot of newspaper sites (and advertisers) are attracted to Web video as a shiny new toy, only to find out that it's very hard to do well�and even harder to attract an audience.

Based on my experience at Philly.com and talking to other site editors with similar experiences, it seems clear that TV newscast-style videos (a la 702.tv) don't really cut it for most newspaper site visitors. Instead, what works--surprise!--are the same sort of things that are popular on YouTube: offbeat, entertaining, very short programming, or "you are there" news video. You know, the kinds of things that tend to go viral. Trying to replicate TV talking heads online just doesn't work (and yeah, 30-second pre-rolls don't help, either).

You didn't mention one of the most successful newspaper video efforts: David Pogue's wonderfully witty and inventive technology reports for NewYorkTimes.com, which have garnered millions of views, and have a certain guerilla-theater quality about them. That's what works, and papers should be trying to find people in their newsrooms with that sort of spark and verve to be the faces of their video efforts.

There's some history to this: 50-plus years ago, in the early days of TV, newspapers put reporters on air as newsreaders in very static settings. Fortunately, the medium evolved very quickly away from that, and journalists learned how to use broadcast TV to best advantage. Newspaper efforts in Web video need to similarly evolve to something that the audience finds more interesting and entertaining. You can't paste a newspaper onto a computer screen; you shouldn't try to paste (second-rate) TV news and programming onto a computer screen, either.

Have to point out a rookie mistake, here
Posted by Spencer Soper 10/20/2009 4:29:38 PM

I write On The Cheap for The Morning Call, which Ken mentions in this post. I've been corresponding with him privately about his erronneous assumptions today, but I'm frustrated with his response. Ken never asked me about preroll advertising in our e-mail interview. So I was surprised to see it was such a big part of his post. He basically says WP has lots of big money preroll ads, but it's rare for small papers like The Morning Call to sell preroll ads. He then goes on to say that "perhaps" On The Cheap has been allowed to continue for more than a year because it doesn't have preroll ads. There's just one problem that I pointed out to Ken this morning. We actually have preroll ads. On The Cheap runs on Tribune websites throughout the country. Preroll advertisers appearing before the videos include Chevron, the NFL, Imagi Studios (promoting their film Astro Boy), and several other regional companies in such markets as NYC, Philly, Seattle and Houston. On The Morning Call site, we've had a local cable company and Applebees post preroll. I actually didn't realize we had so many preroll advertisers until I was forced to do Ken's fact-checking for him today. When I told him about this, he put a paranthetical line several grafs down post publication that On The Cheap actually has preroll ads on other Tribune sites. But he never alters his flawed premise that the reason the column has been allowed to continue is because it doesn't have preroll ads. I know, he couches it with "perhaps," but that's just a lazy semantical tapdance that makes a lame substitute for more thorough reporting. I find it rather surprising that someone posting to a journalism training site would have such utter disregard for the facts. Remember, Ken, never assume. And I'm still wondering why you didn't ask me about preroll advertising before posting this item.
Oh yeah, one more thing, thanks for plugging On The Cheap. Some of my old colleagues saw it and were pretty jazzed.

Deja who?
Posted by Ben Pollock 10/20/2009 2:25:17 PM

We could applaud journalists' efforts to record and edit video, it would add so much. Wait. Hasn't this format been available for more than a half-century, with the kinks worked out decades ago?

Eric, what defines "success?"
Posted by Ken Sands 10/20/2009 12:45:00 PM

Eric, I'm curious to know more about your strategy, because no one seems to be using "success' to describe their video strategy. Are you talking about an editorial strategy, an advertising strategy, or both? You say that "often our video views triple our story views thanks to syndication."
What kind of syndication are you talking about?
Are you still at sunjournal.com? that's a small site. How many people do you have devoted to video? How does that stack up against advertising revenue from video?
Thanks for writing in!
Ken

Less is more
Posted by Eric Kaiser 10/20/2009 11:38:34 AM

Val makes a great point. Most video is separated from articles on newspaper sites or is not lead art. Thankfully we've been able to anchor our lead story with a video if necessary. When we set out to do video we made it clear that most of the time the expectation isn't to retell a story in video. Look for that one highlight, a strong clip or something that will enhance the story. We have been very successful with this strategy. Often our video views triple our story views thanks to syndication. I guess the "high cost" comes with studio type equipment. We got into this for around $16,000 and purchased high end gear for shooting and editing. Our focus is on local news events. No documentaries or variety shows. We are certainly open to ideas, but we rely on our audience to dictate what they want to see and read.

More quality short video needed
Posted by Curt Chandler 10/20/2009 11:13:14 AM

I agree with Val that newspaper affiliated Web sites need to integrate video into their stories more effectively. There is an excellent article by Ronald Yaros in the recent American Journalism Review that talks about this strategy, called contiguity (http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4818). Producing occasional mini-documentaries and marooning them in video players with the hope that viewers will find them doesn't seem to work. A major strength of Web presentation is that video can be used for emotional impact and written words used to provide context.
My students and I are experimenting with very short video inserts -- 30 seconds on average -- that work like still photos on steroids. They introduce the viewer to a character, show what that person does that is interesting and use natural sound and an interview to provide the soundtrack. These are designed to be incorporated into the story and again provide a format unique to the Web.
The key element is not whether the video contains every story detail (text can fill the gaps) -- it is consistently giving the viewer a quality experience every time they click on a video link.

We make it too hard!
Posted by val hoeppner 10/20/2009 10:11:56 AM

Great take on video journalism at newspapers. One other thing that I believe plagues newspaper video is the fact that video players are not integrated into articles. Instead, newspaper websites force you to follow a link or use a video tab that takes you to a slow and often poorly designed video player.
If newspapers are serious about video and visuals online they should incorporate both into their web design.

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