Spills, egos and audience reactions

How much do audiences dislike politicians talking about themselves?

Enough to generate sympathy for Kevin Rudd and make him popular again. And that's no easy thing.

We're talking about the latest leadership change in Australian federal politics - the time when politicans, their egos and their dislike for each other dominates news.

These leadership battles increase viewing numbers and newspaper sales. I was in my fourth month as editor of The Courier-Mail in June 2010 when Julia Gillard toppled Kevin Rudd. We sold several thousand extra papers the next day - that doesn't sound like much but selling even a few hundred extra papers in this changing media era is rare.

And the visits to couriermail.com.au increased by the tens of thousands. But, does that mean people were impressed by the story playing out before them?

No.

Compare these figures for Rudd. According to the Essential Poll, Rudd's approval rating in May 2010 - weeks before he was toppled - was 41 per cent against a disapproval rating of 47 per cent. So, a net result of -6.

By July 2013, weeks after he had regained the leadership, Rudd's approval rating was 50 per cent versus 35 per cent disapproval. So, a net positive of 15.

What had he done in that time?

He had become the focal figure for the disenchanted Australians fed up with political egos that they believed were focused more on their lot than the nation's lot. In other words, politicians talking about themselves. Audiences detest that regardless of the winners and losers in these fights. 

They lead their lives with more maturity, cooperation and goodwill than the political pack in Canberra. Most Australians don't particularly enjoy politics - they don't stand around at suburban gatherings talking about political leaders. But they are drawn to the fray when they see a prime minister knifed by their own for the third time in five years. It's hard to ignore when you go to bed with one person as prime minister and wake to find a new leader has taken over.

Malcolm Turnbull will have to deal with that fallout in the coming months after he brought down Tony Abbott. He will have the benefit of a quick bounce in opinion polls but this will be a longer game played before audiences that are more intelligent than most politicians believe.

Turnbull spoke yesterday of Abbott's failure to respect the people's intelligence. Turnbull is intelligent enough to know those audiences are awake to this new disposable culture of leadership. And it doesn't fill them with joy.

The last afternoon paper - for sure this time

It's been said before but this time it's real - Australia's final afternoon daily newspaper will be published today.

When the last copies of mX are distributed to commuters in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, it will be the end of the afternoon print edition.

The same was said two decades ago as the major cities lost their afternoon metro dailies. But mX revived the daily model, albeit changed to a free paper, in 2001.

That mX has lasted for almost 15 years is a credit to the innovation, energy and smarts of the many excellent journalists who have worked on the masthead. 

But anyone on a train or bus heading from the CBD in recent years has noticed that the numbers of people reading information on their mobile devices clearly outnumbers the newspaper.

It's not a sign that journalism is going the way of the afternoon print newspaper. We're consuming more news and information than ever - we're just choosing not to do it through the costly means of print.

Those papers are very expensive to produce compared to the agile, lively digital delivery.

It's a changing era and we can be sure of one thing - the afternoon newspaper is dead. Let's hope the mX staff continue to play a role in journalism.

Anzac memories stir strong news values

The 100th anniversary of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli has been more than just a news story - it has stirred rousing sights of people power across two countries.

Anzac services everywhere were packed. The dawn service at Lutwyche Cemetery - the resting place of Jack Tracey and hundreds of other servicemen - had at least twice its usual number. And that's one small example.

The interest levels cannot be attributed to blanket media coverage. The media is not good at telling people what to do - audiences figure that out for themselves.

The crowds turned up in record numbers because Anzac Day has the most powerful elements of a story. It crosses demographics - every Australian can believe that this country is fortunate because of the sacrifice of others. It features people - these young men, and women, who were subjected to the tragedy of war. And it involves some incompetence - the stories of the campaign bumblings at Gallipoli continue to rouse strong feelings among some Australians.

55 comms was named because of the life story of one of the hundreds of thousands of Australians who served in times of war.

May all Australians and New Zealanders savour something of note from this most special anniversary.

Newsroom cuts won't end with radio demise

Another brick has been removed from Brisbane's legacy media wall with today's demise of 4BC's breakfast, morning and evening shows. They are set to be replaced by networked content from Sydney.

It's a sad day for Brisbane media. I'm particularly sad for the likes of presenters Patrick Condren, Ian Skippen and Loretta Ryan and their excellent producers. I was fortunate to be on Patrick's show only two days ago, enjoying the fun of live radio based on local issues and local contributors.

As a chief of staff at The Courier-Mail, I spent two years with a radio on either side of my desk, trying to keep up with then ABC mornings presenter Madonna King and then 4BC mornings guru Greg Cary. Both were outstanding broadcasters who were compulsory listening for Brisbane news junkies. They helped to make Brisbane a vibrant news base.

We are a much better society for the presence of smart, inquisitive and ethical journalists. I was privileged to watch up close as Mark Solomons and Kelmeny Fraser unleashed outstanding investigative reports that brought down state MP Scott Driscoll. If not for the work of Solomons and Fraser, Driscoll would not be facing a trial on 16 serious charges. During their investigative work, I encouraged Solomons and Fraser to follow only the Driscoll story and not to write anything else. I estimate they would have spent more than one year combined on the story, sometimes not publishing for a few weeks as they continued their research. But the days of allowing two journalists to spend months researching stories are coming to an end for many newsrooms. For some, that luxury has been gone for years.

Fortunately, the ABC now has a national reporting unit that is having an impact across the country. Hopefully this unit will be funded for years to come.

While today's demise of three 4BC shows is unfortunate, it won't be the last changes for local media. News organisations need revenue to pay for their employees. That revenue is being blown away by a media world that continues to change before our eyes. 

Radio is suffering because its cumulative audience is falling away. The listeners who would tune in for the news bulletin on the hour, and then stick around for a show, now get their news from their smartphones. Others are making excellent use of podcasts, listening at their leisure. 

Newspapers are being crippled by the shift of readers to digital platforms. If a reader of the print version is worth $1 to a publisher, analysts say, then a reader of the website is worth 10 cents. And the reader of a mobile site only a few cents. Most online traffic to newspapers now comes via mobile devices. Some print publishers have only one reliable way to increase revenue - by lifting cover prices while the size of their product shrinks. 

Commercial TV news continues to generate strong revenue for its networks. And Brisbane has excellent competition in its commercial TV news ranks. But, like radio, TV needs to retain that audience that used to switch on at 6pm to learn the news of the day. The growing use of smartphones doesn't help television news.

We can at least feel better knowing that intelligent audiences work out a lot for themselves. Queensland doesn't have the same resources covering state parliament as it did two or three decades ago. But voters still worked out in less than three years that Campbell Newman - despite his thumping election victory - was not the man they wanted to lead the state. They delivered to Newman the same brutal assessment that fell on the Bligh Labor Government in 2012. 

The media world is changing. We're consuming more news and information than ever and in ways more fun than we could have imagined. But we will have to get used to this news and information not coming from well resourced, traditional newsrooms. In the years to come, more journalists from traditional newsrooms will be made redundant.

At the same time, the private and public sector are employing more content creators than ever before. And some are doing a much better job than newsrooms in connecting with audiences. The work of some sporting communications units is outstanding. They know their audiences, they crunch data to ensure they're engaging them and they try new things. 

More stories are being told than ever before. It's not the end of storytelling. It's a changing environment moulded by the power of the consumer.

When eight seconds is too long to wait

The relationship between Facebook and news publishers is one of the most fascinating in the changing media world.

Facebook is a behemoth – dominating the town square in the way that news publishers once ruled in the pre-internet era.

The problem for those publishers is that they’re still not sure if they should ride the Facebook wave or continue to try to take on the social media giant.

The late New York Times media writer David Carr nailed it when he wrote that Facebook, for publishers, is “that big dog galloping toward you in the park … it’s hard to tell whether he wants to play with you or eat you”.

We may be about to find out. Facebook is considering hosting news content rather than simply directing users to articles on news sites.

Facebook’s issue is that redirecting users to news sites can take up to eight seconds – yes, eight interminably long seconds – for a page to load. Much of this has to do with the news publishers auctioning space to advertisers on the chosen page.

And Facebook correctly believes that users just can’t be bothered waiting eight seconds.

Facebook is reportedly happy to host the content and share some advertising revenue with the news publishers.

This is giving publishers plenty to think about because:

• Facebook is the best distributor of news links in the world. Better than Google and far better than anything publishers can manage

• News publishers are already active players in Facebook – some have hundreds of thousands of followers – but they can’t work out how to make decent money from the eyeballs they attract from the site

• Facebook is prioritising video, which is played instantly on its news feed (no eight-second wait there)

• Traditional publishers are watching their revenues plummet because nothing makes money like newspapers and we’re buying fewer each day.

• In contrast, readers on mobile sites are worth very little to publishers. And most publishers now have more than half of their traffic from mobile users. It’s not a recipe for revenue.

• Importantly, publishers would most likely lose the data insights from users if their content were hosted on Facebook. And that’s becoming vital as content revenue tumbles.

So, what will publishers do if Facebook asks to host their news content for a share of some ad revenue?

That’s the big question because news publishers across the world have a history of wishing away competitors at their own expense.

The New York Times article hinted that some publishers were discussing banding together to build a stronger revenue option for their content. Good luck with that.

Outside of the media, forward-thinking companies are having much success in engaging new audiences because they’re meeting them where they play. And Facebook is the most popular field of play. And these companies like the fact they can control their message on Facebook.

Facebook also provides the benefit of recommendations from friends – which are far more credible than recommendations from news publishers.

Should Facebook come knocking, it will be telling to see if the publishers open the door or pretend they didn’t hear the pounding.

How a crisis went from bad to worse

It’s hard to believe that a mighty sporting empire could botch crisis communications so badly.

But that’s what America’s NFL – a behemoth whose competition nets about $6 billion in TV revenue each year – has to confront.

The NFL placed its fingers in its ears while a domestic violence matter involving one of its players became a huge story. The NFL failed two basic premises of crisis communications:

• find out whatever you can learn about an incident that affects your organisation. Otherwise, journalists will do it for you.

• the response to an incident is often more important than the incident

The NFL’s problems began earlier this year when Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice was charged with aggravated assault of his then fiancée Janay Palmer after a late-night incident at an Atlantic City casino.

Security video emerged showing Rice dragging an unconscious Palmer out of a lift at the casino. What happened before that was uncertain. And the NFL did not want to know.

In July, after Rice and Palmer had married, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Rice for two games. Yes, two games.

The Baltimore Ravens told their 481,000 Twitter followers that: “Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident”. Yes, really.

While the NFL wished it would all go away, journalists tracked down the full video of the incident and broadcast it to the world a few weeks ago.

The video is shocking. In the lift, Rice lands a left hook on the chin of his then fiancée and knocks her out. He then clumsily drags her by the legs from the lift while looking around to see who is watching.

The outrage flowed. Within hours, the Ravens terminated Rice’s contract and the NFL suspended him indefinitely. But that didn’t save the NFL from a deserved hammering in mainstream and social media.

The video has sparked an unrelenting wave of commentary about the NFL’s leadership and Goodell’s standing.

The NFL looked many things – cowardly, incompetent and cold-hearted – and unwilling to confront any problem unless it became a threat to its very polished reputation.In other words – selfish and vain.

And it could yet be seen as a liar as stories emerge that the NFL received the full tape in April.

If the NFL had tried to gather the video footage back in February – the hotel says it was never asked – it could have been proactive and kicked Rice out of the league. The league could have shown that it took very seriously issues of domestic violence and that it upheld the same standards demanded by general society.

Instead, the NFL played the game that so often ends in tears – let’s hope the media doesn’t find out. Most times, they will, and the result is never pretty.

Merit-based journalism? In whose opinion?

The revenue pressures strangling newspapers are being most acutely displayed in Australia by Fairfax and its stable featuring The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. 

In a memo sent to staff this week, Fairfax bosses outlined their push for a series of changes to journalists' remuneration, including penalty hours and redundancy provisions.

And there was this hazy factor: shifting "our pay structure to a meritocracy basis, rather than the current lowest common denominator model. The best people should be able to be paid more". This can be translated to read that revenues have fallen so far, there's very few dollars available for pay increases. Who should get them?

This sparks one key question: in this digital age, what makes for good journalism in the eyes of news bosses?

Is it the reporter who slaves two months for a first-class investigative series that may only run across a few days? Or is it the reporter who generates significant online traffic by putting together such life-changing moments as "celebrities hanging out with their wax doubles"? Or is it both?

This is not an easy question because the dynamics of the news market are changing so rapidly. But there is one certainty - in the current climate, well-researched and reported stories are more likely to attract paying readers than low-value clickbait.

But, how do news bosses weigh that detailed, researched journalism versus the clickbait that is becoming irrestible for some Australian news sites in the fierce chase for online readers? 

Fairfax is facing some tough questions. But that's hardly new for some traditional news outlets in this rapidly changing era.

People like penguins wearing jumpers

Never underestimate the power of community news - especially when it delivers a popular story about penguins wearing jumpers.

The insightful Share Wars team has found an Australian story that has been shared more than 600,000 times - a call for people to knit jumpers for penguins recovering from oil contamination.

The ABC Radio piece describes how recovering penguins in Victoria need the jumpers to keep them warm and ensure that they don't continue to clean oil from their bodies with their beaks.

The story even contains a link to a knitting pattern for the jumpers.

The Share Wars team analysed the story and found that it ticked some of the most powerful boxes when it comes to popular share elements featuring animals acting like humans, interest groups and a call to action. 

The penguin story was traced back to Melbourne's Leader community newspapers. This is an underrated element of news coverage because community news articles - once only seen within their small distribution networks - have been propelled more widely through the popular websites of their parent companies.

Many of the community newspapers had their own websites shut down during a rationalisation by major publisher News Corp. Some of those local papers' online news feeds are now channeled through the major News masthead within their regions, adding interesting content. 

The penguin story is a reminder that shareable stories are often the ones you talk about at barbecues and dinner parties. With many people craving light relief among busy schedules, penguins in jumpers hit the jackpot.

When to engage with audiences, via the NRL

How often should athletes, executives or thought leaders engage with audiences? The question has been debated in recent weeks as mainstream media complains of a lack of access to National Rugby League players. League legends Darren Lockyer and Mal Meninga have written excellent columns on the topic, highlighting the importance of mainstream media interaction despite the booming reach of social media.

Greater access to opinion shapers makes life easier for journalists. I recall covering Australian cricket tours overseas and regularly dialing room-to-room in hotels or even knocking on players’ doors down the corridor to get some insights. It would sometimes end with an interview conducted in a player’s room as they chewed through a room-service club sandwich. It wasn’t such a big deal then but today’s sportswriters would be lucky to get such access in this era of much tighter media control.

Should the NRL, AFL and Australian Rugby Union push their players in front of the media more often? The US experience suggests they should. In Major League Baseball, every club plays 162 games each regular season. And, after all 162, the locker room is opened to media. The same doesn’t happen in Australia’s major sports, where the default offering is a coach and one senior player after games. The smart clubs are far more compliant and proactive with media requests to their obvious benefit. The Queensland Reds now livestream interviews with players and coaches in the hour before matches. 

It’s easy to say that sporting clubs or corporates should want to push their key people out more. But one difference must first be addressed – Australia remains a country in which engagement with audiences is largely feared. In the US, there is a much better acceptance of audience engagement – it’s a part of life, it’s not to be feared and it can often be beneficial.

There are already plenty of stories about people or organisations embracing audience engagement and reaping the rewards. They have good stories to tell and they’re keen to share them. They know that sometimes they will have to talk about bad news but they have the confidence to realise that audiences are smart, hungry for information and keen to engage. NSW Chief Justice Tom Bathurst last week said he would hold more regular media briefings to counter the perception that judges are out of touch with the community. In some ways, that’s a no-brainer but it’s encouraging to see such a highly ranked legal mind make the move.

Until the fear of audience engagement wanes in Australia, the debate about how many footy players should speak with journalists is a secondary argument.

Captain Sum Ting Wong and fact-checking woes

You may have seen the photo in the last month - the pyramids in Egypt covered in snow. The photo featured in stories that were published on some reputable news websites.

It was a hoax. But the photo was retweeted more than 10,000 times on the first day as the story went viral.

And here are some other great fakes of 2013: the Chinese man who sued his wife for producing unattractive children; Captain Sum Ting Wong crashes an Asian-based passenger plane; Sarah Palin takes a job at Al Jazeera (the Washington Post fell for that one); and Nelson Mandela's premature death (announced on a fake CNN Twitter account and reported by journalists). 

They sum up the dangers of the race to be first or to be popular in digital journalism. Freelance journalist Luke O'Neill has analysed the trend of viral stories in an excellent piece for Esquire entitled The Year We Broke the Internet.

O'Neill says that the temptation to publish before checking facts is often too great. The rewards of online traffic can outweigh the risk of reputation damage.

But there may come a time when a viral hoax does serious damage for the subjects of the story or the news site. The scepticism of many readers is valuable on these occasions but relatively powerless when reputable sites peddle dodgy stories.

In the meantime, prepare to be sceptical. The revenue pressures strangling some online news sites are so great that popularity is the priority. It's a sad truth regardless of the insistence that "you're never wrong for long online".