Think of this as Volume 15, Number 5 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
While signing up recently at Seeking Alpha, which wants to re-publish some of my Renewableenergyworld stuff, I was stuck on the question of my status. (Image from Webdesignerdepot.)
Among the choices were either "professional blogger" or "journalist." (Not both.) I checked the latter, although for the last decade I've mainly been the former. I see no difference between the two, and I find it offensive that the profession I was trained to serve still does.
Not all blogs are journalism. But the idea that they they are separate ideas, that there is a difference between what I do at Renewableenergyworld and for InformationWeek, is foolish. And it reflects a basic misunderstanding that still exists within the business, nearly 20 years after the Web was spun.
Every medium is different. Each has different folkways, different ways of acquiring and measuring an audience, different ways of presenting things. The way you write for print looks atrocious when applied to the Web, and vice versa.
Yet too many companies, still, insist on treating those who work for the Web as though they're second-class, "not real journalists."
Well, the stuff I did for ZDNet was journalism. The stuff I did for Corante was journalism. Much of the stuff I do here is journalism.
Journalism is a business, a trade, not a profession.
Just as restaurants are about selling food for more than the owner buys it for, so journalism is merely the selling of new information for more than it cost to acquire.
What I am proudest of from my ZDNet experience is seeing a real Web business model in action for journalism, and learning what it takes to build one.
- Know your audience, the place, industry or lifestyle you're serving.
- Know their product and service needs. Put enough salesmen in the field to get ads for those things in your pages.
- Maximize your yield per page.
- Focus on costs. Server costs, bandwidth costs, design costs, ongoing maintenance, editorial and advertising.
- Wash, rinse, repeat.
Not terribly different from print, it turns out. It works great in vertical markets, in b2b, where it turns out there are all sorts of ancillary cash flows — events, white papers, training, research, etc. — to exploit, often with the same resources.
Here's the big difference. A newspaper, magazine, or TV operation, once established, can pretty much be put on auto-pilot. A Web effort? Never. There are always going to be new competitors, there is always going to be new software, there will always be new ways of presenting information that you must take advantage of to protect your niche.
It is this last lesson that established media companies ignore. They buy a Web property and milk it. They let it be caught by new players. CBS, which bought ZDNet and CNet soon after I joined, is a great example. They're so insular they've been caught by new players like TechCrunch and GigaOm, which deliver what the readers really want, snappy comebacks, attitude, and full-throated advocacy rather than namby-pamby maybe this and maybe thats.
There is laziness across the board. They complain about writers getting fresh with readers, but that's what their business model calls for and they won't tweak it. They make changes to the page design and won't back-off even after it's shown to be counter-productive. They worry about readers complaining when that is just evidence they're getting to them, and doing their job.
There's laziness on the business side, and in covering it. Take the whole question of registration and pay walls — the idea that "the web must be free" was always bogus. There are advantages in a vertical market to restricting your audience. It automatically makes what you have more valuable. The trick isn't requiring registration. The trick is making certain those you most want to read your restricted site actually go there. (Hint — e-mail.) In print you just print extra copies and mail them to coffee tables. The trick online is to get those key names onto a list for daily headlines. Even if it just goes to their assistant, make that e-mail (or RSS feed) compelling enough and it will reach the right person's attention.
Mainly journalism companies today are not entrepreneurial. And the Web is too new, its barriers to entry still too low, to allow for that. There are, now, some barriers. You need salesmen, tech wizards, a little SEO magic, and compelling editorial to get a start now — before you only needed the last. You need to know your focus before you start — the beat you'll cover. You need to do some research before launch, and come out of stealth only when there's something worth seeing — a going concern.
That's the difference between a blogger and a journalist. A blogger does it out of love, a journalist for money. Doesn't mean a journalist doesn't love the work. It just means they know they're working for something — a reader, an industry, a lifestyle, a place, a niche. Alton Brown can cook, Paula Deen runs a restaurant, but both do the same job on Food Network.
Which brings me to another point. What will make this industry in the future, what is already starting to make it, is talent. As niches are built-out, the difference between winning and losing lies in getting the best people under your wing, and paying them what they're worth. Very, very few successful web journals have learned that lesson except for a few whose entrepreneur is also the best writer.
Those are the best restaurants, too.
My point, I guess, is that despite the Web being almost 20, it's still a baby in terms of its life as a medium. And that's exciting. It means there's opportunity here, plenty of money to be made. Make some and then hire me, please.
