Online Newsroom Investment - 2006 Annual Report

Unlike local television and newspapers, which collect industry-wide statistics on staffing levels, there are few data available for how many journalists work in online news. Many sites with original news content mainly carry stories from their sister platforms. Washingtonpost.com, for instance, can post stories directly pulled from the newspaper, thus using the same print reporter for both platforms.

For television outlets, the translation is slightly more involved, at least for now. The stories produced for CNN, for example, are normally put in written form for the Web site. Even here, though, the additional work is minimal and the story is usually posted under the same correspondent’s name.

Clearly, many news organizations still see the online operation as a spin-off of their “primary” platform. That makes some sense, since most of the online ventures could not yet stand alone financially (though that may change). It also suggests that any staff cuts in the main reporting arm greatly affect the online reporting capacity as well.

Many traditional news sites have begun experimenting by offering more citizen-based content. The level of experimentation has varied. The News & Record, the daily newspaper in Greensboro, N.C., was encouraged by its owner, Landmark Communications, to “break free” of the conventional method of newsgathering. The News & Record site showcases a virtual town square complete with blogs on news, sports, religion, food, cooking, and music. The site also offers an opportunity for citizens to submit their own news stories, which are only lightly edited for grammar and spelling.1

As a way of testing new waters at a more comfortable remove, other traditional news organizations have experimented by partnering with technology-based sites that themselves are doing more experimental reporting. Knight Ridder, for instance, launched SiliconValley.com in early 2001. The site offers a range of interactive tools for readers, including blogs and a number of virtual round tables.

In 2005, one site that took steps to make its content more of a public square yet reinforced its commitment and priority to the classic tenets of journalism was CBSNews.com.

CBS News

For now, it appears CBS News has invested more in its Web operation than most traditional news organizations.

In the summer of 2005, at a time when network television news broadcasts continued to experience shrinking audience ratings (see Network TV Audience), CBSNews.com announced it was going to rethink its role as a traditional television and radio news provider and begin shifting much of its content to the Internet. CBS Digital’s president, Larry Kramer, who founded MarketWatch.com, even audaciously predicted that the move would undermine the existing cable television news model because it would cater to the online news consumer’s growing habit of seeking news during the day, and from a computer.

The move has happened. CBSNews.com’s revamped Web site is built around three core principles that enthusiasts have championed as the promise of the Internet: transparency, interactivity, and multimedia capability.

One major component of the new look at CBS News.com is a Web log hosted by Vaughn Ververs named the “ Public Eye.” Ververs’s blog is intended to illuminate the newsgathering process at CBS News, and the site has offered Webcasts of editorial meetings. NBC and ABC are also offering online sites that pull back the curtain on how the news is made at the major networks.

In an interview with CJR Daily, an online media-criticism arm of the Columbia Journalism Review, Kramer provided an example of what is meant by more transparency:

“The other thing [Ververs] will do is he’ll be proactive in explaining how CBS does its business. And by that I mean he’ll go in, and he might decide one day to videotape the story conference for the evening news — at 10:00 in the morning they get together and talk about what’s likely to be on the evening news tonight — and give people a glimpse of how those decisions are made. And show the editors pitching stories, and saying, ’No we have that, we should put this here, and let’s spend our time on this.’ ”

“Public Eye” is also striving to make the online news experience more interactive by serving as a “liaison” between readers and reporters at CBS. Andrew Heyward, then president of CBS News, even created a new title for Ververs: “nonbudsman.” Ververs was supposed to survey what the online community was saying about CBS News, then deliver that criticism to management and news correspondents, who in turn would offer Ververs their explanations for posting publicly on the “Public Eye” blog.2

Some critics saw CBS’s move as designed more to restore the news organization’s credibility, which was tarnished during the “Memogate” incident of September 2004 — particularly among bloggers — than to innovate newsgathering.

CBS, however, also sought to deliver on the Web’s promise of multimedia capability. Kramer argued that in the new 24-hour digital universe, online users will want their news all the time, and especially at work, where the growth of broadband has created more opportunities for video news consumption. Through a video player named “The EyeBox,” users were supposed to be able to stream over 25,000 new and archived videos. Users were also allowed to build their own newscast, and CBS plans to offer daily and weekly video programming from Bob Schieffer, John Roberts, Hannah Storm, and others. There was also talk of sending crews into the field to shoot video footage of bloggers who have particularly valuable commentary on the organization’s news products.

Investment has not been exclusively limited to technology. In July, Heyward and Larry Kramer of CBS Digital said they planned on expanding editorial staffing at CBS News.com as well as the total resources of CBS News.3

Reactions from the blogosphere to the launch of “Public Eye” were generally positive (source: “Eye on CBS,” American Journalism Review, October/November 2005). But some bloggers criticized the decision to edit readers’ comments and posts — which violates orthodox blogging protocol. Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University who blogs on the news media industry, said he hoped that the move toward more transparency would ultimately improve the quality of the network news programming, but he remained rather skeptical.4

One important question lingers for other news organizations that consider CBS’s strategy a harbinger of things to come. As Kramer told CJR Daily, the Web site was largely funded by existing television revenue, though it hoped to cash in on the lucrative online advertising market. Is this a viable long-term strategy, if the television audience ratings continue to decline and revenue from TV ads dries up? Again, the question of a stable online business model continues to loom for the online news universe.