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Thursday, February 02, 2006
Seven Days, Craigslist, Buzz Machine
Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine has singled out Seven Days in a post he made about alt. weeklies and Craigslist. Mostly, I think Jarvis is right when he talks about the way alt. weeklies are approaching Craig's business. We need to innovate, and we need to do it soon. Villifying Craig won't change that reality.
But I think this is wrong:
Let’s go look at Vermont’s alternative paper,
Seven Days, which today is asking its readers to “send us your sex
secrets.” Well, I suppose that could build community, one birth at a
time. I see them charging people to listen to personals on voicemail —
a model that was outmoded 10 years ago. I see them charging not
insignificant rates for most classified categories. I don’t see any
open exchange on their site, allowing the community to meet and share,
not even any forums or community-run blogs.
OK, the part about the personals on voicemail is true (and I've heard rumors that that may be changing...) and what he says about classifieds is duly noted. But I say this blog counts as an "open exchange." No, it's not community-run, but it's community-driven. I link to every Vermonter who puts up a blog (that I know of), and I regularly link to and promote other local bloggers both online in the paper. I think what I'm doing builds community. And people are free to comment here about the paper, which they do on a fairly regular basis.
Heck, if people were blogging about the paper, I'd link to and respond to that.
Please, readers, feel free to comment here with questions/concerns about the paper. Do I need to make that any clearer? And feel free to comment on Buzz Machine if you feel so moved. I did.
And hey — didn't people like the sex survey? Readers consistenly tell us it's one of their favorite features. I thought this one was pretty good.
February 2, 2006 at 06:44 PM in Media/Keeping an eye on the competition | Permalink
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Comments
I link to every Vermonter who puts up a blog (that I know of)
MIA? Sugar Mountain Farm Blog and No NAIS
I found out about the first blog I linked above when the proprietor posted in your comments. Walter's blog is one of the most interesting I have ever read. The second one, also by Walter, is a great example of using a blog for activism. And for a cause that Vermonters who support small farmers/CSAs/homesteaders should check out.
Posted by: scully | Feb 2, 2006 7:20:19 PM
I know about Walter. I just haven't gotten around to doing a "welcome to the blogosphere post." I meant to do one today earlier, but I got all wrapped up in other internet stuff.
So yes, I'm going to add both those blogs to my blogroll. I didn't add Walter originally because when I found his blog, it looked like he had abandoned it. But he seems to have started posting again. Or maybe I misread it? Sorry for leaving him off so far!
I have a few others to add, too. I do those posts every couple weeks or so, when I have several at a time.
Posted by: cresmer | Feb 2, 2006 7:29:21 PM
I think you do a great job Cathy, but having one blog with a comment feature is rarely the jumping off point to real community a la craigslist (except, it seems, in political arenas like Daily Kos and talking Points Memo). Your site rocks but it's always seemed a bit like a Cinderella-type princess stepchild to the main paper which really only got a half decent website in the last six months and still has some pretty serious trouble with stuff like archives and interactivity. I know they spend a lot of their time creating a great newspaper, but it's clear that they don't really know that much about the online world. I appreciate your trying to teach them, but that's like people telling me they'd like to be a librarian because they like to read, I just have to look at them and say "there is SO much more to it than that...." Similarly, online community is much more than just having a blog, or having a web presence. What about RSS feeds, podcasts, IM contactability, email addresses that aren't hidden behind weird javascript, valid html, accessible design, myspace profiles, or user created content in general?
I know this all may be putting the cart before the horse, and I read Seven Days in print so I may not be your target audience here, but the move from print to online is HARD, harder than starting online in the first place. We've seen the Rutland Herald try community blogging with successes that could be described as mixed at best. At the end of the day, one person has the password to this site and that's you. Same with the other music blog [which I also enjoy]. Same with the Seven Days main website. So, you're not wrong, this blog is a small community area, but I do think that compared to what people who are active in online communities generally are used to, it's still nascent. People in Vermont are used to interacting in person, that may take a while to change, if it ever does.
For one more critique, when I go to Seven Days' blogs section from their main site, I see them trying to sell ad space on the blogs as well, bleah. I don't feel like craigslist, or most blogs that I read, are creating content in order to sell my eyeballs to advertisers. I know that you personally are not writing in order to sell my eyeballs to Seven Days' advertisers. On the other hand, your bosses might be. One of the joys of blogs to me has always been that they're a respite from the blinking ads and BIG SELL that I get many other places on the Internet. I sympathize with people wanting to make money, pay workers fairly and be good citizens, I just don't like watching them do it at the expense of good content, and good spaces on the web.
The Cluetrain Manifesto guys have said a lot of whatever else I was going to say, and have said it better.
http://www.cluetrain.com/#manifesto
Posted by: jessamyn | Feb 2, 2006 8:01:37 PM
hmmm. Jessamyn, I read the cluetrain manifesto and I get the distinction between centralized corporate markets (old) and smart, networked markets (new) AND I see how this relates to the Craigslist/alt weeklies classifieds revenue issue, but how is Craigslist a "real community" beyond being a networked market where people buy and sell? The CL discussion groups are a joke. Reading 802 Online and clicking through it's VT blogroll feels much more like "community" (though a small one) than CL ever does.
That other stuff you mentioned: RSS, podcasts, etc., that will all come in time. As you know (better than most) Vermont is behind the technological curve. But 7D and the rest of the state will catch up... sooner or later.
Good point about ads. Keep 'em out of the blogs.
Posted by: Bill Simmon | Feb 2, 2006 8:35:46 PM
I enjoy reading the 802 Online blog's RSS feed in my reader everyday, Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine too. I just wish more of Seven Days departments would embrace RSS sooner than later. Especially the Calendar department. (And hey, I realize Seven days has to pay the bills, so advertising in feeds or on the blog doesn't bother me.)
Keep up your great work Cathy.
Posted by: usrbingeek | Feb 2, 2006 9:01:37 PM
Hmmm. A lot of thoughts. Thanks, everybody, for commenting.
First, I think we have to couch this discussion in the reality of Vermont. People literally come into the Seven Days office every week with their personal and classified ads written on small scraps of paper. Some of our readers still have trouble using email. We're operating in a market that is still very much offline, in a state that, as we all know, is still struggling to get cable television, much less broadband, to its rural areas. Online readers/users are still a relatively small percentage of our audience, and no one really knows when/if that's going to change.
This is also a small market, one of the smallest alt. weekly markets in the country, in fact, which means we're operating, like everyone else in this state, with relatively meager resources. If we want to add something to our operations, we also need to find a way to pay for it.
Any conversation about online innovation has to take those two realities into account.
Jessamyn, you're right that my blog is far from an online community a la Craigslist. And it's true, we don't offer anything like that at Seven Days. I know how "nascent" we are when it comes to online communities.
But we're not an online community. We're a newspaper. Honestly, I'm not sure that we *should* offer open forums. Offering forums would be an investment in time and money that I'm not sure is worth it in this market at this time. I'm not sure what it would add to the discussion that isn't already available.
That's why I've done what I've done with my blog. I think it's more useful to let people create their own blogs and then link to them and let readers know they're out there. It seems like a smarter investment for us, and more doable.
The more I think about it, the more I think that we should act as a kind of filter, a way of focusing public discussions. Like, I think it's smart for newspapers to put up forums for a specific issue, or an event. But it doesn't make sense to me for us to host open forums that are community driven. Maybe the dailies should do that. From what I've seen of the forums at the RH/TA, I get the sense that it's an idea ahead of its time here. We should act, I think, as a tool that picks up and fleshes out the best of online discussions to give them a wider audience.
That said, I'm open to being convinced that I'm wrong. We're all still figuring out what will work in this new media environment.
And I'm also eager to adding more interactivity to our website. It's been a long time coming, but we're about to add RSS feeds and comments, so people can respond immediately to our stories online. And there are other changes coming to the ad side of our business. I don't know what those are, but I know we're working on it.
We're working on the calendar, too. We're all frustrated by the challenge of putting our calendars online in an easy to use way. Reconciling the back and front ends is a lot more difficult than you might think. We're still asking for your patience.
IM contacts would be great, but I'm not sure that anyone here but me IMs. Myspace pages... what do you mean? For us or for the community? That sounds cool.
Again, though, any innovation we do has to be paid for. I hear people saying get rid of the ads, but unless all of our readers want to pitch in to pay us to do this, we have to have ads. We couldn't produce a free paper without them.
Posted by: cresmer | Feb 3, 2006 10:08:03 AM
how is Craigslist a "real community" beyond being a networked market where people buy and sell? The CL discussion groups are a joke.
They seem that way to me too, but I know that in many cities including Boston they are a congregation point for lots of people both online and in real life. My sister is a CL fan and it's one of her main social outlets. It's not a place I hang out, for sure, but it seems to be for some people. They've got event listings, rideshare boards, free stuff giveaways, etc.
And Cathy, I hear what you're saying, I don't think Seven Days should try to push the online community envelope particularly, I think it works great as a newspaper that a lot of people read. I just think that for every person that brings a scrap of paper into the office with a classified ad, there is some kid on myspace that gets all of his or her news from Google news, RSS feeds and his/her friends over a chat client, nearly ad-free. We grapple with this in the library all the time, and I don't have easy answers, I just know that traditional media is often defensive about new media all over the map, just look at what Sony has been up to lately, and broadcast tv. Part of this is because of revenue -- print is expensive to produce and maintain, for example -- and business model -- classified ads are cheaper and easier to distribute digitally, so is music, so are books. I still read books in print format, but I'd be kidding myself if I thought the next generation of people "born with the chip" would do so to the same extent that I did.
Part of new media isn't just harnessing the Internet to reach more people, it's also a development cycle where feedback is integrated rapidly into the overall system and change and response to markets happens quickly and effectively; this is the main thing I bring away from the Cluetrain Manifesto. I'm heavily involved in an online community and the guy who runs it rolls out new features weekly in response to feedback -- things like tagging, contact lists, jabber servers and chatrooms. I spend the bulk of my online time there. It's like I said before, at the end of the day, he designs and builds his site, he makes deals with advertisers, he codes the back end, and he is a part of the community he is building. Craig and Jim and co. from Craigslist are like this as well, and that sort of investment shows.
When Seven Days needs to roll out new website features, they have to pay developers, which requires a revenue stream, time, effective communication about technology, interaction with existing data structures, etc. It's a totally different model, and many of the staff at Seven Days probably aren't even online junkies enough that they even use the website, since they enjoy print. That also shows. The website is fine, but it's just a website for a newspaper. Seven Days is really unmatched in providing local content, listings, news and feature articles in an attractive regular fashion, but seems to want to take advanage of new media without really understanding or interacting with new media in ways that people are expecting and/or used to.
Posted by: jessamyn | Feb 3, 2006 11:05:38 AM
Jessamyn has put her finger on most of my initial responses.
However....
"But we're not an online community. We're a newspaper. Honestly, I'm not sure that we *should* offer open forums. Offering forums would be an investment in time and money that I'm not sure is worth it in this market at this time. I'm not sure what it would add to the discussion that isn't already available."
Herein lies the problem...the whole idea of what constitutes a newspaper is changing and needs to change. Traditional dailies and weeklies are dying or will in the near future because media consumptions habits (especially those of younger generations: http://tinyurl.com/8v6xh) are turning away from them.
I re-blogged this from my friend Marnie as it pertains to nonprofits...think the same goes for newspapers: http://tinyurl.com/bzfz9
"I think it means the organization that provides the greatest access to information, organized in way that allows it to be displayed and used in ways that are meaningful to the individual user, will be able to get the greatest amount of attention."
Posted by: Sonny | Feb 3, 2006 11:44:34 AM
Hi Cathy,
I have a new blog if you want to link to it. htp://www.burlingtonpol.com
Also, for what it's worth I kinda wish 7D would print letters about anything, not just responses to articles. Of course now that I have my own blog, I don't care as much.
Oh, and I check your blog every day. Keep up the good work.
-Haik Bedrosian
Posted by: Haik Bedrosian | Feb 3, 2006 12:57:45 PM
Somebody should do a story on just how much money Jarvis and the rest of the Craig circle jerk are making either directly from Craig "investments" or indirectly from being citizen journalism pontificators.
Posted by: SamIAM | Feb 5, 2006 11:36:51 AM
Vermont does have a split personality: two worlds that don't acknowledge each other. Online and offline. When I read how people submit classifieds written little scraps of paper, I totally laughed. And not with mirth. People just do not have the slightest clue. They whine about Wal-Mart and newspapers going out of business when the salvation for their own dwindling business is staring them right in the face on their computer screen--IF THEY EVEN HAVE ONE. The word's biggest opportunity is here and all they can do is complain about how everything's changing.
It's JUST PAPER. Nobody cares about the fact that it's a paper. Are you or are you not a community news organization? Just think of what the money you used to spend on printing could get you. I could go on but you know where I'm going: deck chairs on the Titanic and all that. Newspapers insist on driving their horses and buggies around while the world switches to cars, and then they fret about how to get more people to like horses and buggies. From a newspaper's point of view, I guess a car would still be called a "horseless carriage." Like, you know, a website is an online brochure. And a blog is an online diary.
Welcome to the 21st century.
Posted by: Michael Martine | Feb 5, 2006 7:41:14 PM
Um, hello? Condescend much?
People still read newspapers. I was having lunch in New World Tortilla and Friday and in the 20 minutes I was there, five people approached the Seven Days stand looking for the latest issue. There weren't any left. Didn't have any left at City Market on Sunday, either.
It's not like we're soooo far behind the majority of our readers. Yes, we want to be innovating, but it would be a stupid move to get rid of the newspaper, at least any time soon. I don't read websites over lunch.
Newspapers are trying to do both print and online, because these days you can't just focus on one or the other. And that's what makes it hard. It's not like we're morons. And we're not luddites. We're just overwhelmed.
Posted by: cresmer | Feb 6, 2006 10:02:05 AM
I think 7D does a good job integrating blogs, at least compared to most alt. weeklies around the country.
one of the issues here is internal to the journalism world and that's the antipathy between reporting and commentary. Blogs are usually commentary and don't do their own reporting. I think there's value in both, of course, but I do think it sheds light on why so many weeklies (and dailies) have been slow to integrate online.
As for the vulgar practice of using blogs to, gasp, sell ads well, some of us need to pay rent. Sorry.
Posted by: John Dicker | Feb 6, 2006 11:41:21 AM
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