And it’s about time we started coming up with a few of the new variety.

Picard rightly shifts the focus from us (the journalists and publishers) to them (the people). After all, who cares about what journalists or publishers want?

As much as we wish it to happen, we will never be able to force people to pay very much for our product/service at its most basic level.

Would you pay $150/night to stay at a Motel 6 in Dayton, Ohio? (No offense Motel 6 or Dayton).

That doesn’t mean the masses are not willing to pay at all, Picard argues. We just haven’t offered any compelling reasons for them to upgrade their account (i.e. Jacuzzi! Sweet!).

I’m happy to pay (I’ll let that phrase sink in for a second…) to use premium versions of Flickr, Vimeo and Wufoo. These sites offer additional value (more tools, more flexibility, more storage space, etc.) over their free version and what their competitors offer. They have met my crack-open-the-wallet threshold.

This method has at least three benefits:

• Folks can establish a relationship with us and get a feel for our product or service for free. We can advertise to a larger user-base and/or gather product feedback (e.g. What would you pay for?).
• Folks get a better product/service as we seek to retain and attract customers. We can charge more depending on the awesomeness of our product/service.
• Folks are happy and we’re happy to be able to buy groceries and beer again.

It’s also not about what we think might be valuable to our users. Rather, what do they actually care about? How can we fulfill their needs and desires? How can we add value?

How many newspapers have a public feature/product request forum on their Web site? That might be a good place to start. What do you think?

But beyond the bickering, there were a few reasons for optimism.

New non-profit news organizations, grounded in public service journalism, have a promising chance of picking up where traditional newspapers are leaving off. MinnPost.com was mentioned numerous times throughout the hearing – and it represents just one attempt in one city.

The MinnPost.com model for self-sustained community journalism could be duplicated in every American city to compliment existing news organizations and fill the holes left by fading legacy media.

David Simon – former reporter and creator of the HBO show The Wire – talked about 20+ percent profits margins that could have gone toward R&D and additional staff:

I have no faith that if a new revenue stream were established and newspapers began to thrive again that the chain journalism that was not locally based, that was not committed within the communities that it was covering, that was basically a creature of Wall Street and of the profit margin – I have no faith that that new revenue stream would not be cannibalized into CEO salaries and the price per share and it would not be transformed into new reporters, new hires [and] better coverage.

The reason we all pay $50 or $60 a month now for our television, which used to be free, is that the content expanded and became more complex and more sophisticated. And we’re willing to lay out money for something which was free for 30 years. Newspapers actually shrunk prior to the arrival of the Internet and they did so because they were not non-profits. The public interest was not the priority.

Is it time for more public service journalism that isn’t publicly traded?

8:25 p.m.
Question: What is the revenue model for Slate? Is it profitable?
Weisberg: Key costs (i.e. printing on paper) are reduced with online content and that’s been born out. He says his business is doing well but says the lawyers won’t let him say if they’re profitable. Almost all of the revenue comes from advertising.

8:19 p.m.
Question: How will Spot.Us survive after the grant runs out?
Cohn: Solicit donations like Kiva.org.

8:16 p.m.
Question: How will media address an increasingly diverse population?
Sewell: City Room had a discussion concerning publishing comments in languages other than English. He says the Times has published some stories in other languages (e.g. China).

8:07 p.m.
Weisberg: Going to launch a group blog focused on women: The XX Factor. Recipe for success? “We just had to kick out all the men.”

8:03 p.m.
Weisberg: They create one original video a week at Slate V.
“This is an attempt to see, what really is the DNA of web video.”

7:57 p.m.
Jacob Weisberg, chairman and editor-in-chief Slate Group: Says journalists need to be well-versed in new media and the web. “If you’re not immersed in that yet, I think it’s too big a leap.”

7:52 p.m.
Smith: Said she would’ve been laid off, too, if she hadn’t picked up some web skills (her Twitter feed).

7:49 p.m.
Smith: Paper Cuts started about a year and a half ago. About 41 print jobs are lost every day.

7:47 p.m.
Erica Smith, news designer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and “Paper Cuts” blogger is up.

7:45 p.m.
Farano: CafeBabel publishes in six languages with 6,000 people contributing for free. It has around 300,000 unique visitors per month.

7:41 p.m.
Farano: Was at a NBA game in California and wanted to pay for a pizza with a traveler’s check. The server asked for a passport and then asked, “Italy, is it still a country?”

7:39 p.m.
Adriano Farano, executive editor, CafeBabel.com
Starts with the question: How many Europeans are the in the room? About 1/4 of the people raise their hands – woah!

7:36 p.m.
Cohn: Cites Clay Shirky saying collaboration online is incredibly complex and hard to predict – like the weather.

7:34 p.m.
Cohn: We often attach journalism to newspapers, he says, but journalism will survive the death of its institutions. “Journalism is a process, not a product,” he says.

7:32 p.m.
David Cohn, founder, Spot.us: Gift economy in America is $300 million.

“There is a way to donate to journalism,” he says, pointing to NPR. “But in that case you’re kind of throwing you money over the wall.”

He jokingly mentions the fear of buying a $40,000 stapler.

7:23 p.m.
Sewell: Mentions Knight News Challenge Grant in conjunction with ProPublica and Clay Shirky’s book, Here Comes Everybody.

7:20 p.m.
Sewell: Times Topics pages – now pages are updated every few days that links to outside content (about time!).

7:14 p.m.
Sewell Chan: Dead-Tree Editions Sell Out was the headline on the City Room the day after the election – readers used the web to find out how to get a paper copy.

7:11 p.m.
Columbia has purchased 50 Flip video cameras for their students, according to Prof. Sree Sreenivasan, Dean of Student Affairs.

7:06 p.m.
Full room – standing room only (wait, people sitting on the floor, too)

Panel:

Sewell Chan, blogger/bureau chief, New York Times “City Room” blog

David Cohn, J2008, founder, Spot.us, a new crowdfunding investigative journalism project; winner of $300,000 Knight News Challenge grant

Adriano Farano, executive editor, CafeBabel.com – the first multilingual European current affairs online magazine

Erica Smith, news designer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and “Paper Cuts” blogger (coming from St. Louis)

Jacob Weisberg, chairman and editor-in-chief Slate Group – Slate, Slate V, The Root, and the Big Money

MODERATOR: Prof. Sree Sreenivasan, Dean of Student Affairs

Collins interviewed Josh Silver, executive director and co-founder of Free Press. Silver seems to share some similar thoughts I recently blogged about.

Newspaper profits are going down, but there are profits nonetheless. There is a bright future for quality journalism. Monetization is not the big hurdle. The real challenge is developing business models that frame and support journalism as a public service, not as a share of stock.

“What we’re seeing is a direct connection between the corporatization of the media and the failure of the media to provide the kind of journalism that democracy requires,” Silver said.

Josh Silver. You are my new hero.

Listen to some excerpts from MPR (mp3s):

• Fed up with “what is posing as journalism.”
• Three areas of the media need reforming.
• Why shouldn’t reporters be cut if people aren’t buying newspapers?

Stay tuned for my post on my ideal staff for a metro news startup.

As a journalist and someone who cares about the future of the profession I’m conflicted about the news. I mean that in both senses of the word. Part of me mourns as deteriorating financial conditions continue to strip newspapers of hard-working staff.

The other part wonders if we need to ask a hard question. Are big newspapers worth saving?

Asking that question does not mean we shouldn’t care about journalists working at those papers. Most of them are doing their job and doing it as best they can with limited resources. There’s nothing wrong with saving the journalists. It’s the sinking institutions I’m worried about.

So, why are big media gurgling and why am I sounding the horn to abandon ship? Newspapers (and television and radio, for that matter) no longer have a monopoly on information. They can no longer simply push out information and expect to be useful or sustainable. In many cases, out-of-whack profit margins are falling and circulation/viewership is in a nosedive. It’s time for a rebirth and new expectations.

Journalists provide a great public service and while the news business can certainly be profitable, I would like to see more non-profit ventures or at least journalism-centric businesses focused on financial sustainability. Journalists should worry about serving their community, not corporate overlords and their inflated valuations.

So, what can we do? I’ll tell you what I’d do.

(I’ll speak of the situation in the Twin Cities because it’s what I know best. I grew up in Minnesota and was a six-year resident of Minneapolis. I also had the chance to work at two mainstream media outlets while I was there. It’s a place I care about a lot.)

First and foremost, enable social networking. Place still matters, as do shared interests. People with similar interests can use social networking to communicate and form loose relationships with others in their community. It helps establish trust and can make it easier to meet in person and forge “real-world” friendships.

I joined the Twin Cities Flickr group in its infancy, attending the first meetup at a bar a little over two years ago. A few of us shared a few beers and took a photo or two, thinking it fun to see our photos of each other up on the site the next day. Now, the group has 1370 members, with many showing up for frequently-held photowalks.

A local news site should support and sponsor these interest groups or at the very least aggregate them (Meetup, Flickr, etc.).

A local news organization should also:

• Allow comments (video and text) on all of its stories
• Host online forums/bulliten boards for local issues
• Make it easy for members to post story ideas or contribute first-hand accounts
• Make it easy for people and organizations to post events
• Organize events so they are easy to browse/search and feature the best submissions
• Not refer to itself as a newspaper
• Adopt a web-first mentality
• Aggregate sites and resources that are valuable to your users, including the competition
• Do technology training and outreach within the community (especially with high school and college students)
• Hold regular public meetings to encourage participation and feedback
• Provide multimedia reporting
• Encourage user feedback on content
• Encourage user feedback on usability, design and usefulness
• Promote, encourage and reward active users

No media in the Twin Cities are realizing the full potential of the web and mobile communications. There is a lot of great multimedia work and good breaking news coverage, but few have made a very good effort to engage the community.

There are a few exceptions, including MNSpeak and Jason DeRusha. We need these people and efforts a hundred times over.

“But wait!” you say. “This is all fine and dandy, but how do you actually make money?”

Text and image display advertising is certainly still a substantial piece of the revenue pie, but we need to be more creative and more specific:

• Get companies to sponsor social or interest-based groups that would actually find their products or services relevant and useful
• Create places/spaces/opportunities where companies can have meaningful conversations with customers
• Do some fundraising (events/drives/5ks) and offer badges or other ways for people to promote their donation
• Seek grants
• Sell clever t-shirts (it works for bands, right?)

Lastly, profits should be invested to ensure stability during tough times.

If someone did these things really well, I am confident they would be able to make a comfortable living. They might not get rich, but they’d be able to provide a useful service for years to come.

It’s time for a mutiny of sorts. Facebook and Wikipedia are not abbirations. They are evidence that people thrive on conversations and sharing knowledge and experiences.

We need a few brave journalists who understand the need to engage their community. We need a few brave entrepreneurs, dedicated to creating a sustainable business model. We need these people now.

In my next post, I will talk about what my ideal staff would look like for a meto news start-up.

Doing 1 thing great > 2 things good > 3 things average…etc.

But how do you do one thing really great as a business? Start by listening.

Provide a space, physical or digital, for your customers to ask you questions, ask each other questions, make suggestions, complain or praise.

Then:

• Answer questions
• Thank people for their suggestions and look at implementing those ideas
• Apologize for mistakes or defects and fix promptly
• Humbly accept compliments
• Be quick
• Be human

Interact with a customer on their terms. That’s the beauty of the web. It is live and asynchronous all at once.

Be aware, when you do open up, you’re going to see some criticism. Some of it is probably going to be harsh and that’s OK. Take a deep breath. Respond politely and try to ease their pain. Imagine if you convert someone who really hates you. They’ll probably give you twice the respect and be a outspoken advocate.

So, what are some online tools to get you started?

Twitter (in practice with JetBlue)

Get Satisfaction (in practice with PBwiki)