washingtonpost.com’s “On Being” project is simply stunning: real stories from real people based on the simple notion that “we should get to know one another a little better.” An elegant design and interface, enhanced by professional video production standards, bring to life the musings and passions of ordinary extraordinary people. This is how journalism from MSM should look on the web: visual, interactive, compelling, real. The big problem: You can’t find “On Being” on The Post’s dense home page. Which raises the existential question of whether it really exists.
Look here: http://specials.washingtonpost.com/onbeing/

You have to admire the chutzpah of any group that seeks to save journalism from itself by blowing with the wind. But inspired by native forces, the goo-goos at Journalism That Matters gathered in “open space” at a George Washington University cafeteria to agonize over the ill-winds of change. All the right people – which, in the language of the event, were those who were there – blew away inhibitions in feel-good exercises designed to find salvation for journalism at the crossroads. All in about 30 hours. Which is very fast when you consider that journalism has been at someone’s idea of a crossroads for a coupla hundred years.

The outcomes were as predictable as they were quick. Flip-chart wisdom validated pre-planned outcomes including (1) research and education agendas sustaining journalism; (2) “breakthroughs across silos of thought and practice;” and (3) a framework for launching the Next Newsroom, a business with margins that appeal to the low financial expectations of civic-supportive, community investors.

While its agenda is earnest, JTM suffers from dated, naïve assumptions about the ongoing transitions in journalism, community and civic life. And then there are JTM’s breezy rules of engagement: “whoever comes is the right people/whatever happens is the right thing ….” That’s just silly. Serious plans require rigor, talent and scrutiny.

We’re all for journalism that matters. Who isn’t? As far as we can tell there’s nothing stopping journalism-that-matters from happening. Better reporting from the very people who seek better reporting is a good place to start. So would the inclusion of the fairly brilliant innovators outside of journalism’s tortured and clubby network. With so many inspiring innovations, enabling technologies, fresh investment and creative ideas emerging from a media-savvy society it’s hard to embrace a woe-is-journalism agenda. The wind blows forward.

If the Next Newsroom sounds familiar, it is. It borrows language from Newspaper Next (request the report; don’t republish), the “transformation project” financed by newspaper publishers. Both projects owe to Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen’s broadly applicable, 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma. The difference: the American Press Institute paid Christensen’s consulting company $2.5 million to repurpose his case studies; JTM organizer Chris Peck bought the book. ($12.21 for the paperback at Amazon). Never mind that Christensen famously forecast the demise of the newspaper industry. His company, Innosight, happily competes for consulting engagements to help fix the industry.

The situation reminds me of the fertilizer problem at my golf course. We hire an enterprising service called Birds-B-Gone to chase away the flock of geese that summers by the lake on the 16th Hole. Trained dogs cause the geese to fly off to a nearby course. That course then hires the same service to chase them back to ours. Birds-B-Gone gets good both ways.

Though they share terminology, the two Next projects come from different parts of the goose: JTM from the heart, Newspaper Next from the, ah, wallet. The competing initiatives, both aimed in some way at saving newspapers, exacerbate the rift among journalists and publishers about solving a common problem. Only the goose-chasers make out.

A friend at a relatively large media corporation recently asked me to evaluate one of that company’s newspaper web sites. I removed any references to the specific paper/company not so much because I’m avoiding picking on them, but because most of the things I list I’ve seen elsewhere and I want more people at more companies to understand what to look for and why I feel they are important.

It’s very fun these days to obsess over various Web 2.0 technologies and how to integrate them into your existing site. But keeping up with the items listed below can do a lot to help companies grow and maintain readership.

Here goes nothing:

Improper copyright year in the footer – If the reader thinks you don’t know what year it is, it doesn’t do much to help credibility. I subsequently found this in a lot of places. When this extends into the second quarter of the year (as it now does as of this posting), it looks much worse than seeing it in Jan. and Feb.

Contact info without a means of communicating via the web — The site listed a collection of phone numbers for News tips, Classifieds, Display advertising, and Subscriptions. But there was no link to pages for these departments or Web-based email forms. This can frustrate the reader and cost your company a good chunk of change in the man hours needed to answer all those phone calls.

Articles with no comment functionality – I had the chance to integrate Topix.net into the iFocos site and was impressed with how easy the integration was. Such a service, or others like it integrated into the bottom of each article, could both enable reader feedback and expose the article to a wider audience. Also this wasn’t a matter of the site not encouraging any comments, as it’s blog had them fully enabled.

Registration requirement — I think the ESPN.com’s Insider approach is much better than preventing a user from seeing anything at all. If you’re going to require registration, I feel you should give the reader a tease of the first two or three grafs.

Hiding back-door views of your site — I’m a view-source kind of guy. I deleted some of the URL for a blog post, down to http://www.DOMAIN.com/CATEGORY/ and found a “test page” was exposed. This should probably be an inventory of all the company’s blogs. I also noticed that it said “Powered by Movable Type 3.16″ Much has happened to Movable Type since version 3.16. Keeping on such an upgrade path can sometimes uncover new publishing, revenue and social networking opportunities for your company.

Make your headlines clickable – Not everyone instinctively knows to click on a “permalink.” Having both the word “permalink” and the headline clickable could result in increased page vews.

OK, I lied. I am now meandering into some more Web 2.0 territory. But don’t worry, none of this requires a computer science degree or anything …

Google maps indexing – I started playing with integrating Google maps into Movable Type recently for a client. I think this is an amazing opportunity for companies to explore. What I envision is a Google map that, when you click on a specific region, your last X number of articles, blog posts etc. that relate to that area show up.

Very targeted advertising could be integrated as well in the pop-up windows in the map. When users mouse over one of the markers on the map. Constructing such a map is no more complicated than creating specialized RSS feeds.

Go where the high school kids are — Why not create an account on MySpace that features links to your latest content? You could get thousands of potential young readers to be your paper’s “friend” and communicate with them on a level newspaper execs haven’t even let themselves ever dream about.

Recruit and host guest bloggers, and make them a real part of your publishing effort – Several news sites are warming up to the idea of “guest bloggers” as part of a citizen journalism effort. However, the areas these fine folks often post into is not always fully utilized by the newspaper company. Including small widgets showcasing “Latest headlines” or articles and features related to what the guest is blogging about seems to be a natural fit that would enhance the user’s experience with the guest blog and the company’s ability to reach a larger audience.

Speaking of reaching a larger audience … claim your blog on Technorati! – Once you’ve created these blogs for guests, take the next step and get them on Technorati’s radar. Make sure the ping settings in your publishing system are correct, and embed the little bit of HTML that enables visitors to make that blog one of their favorites on Technorati.

This is obviously just a small snapshot of opportunities and mistakes out there. We’d love to hear other from you. Comment below and get those gripes off your chest!

Chad Capellman is an occasional contributor and site constructor for iFocos. His LinkedIn profile can be viewed at http://www.linkedin.com/in/capellman

Newspapers are failing, and my friend and advisor Alan Webber knows why: the problem isn’t technology, shifting business models, the rise of social networks or all the other excuses newspaper executives like to talk about. The problem is lousy products.

From Alan’s Nov. 13, 2006 post:

What’s happened, I think, is that newspapers have stopped asking the right questions. They’ve stopped provoking public conversation about the great issues of our time. They’ve stopped seeing themselves as provocateurs of public discourse. … Why do movies, the Web, TV, get to have all the fun? Ask all the good questions? Carry all the inspirational, challenging, provocative answers?

Good questions.

Alan was the founder of Fast Company magazine.