How to Improve Southeast Idaho News Environment
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the newsletter or RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I got notice that my online subscription to the Post Register expires this Wednesday. I do not think I will pay for a renewal, for a few reasons.
First, I really think I deserve a free subscription, given the huge amounts of free advertising I do for the PR on IFz. I must mention an article I read in the PR at least a few times each week in my articles or comments. If they had free access, I would provide links to each article each time. Perhaps it’s time for me to branch out and mention the news I find in other sources.
Second, I think their online version should be free. We had this discussion awhile back, and I think the trends are tipping more towards free online newspaper access. At the time of that discussion, the New York Times had gone free because they realized they could earn significantly more from increased ad revenues than from the subscriptions. Since then, the Wall Street Journal is considering going free, and they offer free access to articles that are posted to the Digg.com website. So essentially their publication has become free, so long as a socially popular route is taken.
The PR charges online subscription fees because they have a unique (and great) niche product. I agree they certainly are the best and most complete southeast Idaho news source, but that could also be described as a local monopoly. And there we have my third reason, I feel strongly I should not continue financially supporting a local monopoly. I should encourage and help alternative news sources until the PR feels real competition, in which case they would probably drop their online fees.
Before anyone gets themselves bunched up at the PR over these remarks, I should make clear these are my opinions and not intended to libel the PR or their publisher. ;^)
So how can we foster a more competitive and better quality news environment in southeast Idaho? Could it be the Digg.com model, where anyone can submit links to news articles published on news outlet websites? The beauty of the Digg model is that others vote if an article is good or not, and visitors can choose to see just the best news, as chosen by the crowd wisdom. Blog writers could also get their articles published in the same forum as mainstream news outlets, and get a chance to compete on the same level field. This means someone with a small voice can still be heard, despite the mainstream media ignoring their story.
Unfortunately, the Digg model can be gamed, and in our local market it would not take much for a news organization to throw their weight (employees, friends, and family) at the voting mechanism and game their stories higher than other outlets’.
Perhaps a competitive news environment could be found simply by creating a single web page with RSS feeds of all the local news outlets? Every morning I visit four to seven websites to find all of my news. A single page with all the news feeds would be much more convenient. This style would also be great for mid-day breaking news. This environment could be made fair by publishing the story headline and first 100 words, then if folks want to read the entire story they click through the outlet’s website (where the outlet earns visits and ad revenue).
This kind of page could foster more direct local news competition, where multiple outlets report the same story but in their unique ways. Our news outlets would need to develop the best headlines and best reports to gain the highest click-through rate.
I thought of creating a page like this at IFz, but always stopped because of the ethical dilemma. Is it fair for me to wrap my ads around other people’s content? Some websites do this, and I don’t think it is ethical. Perhaps if I created a page without my advertising, then it would be more neutral and fair for all news outlets?
Is a “citizen journalist corp” a realistic mechanism to achieve competitive news? Most anyone can write a letter to the editor at PR or publish an article at IFz, but these are usually opinions rather than news. Perhaps some basic news/journalism standards could be used for everyday southeast Idahoans to become amateur reporters themselves?
Imagine hundreds of folks in our area publishing once or twice a week on news that they dig up, publishing to a central “open-source” local news forum, and they receive shares in the profits? Your motivation would be to publish good news often, so you earn more money. If it was distributed enough, each person would only have to do a few minutes each week, but the net effect of hundreds or thousands of amateur reporters submitting a news item or two each week could drown out all the local news outlets in publishing scope.
Of course the problem with this model is that it is all online, and thus limited in reach. However, what if each of these articles carried a “digg” mechanism, and the best news each week was published into a newspaper and distributed around the area? If it worked, that published paper would likely be in high demand.
What do you think could help foster a more competitive news environment in southeast Idaho?
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
Vote:
0 
0 Wow.
That’s some amazing koolade you’re consuming.
You get your ideas and content from the PR, but they should offer you $10 per month ($10?! talk about penny-ante compensation) for using it? I’ve got you an eye-opener: call ‘em up and license their content. I think you’ll be shocked to learn how much their going rate is for universal reprint rights to their data (think Lexis).
And you think they’re a monopoly, despite god knows HOW many other media sources (TV, Radio, other regional papers, a few local weeklies, Internet) are around, even in a backwater like ours?
Moments later, you talk of checking 7 media sources daily for your news. I thought the PR was a monopoly? And you think you’re gonna be permitted to adapt these 7 sources’ content and wrap ads around it and generate revenue as a result?
Newspapers are in crisis because they’re largely clueless, and I agree totally the PR needs to do cost-benefit comparisons between their subscription-only website and what they’d get off a free site and more eyeballs. I’ve also thought about this a lot and the newspaper industry’s way out is to reinvent themselves (the internet gives them back audience that they lost to multimedia/TV/Radio, while retaining depth (since neither TV or Radio have unlimited airtime). That, plus finding ways to make all the pageviews self-sustaining off ad revenue… presto, new newspapers!
Seriously, bad ideas abound in your rant. Seriously, do this and you officially ‘jump the shark’.
But what the hell do I (some anon stranger) know. Prove me wrong. But do so like a businessman. Back up. Research and write a business plan. Do some competitive espionage on ‘New West’ and the Post Register (or some equivalently-sized publicly-traded news company). Ask similar companies for their prospectus. Read about the industry. Don’t just GUESS that you understand it enough to be a disruptive technology inventor. Have some hard plan in place. But be ready for it to be a bit daunting: You’ll see that marketing and writing and editing and graphics design and legal and fact-checking and advertising and billing and accounts-payable and HR and benefits and etc… they’ll suck you dry for next to nothing in the way of page-hits. And be ready for all this to happen as you watch craigslist and others disrupt/break your model each time you find a profitable business in all this.
And even if you succeed, about the time you hit your stride, someone will do what you’re doing globally and eat your lunch on economies of scale. The economically-flat world hasn’t yet devoured the production of local news, but I can see it coming. After all, there’s nothing stopping a writer in India from half a dozen techniques useful in remotely researching a story. Or broadcasting their results.
Oh, and if my snarky rudeness hasn’t put you off completely and by some freak accident this pulls you back from the brink, consider trying to not reinvent the wheel. Write your b-plan and investor presentation with an eye toward *altering* the PR to add functionality you envision. Let them handle the budgets and the conventional media and everything else. Just show ‘em how to get more ad revenue and more eyeballs.
Vote:
0 0 Wow, I feel like I’ve already been eaten up the business world, and I was just making some random suggestions!
The sources I check daily do not compare to the PR. Local news stations provide some local coverage, but as I said nothing as complete as the PR. Thanks for reminding me about New West, I’ll start checking them again also, but they cover multiple states not just our area, right?
You certainly burned me there, I don’t know anything about the newspaper business. Why is the suggestion of a more competitive environment so dangerous? Isn’t real competition supposed to be good for the businesses involved, and certainly for the consumers.
Vote:
0 0 I liked the saying above the PR’s Dean Miller’s desk: “Television is to news what bumper stickers are to philosophy.”
When I compare the news between TV stations and the PR, it’s easy to see why. The TV news stations have one or two stories published daily that catch my attention, so I get maybe six stories a day from the TV news websites, compared to 10-20 articles daily that catch my attention in the PR.
All I’m saying is it would be nice to see a more competitive news environment in southeast Idaho. Someday we will grow big enough for a second daily newspaper.
Vote:
0 0 The fact is, the PR SHOULD offer it’s online content for free. The people that buy the print are not going to stop just because it’s free online. When I first moved here 3 years ago, I was amazed at the amount of people that still do not have internet access in this part of the country. Let alone the lack of local business’s that actually have websites in this neck of the woods. South East Idaho really needs to get with the program and move into the digital age already. It’s a potential gold mine here for those that build and/or host websites. Giving the public free news online would only help move the PR in line with the rest of the country.
Lets get with the times already PR!
As for asdf….I thought your comments were a little harsh.
Vote:
0 0 In the 80-s I worked as a producer (and a director, which was a first) for a local tv station. I felt I couldn’t get enough of the story into a 30 second slot.
I was told that my writing was more suited for a newspaper than for the broadcast news.
However, I don’t see that we have much more than the ‘news lite’ in our local paper (although I generally like the PR). I’d like to see more investigative reporting, more in depth series.
A competitive newspaper would be nice, I think. But I’m afraid of a race for the bottom, pandering to the enquirer/star crowd rather than folks who want real news and analysis.
I get news from many sources, cnn.com is my homepage, but I also go to yahoo! for news, POE and the onion for the offbeat, and nfl.com or si.com for my sports.
I like what you’ve done with this site for the most part. I would be interested in reading whatever you come up with.
Oh, by the way, I’d be one of those people who’d drop my paper subscription in a heartbeat if the online PR (which is how I read my paper anyway) was free. So if there are more folks like me the paper would lose some revenue for sure.
Vote:
0 0 Good points Nemisis. And I agree that the PR does need more investigative journalism. And while I agree that the PR MAY loose some revenue by offering free online news, it could easily be made up in online advertising.
I think it could be a win win situation all around.
Vote:
0 0 I still love ya Joe…you do a good service for the community with IdahoFallz.com.
ASDF…I have two words for ya S*&% It
Vote:
0 0 Well my main point was that we should have a competitive news environment here. The PR does a great job, but they would do better if they had competition. Southeast Idaho news consumers would get better news if the PR had competition.
Vote:
0 0 My first post on IF.com-
Many guidelines, I’ll do my best to adhere. I have several friends on the PR staff and all are great people. As far as PR business practices go, even my friends on staff don’t approve how the paper is operated. Knowing what the PR gives back to the community, I wouldn’t hold my breath on them giving anything away.
My wife works for a “perceived” competing paper here in IF. The PR actually threatened their long term advertisers with rate hikes should they advertise in the new local weekly. So far that strategy has backfired , but it amazes me how petty they can be.
BTW- I still get the PR and enjoy the majority of the content, I just don’t like how they do business.
Vote:
0 0 I guess we’re talking about the River City Weekly as the strongest competitor to the PR at this point?
Maybe they could develop into a full newspaper during 2008? Right now the only newsy things I enjoy are their development news. I don’t care so much for their features like obits and comics, but heck those are newspaper type features so I guess they are on their way.
Unless another newspaper organization starts up to provide competition, I have to hope the RCW will ramp up and become a stronger competitor. I don’t want to see the PR get plowed under eventually, I just think it would be healthier to have a real competitive environment.
Vote:
0 0 Oh, Joe, you just knew I’d have to weigh in on this one at some point, didn’t you? Actually, it is Watson’s comment that triggers my response.
He/she writes: “Knowing the the way the PR gives back to the community, I wouldn’t hold my breath on them (sic) giving anything away.” The PR can legitimately be accused of many things, but not giving that to the community isn’t one of them. To wit:
1. The PR’s owners literally gave 49 percent of their company to their employees beginning in 1998, culminating in 2005.
2. The Post Company gives hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and services to the community every year. For its size, there is no company that gives more to the community, as far as I can ascertain.
3. Dozens of PR employees volunteer in the community every year, coordinated by the newspaper’s Promotions and Community Affairs Director.
4. I can assure idahofallz’ readers that the PR has not “threatened” any advertisers with rate hikes for buying ads in any of its competitors. That would be just, plain stupid.
I could go on and on.
Once again, I make the plea (undoubtedly to no avail) for people to use reasonable discretion when making claims about people and organizations in our community. And if “Watson” knows so much about how the PR’s employees feel, I’d be very interested in meeting with him/her to learn more, so we can address these concerns as much as possible.
Roger Plothow
Editor and Publisher
Post Register
Vote:
0 0 Baited and hooked, yes!
I hadn’t even heard of the advertiser thing, and it does not sound plausible. I agree wholeheartedly with Roger’s points, and want to additionally point out that we often see the PR listed as a supporter of many local events.
If you have suggestions for improving the Post Register, please add make those suggestions in this discussion from awhile back.
For this discussion, consider that the next people in charge of the PR may not be as benevolent or may not strive to be as good, that maybe they discourage stories that negatively portray their buddy’s businesses or families, etc. It would take awhile for folks to notice that happening, and it would take even longer for a competitive news source to build up in response.
I’d rather see Idaho Falls start developing the alternative major news source before we need it.
Vote:
0 0 This was named one of the top 50 websites of 2007, it’s the idea of enabling citizen journalists to do the idea I described above. You can sign up and report whatever you want. Apparently a lot of people use the “highlight” firefox function in conjunction with this website to make reporting easier.
Anyone used this site much? I’m not sure if this is THE solution, but it’s in the same realm of what I was thinking. One drawback is when I type in 83402 for the local, the newest story is two weeks ago, and there are very few. So far, that it.
Vote:
0 0 This page has a 3 minute video with clips of news reporters, ehh let’s say having a bad day. I’m sorry for these reporters, but some of the things are funny.
http://gawker.com/377201/the-dangers-of-being-a-television-news-reporter
Vote:
0 0 Oh, it’s horrible, some things that happen and are caught on tape. It’s typically very funny, too (against my will, but it’s true). Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out later.
Leave Your Comment
Our Community's Comment Guidelines:- Please stay polite and on topic.
- Your email will never be published.
- No profanity or euphemisms for profanity.
- No personal attacks, name-calls, put-downs, or baiting other guests, races, genders, or religions.
- Express opinions, facts, logic, and reasoning; just don’t argue for argument’s sake.
- No commercial links (unless absolutely relevant to the discussion) and no religious proselytizing.
- No religious discussions (for or against). Go to http://religiondebates.blogspot.com for religious discussions.
- Use the "I" word as much as possible to demonstrate responsibility.
- Limit yourself to using one name per thread to demonstrate responsibility.
- If you think a comment is inappropriate, ask Joe to review it.
Loading ...
Vote:
Post Register - For heaven’s sake, give the man his online subscription for free. He’s done all kinds of free publicity for you. You will never miss the $5 (or whatever it is) a month and you will have the satisfaction of knowing you did the right thing.