Hot News!
• U.C. Study Approves Streetcar Boondoggle
• Chabot v. Driehaus, The Cincinnati NAACP, and Black Votes
Contact Us
v mail, fax: (214) 481-6464
e mail: click here
Events
 Monday, September 8 4:30 – 5:30 PM: Women In Black Vigils
|
Tuesday, Sept. 9 Tri-State Suicide Prevention Coalition’s all day symposium: “Youth and Young Adult Suicide...Prevention, Crisis Response, and Postvention” will be held from 8 AM to 4:15 PM on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2008, at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center, 1 West RiverCenter Blvd, Covington, KY 41011. A brochure is available on-line. |
Tuesday, September 9 7:00 PM: Cincinnati Chapter of Ohioans to Stop Execution
|
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
You Looked! Enquirer Broadens Advertisement Delivery Systems
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
Photo courtesy of here.
Online infotainment centers the latest technological advance in bringing you commercials.
On Sunday, April 29th, The Enquirer got its own news several months too late—issuing this report about it’s new approach. Ben Kaufman had reported the same thing at CityBeat in December, 2006. The several pages of Sunday columns devoted to this issue looks like the mustachioed Tom Callinan’s way of staying relevant since getting “promoted” from Executive Editor to “Vice President for Content and Audience Development,” whatever that means. So here are the adpaper’s latest strategies for bringing you commercials, while pretending to care about news.
Check out Callinan trying to get readers excited about “content and audience development”:
In the past, newsrooms tended to be set up for a once-a-day printed newspaper, a model out of line with modern social and readership trends. The Local Information Center is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week approach that uses new technologies and techniques to gather the news and get it back to you through whatever form of delivery you may want.
And we want you to partner with us on the news as well. The Local Information Center values the interactivity of blogs, message boards and information provided by the public to enrich our community conversation. So please read all about it. And let us know what you think.
For a point of comparison, here is Kaufman writing on the same topic almost five months ago:
Changes have begun at The Enquirer. It must be exhilarating for some and scary for others. There will be casualties as traditional jobs are redefined.
Unlike ridicule that in 1982 greeted Gannett’s USA Today as “McNews” or worse, the 24/7 information center is eliciting mostly positive, if sometimes guarded, responses from media commentators. Success won’t go unnoticed by other papers that embraced USA Today’s innovations as it matured into one of the better US papers today.
The Gannett reorganization promises micro news at the neighborhood level, a renewed commitment to watchdog journalism, greater interactive Internet conversations and potentially valuable “crowd sourcing” that invites the public to dig into problems and share what they know/learn with reporters.
Nothing like timliness from Callinan’s 24-hour-a-day approach!
Several Enquirer staff added to the cacophony of fluff for Sunday’s paper, including Julie Engebrecht, who wrote this piece:
We used to have a single goal: Put out the best possible newspaper for our readers to enjoy over breakfast the next morning.
That’s so yesterday.
Today we are working around the clock, seven days a week, to provide the information you want and need about your world. And get it to you now - on the Internet with audiocasts, slide shows and videos, as well as in the newspaper so you can sit down and read what you want, when you want.
The frenzy with which corporate news has tried to imitate and integrate the tools of bloggers into their structure is notable—at least for their stunning lack of originality, combined with their attempt to market themselves for the electric age. (One can’t help but wonder what the print industry—with its indefatigable desire to imitate blogs by colonizing bandwidth—would do if suddenly the blogs started imitating them by printing newspapers!)
For some reason, the newspapers seem to like using their own bandwidth for hosting videos, while the rest of us figured out we could save money and server space by outsourcing to places like YouTube or Google Video—which also optimizes content for search engines. Sites like Flickr and Scribd offer outsourcing, too. These are great tools for the citizen journalist. We encourage you to use them. And we encourage you to watch all of The Enquirer’s videos—over and over again. Tell your friends. Just close your eyes during the commercials.
Here is Kenneth Amos tooting The Enquirer’s horn about this:
Locally, I am proud to know that The Cincinnati Beacon’s very own Justin Jeffre was the first citizen videographer to get out there capturing multimedia content. Without Jeffre, we never would have gotten footage like this—featuring a huge labor march that got ignored by The Enquirer and their enormous team of multimedia experts just waiting to bring us the latest and most up-to-date news.
Wait a minute…
Anyway, thank God The Enquirer is there to deliver advertisements in even more creative ways than previously available!
• Share This Article!
Listen to this article
|  |
Register
Anonymous comments are allowed, but you can create an account above to stamp your name and to avoid typing the anti-spam code.
If you are not familiar with our rules for leaving comments, click here! The Cincinnati Beacon is not responsible for the contents of any comments. Comments do not represent the views of the moderators of The Cincinnati Beacon.
01 May 2007 at 07:15 am | #
The second I saw where they were going with this in the Sunday paper, I stopped reading out of disgust and immediately prayed you’d write about it how awful it was.
I am so sick of their folksy “let us know what you think.”
I have let them know very respectively over some years what I think about their reporting on my city. And you know what?
THEY DON’T LISTEN! And you know what else? If you let know too often, then they REALLY don’t listen!
01 May 2007 at 01:11 pm | #
24/7, Huh ? That’s why their blog posts a favored conservative piece by 4:00 PM on Friday and then they update the comments on 2:00 PM the follow Monday !
Yep, that’s 24/7 alright.
Bias, NO !
01 May 2007 at 08:19 pm | #
The thing that gets me—in addition to what you both have noted above—is how they act like their coverage is so comprehensive, but really it is all trivial. Sure, they have a bunch of videos, but what do those videos do? What function do they serve? Everything about the Enquirer screams that it is nothing more than something to do to pass time when really, really bored. They are not trying to accomplish something.
Sure, they need to get advertisers (I can appreciate that!), but does that really excuse their refusal to do real news?
02 May 2007 at 09:04 am | #
The Enquirer is simply trying to adapt to a public that has no time or interest in understanding news and issues in depth. While You and Your Friends may want more analysis in your news, the majority of the public does not.
Blogs and videos, while interesting and good for drinking party chatter, are not news, they are anti-news. They have no depth, no analysis.
In the end, like everything else in modern America, “news” is about making a buck.
02 May 2007 at 11:48 am | #
Dave - I think you missed it. The dumbing down of our country is not in response to the desires of the public or their best interests. It is the natural outgrowth of human greed. It is the marginalization of the message that directs public debate and keeps people apathetic. Rep or Dem, the discussion usually revolves around some meaningless issues so our election is decided based on who opposes abortion or which party is best. The two party system ensures discussion and guarantees meaningless debate to entertain us while our country goes to hell.
We’ve lost initiative. We have been deceived into a state of confusion based on complexity. Everything is specialized and compartmentalized to the point of absurdity. We have licenses for everything. A license is a legal document giving official permission to do something. Want to operate a business, own a dog, get married, drive a vehicle, remodel a building or work in many professions? Better have a license or you will be in big trouble. The dumbing down of America has been systematic and deliberate through media, school systems and entertainment. We have become a nation of do-nothings that continue to cling to the mistaken belief we are better than the rest of the world.
So if you think the media in Cincinnati is serving the people you must work for the media and get a check from them. Don’t bite the hand…
02 May 2007 at 12:02 pm | #
Dave, what are you talking about? Can you provide any evidence to support your theory?
Not true,this blog broke the Attorney General scandal that Alberto Gonzalaz can’t recall but assured the Senate that everything was done properly. The Beacon has broken local news and has more indepth analysis than any other outlet I can think of.
Where else have you seen Todd Portune post 3 pages on a subject?
News is news whether the corporate media tells you about something or not. Corporations are only interested in making a buck, but that doesn’t change what’s news worthy, only what gets covered or doesn’t get covered.
People are getting news from youtube, blogs, non-commercial outlets and from other countries now because Americans are starved for real news. Polls say Americans think our media sucks and they sure are right about that.
02 May 2007 at 02:30 pm | #
I can do some research and resurrect the necessary data to support my theory (please don’t say “you should have the data right now before making your statement,” that’s as well-worn an Internet tactic as saying “that sounds suspiciously like something Hitler might have said”
.
Of course most people will see it as a chicken-or-the-egg thing (did media change because it’s greedy, and make the public stupid, or did public stupidity make the media change).
You’re completely correct that the media (that is, the five or so corporations that own most of the mainstream media outlets) are greedy. So if you want to make a buck, you sell the public what it wants. What does the public want? More analysis? You claim it does ... so when the media decided (in spite of its huge staffs of employed sociologists, psychologists etc.) that it was going to give the public more “infotainment”, where was the big public uprising? Where were all the phone calls, saying “dammit, I don’t want vaccuous blonde newscasters in tight dresses telling me about the latest celebrity arrest, I want to know more about the history of this foreign country,” etc.?
The people who run the media aren’t stupid. There are two practices amongst TV news media, for example, which have been in place for some time:
1) Package and deliver your material assuming that the average member of the public has an eight-grade comprehension level.
2) Do not present any news piece which takes more than 60 seconds to explain.
You believe that this is a recent phenomenon which has come about because the public has become stupid because the media has “marginalized” the “message” because ... err ... it became greedy. I believe that this is actually a result of the media intelligently, and greedily, learning over a period of decades that the majority of the public have psychologically adapted to their role as infantilized consumers in fear-driven, materialistic post-WWII America.
Of course there may be smidgens of real news presented in blogs ... news you won’t hear in the mainstream media. There’s also a huge amount of crap. You’re as likely to hear something real and intelligent on a randomly-selected blog as you are to hear something real and intelligent from the first person you walk up to in your local mall.
If there’s any hope for the average member of the public to become informed, it’s by re-creating “mainstream” media. The news media should belong to the public, just as the government should. The public needs to get its information from a handful of media outlets, carefully monitored and held accountable, not 18 million blogs. Writing into a blog may feel “empowering” ... “hey look, the world is paying attention to me!” but blogs are, individually and collectively, powerless on a country-wide and globally-wide scale, because in the end the vast majority of their content is the blatherings and the yammerings of your neighbor Alice Kravitz.
You mention the natural outgrowth of human greed. More powerful and destructive is the natural tendency towards following leaders out of fear. In the end, democracy will fail because not enough people remained involved in their government. Blogs are just a reflection of the decentralization of information and communication ... feel empowered all you want, but even if you can get Mr. and Mrs. Joe Public jacked into cyberspace in some kind of Matrix wetdream, they’ll most likely turn to Britney Spear’s blog rather than your own.
02 May 2007 at 04:02 pm | #
I don’t have a link now, but recently CincyNewsAche noticed that the Enquirer seemed to be lying about its web clicks and hits. To believe The Enquirer’s reporting on the matter, they would have been number two in the Country for web news hits—but when that list was published they were not even on the top ten.
How can that be?
I certainly hear that The Enquirer is doing better and better. And I see them continuing to downsize and get rid of people. Is that what an organization does when it is thriving?
Also, NewsAche has noticed the number of days recently when the paper has failed to sell full page ads. Is that the sign of a healthy paper with increasing circulation?
Just some questions I have. I have not had a chance to follow them through…
03 May 2007 at 08:40 am | #
Speaking of internet videos, check this out!!!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih2LNu8jf5c
Old man crowley better watch out!
03 May 2007 at 01:42 pm | #
Dave, don’t worry I wouldn’t expect you to actually have any data to back up your assertion. That old internet tactic is just like calling you Hitler?
I never said the media were stupid. Their greedy, lazy and inept when it comes to living up to their role as watchdogs and serving the public interest.
See what I mean. Their serving the interest of their corporate parents who serve the advertisers.
As with the AG Gonzalas scandal, blogs are breaking news and allowing people to engage in a more vibrant discourse. Like a pen as a sword the blogs are dicing the self proclaimed media gate keepers into a thousand peices. Corporate America no longer owns that copyright to America’s story. We’ll write it ourselves thank you very much.
There’s a lot of crap out there but the same can be said for talk radio and the Sunday talk shows. After all, who got it wrong on the war?
03 May 2007 at 02:14 pm | #
The Enquirer and its mix of publications appear to be far from thriving.
The growth in circulation results from aggressive discounting (25 cent papers), low multi-day offers and in the case of “premium issues”, over-charging customers 54 times a year so they (the Enquirer) can “buy” their own papers to sample with non-readers. The numbers may be up, but the total dollars would almost have to be down.
Advertising revenues are obviously down too. A fact that any regular reader can observe in most issues. The word on the street is that the other publications that they produce aren’t doing well either – Housetrends clobbers Design, just count the pages. And, the Community Press issue that I see looks a lot smaller than it did last year – plus, they fired a lot of people recently too.
In regard to internet revenues and traffic, they obviously lost a lot due to WCPO’s departure, especially given the local weather connection. And, it’s hard to believe that they won’t lose more when the Post drops off at year-end.
And, the word on the street continues to be that morale is low due to all of the changes and those yet to come. Plus, have you seen the price of gas lately? That hurts them as well.
03 May 2007 at 05:56 pm | #
Screw the Republican party! Check out this video.
You fascist had better watchout!
03 May 2007 at 10:31 pm | #
Look for the Enquirer news operation to follow the lead of its editorial department. Editorial exists only to hand the mike over to whoever wants to burp a comment on the Enquirer topic of the day. Might as well turn the paper’s website into one never-ending message board on church festivals, good samaritans, elementary school projects and the other news-lite that fills their pages. The object of this strategy is to turn the reporting function over to, well, you and me. And for no pay, no less. Now that’s a corporation for you.
04 May 2007 at 07:01 am | #
...and the more Buchanan cuts to make ends meet because she can’t make her revenue goals, the more readers will see breaking news about lemonade stand openings versus investigative reporting that matters.
And, that’s the problem with media consilidation. Imagine the diversity of news that this city will get once the Post is gone as the Enquirer will own all the newspapers of mass distribution - none.
Plus, she’ll be more empowered to do things at her business that would make headlines if it were any other business.
Freedom of the press takes on a whole new meaning.
05 May 2007 at 08:39 pm | #
If the Enquirer is giving people what they want, then why the financial trouble? People are sick of a piece-of-shit paper that is straying too far away from the news. This is why they are losing money.