I became a journalist because I liked to tell stories.
I also asked too many questions. I always pushed a deadline. And I likely had a minor case of ADD.
Most importantly, I loved to be in the middle of things. Or, more precisely, I loved reporting about other people in the middle of things.
But it wasnÂ’t until recently that I really found myself in the middle.
Today, IÂ’m one of many newspeople trying to reinvent an industry that changed before we knew it. While I was busy writing about the cyclical nature of recession and recovery, my colleagues and I were picking up the slack of others whoÂ’d lost their jobs in the midst of our own downsizing. All the revenue we had from printed advertisements wasnÂ’t going to come back.
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The idea for this column came in May after a visit from executives from our parent company Gannett Co. Inc. I sat in as a group of about 25 Enquirer Media employees, including mobile and Web developers, market researchers, digital advertising experts, reporters, social-media coordinators and the executive team, prepared for the presentation.
And I was surprised by the number of my coworkers taking on transformative projects.
People I work with are building mobile applications and experimenting with augmented reality, tools that could create new streams of revenue for our company. Others are targeting ads and headlines to individual Cincinnati.com users, giving readers a more personalized experience they may not even be aware of and helping advertisers reach a more specific audience.
Reporters are engaging with readers in new ways, too, conducting live online chats, hosting community meetups and answering questions and seeking feedback through Twitter and Facebook.
Transformation isnÂ’t limited to online. Last week, Gannett Co. Inc. announced that it has signed a letter of intent with The Columbus Dispatch for the possible printing of The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Kentucky Enquirer in a new, more compact, easy-to-use format. The change would begin in the fourth quarter of 2012. New & Tech, a trade publication, said the Dispatch will become the first newspaper in the world to convert to a technology called three-around printing, which allows cylinders on a press to print three sheets in a single revolution, instead of two.
IÂ’m part of all this change. Early this summer, I began producing videos and using QR codes with my Innovations columns in print, prompting readers to scan with their smartphones to view that content. Soon, IÂ’ll begin a blog on innovation and startups called EnterChange with some insights contributed by outside experts.
If this were another company in town, IÂ’d be writing one of my Innovations columns about so many cool and creative initiatives.
And so I decided to do just that anyway. I got access to Enquirer executives. And my bosses found an independent editor from Arizona State University to review this.
Enquirer president and publisher Margaret Buchanan describes our mission today as “balancing the needs of the traditional business and having an eye to the future.”
That list of future-oriented projects at The Enquirer is best of class within Gannett, says president of the newspaper division, Bob Dickey.
“We believe very firmly that innovation cannot be a corporate mandate,” he shared with me during a recent call. “We want it to come from the local level. And, sometimes, it’s personal innovation, willingness to do something different.”
And so James Jackson leads a team driving innovation that could be disruptive to the industry long term. Jackson, formerly vice president of new media for The Enquirer and the director of regional marketing for Gannett, was recently promoted to a senior director of product development for Gannett. He is still based in Cincinnati.
Brian Butts, director of digital content and development, is charged with sustaining innovation through initiatives that grow the online and mobile audience right now.
ButtsÂ’ team oversees those online chats, as well as the story and photo mix on Cincinnati.com each day. He manages a network of 238 neighborhood blogs, populated with Enquirer stories and content written by Community Press and Recorder reporters on iPads. Another 25 blogs are part of a blog network, in which established community blogs are linked from Cincinnati.com in return for a share in ad revenue. They generate up to a million page views a month.
Butts controls the functionality and content mix on a Cincinnati.com mobile site (m.cincinnati.com) and several iPhone and Android mobile applications, including Cincinnati.com, CinBaseball, CinFootball, CinStages and Porkappolis. That list continues to grow.
He works closely with social-media and engagement guru Joe Long to test other new tools such as DocumentCloud, which allows us to share document sources with readers, or Storify, which lets us combine public tweets, Facebook updates and Flickr photos relevant to a local event or issue and share the findings. WeÂ’ve been doing this frequently during and after Reds games.
You’ll see other reporters, including myself, establishing journalist pages on Facebook so we can build a community around our work. I’ll often post my stories, or share insight from an interview, or ask those who “Like” my page for help developing a story idea.
Jackson, meanwhile, has a staff of five developing new technologies like Simple Messaging, Alerting & Reporting Toolset (SMART), the proprietary system that allows stories and ads to be targeted to users based on information they share through surveys and profiles and by tracking how they navigate the site.
Recently, a Community Press Sportsman/Sportswoman of the Year contest displayed to Anderson Township residents only the winning student athletes from their community.Gannett chose Cincinnati as the market to develop and test the company’s first location-based application, similar to the mainstream Foursquare app. Launched on Opening Day this year, Porkappolis lets users “check in” at local venues and get reviews and recommendations for those spots, powered by Cincinnati.com. Hundreds of users have signed up, and advertising partnerships are just beginning. Porkappolis-themed beverage coasters are in the eight local bars owned by Four Entertainment Group, prompting users to “check in” for an exclusive offer or discount at each bar.
“Foursquare can’t deliver a tip from (Enquirer dining reporter) Polly Campbell about a menu item or (Enquirer Bengals reporter) Joe Reedy’s game preview,” Butts says. “We’re beginning to understand the power of being able to serve our content where a person is.”
Another project code-named Bestopolis advances location-based technology using augmented reality. The mobile app will match people looking for a home with a local neighborhood that best fits their needs and interests. Eventually, users will be able to hold a smartphone in front of a potential home and see detailed information about the home delivered to their phones.
Ipad applications are being tested at two other Gannett newspapers, USA TODAY and the Indianapolis Star. Eventually, theyÂ’ll be rolled out throughout the company. A subscription fee will be required for tablet readers, says Dickey.
Dozens of websites and blogs are out there studying initiatives like these and hypothesizing about their viability as a savior to newspapers.
Two of the most respected writers are Rick Edmonds with the Poynter Institute and Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University. I contacted both of them for this story.
Edmonds calls mobile and tablets the big potential opportunity for newspapers. Tablets are expected to help newspapers increase paid digital circulation to 4.6 million in 2015, according to an annual report by PriceWaterhouse Coopers.
But the challenge will be to keep readersÂ’ attention span (which proves to be shorter on devices) without diminishing the significance of a story, and to help advertisers take full advantage of the rich media capabilities, he says.
There are other lingering questions, too.
For example, how much will an advertiser pay to reach a small subset of a population using SMART? And, how far can Enquirer Media personalize to individual readers without scaring them?
Also, can reporters and editors change fast enough? Can we embrace new media opportunities? Look to our readers as a resource?
“Traditional news organizations have loyal users who know a lot about their communities,” Rosen says. “Finding a way to get some of that knowledge flowing is a major strategic challenge for people in the news.”
We have an inherent advantage in all of this, because weÂ’ve always been entwined in our local communities.
We also are led by a management team encouraging us to test and learn, and then do it again.
As my daily tasks continue to expand, I wonder how much more I can do. And if it will be enough to outlast these tumultuous times.
But I also enjoy the magic that can happen in the middle.
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