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On Sun, 26 Mar 1995 StudioBrf@aol.com wrote:

> Responding to my previous posting about rewriting news copy for radio, John
> Granatino of the Providence Journal wrote:
> 
> > This looks disingenuous to me from where I sit,
> > as an employee of a newspaper where more than
> > 300 people are employed by the News Department
> > to gather and publish news for our readers. We
> > try to sell the fruits of our labors, but
You sell those fruits to many sources, including syndication,
wire services, and other distribution sources.

> > subscriptions are regularly cancelled by
> > readers who tell us (literally) "I can get it
> > for free on TV or the radio." In fact, the
They get some free news on TV or Radio.  The average radio station publishes
the top 40 stories over a period of 60 minutes.  They "loop" the stories
and give about 2 new stories per hour.

The PR Newswire publishes 3-5 press releases/minute, with no repitition.  
Local Newspapers publish over 300 stories/day/publication.  The biggest
nuisance of newspapers is that you have several pounds of waste product
at the end of the day.  The sunday New York Times weighs about 10 pounds,
and I might only want to read the Real-Estate and Classified ads that day.
Many people leave their leftovers on the subway or where they can be
accessed by others.  In the terminals they have special containers
that prevent people from fishing out discarded papers.

If you compare the first 5 pages, or the front page of each section,
to television, you might get the same content.

> > television and radio stations can't duplicate
> > what we spend about $15-$20 million a year
Actually, they spend about 10-50 times that/year trying to come up with
15 second "sound bytes".  In fact, now it is possible to get these
sound-bites off the internet, including the 200-300 that are never used
on a given day.

> > creating; all they can do is steal it and
> > broadcast it as their own product. Those same
Actually, they don't steal it.  Television and radio stations pay a 
rather hefty annual fee to syndication services to get the foundation 
story.  Royalty agreements between the various news networks are
as complicated as a spider web.

> > television and radio stations then turn and try
> > to appeal to the same advertisters that
> > newspapers are serving. It cannot be a surprise
> > to you that newspapers would consider somehow
> > withholding their content from organizations
> > that pirate the content for commercial gain
> > that comes at the newspaper industry's expense?

> I recall a time in Los Angeles (where I work) when newspaper reporters
> boycotted news conferences that were attended by radio and TV reporters. They

Actually, all that is really going on is that there are several different
"User Interfaces" to the "News".  When I was driving to work for 40 
minutes/day each way, I couldn't hold a newspaper, but I could listen to
the radio.  When I started commuting by train, I had more time to read
a newspaper.  When I lived close to work, I had more time to read by
E-News.

> Print, broadcasting, and online news has its own strengths. Broadcasting's is
> its immediacy; print's, its ability to provide in-depth coverage. I think
> online news's principal specialty is its ability to allow users to search for
> information or to gather specialized information together automatically for
> the reader.

Even within the E-News markets, there are different niches.  There is the
"Search 2000 newspapers for the last 90 days", useful for finding out
about recent developments in a particular area.  There are the "Filtered
Wires" which take real-time news feeds and test each to see if the
story matches a user's criteria.  Then there are services that organize the
information in different ways.  They organize by company, industry, or
topical groupings.  Then there are the "Reporters" who actually dig in
and add depth to a story.  There are "Analysts" who try to predict the 
consequences of different news events.  There are the "Columnists" who
chart the course for future events.  Most of us have a variety of roles.

> However, instead of persisting in the notion that we are all rivals and ought
> to be building barriers against one another, I think all of us in the news
> media should realize that we can effectively complement one another.

When you consider the approach of News Corp, or Time/Warner, you can 
realize that we not only compliment one another, we even interdepend on
each other.  Imagine trying to put together a newspaper without a news feed?

> There have been times in the past when I have seen original reporting that I
> have generated on radio and television end up as part of some other writer's
> efforts in newspapers, magazines, or books. It has never occurred to me to
> consider this piracy. After all, collecting information from various sources
> is what reporters do for a living.

The real challenge of teh reporter is to take one piece of syndicated 
information and find an angle that will make it suitable for 
syndication.  The reporter might take a press release from Microsoft and 
call Lotus representatives to get their reaction.  Often the result will 
be a counter announcement.

> Incidentally, this entire posting is longer than the last newscast I
> broadcast -- containing "all" the news of the day.  It's therefore hard for
> me to consider myself in the same league as Captain Hook. 

Just think, this is only a small pebble in a granite quarry.

> = Lew Irwin
> STUDIO BRIEFING

	Rex Ballard
	Standard & Poor's



From rballard@cnj.digex.net Wed Apr  5 16:47:03 1995
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