(Limor Peer)

It's symptomatic of the newspaper industry's trouble defining itself, that it is unsure how to measure its audience.

The last few of weeks saw conflicting interpretations of whether time spent with newspaper Web sites has actually gone up or down. A Nielsen study showing that the average time spent on newspaper sites dipped in the first quarter of 2008 compared to the same time period last year, received the following headline on the Editor & Publisher's site: "Only 11 top newspaper sites report increase in time spent." Carl Bialik, the WSJ's Numbers Guy, putting newspapers sites' statistics in context of overall Web usage patterns, also concluded that "newspapers' online performance looks less impressive" when considered against the backdrop of "a sharp increase in the amount of time American adults spent on the Web." But others suggest that these findings should bring relief to online newspaper publishers because some are doing well (see CMSwire).

But, is "time spent" measuring the right thing? Many think not.

When Nielsen announced in the summer of 2007 that it is replacing "page views" with "time spent," the announcement was received with some fanfare. Some called it "the best engagement metric," and many were happy to see the page views metric fall from grace.

Among the touted benefits of measuring how many minutes a user spends on a site is that it allows comparison between two or more different sites: "It is not that page views are irrelevant now, but they are a less accurate gauge of total site traffic and engagement," Scott Ross, director of product marketing at Nielsen/NetRatings said. "Total minutes is the most accurate gauge to compare between two sites."

Others point to "time spent" as a more fair measurement of "Web environments that have never been well-served by the page view, such as online gaming and Internet applications." For example, Ross said, "MySpace may have 10 to 11 times more page views than YouTube, but myspace.com users spend only three times more minutes on the site... Therefore, measuring total time spent on a site will make it easier for advertisers to mold their ads to how users are actually accessing content."

And, by measuring time and not pages, you bypass the problem of sites that artificially inflate page views by increasing the number of pages a user has to go click on.

But many others were not convinced this is, or should be, the way to measure Web traffic. The obvious argument is that "time spent" is deficient because it does not directly measure whether anyone is actually paying attention. Bryan Eisenberg, an author and expert on online marketing and marketing analytics said "anybody who browses with several open tabs, or walked away from their computer knows how big a mistake it would be to assume that, just because the website is open, someone is actually paying attention."

So, while measurable, this sort of "time spent" is not very useful to advertisers - a key stakeholder in the conversation about metrics. On OJR, Robert Niles points out that "ultimately, a publisher ought to be able to show not only that it is delivering readers to an advertiser, but that it is positing the ad in a way that readers will see it... 'Time spent on the website' doesn't deliver that assurance."

The Newspaper Association of America, recognizing some of these problems, has made an effort to highlight the issue. The Audience Development Committee for NAA's new Media Federation offers a resource guide to various measures and their limitations.

But a more fundamental issue is: Are newspaper Web sites well served by the "time spent" metric for their online audience? Is that what they should be measuring? Some think not.

In our work at the Media Management Center, we have argued for a more sophisticated and nuanced approach to measurement - the focus should be on the role a site fulfills is a person's life. We see online behavior (i.e., usage - which we measure as a combination of both time and frequency) as a function of how a person engages with the site, and argue that both should be measured and addressed by news organizations.

Also focusing on engagement, Robert Gorell - writing in grokdotcom back in July 2007 - thinks that both page views and time spent are simply proxies for frequency and reach. This is old thinking that is inappropriate for digital media. Engagement, he says, is what we should measure.

Gerry McGovern, writing in CMSwire, thinks any measure of quantity relating to the audience produces meaningless information. He gives two examples:

Example: A customer clicks on page A, then leaves after 1 minute. What does that mean? If they stayed for 3 minutes would that have been better? Why? Supposing the person who spends 3 minutes on the page finds it cluttered and full of verbiage?

Example: A customer clicks on page C, then clicks on page M, then goes back to page C, then leaves. What does that mean? Did they think they were going to get something on page M that they didn't get? Or did they get what they needed on page M, and were simply using the Back button to navigate out of the site?

He proposes using a qualitative measure of how successful a Web site is - identifying the top three tasks of a Web site, giving people these tasks, and then measuring whether they were able to complete them. "The essence of Web metrics... is the observation of our customers as they are hunched over their screens," he says. "Were they able to quickly do what they came to do? Web metrics can be boiled down to two words: task completion."

This resonates. In our recent work with teens and young adults we heard many times that they go to news sites to get the news. That's it. They're not interested in spending time on these sites doing anything else. If that's the case (and it seems to be - wait for our report in July), newspaper sites are at a disadvantage compared to many other sites when it comes to how much time people spend on them. Shouldn't these sites be measured in terms of how well they serve their audience? How quickly people can find what they're looking for? How well they lay out issues, or provide added value to the news of the day with digests, timelines, maps, data banks, etc.? Just because you can measure time spent - across media, which is nice - doesn't mean you should, or that you only rely on that measurement. Newspaper sites are in essence trying to compete in a race that is not their own, and risk handicapping themselves by letting others define them.

In the end, however, as Phil Napoli explains in Audience Economics, the way an audience is defined depends on whether it can be measured in a practical way that is acceptable to all stakeholders. Newspapers just need to have a clearer vision of what they do and make sure their stake is on the table.


By Limor Peer (l-peer@northwestern.edu)
Limor Peer is research director for the Media Management Center and Readership Institute.

(Mary Nesbitt)

I've been on the lookout for local stories that look out for the public's interest. Most news organizations would say they do it every day, but that's not the impression news consumers have (see this study, for instance). So my search was for A+ stories that tell people about something that really matters to them as citizens; that are told in a way that's easy to understand; and that encourage participation.

I have three recent examples to share.

1. The Plain Dealer in Cleveland looked at employees in the Cuyahoga County recorder's office and reported last Sunday that the current recorder has awarded about three dozen patronage jobs. The previous job skills of many don't match the positions for which they were hired. A simple but forceful front page design featuring thumbnails of the patronage hires was matched by a wonderfully lucid, tightly-written story by reporter Joseph Wagner that begins:

Even if you have never been to the Cuyahoga County recorder's office, you will no doubt be familiar with the names of the workers behind the counters.

That's because some have appeared on your election ballots for mayor and City Council. With others, their spouses or relatives have sent you campaign fliers for congressional races, judgeships or school board seats.>

Recorder Patrick O'Malley's staff directory, you might say, is a Who's Who of the politically connected, with surnames of Mottl, Russo and Sustarsic.

Plain Dealer review of the recorder's 2007 payroll found that O'Malley has given nearly three dozen patronage jobs, with combined salaries of $1.4 million, to politicos and their kin - former mayors, the son and daughter of a judge, the wife of a councilman.

A review of applications also found people whose previous job skills don't match the work they do for O'Malley.

A $16,000-a-year teaching assistant became a $46,000-a-year department head.

A $10-an-hour construction worker is now a $40,000-a-year clerk.

Judging from the comments and tips in the online feedback, Plain Dealer reporters have leads for where next to look for juicy government payroll and hiring practice yarns.


2. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also caught my eye last Sunday with a line story about serious health violations in almost four out of 10 local eateries. A great story that many newspapers have pursued in their own communities, always with stomach-turning results, but what especially piqued my interest was the overline: Public Investigator/Taking Tips, Chasing Leads, Solving Problems.

So I investigated further. It turns out the Journal Sentinel has built a 10-person Watchdog team and a rich online presence that includes Watchdog Reports ("Shining a light on wrongdoing, dysfunction, waste and injustice"); the Dogged Blog; Public Investigator (including a blog by team members); Citizen Watchdog ("Your one-stop center to conduct investigative reporting" with databases of campaign contributions, lobbying, crime and courts, business records, and laws and property records in five local counties); Data on Demand ("Your portal to analyze numbers and statistics" which has a host of data on areas such as public salaries, inspections, education, sports and census); and commentary from political watchdog columnist Daniel Bice.

Here's my plea to the Journal Sentinel: please market the heck out of this terrific stuff. Seize the opportunity to build your news organization's public interest brand - somewhat similar to what the South Florida Sun-Sentinel did with its Help Team. There's large potential to engage citizens in looking out for each other's interests. But without marketing – including, but not limited to, internal links, links from bloggers, links from print, links from local online networks, external marketing – important, useful work will be under-engaged and under-appreciated.


3. The Indianapolis Star is among several newspapers to provide daily interaction with readers over broken infrastructure in the community. Theirs is called Starwatch and, it being pothole season after an especially long and nasty freeze-thaw cycle in the Midwest, potholes figure large at the moment, along with litter and abandoned properties. ChronicleWatch in the San Francisco Chronicle is perhaps the first of this genre and it is still going strong. Other examples include the Sun-Sentinel Watch and the Chicago Tribune's What's Your Problem? which focuses on a broader variety of consumer issues with unresponsive or evasive authorities.

What I like about all of these "watches" is their simple story line: there's a visible problem – sometimes a danger – that can and should be fixed quickly. The problems bubble up from reader-citizens; journalists verify and push for redress. So simple and so important. So in the public interest.


By Mary Nesbitt (m-nesbitt@northwestern.edu)
Mary Nesbitt is managing director of the Readership Institute.

(Vickey Williams)

There were more calls for culture change in media companies at last week's Capital Conference, the joint convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Newspaper Association of America.

Each of the CEOs from three companies that snatched success from the jaws of failure talked about how essential it was to engage the workforce in changing the way they did business. Talking about their roads to transformation, Stephanie Burns of Dow Corning; Philip J. Faraci of Eastman Kodak Company and A.G. Lafley of Proctor & Gamble drew a capacity crowd of editors and publishers.

Lafley was running a division of P&G in 2000 when he was tapped for the top job in a historic powerhouse of a company that had missed its earnings projection for the first time since World War II, with stock prices on the decline. He cited four deliberate choices that powered P&G's transformation:

1. "Put the customer at the center of everything"


2. Focus on sustainable, organic growth at a reasonable level


3. Make innovation a critical strategic choice and define it more broadly


4. Find new business models and cost structures

"We asked all employees to get into the game," Lafley said. And in words that were probably music to the ears of the journalists in the room, P&G committed to "hold onto core values but change everything else." He described today's culture as "More collaborative, more curious and more courageous."

The call for overhauling the way we do business inside the business was familiar. It was the Readership Institute's Impact Study that first alerted publishers and editors to what a lousy state newspapers are in when it comes to workplace culture. Overwhelmingly, newspapers presented a profile of a place where tradition means everything and change would come hard. Impact, now 7 years old, and the subsequent New Readers Study in 2004 continue to hold insight on many of the internal issues that make it hard for traditional print media organizations to work their way out of the dilemma they find themselves in today.

Burns cited a familiar scenario that precipitated Dow Corning finding itself a few years ago with flat revenue and overbuilt capacity at its plants. To use his terminology, a successful run to that point had fueled an arrogance that kept leaders from recognizing the changes needed. They realized they hadn't put the customer first, Burns said, and had failed to listen across all the consumer segments of this primarily business-to-business enterprise.

"We took a step back and asked employees to get involved in assessing customer needs... what was core and critical to keep and what should change. Engaging them was key because they became our ambassadors."

She cited as an example requests for an Internet-only ordering system, with virtually no human intervention or customer support, to serve the pure price buyers. This segment wanted bulk materials at low cost; a Sam's Club model, she said.

In finding a solution, innovation didn't come in new products, but in everything else around designing such a service - IT support, financial systems and vision, Burns said. Dow engaged in rapid prototyping and delivered in seven months. In exploring an unfamiliar value proposition, "Test quickly or you'll over-engineer," she said.

Because changing culture in a company in a mature industry usually entails breaking down old hierarchical management structures for greater flow of communication and ideas - as would certainly be required in most newspapers - executives often mistakenly think that means handing over the reins and converting to a commune-like existence. Burns addressed the point.

To drive culture change, she said, you have to bring people along. Leadership may not have full clarity on the direction, but only a general vision of where the company is going. They must share the plan openly, broadly and repeatedly. For those who insist on hanging back, Burns said, "Let them off at the first stop, pick up new people, keep moving."

But perhaps resonating most strongly with this audience was Faraci's story about Kodak's restructuring. (Complete with a showing of the company's tongue-in-cheek Winds of Change video that was a viral hit online early last year.) As recently as 1999, the film business was still growing. Facing even more underutilization than Dow, he said, Kodak had to accelerate depreciation and take write-offs even as its executives realized the company needed to invest more in technology.

When film sales took a nosedive at the start of this century, Kodak had to assess core capabilities. The company that invented the first digital camera in 1975 but essentially put aside that discovery due to its strength in film decided to place all bets on its knowledge of material science and digital technology.

Today the company's employee base, at about 25,000, is just over a third of what it was during its heyday. Film still represents about a third of sales - though still in decline - as does commercial printing. But technology investments are paying off, Faraci said. It's nearly impossible today to share a digital photo, online or otherwise, without touching a Kodak product.

In another conference session led by Jim Chisholm of iMedia Advisory Services, where he gave a preview of his forecast on the future of the newspaper industry through 2016, the call for change was more blunt. "Culture in newsrooms is still to be resolved," he said. "We are a content and service machine, not a divine right." In short, Chisholm expects most newspapers will capitalize on their local foundations and survive, with mobile technology improvements presenting a fertile field for opportunity, but also bring in a third less revenue as compared to 2007. Expect to hear more when his analysis is complete June 1.

Like Chisholm, many publishers seem to peg the culture issue first and foremost a newsroom problem. Newsrooms are due a portion of the burden, and changing practices there present particular difficulties. But RI's research showed ownership of the problem would be more accurately attributed across and throughout newspapers.

If journalists' unwillingness to change tends to center on a strong desire to continue in their traditions, the data showed there's also a more than healthy amount of the same stance in advertising departments. To be specific, journalists tend to be stymied by their perfectionism but that style is high among advertising staffs as well. People on the revenue side can also exhibit more internal competition or conformity than one would expect to see in a "more collaborative, more curious and more courageous" environment such as P&G's Lafley described. In fact, all departments and slices of newspapers except the executive team tested out as lacking a constructive culture style. The worrisome message that sends for today: Standing still.

"Change the jobs and culture will follow" is a slightly faddish statement I've heard voiced occasionally over the past year or so, including in conversations at this conference. That seems to me the equivalent of brute force. Engagement is the more constructive route, and clearly the one prescribed by the CEO panel. People who work in news organizations have the energy and the smarts to innovate, I'm convinced, but because of hierarchy, don't think they're expected or invited to contribute to the conversation.

A newspaper that has taken a very deliberate approach to changing newsroom operations is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Shawn McIntosh, director of culture and change, was on another ASNE panel that took up doing serious journalism in a digital age. I've heard McIntosh speak several times about that newspaper's attempt to motivate employees to focus on content that is more attuned to today's consumer wants and needs. Unfortunately last week, a fixation continued with her title instead of the workforce reorganization, described in this AJC video, that sparked it.

An article on this topic with enduring value is Peggy Kuhr's interview with the Institute's Mary Nesbitt and researcher Rob Cooke. See especially the prophetic answer Cooke offered when Kuhr, now dean of journalism at the University of Montana, asked if he were an editor how he might respond to the findings on culture. I checked back this week with Cooke, an authority on workforce culture across industries, to ask if his ensuing studies in news organizations in the nearly seven years since have changed his opinions.

"I believe that most, if not all, of the comments offered during the 2001 interview regarding the organizational cultures of newspapers still apply," Cooke said in an email. "However, the situation today is likely to be more difficult than it was seven years ago. Organizations with defensive cultures tend to respond to negative changes in their business environments in passive or aggressive ways. This tendency runs counter to and complicates efforts to launch and sustain cultural change initiatives - despite the fact that the need for such initiatives is probably greater now than ever for newspapers."

In a conversation at the airport, a publisher I respect talked with regret about having to oversee cutbacks without truly remaking the structure and operations. I think many are in that position this year, feeling unable to make the time to thoughtfully re-deploy those who are left.

What should be happening instead?

1. Leadership sets an audience strategy around which specific market segments - or better still, consumer experiences, as entries on this blog by every one of my RI colleagues have endorsed for years - the newspaper will seek to serve across its various platforms. And they may be different in print and online.


2. Leadership over-communicates (that is, to the point people are sick of hearing it) the message above.


3. Leadership educates full staff on business realities, provides for staff a first glimpse of what success will looks like in the new world, invites engagement on reassessing the operation.


4. Jobs and roles reassessed, new models tried with the understanding that course corrections will be necessary.


5. The above four points are done under an umbrella recommitment to customer focus and interaction.


6. Tough calls are made on what to stop doing, today and forever, because it no longer constitutes the best use of resources.

The steps above should be done with input from employees and consumers, but the onus is on leadership to set the direction. The last bullet will be the toughest to accomplish, but is also the most essential.


By Vickey Williams (Vickey-Williams@Northwestern.edu)
Vickey Williams is director of the Media Management Center's Digital Workforce Initiative.