Feb 15 2008
How newspaper associations influence newspaper websites
A couple of posts ago, in a comment, I whined about how newspaper associations like the OCNA influence how newspapers do their websites, by rewarding certain behaviour. Well, here’s a couple of tidbits of news on that front.
First, the OCNA announced their Better Newspaper Competition award nominees yesterday. Lo and behold, there’s no longer any award for Best Online Edition (a.k.a Best Website)! There used to be one….I should know, I placed top three in that category three years in a row.
So I sent an email to the OCNA people, who inform me that they’ve taken the award out temporarily while they work on a whole new suite of awards for websites. So that’s good, I’m glad to see that newspaper associations are taking websites seriously (like, 15 years after the fact). Any bets that Best Video will be one of the categories?
Also recently, Metroland released its Metroland Award Categories for 2008. Finally, this year, they have awards for online stuff. Look at those new categories: Best Web-Only Story, Best Video, Best Slideshow, Best Online Series or Special Section. Notice how they encourage certain behaviour on member paper websites? Who says newspapers should allocate resources to doing video on their websites? Metroland Corporate does, because they give an award for it! Is that correct?
Nuh-uh, I say.
Talk about thwarting initiative and experimentation by your subsidiaries. Metroland must really think it’s got this shit figured out, if they’re encouraging certain behaviours – inevitably, at the expense of others.
For balance, let’s look at how the CCNA does it. That is both more detailed and less “we know how it’s done so just do what we say and we’ll give you a prize.”
5 Responses to “How newspaper associations influence newspaper websites”
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You know, you raise an interesting point here. But I would go a step further and say we really should stop worrying about platform and concentrate on excellence in journalism. What the devil should medium have to do with an award-winning story?
That seems like a good point on the face of it. Good journalism – including fact checking, depth, analysis, good writing, good style, good lead, etc. – is good journalism, regardless of what platform it ends up on.
Or is it? Doesn’t layout matter? If you didn’t lay the paper out properly – if, for example, you put everything in big chunks of grey text, or tombstone your headlines, or you can’t tell which picture goes with what story – then people might have a tough time reading the stories. They might not read them at all. And you would have failed a primary journalistic function: to present the news in a meaningful, easy-to-read way that helps the reader become more informed about his world. Or something.
Anyway, news associations have long recognized this fact, since they’ve given prizes for best layout, best use of colour, and prizes for other layout issues for many years.
Similarly, if you presented your stories online in a tiny, unreadable font – or put dark text against a dark background, or made your site hard to search, or forgot to do basic SEO so no-one can find your stories – then you’ve failed to fulfil your journalistic function on that platform.
So I think it’s appropriate to have awards for websites, too, since that’s a very common platform for newspapers big and small these days.
If you’re arguing for awards specifically for online, that’s one thing and perhaps a tad elitist. You fail to consider that that would exclude many smaller, independent and alternative voices in the media these days that simply don’t have the money to compete with the bigger papers online, to make fancy videos and the like. Why not have a separate section for our poorer cousins who are doing excellent journalism?
Even the smallest paper can have a good and award-winning website. As for papers (of any size) making video, I argue rather eloquently against the committing of resources to video (here) and against the giving of awards for it (above).
Tim, hello! I can read the javascript on the wall, but I’m still not convinced that awards for excellence in journalism should have anything to do with the medium. For that matter, just like awards categories of best front page layout, best photo spread, you could slot best website in there, too, period.
Forget MTV, let’s give awards for best UCG (user generated content). Let’s really try, as an industry, to stay a step ahead.