Watch for www.politicsispoo.com...

On a complete whim (as in writing that at 10 p.m. for a midnight deadline whim), I applied for a fellowship with Atlantic Media. Not really sure why, but it does with the current "shots in the dark" motif I have lately in terms of stuff. I totally didn't get it, the general email said 500 people applied for 10 positions. It was to create a new news website. Good luck on that one.

Anyways, this is what spouted out in 90 minutes. It needs a little more finesse, but I think it's funny. Thoughts welcome.

Atlantic Media Editors:

In the news, there is no new new. No matter the format: Print, online, TV, homing pigeon, the purpose is providing news to the readers. While it sometimes appears that Marshall McLuhan is the consultant for some of the ideas sprouting about the business these days, it is most important to prioritize content above all else. No matter the medium, it’s the messages that people want.
As one who was paid his dues in the window-less newsrooms gleefully cursing the creators of the CCI database system, I know the intensity and acidity of the debate regarding the future of newspapers. There are several able-bodied editors and executives that desperately want to innovate and see the yellow brick road going through the World Wide Web. In the meantime, print and TV outlets have taken the pre-modern medical approach of bleeding out the bad blood to fix the revenue ills. Cuts upon cuts upon cuts, then rinse and repeat.
In both situations, there is an intense desire to fix the problem. The problem is that no one is completely sure what the problem is, if there is a problem at all.
That’s a problem.
Now, the industry is saying that the journalism gods are casting Messianic lights on news websites. No dot com, big problem.
Borrowing from Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, news websites are in between the phases innovators and the early majority on its way to becoming an epidemic. Matt Drudge took his computer and used it to catch President Clinton with his pants down and got journalism’s attention. Even though it took a bit, Google, Yahoo! and AOL set the stage for the BOOM! that is getting information in a new medium.
Yet, it seems that the journalism community is still trying to gauge the innovators and leapfrog to the profitable majority. Most sites are morphing as quickly as possible and trying to run when it’s still crawling and drooling. In the midst of the corporate trying to tag on to tagging, there are a few innovators who are truly changing the pace of the game. Talking Points Memo is one of them. Since 2000, Josh Marshall and his Merry Minstrels are taking Pro-Am Journalism and making it work. TPM gained prominence with its investigative reporting of the firing of U.S. Attorneys under suspicious pretenses. The reporting earned the site a Polk Award, but more importantly, it earned the seal of credibility, complete with the Defense Department taking the site off its press release list for a time. Impressive.
The biggest strength of TPM is its informational hierarchy. The main site includes analysis by Marshall, David Kurtz and others, both written and visual, as well as the leading story at the moment in the top right-hand corner. The home page houses links to AP stories, “TPM Approved” bloggers and advertisements. TPM also is home to TPMMuckracker, the investigative wing of the site; TPMElection Central, which includes virtually every poll that has been taken, is being taken and will be taken about the Presidential Election. Greg Sargent is the main blogger for TPMHorse’s Mouth and TPMCafe features an eclectic array of bloggers and topics.
It is clear that readers are the foundation of Talking Points Memo. Readers recommend stories, make comments, contribute news tidbits (in fact, it was readers in New Mexico that noticed the firing of U.S. Attorney David Yglesias and told TPM about it that got the scandal abrewin’) and organize RSS feeds for whichever stories that are wanted/needed. By allowing readers to create accounts and highlight their comments in a predominate place, it bolsters the communal asset essential to making a niche news website float.
Marshall successfully parlayed his blog for venting purposes into a full-time job. In a recent New York Times article, Marshall said TPM is mostly an ad-generated site that sometimes asks readers for donations. TPM held fund-raisers to launch TPM Café and to pay for its Presidential Primary coverage. With a Manhattan newsroom and D.C. touch points, this is a no-pajamas allowed operation.
Structurally, the website is sound. It provides many options but doesn’t overwhelm the reader. The main blog on the page contains both little blurbs and substantial thoughts from Marshall and others. The design is clean and simple, with font and style variations for the separate components of TPM.
The biggest disadvantage of TPM is that of forward motion. Right now, the site is hoisted comfortably between the worlds of individual blogging and original journalism. TPM still has a blogger feel to it and while the level of sophistication of reader’s comments is higher than that of www.politicsispoo.com (I just made this up and I will be very disappointed with Atlantic Media if this is the address of whatever website you want to create), there’s still enough sense of renegade reactionaries to ensure that News Corp. isn’t poaching from the readers for new positions. Yet, with credibility comes responsibility. New changes are coming to TPM and it is quite apparent the site is moving toward more original reporting and most likely, more professional reporting.
That is a good segue into the biggest struggle for news websites who those that create them. The site is only as good as the content and if the content is professional journalists doing the work, then amateur bloggers automatically become the antithesis. Even while www.nytimes.com is a great website and now much more accessible than a year ago, those going to the site know exactly what they want. It is the same with the Atlantic Media and any one of the journalistic institutions that have created and sustained its positioning already. More often that not, the stories are exactly the same as the print version and while there are no news holes for designers to work around, there are the exceptionally pesky Google banner ads.
In other words, there is no new new.
Another downside to TPM and sites like it is that it is inherently a niche site. They cover politics and offer little else for anyone looking for non-political coverage. That might be why 75% of its readership (most likely, the readership that has accounts) are male and are more educated and have a higher income median. If TPM were to offer stories on women’s clothing, it wouldn’t stick. Frankly, that is the beauty of online journalism and the downfall of print journalism. Online means access and the accessibility allows for niche products to thrive. Not to go Long Tail on y’all, but sites like TPM, or Huffington Post or even Hugh Hewitt wouldn’t survive in print. They thrive online because low costs and low overhead allow for a specialized audience to galvanize and coalesce.
The current business model of most print papers require that newspapers be all things to all advertisers and most things to some readers. Since circulation is downgraded and advertisement is enhanced to near-ungodly levels of measuring success, it really doesn’t matter who the reader is in terms of print newspapers. For online, who the reader is is all that matters.
One final point. News websites that are successful recognize that they aren’t the only game in town. Odds are that readers of one site are readers of other sites, are using RSS feeds and email subscriptions or just check out Yahoo! or MSM news for general-interest stories.
In what should be a boost to the fragile egos of journalists, people wanting the news online will come to them. Eventually. If the website is accessible, offers quality information and provides opportunities for reader reciprocation, then it would be a success. That’s what makes Talking Points Memo a success and a worthy model for other news websites.
I don’t presume to offer any new ideas because as I stated, there is no new new. Therefore, the pot of gold at the end of the digital rainbow is filled with subscriptions and PayPal tip jars. If the industry is truly serious about succeeding in a new medium, it has to find a way to pay for content. While Google ads are pretty nifty, it has a lower ceiling for profitability than creating a tier of premium content and defining simple pay structures for them. Otherwise, instead of relying on bra ads from Macy’s, we’re relying on links to fake Macy’s cards and sites proving that Jesus Christ wasn’t a real person.
Enough with the Messianic lights already.