History in the making in LA as online ads hit target (História sendo feita em Los Angeles, dos EUA, à medida que a propaganda online atinge seu alvo)

Outra notícia boa vinda da coluna do jornalista consagrado Jeff Jarvis no britânico The Guardian: a receita de propaganda online do jornal Los Angeles Times, dos EUA, é suficiente para cobrir as despesas da folha de pagamentos inteira da editoria, parte impressa e a parte online.  Ou seja, uma notícia interessante para quem quer saber sobre a Economia da Propaganda Online (como trataremos em palestra-aula na Recife Summer School, do CESAR.EDU, no dia 17/02/2009; detalhes  aqui!).

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History in the making in LA as online ads hit target

Jeff Jarvis/The Guardian

Monday 12 January 2009

Note well this moment in the history – and I do mean history – of newspapers: the editor of the Los Angeles Times, Russ Stanton, said the paper’s online advertising revenue is now sufficient to cover the Times’s entire editorial payroll, print and online. “Given where we were five years ago, I don’t think anyone thought that would ever happen,” he said in email. “But that day is here.” The same day has arrived for at least one more major US newspaper. What this tells me is that we are on the cusp of the moment when online revenue could sustain a substantial digital journalistic enterprise without the onerous cost of printing and distribution. Hallelujah.

There are caveats aplenty: the LA Times newsroom got to this point because it was cut to a shell of its former self (from 1,200 staff to 660). Online advertising is often sold in packages with print (though if and when print disappears, marketers will have little choice but to shift to digital). And news organisations carry costs besides payroll, such as rent (though some papers are now making their newsrooms virtual).

Still, work with me here: imagine if the Times turned off its presses tomorrow. I’ve discussed that prospect before, going back to 2005, when Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger acknowledged that his new Berliner presses might be the last this paper would use. But the talk was speculative. Now it could be real: the paperless paper.

I remember the head of another major newspaper company telling me four years ago – with little romantic wistfulness – that if he could abandon print, he would cut $1bn in costs overnight. The problem was that he’d have abandoned about as much ad revenue and would have incurred high shutdown costs.

But at the LA Times, revenue and cost are converging. The paper could avoid some shutdown expenses because its parent, Tribune Company, declared bankruptcy late last year, allowing it to abandon costs and renegotiate contracts. In a conspiratorial frame of mind, one might wonder whether bankruptcy is convenient for the company’s head, Sam Zell, a real-estate speculator specialising in depressed properties nicknamed the “Grave Dancer”. Bankruptcy could be a convenient cloak for radical change.

Editor Stanton said in an email that he does not think the LA Times should turn off its presses. Plenty of other editors would agree. Indeed, I fear that Stanton’s tale will embolden fellow editors to think that online has now grown sufficiently to support them in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed. For years, I’ve heard editors demand to know when this internet thing would pay for their newsrooms. Never, I always responded. Your days as an oligopolist are over, I’ve said, and the scale of the news business and your newsroom will inevitably shrink. Now, perhaps, they’ve shrunk enough.

But perhaps it won’t be a legacy player who breaks this digital barrier. A newcomer unencumbered by the costs, expectations, processes, traditions, and culture of a print newsroom and business could build a profitable online news franchise at low cost. It could operate more efficiently by working in collaborative networks with the community, extending journalism’s reach there. It could serve a vast new population of very small advertisers who never could afford print.

So in the LA Times revelation, I see hope: the possibility that online revenue could support digital journalism for a city. The enterprise will be smaller, but it could well be more profitable than its print forebears today and – here’s the real news – it would grow from there. Imagine that: news as a growth industry again.

• Jeff Jarvis blogs at Buzzmachine.com

Inverted Pyramid (Pirâmide Invertida)

Estava preparando material para minha palestra na RSS- Recife Summer School, do Cesar.Edu (detalhes aqui), quando me deparei com a metáfora da Pirâmide Invertida, como sendo a técnica mainstream das news rooms.  O interessante é que há indicações de que esta técnica surgiu quando os serviços de telégrafos surgiram. Imaginem, então, o impacto que a Internet vem proporcionando nas news rooms recentemente!

Eis abaixo o que há no Wikipedia a respeito:

 

INVERTED PYRAMID

The inverted pyramid is a metaphor used to illustrate how information should be arranged or presented within a text, in particular within a news story.

The “pyramid” can also be drawn as a triangle. The triangle’s broad base at the top of the figure represents the most substantial, interesting, and important information the writer means to convey. The triangle’s orientation is meant to illustrate that this kind of material should head the article, while the tapered lower portion illustrates that other material should follow in order of diminishing importance.

The format is valued because readers can leave the story at any point and understand it, even if they don’t have all the details. It also allows less important information to be more easily removed by editors so the article can fit a fixed size.

Other newswriting styles are also used, including the “anecdotal lead,” which begins the story with an eye-catching tale rather than the central facts.

HISTORY

Historians disagree about when the form was created. Many say the invention of the telegraph sparked its development by encouraging reporters to send the most important facts first so that if the transmission was interrupted, the focus of the story would survive. Studies of 19th-century news stories in American newspapers, however, suggest that the form spread several decades later than the telegraph, possibly because the reform era’s social and educational forces encouraged factual reporting rather than more interpretive narrative styles.^[1]

In addition, having less-essential facts at the end simplified the process of shortening a story after it had been set in type.

Chip Scanlan’s essay on the form^[2] includes this frequently cited example of telegraphic reporting:

This evening at about 9:30 p.m. at Ford’s Theatre, the President, while sitting in his private box with Mrs. Lincoln, Mrs. Harris and Major Rathburn, was shot by an assassin, who suddenly entered the box and approached behind the President.

The assassin then leaped upon the stage, brandishing a large dagger or knife, and made his escape in the rear of the theatre.

The pistol ball entered the back of the President’s head and penetrated nearly through the head. The wound is mortal.

The President has been insensible ever since it was inflicted, and is now dying.

About the same hour an assassin, whether the same or not, entered Mr. Seward’s apartment and under pretense of having a prescription was shown to the Secretary’s sick chamber. The assassin immediately rushed to the bed and inflicted two or three stabs on the chest and two on the face. It is hoped the wounds may not be mortal. My apprehension is that they will prove fatal.

The nurse alarmed Mr. Frederick Seward, who was in an adjoining room, and he hastened to the door of his father’s room, when he met the assassin, who inflicted upon him one or more dangerous wounds. The recovery of Frederick Seward is doubtful.

It is not probable that the President will live through the night.

General Grant and his wife were advertised to be at the theatre…

– New York Herald, April 15, 1865

‘Who,’ ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ are addressed in the first paragraph. As the article continues, the less important details are presented. An even more pyramid-conscious reporter or editor would move two additional details to the first two sentences: That the shot was to the head, and that it was expected to prove fatal. The transitional sentence about the Grants suggests that less-important facts are being added to the rest of the story.

References

1. ^ Errico, Marcus; et al.. “The evolution of the summary news lead.“.
2. ^ Scanlan, Chip (2003-06-23). “An examination of the inverted pyramid“. Poynter Institute. Retrieved on 2006-07-04.

Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid“