Experts
John Temple
Former Editor & Publisher, The Rocky Mountain News
Recent Activity
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's Sunday column from Pushghar, Afghanistan contains an inspiring quote that reinforces why newspapers matter so much. The quote also is a reminder that newspapers are first and foremost about knowledge, an educational tool.This is what Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea,” told him at the opening of one of his schools for girls in a remote Afghan village."When a girl learns how to read and write, one of the first things she does is teach her own mother. The girls will bring home meat and veggies, wrapped in newspapers, and the mother will ask the girl to read the newspaper to her and the mothers will learn about politics and about women who are exploited.”
July 20, 2009, 12:55 PM
Newspaper people often blame others - see Google, parasitic aggregators, etc. - for their troubles making enough money online. But could there be another problem in many cases? Could it be that newspaper Web sites in many - even most - cases aren't good enough to compete?Mark Potts provides an excellent test for newspaper Web sites on his blog, recoveringjournalist.com. Now you may quarrel with his standards, but I think it's fair to say that Mark is an expert in Web journalism. He was one of the co-founders of WashingtonPost.com and has a deep digital resume. I happen to think he's got a lot of good ideas about Web journalism.I thought it would be an interesting exercise, since I no longer supervise a newspaper Web site of my own, to test one of the best newspaper Web sites, as identified by the industry itself through the Eppy awards. These awards, sponsored by Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek, honor "the best Web sites offered by newspapers, television, magazine and radio companies. " So to be fair, I didn't pick on an easy target. And I stayed away from the big guys - the NYTimes, WSJ, USA Today, which compete in a different league than most papers. I decided to apply Potts' test to the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson's daily newspaper. That newspaper won this year for "Best News Web Site with fewer than 1 million unique monthly visitors." It is owned by Lee Enterprises, one of the country's leading newspaper companies and one that is paying attention to online journalism.How did the Star do? It failed. It got a score of 41%, or 7 out of 17. Now, if I felt really generous and applied grade inflation, I could sneak it over 50% by reversing two scores that some might quibble with. Then it would get 9 out of 17. But the truth is I think I was generous giving it 7 passing grades. The score could easily have been lower. I think we can all agree, the results aren't very encouraging, especially for the "best news web site."What follows is Potts' test with my comments and grade for each item. I understand that some may disagree with my thinking. But I tried to act like a new resident of Tucson using the Star's site to make my life better. I think that's reasonable. I think there's much that can be learned from this result. Perhaps that's for another blog post.Without using search, find continuing, in-context coverage of a long-running local story. I decided to see whether the paper had continuing, in-context coverage of spring training and the issue of whether the Rockies and Diamondbacks would leave Tucson. I clicked on the latest story, "Teams ink deal to leave Tucson," and when I did I found high interest - 64 comments - with links to two related articles and a "Did You Know" question about spring training, but there was no link to a site that would have everything from analysis of the economic impact of spring training on Tucson to history of spring training in Tucson, photos and video, etc. Grade: Fail.Similarly, find a comprehensive package of information (even a collection of past stories) about a significant local icon or personality. Lute Olson seemed like a good choice, given his significance in Tucson as the longtime (and yes, former) coach of the University of Arizona Wildcats basketball team. So I typed his name in the site's search box and got one news story about Wildcats basketball. There was no link or refer to a page or site about Lute Olson or Wildcats basketball. It should be noted that only stories from the past week are free on this site, so perhaps that's the reason. Also, by this time I had clicked on the site enough that if I wanted to continue I needed to register, which I did. I did find at the top right hand corner of the page a small refer saying I could sign up for "Wildcat newsletters." I decided to go another route and go directly to the Wildcats basketball page to see if I could find a package of information on Olson. The drop-down menu on the navigation bar at the top of the page didn't have a clear link to Wildcats basketball. There's a pac10fanatic.com site, which was all schools and all sports. I tried it, but it didn't seem obvious what to do to find more on Olson there. So I tried "All sports." Strange as it may seem, I couldn't even find a basketball page, let alone a page on Olson. When I clicked on the columnists' page, I did find an Arizona Wildcats link, and it took me to a page that did have depth about UA sports. However, while there was a 2008-2009 basketball preview, it again wasn't obvious how to find out about Olson or the team taking shape for the 2009-2010 season. Grade: Fail.Locate all the coverage and information on the site about a specific local town. Casas Adobes was the first suburb of Tucson, begun in the mid-1940s, according to Wikipedia. Remember, I'm acting as a new resident who doesn't know much. The 2000 Census pegged its population at roughly 54,000. I typed its name into the site's search engine and did get a community calendar, one event and a "moving up" feature. There were also yellow page listings for the community and local web info. However, when I clicked on the community calendar link, I didn't find anything guiding me to more coverage and information on the community. So next I went to the Local News tab on the navigation bar. While I didn't find the name of the community, I did see a "neighbors" tab, so I tried it. That didn't do anything for me, but I did learn there that I could subscribe to a newsletter for what appeared to be any ZIP code in the Tucson area. I clicked on 85643 and got a few headlines, but no collection of material on even that ZIP. Grade: Fail.Starting on a story page (not the home page) quickly find other key information, e.g. the day's top headlines or most-read stories. (Remember, the vast number of readers don't enter your site from the home page, though print-focused newsies obsess about home pages.) I went to a hot, breaking news story about a Tucson man barricading himself in his house for four hours before surrendering. There was no list of the day's top headlines or of the most-read stories. Grade: Fail.Find a list of the best local restaurants, or ratings and reviews of a particular kind of cuisine, preferably by locality (extra credit: user reviews). BTW: This is why Yelp is really hurting newspapers. I went to the Food tab in the navigation bar and then clicked on the reviews tab. I found a search box where I could search by name, cuisine type, location and cost scale, but there was no list of best local restaurants or list of best restaurants by cuisine. I tried to type barbecue under cuisine type to see whether that would help. It wouldn't work. I had my choice of 9 types of cuisine, or "all." So I picked "Italian/Pizza." I got a long list of restaurants, with a single sentence summary of the review, but the list didn't indicate which were the highest ranked (there was no rating system at all) or where they were. So I clicked on one to see what I would get on the review page. I could find nothing there explaining what the paper thought was the best Italian restaurant or best for different types of Italian cooking. Grade: Fail.Find a local movie listing, or better yet, a local theater listing and review (extra credit: user reviews). One click on the Entertainment tab of the navigation bar showed me there's a link for movie times. One click and I was there. Easy. It wasn't so easy for theater listings and reviews. There's no theater tab under the Entertainment tab of the main navigation bar. So I picked Events. That didn't seem to work. I tried Calendar. But the categories on that page didn't include theater. Let's give the Star credit for good movie listings anyway. Grade: Pass.Find something a family can do for fun this weekend. I went to the Entertainment tab of the main navigation bar and picked Events, thinking that should help. There's a tab on the left side that says, "Get out." I figured that would work. The listings were limited, but I could have found something to do. However there's nowhere I could see on this site to find "family" events. Again, the Star barely makes the grade, but it does enough that I can say I can find an event for a family. Grade: Pass. (Barely.)Find any location mentioned on the site on a map—wait, no, you're not allowed to leave the site. No MapQuest or Google maps! I decided to stick with the man who barricaded himself in the house before surrendering to police. There was nothing on the story page that would help me find the location on a map. No link in the story. No map accompanying the story. No indication that searching for location was possible. Grade: Fail.Using the site's search function, search for a term you know appeared in the newspaper in the past 24 hours. I tried Supreme Court, given the prominence of the hearings for nominee Sonia Sotomayor. I found story links from Friday, Thursday and Wednesday and a link to "More." There I found a total of 10 stories. Grade: Pass.Subscribe to your site's mobile alert function (you have one, right?) and see if it's truly useful. While you're at it, be sure to look at your site regularly on its iPhone or mobile version (you have one, right). Is it updated as frequently as the main site? There's a small link far down the home page on the left side. When I went to the site, it took me three clicks to get to a story. That's too long. I followed the story of the man barricaded in the house. Instead of continually updating one story, there are three stories on the recent updates page. I don't think that makes sense. But, the site does work, although nowhere near as nicely as major newspaper mobile sites. Grade: Pass. (Barely.)Find something in the paper's archives. I looked up Lute Olson's retirement. There were 77 articles. I could read a few lines before deciding whether to pay for the full article. Grade: Pass.How easy is it to e-mail a story, or print it out, or view it on a single page? Easy. Grade: Pass.Find a way to quickly contact a specific reporter, or an editor, or anybody at the paper. The bylines on stories are not clickable if you want to use them to e-mail the reporter. I could not figure out how to contact the reporter on a story page. I couldn't find a link on the home page to contact editorial staff. I did click on subscriber services and it took me to Tucson.com, which appears to be the umbrella site for the Tucson newspapers. There were no editorial contacts listed there, though. Then I realized that under the Home tab on the main navigation bar there is a contact us tab. That leads to a search box that allows you to browse by last name, department or to search by last name. I found a friend who works there. But I'm sorry, this takes too long. Grade: Fail. Find an ad you know is on the site. (This drives advertisers nuts, incidentally.) Display ads do not show up in the local search. I looked for the Ford ad I found on a business page. I couldn't find it. I could find no way to locate a directory of ads on the site. Grade: Fail.How easy is it to place a classified ad online—or to buy any kind of ad? To place a classified ad, you're taken to tucson.com, the business site for the the Star and the former Tucson Citizen. You need a different login and password for this site even though you're already registered on the Star's site. That, to me, is an immediate failure. Grade: Fail.How easy is it to manage your print subscription online? It's doable. Grade: Pass.Using the site's search function, search for just about anything in the list above. One of the top stories on the web site was that a Grand Canyon death was ruled a suicide. So I typed Grand Canyon suicide in the search engine. It didn't find the story. Then I typed, Grand Canyon. No news stories came up. One of the latest updates on the site has this headline: Man's drive over Grand Canyon edge ruled suicide. Grade: Fail.Now, try the same searches from Google. When I did the same with Google, the story that's reported on the Star's site is the fifth link in my first search under Grand Canyon suicide. It links to the San Jose Mercury News and 39 related articles. The Mercury News story is the same Associated Press story found on the Star's site. Clearly, Google is better at finding the topic than the Star's own search engine. Grade: Fail. But for purposes of this test, we won't count this one because it feels repetitive.
July 20, 2009, 2:01 AM
When is the newspaper industry going to stop blaming Google?
Newspapers and newspaper journalists pride themselves on doing their homework before they publish stories. It's one of the ways they and others in the "mainstream media" like to distinguish themselves from "bloggers." That's why I wish accomplished industry leaders like Howard Weaver would spend more time establishing his case in arguing that Google should share its wealth with newspapers and less time complaining about what he thinks it's doing to the industry.Look, Weaver is right that he's one of the people in the industry who can say he understands competition. He's a winner of a newspaper war. I think I understand competition, too. But in my case, I didn't come out on top in a newspaper war. So perhaps his thoughts should be given greater weight than mine.But does he do the industry any service when he provides a totally lame economic analysis, if you can even call it that, of the impact of Google on the newspaper industry and then calls for some form of redistribution of income to newspapers from Google? I don't think so.Here's the core of his argument:Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL are making more money from online content than the newspaper industry makes from everything. Many billions of those dollars are tied directly to the distribution of news and news searches, and that’s the money news companies must find a way to get.Let’s say those online giants – call them GYMA – make $15 billion a year from news and news-related content (searches, archives, etc). I think that’s a conservative guess.If we could find a way to get just 10 percent of that – $1.5 billion – pumped into American newsrooms, the impact would be direct, immediate and dramatic. The layoffs could stop, and owners would have breathing room to address strategic questions instead of constantly bailing water to keep the boats afloat. Newsrooms could start hiring the kind of people they need to create the journalism of the future.Would Weaver, if he were back in Anchorage, have allowed a reporter to guesstimate the revenue the online giants make from news? I don't think so. And if he had, would he not also have asked the reporter how much newspapers are making today as a result of the traffic the major search engines send their way? I think he would have. And would he also not have asked whether the cooperative owned by the newspapers known as the Associated Press is charging these online giants adequate rates to provide them content? I think he would have. And might he also have asked whether AP has charged what it should, or could? I think so.Weaver is a fine journalist. But I don't think his current approach helps. Why doesn't the newspaper industry commission a serious economic analysis of the impact of these online giants on the bottom lines of newspapers? That would be useful. It would be a good start to prove the negative impact and to quantify it. If it's true, of course.Instead, there's still way too much whining about how somebody else is smarter than newspaper people and making more money from what they do.
July 17, 2009, 3:40 PM
The debate over whether changes in copyright law could save newspapers is complex, in part because it seems that Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz may have mischaracterized the thinking of David Marburger, the lawyer behind the ideas she put forth in her column that prompted a full-scale pie fight over the issue. I'm sorry if this seems too twisted, but I think the best way to explain is to share Marburger's correspondence with me and provide links to his writings that I've uploaded to mediafire.com. First, I posted a response from Marburger to my blog post on Schultz's column in which he clarified his views, making them seem, at least to me, different from the way Schultz had presented them. The following were his three main points: 1. We do not advocate a statutory 24-hour moratorium on rewriting news reports originated by others. Like you, we'd vigorously oppose that. 2. We do not think that linking to originators' news sites, as Google News does, is bad; on balance, we think it's good for any news originator. 3. We oppose the "pay wall" concept that many newspaper publishers endorse. For reasons that we summarize in our analyses, we think that it would be futile in the long run.In response, I asked him: "From what you've written here, I'm not sure she's on the same page as you on a number of points. Am I correct?"Marburger then sent me back an explanation of what he think happened and why he's concerned about the way bloggers, including me, have characterized his thinking. Before posting that explanation, he asked me to also publish the following:"I must say that Connie was not calling for a statutory moratorium on rewrites for 24 hrs. Her column was worded as saying that Dan & I specifically recommended that, and my note below explains the origin of her statement. Her column endorsed our 60-page theory, which is pretty analytical. Our analysis calls for restoring common-law unfair competition and unjust enrichment principles by amending the copyright act so that the act clearly doesn't preempt those common-law principles. Neither Connie nor anyone at The Plain Dealer has called for Congress to adopt a prospective statutory moratorium on rewriting factual accounts originated by others."The following is "the note below" he mentioned in the above statement."My brother & I are quite dismayed that so many knowledgeable people think that we advocate a statutory 24-hour moratorium on rewriting original news reports. It is vital to us that correct information be published so that those who are in a position to implement our analyses can assess them for what they really are. Connie is on the same page with us. The 24-hour thing came from my being too inarticulate in an interview with her. Even though I work with journalists constantly & was one myself, I forget that journalists and lay people equate the "law" with statutes that legislators pass. And since she's married to a legislator she probably equates "law" with statutes quite naturally. Remember that negligence, personal injury, libel, invasion of privacy, fraud, and other commonplace legal rights are common law. No statute involved at all. Unfair competition, too, is common law. So when Connie asked me what I ideally wd do, I didn't explain the rather dramatic distinction between making a legal argument in a common-law suit to redress a wrong versus imposing a prospective 24-hour moratorium via the overly rigid rules laid down by statutes. I said instead to Connie(paraphrasing): "I'd argue that competitors should have to wait to free-ride until most of the commercial life of a daily news story has elapsed, which is like a day." By that, I failed to explain that I would make that argument in a court case if I were asserting the common-law unfair competition theory to redress a wrong that already had occurred -- which is all that my brother & I seek to restore. I think that Connie may have interpreted my generalized words to mean that we want to see a statutorily-mandated 24-hour moratorium on rewriting original news reports. As I said, we are dead-set against that because a statutorily-imposed moratorium wd be prospective and inflexible -- not based on real life situations that arise. I don't think that Connie or anyone at the Plain Dealer advocates a statutory 24-hour moratorium per se. What they advocate is legal recourse for direct competitors exploiting commercially the substantial journalistic services of a news originator. We seek to restore that recourse. By their prospective, inflexible, rigid nature, statutes often empower people way, way more than they should. As we explain in our analyses, the common law is what news originators and society need in circumstances like these; not statutes."It sure seems to me like there was something lost in the translation between Marburger and Schultz and that his ideas should be judged on their own merits, separate from whatever Schultz has written.To that end, here's a link to the articles by Marburger and his economist brother, Dan, that provide their thinking in great detail.I apologize for any confusion I may have created over this issue, but I think ultimately my exchanges with Marburger are leading to more clarity on their thinking on how to help newspapers through these difficult times. I thank him for being so responsive.
July 10, 2009, 11:13 AM
What would happen if publishers and editors read only on the Web for two weeks?
Now that I'm on the outside of the news business, I've had more time on my hands and more time has meant more of an opportunity to explore everything from Twitter and Facebook to iGoogle and the Web sites of numerous news outlets. (Not that I wasn't already doing that when I was at the Rocky Mountain News. But not to the extent I am now.)The experience has made me realize something I should have done when I was an editor/publisher. I should have gone cold turkey on the print edition of my own and other newspapers for two weeks or a month and determined what life was like for those who were living solely in a digital world.I say that because somehow the print paper always remains front and center - after all, it still provides most of the revenue - for most newspaper executives and there's only so much time in the day. I use the term executives because I think it's important that all the top leadership of a local newspaper do this, not just the editor or publisher.If they would try this, I think newspaper executives would quickly see flaws in their offerings and would also more clearly understand the flood tide that is running. I'm not writing to criticize specifically what papers are doing online. Only to say that my experience being outside a newspaper tells me that other executives while they still have a chance might want to experience the world without their newspaper. I believe it would hasten their sense of urgency. I'm not talking about a sense of urgency about revenue. We know that's there in most buildings in this economic downturn. But is it there to the same degree in understanding audience and what's available to people today? Is it there in making sure their offerings stack up?They could consider this exercise a competitive analysis if they must. But whatever they call it, weaning themselves from the paper for a brief period could be a big help.
July 9, 2009, 12:21 PM
John Temple is the former editor of the Rocky Mountain News, the Denver newspaper that ceased publication in 2009. Under his editorship, beginning in 1998, the paper won four Pulitzer Prizes and numerous other awards for journalistic excellence. He also held the titles of president and publisher.
Temple joined the Rocky in 1992 as metro editor. He was named managing editor in 1995. Before joining the paper, he was managing editor of The Albuquerque Tribune, another E.W. Scripps Co. newspaper. He has also worked at The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper.
Temple also served as VP/News for Scripps’ newspaper division since 2006. In that capacity, he acted as a sounding board for editors and publishers to help them explore and develop print and online initiatives. Temple has a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto. He is married to artist Judith Cohn and has three children.
