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When America Talks, We Listen | When America Asks, We Share

The reality today is that attracting eyeballs for online advertisers is almost universally the prevailing value for every online publication.We have chosen to take the road less traveled — as have many other publications, new or old, ink or online. We are not alone in our efforts to provide relevant content about the matters of greatest importance in people’s lives today, nor are we the largest, or the best.

Robert Butche

Newsroom Magazine

Substantive Change, Renewed Commitment

What’s News And What’s Not

Q You’ve changed Newsroom Magazine for the better, that’s for sure. Where is this going?

Excellence In Journalism Still Exists

• New York Times
• PBS NewsHour
• Christiane Amanpour — This Week
• BBC
• Times Of London

Who Else Might You Think Belongs On This List?

A Since the launch of Newsroom Magazine in 2006, we’ve learned a great deal about how and why people come to Newsroom  Magazine. For example we know that today’s readers come to us in search of something they cannot always easily find online — substance. Some readers include our content in their daily reading because we’re not politically oriented or slanted. Some like the fact that Newsroom Magazine does not pander to anyone or anything for readership.

What’s changed this year is the amount and presentation of hard news content. Declining coverage of important news in favor of more popular content continues in nearly every media. The shakeout among newspapers has resulted in significantly smaller news holes and less tolerance for stories that are difficult to understand or which have no built in promotional qualities.

But the unassailable fact remains that what’s important for us to know as citizen electors trumps what’s merely interesting, or exploitive of our human weaknesses, or that which is manufactured to tantalize us for commercial exploitation. We cannot make anyone take-in or think about the realities or consequences of important news — but we can, and must, help to make that news easily found, readily understandable, accurately reported, and non-politically analyzed. Doing so provides a foundation upon which news-consumers can make their own judgment about a story’s value, or relevancy to their lives.

Seriousness Of Purpose

Being non-political does not mean we cannot tackle highly charged political issues — it demands that we do so by applying sound analytical, factual and logical constructs.

In today’s rich media environment there are a great many sources that set out to tell people what they want to hear, or slant coverage to attract audience, or frame stories to fit a specific ideological view.

Our purpose is otherwise — to tell people some of what they need to know to survive in a complicated world. By way of information essential to prospering in difficult economic times, as well as stories that help us to be successful at the most important business of all — the business of life.

What we publish as news is rarely trendy, nor entertaining.

Probity, Relevance, Credibility

We honor longstanding journalistic values — probity in the sense of seriously addressing a story or issue. Relevance in the sense of a story’s importance to livelihoods, families, freedoms, culture or national interests. And credibility in the sense of using responsible sources and maintaining fidelity-to-fact.

One of the most troubling contributors to the ongoing dumbing-down of big media journalism are widespread failures of responsibility by people who present themselves as if responsible adults. As serious as have been such failures in recent years they remain less troubling than the cultist rage and exaggeration common on politically-motivated media — or the flaming rhetoric and raging tirades that drive Internet traffic and make angry a nation with so much to be thankful for.

What’s interesting is not news, it’s entertainment.

Hard News Matters

While some publications still qualify as newspapers of record, as does the New York Times, few seek to cover, or have the resources to produce second-tier news content in the amount and quality that was routine as recently as a decade ago. Stories of immense importance, but little or no promotional value are difficult to find on the Internet today without effort and exceptional content search skills.

We therefore increased our hard news content target ( news hole ) to 80% of story count. We also decided to re-style, reformat and redefine how we present hard-news content . The traditional method, a narrative about some event, report, testimony, decision or policy, came from decades of newspaper development. For the most part second tier stories were produced and written by news-wire personnel. Even then, the limitations of newspaper space did not permit widespread inclusion of the source document or other related materials.

This provided us the opportunity to more fully utilize immensely important, but seldom used capabilities afforded by Internet publishing: effectively unlimited space,  essentially permanent shelf-life, immediate recall and worldwide availability.

News Hole Target 80%

So part of the change Newsroom Magazine readers are experiencing is a retrenchment on our part aimed at elevating this publication’s relevancy and substance standards. Hard news about major issues both domestically and globally now commands a full 80% of our news hole — four times what it was just one year ago.

Some days this level of content expansion results in multiple articles — as for example our recent double-header coverage of Rose Gottemoeller — the U.S. State Department official responsible for the new START treaty ratification efforts. Or our three part series on the oral testimony in the Citizens United case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Second Tier Story Focus

For the most part major headline stories are well covered by big media. It’s the medium stories — really important news about issues or government or Congress or policy or business or finance — that are garnering less coverage today. The challenge we set for ourselves in 2010 was to better focus our editorial content on the most important medium stories. Not just a summary, but thoughtful, credible and substantive analysis based on clear definition of terms ( via our online dictionary ) and strict logical constructs ( via our online logic definitions ).

It used to be that newspapers provided this level of content from their wire-service ( AP, UPI, Reuters ) sources. To some degree they still offer such stories — at least on their own web presence, but done the same way it has been for perhaps the last 100 years.

We’ve expanded the time-worn wire-service tradition by the including source documents, tables, statements, news releases, testimony or other documentation that the wire-services omitted. These source materials add immense depth to such stories — and a rich source of indexed online resources.

The result is far more useful and comprehensive editorial content.

And what do you think? What has been the result of these changes in focus and content?

To our great surprise — a significant uptick in readership at home and abroad.