Death by a thousand newspaper cuts

Jersey Journal to the Hudson County community: "We're irrelevant."

Dear Jersey Journal:

Gee, we almost feel sorry for you.

Almost.

We see that you have just announced a series of new columns and features. We also notice that your paper is significantly smaller and thinner than it was before this announcement. Pardon us for noticing, but this smells, more than a little, of desperation.

Wasn't it only a few years ago that you announced a smaller (tabloid) format and a new publisher? Didn't you tell us then, that this was a fresh start, that you would connect better with readers, and all that?

Remember how we said. 'We don't think so?' How we published a series of suggestions for the paper's new publisher? No?

Kind of ironic, isn't it, that with all the noise you were making about your new relevance, you never actually paid any attention to what the blogs were saying about you. But we're not surprised that you think so little of your readers. Not at all. That, after all, is one of the things you were criticized for.

Nor are we surprised to see you in the same position you were in a few years ago: Shrinking to save a buck, and reinventing yourself once again – in all the ways that will make absolutely no difference.

Some of the 'fresh ideas' the paper implemented back then came from Jeff Jarvis. Jarvis is an old-media guy whose main claim to fame is having started Entertainment Weekly magazine. He has cobbled a second career out of counseling his old media contacts re 'new media'. Jarvis offers old-media clients unchallenging, old-school solutions dressed in new-media trappings, so his clients feel like they've taken a bold new direction (without the actual discomfort that would entail). Offering the most superficial advice, he has sells himself to hidebound media outlets as a turnaround artist.

Jarvis is also 'proud' of having started the NJ.com chat-sewers – as if Jersey needed a new outlet for unreliable information and politically-motivated character assassination. Proud as he claims to be of those chatrooms, though, you never, ever see Jarvis himself in them. Jarvis admits to the chat rooms' shortcomings, but claims they are 'the price of free speech'. This is (to put it kindly) disingenuous, and Jarvis knows better. (Here's how to construct a REAL community forum.)

It's possible Jarvis offered the Journal some meatier advice they simply didn't take. But we have no evidence of that. It seems far more likely that he wouldn't offer the paper the bitter medicine it needs. He's a survivor, a corporate guy who knows how to get through the day without getting his manicured nails dirty. Probably Jarvis wouldn't peddle hard-core change that he knew his client would never buy anyway. Instead of the bitter medicine they needed, the Journal helped themselves to a sweet panacea. And in doing so, they survived just long enough to slide even further into ignominy. Another round of this, and the Journal will be printed on a placemat they'll slip under your plate at the Malibu Diner.

This readership decline is stunning, coming as it is in a growing County that will soon be Jersey's most densely populated area. You have to work to fail this completely.

As we pointed out in this article re the New York Times, news can no longer be 'owned' by a newspaper. That ship has sailed. The concept of news 'ownership' originated in an era when the news channel was owned by whoever owned the press. By now it should be painfully obvious that not only is owning a press irrelevant, but even owning a radio or TV station is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

So what's a dying, irrelevant, and just plain vanishing newspaper to do? Simply this: Exactly what the Jersey Journal is NOT doing - but the Times is beginning to wake up to.

What can a newspaper call its own, if it cannot own the news? Primarily, it boils down to one thing: Trust. The paper would do well to read this recent article, and commit it to memory. We'll quote from it here:

The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it.... Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.... This super-distribution system has become the foundation of our economy and wealth. The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy... Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.

Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?

I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

Well, what can't be copied?

There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust."

Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked....

Interpretation

As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. But it's no joke. A couple of high profile companies, like Red Hat, Apache, and others make their living doing exactly that. They provide paid support for free software. The copy of code, being mere bits, is free -- and becomes valuable to you only through the support and guidance. I suspect a lot of genetic information will go this route. Right now getting your copy of your DNA is very expensive, but soon it won't be. In fact, soon pharmaceutical companies will PAY you to get your genes sequence. So the copy of your sequence will be free, but the interpretation of what it means, what you can do about it, and how to use it -- the manual for your genes so to speak -- will be expensive.

Authenticity

You might be able to grab a key software application for free, but even if you don't need a manual, you might like to be sure it is bug free, reliable, and warranted. You'll pay for authenticity. There are nearly an infinite number of variations of the Grateful Dead jams around; buying an authentic version from the band itself will ensure you get the one you wanted. Or that it was indeed actually performed by the Dead. Artists have dealt with this problem for a long time. Graphic reproductions such as photographs and lithographs often come with the artist's stamp of authenticity -- a signature -- to raise the price of the copy. Digital watermarks and other signature technology will not work as copy-protection schemes (copies are super-conducting liquids, remember?) but they can serve up the generative quality of authenticity for those who care.

Patronage

It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. But they will only pay if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators. Radiohead's recent high-profile experiment in letting fans pay them whatever they wished for a free copy is an excellent illustration of the power of patronage. The elusive, intangible connection that flows between appreciative fans and the artist is worth something. In Radiohead's case it was about $5 per download. There are many other examples of the audience paying simply because it feels good.

Findability

Whereas the previous generative qualities reside within creative digital works, findability is an asset that occurs at a higher level in the aggregate of many works. A zero price does not help direct attention to a work, and in fact may sometimes hinder it. But no matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless. When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention -- and most of it free -- being found is valuable.

The giant aggregators such as Amazon and Netflix make their living in part by helping the audience find works they love. They bring out the good news of the "long tail" phenomenon, which we all know, connects niche audiences with niche productions. But sadly, the long tail is only good news for the giant aggregators, and larger mid-level aggregators such as publishers, studios, and labels. The "long tail" is only lukewarm news to creators themselves. But since findability can really only happen at the systems level, creators need aggregators. This is why publishers, studios, and labels (PSL)will never disappear.

As we mentioned, the Times has clearly been processing this. As a result, their archives have been liberated from their firewall restrictions (known as 'TimesSelect', whose swift demise we predicted) and are now freely available online. The paper's articles and columns are now widely linked and discussed - whereas previously they had been sliding into linkless obscurity shortly after seeing print. And while the Times is not seen by all as the standard bearer for the truth, they are at least respected as striving to be standard. They are, in short, relevant.

The Journal, by contrast, continues to hide its back issues behind a firewall, committed to an archaic notion that they can still own the news in this multichannel age. As a result, they continue to slide irretrievably into the canyon of horse-and-buggy irrelevance. A two-year old, one-man web site, Hoboken411, now has more relevance in people's lives than the Journal does.

What should the Journal be doing, then?

1) Start listening to your critics – they're probably right.

The paper is the Titanic, and its owners are doing everything but patching the leak. Clearly, we're screaming at the deaf here.

2) Put your archives permanently online.

The Times finally figured it out: The money they might make by charging for its story archives was far less critical to its future than nurturing an online community around those stories. The Journal doesn't listen to us, but one might think that surely they'd study the Times' example.

One MIGHT think that, but one would be wrong. The Journal's publisher will learn neither from us nor from his enormously influential media colleague across the river.

Someone over there check his pulse, he may have passed on.

3) Clean up your disgusting chat room.

The most compelling reason now for the Journal to clean up its chat room act is simply to distinguish itself from Hoboken411's similarly foul chat-sewer. Since the Journal apparently does not care enough for its reputation to disassociate from the kind of exchanges it enables and encourages, perhaps the loss of traffic to 411 will spur some badly-needed change.

As we've said before: The Journal cannot own the news. It can only own its reputation. Which, at this sad juncture in its history, really means it has to build a reputation, pretty much from scratch. Start here. Take a lesson from The Well: Build an online community of people who are willing to be held accountable for what they say and do, and associate your name with it.

4) Redesign your website.

It's a mess. Its inaccessible. It tells readers to give up and go away, and it needs an overhaul. The site, by the way, should NOT be the afterthought it so obviously is. Online is where the world is going. It's where your classified ad revenue has gone, via Craigslist. (We've noticed that your web address now appears as part of your masthead, so it appears that the little light may have gone on. But you cannot hold out for salvation from that site in the state it's in.)

And while you should be embarassed that anyone has to explain this to you you should be even more embarrassed to have been told the same thing 3 years ago with so little to show for it. (Although your own Hoboken Now blog is much better today than it was then, the website itself is basically the same sorry, buggy swampland it always was.)

But then again, having read your paper, we cannot help but wonder: Are you even capable of embarrassment?

Those are the easy, obvious fixes. After this, it becomes a lot more challenging.

5) Focus on what matters most.

In case you don't know (and, apparently, you don't...), what matters most is the Journal's reputation. That is your key asset, and is the foundation on which the paper must build its future. Unfortunately, that foundation at this point has no integrity.

Right now, the Journal, if the man on the street knows it at all, knows it is a joke. Instituting a "new column for seniors/parents/pet owners" (etc., etc.), along with all the other garbage the paper is now foisting on its readers, won't keep the paper from its pending demise. Jerseyites know that the news they want most is exactly what the Journal has no intention of giving them.

The paper, in other words, is irrelevant to Hudson County residents. It may already be dead but, ironically enough, the news has not yet reached it.

There is no short cut for building a reputation for the Journal, which is no doubt why you haven't begun doing so. The first, most important step in the process is to

6) Become authoritative.

As a cop who helped trap the Monmouth 11 put it: ''Nobody watches, nobody hears, nobody sees.'' Like the Times' "All the News that's Fit to Print", this would be an outstanding motto for the Jersey Journal

Or, if you prefer, it would do fine as the paper's epitaph.

Right now, not only can the paper not speak authoritatively regarding the Number One question on everyone's mind - it does not even know what that question is.

And that's where we'll begin the next post on this subject.

UPDATE: The Times mentions the Journal's broadsheet-to-tabloid transition. The title, with probably unintended irony, is: "The News is Big. It's the Papers that are getting Small."

UPDATE 2:Remembering when the paper was at death's door. (Not that it ever left the premises.) The paper's problems were blamed on unions then, while the current publisher will scapegoat the Internet.