The most obvious answer from Kimberly Wilson of Social News Desk and Josh Rickel of Mass Relevance is to engage with them. Ask questions, put up polls, join in the conversation by replying to comments–all good ideas they shared at the recent Excellence in Journalism conference in New Orleans. One cautionary note, however. Be sure you know why you’re asking a question and let your viewers in on the reason. Case in point:

If you just put something like that out there to get a conversation started, people can wind up confused or even panicked.

But what if your social media posts generate little to no response? It’s frustrating, I know. Take a look at NewsLab on Facebook and you won’t see a whole lot of activity, despite my best efforts. What should I be doing differently?

Research from Facebook offers a few suggestions. I rarely post on weekends but I should–especially on Saturday, when posts get 20% more likes and comments. The message for newsrooms is that your social strategy can’t be a Monday-Friday project. Make sure the weekend team is on board and active too. The same goes for nightside. I tend to post early in the morning, when traffic spikes, but I rarely post at night, missing users who check in after dinner. And my posts tend to be brief, which is not a good thing on Facebook. A post of five lines or more can draw 60% more comments and likes.

On Twitter, I rarely ask for retweets, finding it somewhat annoying when others do. But Wilson and Rickel say you should. If you add “Please retweet” 51% of followers will do it. “Please RT” gets 39% to act. And people retweet more in the afternoon than in the morning. Who knew?

The latest research from Hofstra University’s Bob Papper, produced for RTDNA, says the percentage of minorities employed in radio and TV newsrooms was up this year, but only slightly. The bigger picture is even more discouraging. Over the past two decades, the percentage of minorities in TV news hasn’t increased much at all–from just under 18% in 1990 to just over 20% last year.

In the last 21 years, the minority population in the U.S. has risen 9.5 percent; but the minority workforce in TV news is up 2.7 percent, and the minority workforce in radio is actually down from what it was two decades ago.

Women have made up about 40% of the TV workforce for the past decade and that didn’t change much this year, either. What did change was that the percentage of women in the newsroom varied more by market size, with smaller markets employing noticeably more women than larger markets–almost 6% more. Papper says he’s not willing to call it a trend yet, but he has a couple of ideas as to why the gap might be widening:

It could be that women were more likely to lose their jobs in the economic downtown and job cuts in 2008 and 2009. Alternatively, more women could simply be leaving the business, either due to the growth of one-man-bands and equipment hauling issues or because of the generally family-unfriendly nature of the business.

A look at the details behind the overall numbers is revealing. The RTDNA/Hofstra survey finds the percentage of minority TV news directors, while still quite small, has grown substantially in the past five years for most but not all minorities. The percentage of African-American and Asian-American TV news directors has doubled. But the percentage of Hispanic TV news directors has dropped sharply, from 9.3% in 2008 to 6.5% this year. And the overall percentage of Hispanics working in TV news declined by a similar amount.

The survey goes to both English and Spanish-language stations and Papper guesses the fluctuation may have more to do with who returns the survey than an actual decline in numbers. But based on a new study on Hispanic media, it might be expected that the numbers would actually have increased. The report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism notes that Univision and Telemundo, the two largest Spanish-language networks, have expanded their news offerings, both nationally and locally. In May, the local Univision newscast in New York won the demos at 6 pm and came in second at 11.  It stands to reason that these outlets may be hiring more Hispanics, but that just doesn’t show up in the RTDNA data. Puzzling, to say the least.

The Associated Press alert that chimed on my newsroom computer a few years ago was short and direct.  “Bulletin: Jeane Kirkpatrick has died.” I leapt from my desk and shouted across the room to my 5 p.m. newscast producers, “Folks, we have to add an important story. Jeane Kirkpatrick is dead!” The silence was deafening.

Then came the puzzled, if not predictable reply shouted back. “Who’s Jeane Kirkpatrick?”

One of our senior investigative reporters sitting just a desk away burst out laughing and then buried his head in his hands in disgust at what he just heard.  How can anyone in the news business, the very scribes of contemporary history, not know of the first woman U.S. ambassador to the United Nations?

I walked over to his desk and said, “Dude, we gotta cut her some slack, she wasn’t born yet when Reagan made Kirkpatrick a diplomatic rock star.”

Among the most useful insights from this year’s mindset list of our future customers are these:

1.  There has always been an Internet ramp onto the information highway.

9.  “Don’t touch that dial!” …what dial?

12.  Amazon has never been just a river in South America.

30.  Dial-up is soooooo last century.

37.  Music has always been available via free downloads.

63.  They won’t go near a retailer that lacks a website.

The takeaways?  They’re connected, mobile, and consume on their schedule, not the schedule we make for them.

Those very insights mirror portions of my own research on viewers of Fox 9 News in Minneapolis, Minn.  In a survey of 1116 viewers, 42 percent indicate they use the internet to access Fox 9 News content at least three to five days a week.  Twenty-two percent visit Fox 9 online every day. Even more significant, 40 percent of Fox 9’s online audience indicates they access the station’s news content through a mobile device. 

The implications for news organizations and businesses alike could not be more clear.  Our customers are changing and so are their mindsets.  This year’s entering class of 2015 is symbolic of the new generation of emerging consumers. They no longer shop exclusively at stores with shelves and they will not wait until 9 p.m. to watch the latest news—especially from a traditional TV set.  Those of us in legacy industries trying to reach our customers through traditional platforms and channels are in peril of becoming irrelevant in our own mindset.

Yes, today’s next generation of consumers may not know who Jeane Kirkpatrick was, but they know how to find out on their smartphones.  The question is, will we be there to tell them?

At first glance, the numbers are nothing to sneeze at. The three evening newscasts added almost 2 million viewers combined in the second quarter compared with the same period the year before. That amounts to a 10 percent increase – the first major jump in a decade – not too shabby for programs that have been written off as dinosaurs. The network morning shows saw a similar uptick, adding 1.2 million viewers for a total of 13 million. It’s too soon to call it a trend, but the numbers are significant enough to be worth a closer look. What’s going on here?

There’s no question that more viewers tune in when there’s big news, and there was plenty of it this spring. The aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami raised fears of a nuclear meltdown. The killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces in Pakistan marked a turning point in the 10-year fight against terrorism. And the devastating tornadoes across the South provided the kind of emotional footage that TV news thrives on. But that’s not the whole story behind the numbers.

Over the past several months, the broadcast networks haven’t just been covering the news, they’ve been making it. Katie Couric’s departure from CBS, announced in April, drew almost as much attention as her arrival there five years ago, when she became the first woman to solo anchor a network evening newscast. Her replacement back then as cohost of NBC’s top-rated “Today” show, Meredith Vieira, stepped down in June.

Both networks found solid successors in-house, with Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” stepping in for Couric and “Today” veteran Ann Curry taking over for Vieira. That made the transition relatively smooth for regular viewers and may have kept defections to a minimum. More important, the widely publicized changes likely enticed some non-viewers to sample the new-look programs, which could have bumped up the ratings. In Pelley’s first five weeks all three networks posted gains for their evening newscasts, according to the Nielsen Co. – most unusual for summer, when viewership typically slumps.

The uptick in the morning is all the more impressive, given the downturn in the audience for broadcast television overall. All three networks lost viewers in prime time this TV season compared with the year before. NBC alone, with no Olympics on the schedule, lost almost 14 percent of its prime time audience while “Today” gained about 10 percent. That’s a substantial swing, indicating that many viewers who flock to cable for entertainment at night are flipping to broadcast in the morning to watch the news.

As for the evening news, the latest numbers challenge the conventional wisdom that network news viewers are old and getting older. While the average age of the audience is over 60, all three evening newscasts added viewers in the coveted 25-54 age group―the audience advertisers most want to reach. In fact, nearly a quarter of the growth in viewership in the second quarter came from that demographic.

With so much news available everywhere all day long, why would more people be seeking out an evening newscast? “It may be that cable news has reached the point of saturation,” says TV news consultant Michael Castengera. “Regurgitation isn’t news. People may just want a summation.”

Lately, the nightly summary has varied considerably from network to network, giving viewers a real choice. CBS appears to be taking a harder news edge under new Chairman Jeff Fager. On Pelley’s first night in the anchor chair, the Rep. Anthony Weiner sex-text story ran in the third block while NBC led with it. ABC appears to be trending tabloid, with “ABC World News” giving the final week of the Casey Anthony trial more airtime than the other two networks combined.

Time to pop the champagne? Not so fast. The audience for evening newscasts has been on a steady downward slope for 30 years. Since 1980, the three networks have lost more than half their nightly news viewers. The last time those programs gained viewers year over year was in 2001, when the networks briefly reprised their role as national unifiers in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks (see “Anchoring the Nation,” November 2001). It didn’t last. The morning news audience has been dropping at a slower rate for about six years. There’s no reason to think either trend has been reversed.

But the improved numbers this year are a valuable reminder that network news still serves a huge audience. Four times as many people watch the nightly news on ABC, CBS and NBC as watch CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC combined in all of prime time. The end may come, one day, but for now the network newscasts remind me of that guy in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” who resists being thrown on the cart that’s collecting plague victims. “I’m not dead yet,” he whines.

Neither are they.

Originally published in American Journalism Review, June-July 2011

Now, a new report on one of the biggest international journalism training programs has measured its impact in a different way–by looking at what changed as a result of the journalism being done. The bottom line? Good journalism really does make a difference.

In Kenya, a series on shoddy care in public hospitals resulted in $7.5 million to improve care

In Indonesia, a series on medical waste prompted the government to order hospitals to build their own wastewater treatment facilities; and

In Peru, after crimes by unlicensed cab drivers were exposed, taxis were required to show official identification

These reporting projects and many others grew out of programs run by Knight International Journalism Fellows. They have established new journalism associations, launched journalism schools, created online databases to track corruption, established news delivery services via cell phone and created digital platforms to share content.

The Knight program started more than 15 years ago. For more than a decade, beginning in 1999, I helped to train many of the fellows in training techniques before they headed off on assignment.

Lately, the program has changed its emphasis, bringing in international fellows with strong language skills and requiring them to spend at least a year overseas rather than a few months. Instead of focusing on emerging democracies, the fellows now work in “stable countries with a relatively high level of media freedom.”

Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that their success has been measurable. But here are a few things that other programs could learn from Knight’s experience.

Strong journalism skills are not enough to ensure success. The most effective fellows are entrepreneurs with solid management skills needed to lead complex projects in difficult environments.

High-impact projects need a strong commitment from local partners….By putting their own resources into the project, local partners have a stake in its success.

Projects focusing on digital journalism are more likely to produce lasting impact. Mobile phones reach many more people in developing countries than other media. Authoritarian regimes tend to regulate traditional media more than the Internet.

While it’s encouraging to read these success stories, it would be a mistake, I think, to believe that only a long-term (and therefore expensive) program can make a real difference. That may be what it takes to seed institutional change, but I’m confident that plenty of international journalism trainers have left a legacy without spending a year or more working on a project. They have encouraged and equipped young journalists around the world to do better work, and it’s been my privilege to help them.

He may have been old-school but he was hardly stuck in the past. Gralnick was an early proponent of online news and a firm opponent of paywalls.  A decade ago, when he left his full-time gig to become a consultant, he worked on a research project for NewsLab examining what local TV stations were doing on the Web. The result was a four-part series that was classic Jeff–well-reported, sharply written, with a generous helping of attitude. Here’s how it began:

First, let’s try to get your attention. It IS the Internet stupid, but NOT in the way you think. It is interactivity but NOT in the way you think of that either. Merely having a site is no longer enough. Nor is having a site that posts local news–a recent survey found more than 91 percent of television Web sites already do. It is also no longer enough to use your site to reach out and touch your viewers with e-mail news alerts or program promotion. What’s important now is how you use the Web to let those viewers reach out and touch you back. In other words, it’s time to re-define interactivity.

Remember, this was ten years ago, long before social media put newsrooms in constant contact with the communities they serve. Gralnick urged stations to do more than solicit photos and video from users, although that was a relatively innovative idea at the time. He believed newsrooms should be easy to reach, open and transparent. “Never be shy about telling your users what you are doing and why,” he wrote. “If you market and promote the message that you want to be ‘touched back,’ your users will get it and do it.”

Gralnick saw what was coming and he wanted broadcast newsrooms to catch the digital wave. “Don’t think you can ignore this,” he wrote. “Others aren’t, and they’ll gain a competitive advantage if you wait.”

Was he right? You bet he was. Too bad so many stations still haven’t listened.

NBC’s Brian Williams paid tribute to Gralnik on last night’s broadcast:

Gralnick’s 2001 NewsLab project:

Part one: Enlisting users to supply content
Part two: A suite of interactive tools for involving users
Part three: Making it easy for viewers to make contact
Part four: What’s around the corner for interactive TV news

Mary Bock of Kutztown University spent two years studying the VJ revolution. Her unpublished dissertation highlights many of the challenges faced by journalists who report, shoot, write and edit. Some may be obvious: It’s tough to do this kind of physical work and still look good at 5 p.m., one VJ told her.

A bigger concern is what Bock’s analysis reveals about how the use of VJs is changing the content of TV news.

Pre-planned stories

“Because they work alone, VJs will be more apt to look for quick and easy access to story elements,” Bock writes. “Instead of the smaller cameras and simpler software making it easier to take chances, television VJs see themselves as having less freedom to take chances with their stories.”

So, Bock says, the trend toward using VJs for daily news has resulted in more stories that are mapped out–or even written–in advance. “It‘s not like the old days when you‘d go out and see what was actually happening and then decide how to cover it,” one VJ told Bock.

VJs who work for television organizations and must deliver a package a day, every day complained that they are unable to contend with heavier, hard news materials, and spend more of their time covering easy, one-location feature stories. This contradicts what some of the managers interviewed for this project perceived as a positive characteristic of video journalism. Managers who favor singular production see VJs are more easily deployed and better able to cover spot news, especially when two or three are sent to cover multiple angles of a hard-news story. That may well be.  But based on the interviews and observations of the television VJs who participated in this project, their day-to-day experience seems one of a constant struggle to be taken seriously, not only in terms of their technical skills but the types of stories they cover.

Physical challenges

Another struggle for many VJs is the physical strain of working alone. “This is a craft that demands not only intellectual capacity but real physical stamina and a lot of people are not going to be able to do this simply because they haven‘t got the stamina,” one VJ says.  And Bock reports that the National Union of Journalists in England is starting to hear health complaints–such as exhaustion or back problems–from VJs who have been on the job a few years.

There’s also the problem of doors.

As mundane as they are, doors pose problems for VJs because their hands are nearly always full, and they have no partner. Getting through a door with the equipment, and protecting the equipment from being damaged by a slamming door, is a daily challenge. (One VJ reports a new appreciation for automatic doors!)

Bock’s research does point to some advantages for VJs. Smaller cameras are less intimidating so interview subjects open up more easily, and solo journalists can gather elements for stories when they’re out and about, without having to worry about scheduling a photographer.

But she also finds that solo journalists can’t do the same work as quickly as a team of two, which has led some news managers to reassess the value of VJs. One manager said he’d rather have two people do more, and do it quickly. “I‘m not saying it‘s completely worthless,” he told Bock, “I‘m just saying for day in, day out, where the rubber meets the road – not happening.”

More than 90% of stations now have video as well as text and photos on their sites, although as we’ve noted before many are not using video to best advantage. Podcasts and “assemble your own newscasts” are less common than they used to be, suggesting a lack of interest on the part of users.

The most popular content on TV sites, as you might expect, is local weather followed by local news. What is surprising is the “other information” that comes in third: Photo galleries, school closings, video, user generated content, contests and promotions, among other things. Researcher Bob Papper says “other” is a write-in category and has never ranked that high.

Staffing

Stations are managing their sites with fewer than three full-time staffers, on average, plus about four part-timers. Those numbers don’t vary much by market size, Papper says. But in smaller markets, more stations report that everyone in the newsroom works on the Web. Overall, 71% of stations say feeding the website is everyone’s job.

On the management side, just 22% of news directors are in charge of their websites. That may indicate that a large number of stations are still contracting out their Web operations or that responsibility lies with a corporate executive.

Business

Traffic is up from a year ago on local TV sites to an average of 4.5 million page views a month but the number of unique visitors hasn’t increased much, according to Papper. The reliability of that data is questionable, however, because almost half the news directors surveyed said they didn’t know their site’s metrics. That could explain why 43% had no idea if they were making a profit or losing money online–a level of ignorance that Papper found stunning.

The number of managers who said their sites did make money was up again in 2009 to 35%, continuing to grow despite the recession. But stations use very different accounting methods, Papper says, so it’s hard to know how profits are being assigned. “We don’t ask: if your website were a company and got nothing from your core business” did you make a profit, “because we know the answer would be that they don’t make a penny.”

Future

“Three things make money on the web,” Papper told attendees at the 2010 RTDNA convention. “Commerce, search and pornography. If you’re not doing two of the three, you’ll be in trouble.” But most stations are giving away search-related ad dollars to Google, Papper says. What they should be doing, he argues, is packaging information that comes up when people search their sites with local ads, discounts on movie tickets, restaurants and the like.

Papper sees a great opportunity for local stations at a time when many newspapers are considering pay walls as a revenue source. Newspaper sites may lose traffic if they impose a subscription fee, as Newsday’s experience suggests. So TV stations could profit, but only if they invest in their sites.  ”Long term, if broadcasters don’t step up their newsgathering ability to replace what’s being lost at local papers they are making a terrible decision,” Papper says. “Those outlets that see the opportunity and are willing to invest can come out big winners.”

Research by RTDNA and Hofstra University finds the use of VJs has indeed gone up for the past several years but it hasn’t skyrocketed. About a third of local stations now say they mostly use VJs. Three years ago, it was a little over one in five. And the number of stations that don’t use any VJs has gone down sharply, from 29% in 2006 to 18% today.

But researcher Bob Papper says the real surprise came in answer to this question: Did you use VJs more or less in the past year? Only 12% of news directors said they used them more, while 29% said less.  Those numbers aren’t at all what you’d expect in current economic conditions, and even less so given that the survey was in the field during the depths of the recession. Yes, almost half of the news directors who responded said they expected to use VJs more in 2010, but that’s what they always say. “Every year, expected use of more goes up way faster than the actual use,” said Papper.

The VJ experience

So if the numbers don’t suggest a “VJ revolution” just yet, has the increased use of solo journalists made a difference in television news? Mary Angela Bock, a former local television journalist who now teaches at Kutztown University, has been trying to figure that out. She interviewed more than 70 journalists and news managers about their experience with VJs, and her findings don’t support the claims often made about solo journalists.

Specifically, Bock finds little evidence that VJs produce stories their stations wouldn’t get any other way, either by expanding coverage or approaching stories more creatively. On the contrary, she writes, solo journalists tend to “pre-conceptualize” stories ahead of time.

Because they work alone, VJs will be more apt to look for quick and easy access to story elements and they will be less likely to stray from their pre-conceptualization. Instead of the smaller cameras and simpler software making it easier to take chances, television VJs see themselves as having less freedom to take chances with their stories. That‘s not to say that video journalism is not opening possibilities for new sorts of narratives; newspaper VJs are trying to break new ground. VJs who do not produce a story a day can be flexible. But organizations that demand daily filings on tight deadlines are less likely to foster innovation.

The VJs Bock talked to complained that they’re often assigned to easy, one-location features instead of hard news. And that can leave them at a disadvantage when they start looking for the next job, because their resume reels are stuffed with fluff.

It’s probably much too soon to reach a definitive conclusion about how the increased use of VJs has affected local television news, but as Bock writes, “the data…indicate that video journalism can simply be a way for organizations to cut costs without enriching the product.”

The average amount of on air TV news rose to its highest level ever: five hours a day, up from 4.7 hours in 2008. And the amount of material distributed in other ways also hit an all-time high.

More platforms

The leading secondary outlet for television stations, somewhat surprisingly, was local radio: 52% of TV stations are providing news to radio stations in their markets. Then again, perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise, since the average local radio station has a news staff of one.

Almost half of all stations, 45%, are producing news for mobile devices, more than double the number in 2008.  About a third of the stations also are producing news for another local TV station–sometimes more than one.

Putting news on the air, morning, noon and evening, is still the number one business for local TV stations, but it’s not the only business, Papper said. “If you think of yourself as being in one business, you have a short future. You’re in multiple businesses and you will continue to be.”

Smaller staffs

Stations are doing all this with fewer people than they used to. About 400 local TV news people lost their jobs last year, a 1.5% reduction in the workforce.  “That’s not good,” said survey researcher Bob Papper, “but it’s better than 2008″ when the workforce shrank by 4.3%. And it’s way better than newspapers, which cut jobs by 11% for two years in a row. “At the present rate there will be more TV news people than newspaper people in a few years,” Papper said.

This year should see TV newsrooms hiring again, Papper says. “In my view, we’ve bottomed out. I would be very surprised if we don’t see staffing numbers go up.” The survey data certainly supports that prediction. The number of news managers who expect to increase their staffs jumped by 145%. The number expecting staff cuts dropped to near zero.

“Doing more with less can help you get through a recession, but it’s not a long-term strategy for success,” Papper said, warning news managers that continuing to expect more from fewer people will put them at risk of losing their best staffers as soon as other newsrooms start hiring again.