It may seem like an unlikely union: an old-guard public television station paired with a small, online journalism start-up. However, the two share the same commitment to strong reporting and storytelling.

Each organization, said KCTS Senior Producer Ethan Morris via email, brings different strengths to the collaboration: “InvestigateWest’s reporters are seasoned investigative journalists who have a specialized set of skills that literally take years to develop: in-depth research, database analysis, Freedom of Information Act requests, cultivating confidential sources, etc. Our producers have a separate set of skills in visual storytelling. We build our stories around the video and audio we collect with a specific focus on story narrative and arc.”

The first result of this collaboration, a 12-minute video called “Lifesaving Drugs—Deadly Consequences,” aired on KCTS on July 9 and 12; MSNBC, the Seattle Times, NPR and PBS also shared the piece. The organizations plan to collaborate on four projects a year, with a focus on environmental issues.

Carol Smith, Senior Writer at InvestigateWest, sees the collaborative model play a role in the future of journalism: “Collaboration is a way to leverage each other’s resources and talents to get the most eyes and ears possible on stories that matter.”

Morris agrees: “This may be the future of journalism – creative collaborations that benefit all sides. Our story put a face on Investigate West’s story, and evoked more emotion than a written piece could have on its own. We aired our story first, then cross promoted and drove people to read the full story on the Investigate West site, so it was a win-win situation.”

The promise of the partnership—investigative journalism with a layer of compelling storytelling—is already evident in the heartbreaking “Lifesaving Drugs—Deadly Consequences,” the story of Sue Crump, a pharmacy technician who developed cancer after years of handling chemotherapy drugs.

Sue’s daughter approached Rita Hibbard, InvestigateWest’s Executive Director and Editor, following a conference and urged Hibbard to tell Sue’s story– a story other journalists had turned down. The details resonated with the team, who saw the potential to expose an injustice no other source was addressing. They dug deep into medical records over the course of a year, during which Sue lost her battle with cancer.

View “Lifesaving Drugs—Deadly Consequences” at KCTS 9 Connects.

Helen Pitlick is a recent MCDM grad. She works as Social Media Coordinator at LexBlog, and hasn’t quite figured out what she’s going to do with her spare time now that she is no longer a student.

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Over the past 13 years, Eat the State! (ETS) has provided Western Washington with left-leaning political commentary as a free bimonthly print journal. However, the weak economy has forced the paper to rethink its business model, and many other small publications are in the same boat.

Last month, after having difficulty meeting a $6,000 fundraising goal, ETS recognized that its current publication model is not sustainable. In the future, ETS will only print endorsement issues around elections. The paper’s last regular print edition will be released April 1.

The switch to digital comes with some trepidation. Supporters who paid to keep the paper in print might feel betrayed if the print edition disappears. More fundamentally, ETS worries that losing the print version may limit who will be exposed to its viewpoints:

On the Web, people tend to read what they’re already familiar with. Over the years, thousands of people have discovered their first free copy of Eat the State! by chance in a coffee shop, movie theater, or library… Also, there are still plenty of people who don’t have reliable Internet access or otherwise choose not to rely on the Web for all their news and commentary. Many people just prefer reading newsprint.

Michael Andersen, a journalist and founder of the upcoming transit/bike publication Portland Afoot, agrees that something is lost when publications go digital: “There’s a stronger brand experience when you’re holding something in your hands,” he said. “The bond is much stronger with an object.” Plus, print is a push technology: “If you hand it to somebody, they’re going to look at it at least briefly. That’s something almost no digital product can offer.” Portland Afoot will be a 4-page monthly publication accompanied by a wiki-based Web site.

In addition, many advertising dollars are still tied to print. According to Mark Glaser of PBS MediaShift, even as print publications like ETS move online, “…there are also online publications that are starting to do print versions too because they can make more money with print ads. For now, many local advertisers still like to see their ads in print vs. online.”

From print to digital

Switching from “print first, Web second” to primarily digital is more complicated than just just moving all the content online. ETS needs to “start over in terms of our publishing conception,” said co-founder Lance Scott. “We need to think from an online standpoint.”

For instance, ETS will need to figure out a new publication schedule. Not limited by the constraints of print, ETS can publish immediately, when content is most relevant; but it may also want to spread stories out to give readers an incentive to return to the site.

PC Mag is an example of a successful print-to-digital transition. While hardly a “little guy” like ETS, the magazine also appeals to a niche audience. Said editor-in-chief Lance Ulyanoff of the switch:

The actual transition to all-digital was a years-long process. In fact, we probably began changing our publishing model as early as 2005 when all of our reviews were delivered online first. Over time, all of our content switched to online first, features and solutions were last. As we did that, we also slowly shifted more and more of the staff to online or print and online combined roles. By 2008, we had just a small group of people solely devoted to print. When we ceased print publication in early 2009, our staff had already transitioned. As a result, our process barely changed and we laid off only one employee.

“My advice to ease the transition is to stay in touch with the readers and make sure you are serving their needs and reaching them,” Glaser added. “If they are all online, then going online-only can work. If many of them prefer print, then that’s probably what you’ll need to provide them.”

Portland Afoot founder Michael Andersen thinks it’s important for publications to know the advantages and disadvantages of online versus print. Newspapers and magazines frequently publish the same content in both media without recognizing the value in distinct content tailored for each medium. And print could learn a thing or two from the Web. Attention spans are shorter, and readers are less eager to consume lengthy features than they used to.

The future of print

It’s unlikely that all papers will be Web-only in the near future – at least the Web as we know it today. “I’m not sure that all publications will eventually be online-only; it really depends on the audience of the publication and location of it,” Glaser said. “Tech trade magazines seem to have mainly migrated online, but print newspapers are booming in smaller towns and in India.”

The long-term future may be a hybrid of tactile and digital, depending on the adoption of the tablet. As Wired’s Chris Anderson told David K. Israel of Mental Floss in a Feb. 3 phone interview, “the tablet offers an opportunity to achieve [the benefits of print] and even greater impacts because it has all the kind of visual splendor of the printed page plus the interactive elements, with much more efficient economics, of digital distribution.”

Michael Andersen agrees that inexpensive tablets will be widely adopted in 10 years, yet holds out for print. “Companies that have already sunk a lot of investment in, say, printing presses will still find it useful to use them. But I doubt there’ll be many people like me, investing in new print-driven enterprises.”

image by Matt Callow

Helen Pitlick has been a student in the MCDM program since spring 2009. She works with social media as an intern at Foodista.com, and in her spare time she reviews craft beer

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Update: The New York Times announced on January 20 that they will indeed begin to meter content, starting in 2011. Read the Times’ statement here.

Bloggers’ reactions? Mashable predicts that the number of sites linking to the Times will decrease, negatively impacting traffic, while most readers will move on to another news source after they reach their limit. TechCrunch breaks down the numbers and comes to a skeptical, yet optimistic, conclusion. PaidContent.org, an information company owned by Guardian Media Group, justifies the decision.

*****

The New York Times may be close to charging for online content.

According to New York Magazine, the venerable ”Gray Lady” is seriously considering a metered system that will allow consumers to read all of the paper’s content — up to a point. Once that limit is reached, the reader must pay for articles. This allows new visitors to explore the site while charging the heaviest users. Seems fair enough, right? The question is whether the Times’ audience will agree to pay or go elsewhere for their news.

This is not the Times’ first effort to charge for content. In 2007, after a two-year foray into TimesSelect, a subscription service, Times management decided to offer its online content for free because they believed that the site’s massive readership — 20 million unique visitors – would bring in considerable revenue once online advertising techniques improved. Times executives hoped their strong online efforts would lead them to stand while other newspapers crumbled.

However, the paper’s advertising revenue has fallen with the economy, and the Times seems to be optimistic that its past will not determine its future. Jason Preston of Eat Sleep Publish supports the proposed metered system: ”The market has changed significantly since (what was it, 2007?) and they’re planning to try something totally different … so what they learned is: don’t do Times Select.”

Preston continues,

“I think the NYT is in a perfect position to introduce a metered model, and I think that if that’s how they proceed that they’ll be moving in the right direction. I suspect that their overall traffic will continue to grow, not shrink, as more people take up the NYT as a casual (and free) habit, and ad revenue will grow, as the NYT gains the opportunity to argue to its advertisers that users are paying to view their content.”

The proposed metering may mean big changes for people who rely on The New York Times. UW International Studies professor Tony Lucero requires students in his “Making of the 21st Century” course to read the Times every day. He said this will be a requirement regardless of the cost to access Times content, but he acknowledged that the Times is not the only option for reliable news.

“[The New York Times] is a good source for international news, and it is an influential paper, one that shapes and reflects some of the major political discussions of the day … At the same time, the NYT often drives me crazy (the Haiti earthquake on front page, of course, but Conan O’Brien?) I also want students to read critically — think about how stories are reported and what kinds of ideological issues and choices can be seen both in the news reporting and the editorial pages. This could be done with other publications, sure … That said, in the future I will probably consider other sources.”

Subscription models typically work when a media brand offers content people can access nowhere else — such as small-town news — or produces content of extraordinary quality. People might pay for excellent foreign affairs coverage, but will they pay for the latest news about Conan? The New York Times may be overestimating what people are willing to spend money on — and competing news outlets with free services may benefit.

The proposed metering raises additional questions. Journalist and blogger Jeff Jarvis tweeted a question posed by one of his followers: “I wonder if excellent NYT iPhone app will continue being free, bundled with subs, or metered?” Jarvis himself expressed dissatisfaction in a blog post by asking, “So why charge your best customers? Why single them out? Why risk driving them away?” Jarvis agrees with Clay Shirky that micropayments such as these are not the answer to saving journalism.

The metering would not go into effect for several months, though a decision is expected any day now.

What do you think? Would you pay to read The New York Times online?

image by wallyg via Creative Commons

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On Sept. 14, Matt Nadeau, owner of Rock Art Brewery in Morrisville, Vt., received a cease and desist letter from a lawyer for Hansen’s Beverage Company, owner of the popular Monster energy drinks, demanding that he pull one of his beers — the Vermonster — off the market. A potent barleywine clocking in at 10 percent ABV and 100 IBU (beer talk for really, really powerful stuff), the Vermonster was an aptly named behemoth. However, Hansen’s interpreted this as a threat. The company’s letter alleged that use of the Vermonster name infringed Hansen’s trademark rights and constituted unfair competition.

It’s dubious that Hansen’s had a real case, since “the crux of infringement [was] a likelihood of consumer confusion and it seems doubtful that many consumers would confuse a regionally-brewed alcoholic beverage as being produced by a national energy drink company,” said Ryan Fant, a Stanford law student specializing in intellectual property. However, Hansen’s had the upper hand: The legal fees from fighting the accusation would likely bankrupt Nadeau and force Rock Art out of business.

But Nadeau decided to fight back. Using social media and digital communication, he quickly gathered supporters.

He began by talking with his customers, who took the story to the local paper. He posted the cease-and-desist letter on his Web site and e-mailed everyone he knew; many of those people forwarded his e-mail to their contacts, who forwarded it to their contacts.

Nadeau tweeted his case to @rockartbrewery‘s 307 followers on Oct. 3. The following day, the brewery had 377 followers; it currently has 1,508. Hashtags such as #boycottmonster, #isupportrockart and #Vermonster sprung up. People added badges with X-ed out images of Monster cans to their avatars.

An Associated Press story on the fight was published in the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and several other newspapers on Oct. 12, providing more fuel for the fire.

Green River Pictures donated their services and created a six-minute video for YouTube, posted on Oct. 14. In it, Nadeau described the brewery’s humble beginnings and what the fight meant to him as a brewer, a small-business owner and a Vermonter. Within five days, the video had 63,334 views.

Bloggers from across the country expressed outrage and encouraged others to join the fight. “The fact that this is how corporate America operates is pretty disgusting. If you don’t drink energy drinks, tell your friends that do to stop buying Monster. Post on message boards. If you own a store, pull your stock and stop buying it; there are plenty of other popular energy drinks out there,” wrote Seattle Beer News on Oct. 14.

A University of Vermont student created a Facebook group called Vermonters and Craft Beer Drinkers Against Monster, which grew to more than 16,000 members in less than two weeks. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders even made an appeal for Rock Art by writing Hansen’s CEO a letter.

Hansen’s didn’t predict this kind of reaction. After deciding it would be more profitable to end the craziness altogether, Hansen’s accepted Nadeau’s terms — an offer it had previously rejected — on Oct. 21. Rock Art would be allowed to continue to brew and distribute Vermonster. For Hansen’s, the situation backfired. Instead of ridding the market permanently of Vermonster, thousands of people now know the name and will seek it out. Many involved will continue to boycott Monster and Hansen’s products.

The case was successful because Nadeau and Rock Art were able to quickly provide high-quality, shareable content, which became more in-depth and legitimate as the case snowballed in popularity. Both Twitter and Facebook allowed supporters to pass along articles and blog posts covering the affair, circulate an online petition and share the YouTube video and links to Hansen’s customer service page.

In addition, the outrage came from multiple niches. Craft-beer lovers, notoriously sensitive to the actions of large businesses after years of Anheuser-Busch dominance, rallied in support — even those who had never taken a sip of Rock Art. Vermonters, staunchly anti-commercial residents of a state where even billboards are illegal, took umbrage to a large California company telling one of their own what to do. Plus, the injustice of a large corporation bullying a small mom-and-pop business was enough to unleash anyone’s inner Michael Moore. Nadeau strategically focused on each of these aspects in his YouTube video, ensuring he would receive everyone’s attention.

The incredible viral rallying power of the Internet gave tiny Rock Art Brewery an equal voice with Hansen’s Beverage Company. As Nadeau said in his Oct. 22 letter to supporters, “This was accomplished by Americans communicating and working together and using the POWER of SPEECH. This speech was harnessed through traditional media as well as the new social media such as Twitter, FaceBook, Blog sites, e-mail lists and web sites to name a few. … It’s the same right we have had from our forefathers, free speech. It has been adjusted to meet the new demands of today’s world.”

I’ll drink to that.

image from Sioux Brew

Helen Pitlick has been a student in the MCDM program since spring 2009. She works with social media as an intern at Foodista.com, and in her spare time she reviews craft beer.

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Heavensfield Retreat Center, home of the reSTART program, outside Redmond. (Image courtesy of reSTART)

A new addiction treatment program unlike any other in the country opened recently outside Redmond. This new program, reSTART, aims to heal a malady created by the digital age: Internet addiction. Though similar centers exist in Asia and online, reSTART is the first of its kind in the United States. Patients pay $14,500 to live at Heavensfield Retreat Center for 45 days. They participate in individual and group counseling, outdoor activities, life coaching and a variety of other programs.

So how do you distinguish between healthy Internet use and an addiction? According to an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry by Jerald Block, a Portland psychiatrist who specializes in this field, symptoms of Internet addiction include excessive use; feelings of anger or discomfort when away from a computer or portable device; the urge to increasingly buy better software or technology or to expand usage; and negative impact on quality of life; including sleep deprivation, poor performance at work or in school and lying about how much time one spends online. Internet addiction generally falls into three categories: gaming, sexual content and email or text messaging.

Internet addiction is becoming more prevalent in the United States. In a 2006 Stanford University study, 14 percent of American adults reported finding it difficult to be disconnected for several days; 9 percent said they hide certain aspects of their Internet use from family and friends; and 8 percent said they use the Internet to escape reality. The American Psychiatric Association is currently debating whether to add Internet addiction to the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), due for release in 2012. Inclusion in the DSM would mean both the possibility of insurance coverage for treatment and wider acceptance of sufferers’ hardships. But critics of the term “Internet addiction” say that labeling extreme Internet use as deviant is merely an older generation trying to quantify behavior they do not understand.

It’s not just “World of Warcraft” gamers and online poker players who are affected by this addiction. CNN reports that stay-at-home moms, particularly young ones, are especially vulnerable. New mothers often spend a great deal of time at home with no other adults to talk to. Blogs, message boards and Second Life become natural outlets for social interaction.

Internet addiction is perhaps an even more serious problem in China, South Korea and Taiwan. The Christian Science Monitor estimates that 17 million of China’s 300 million Internet users can be classified as addicts, meaning they spend more than six hours of leisure time online every day. South Korea considers Internet addiction to be a top concern after a number of deaths in Internet cafes, including 10 cardiopulmonary-related fatalities and one homicide.

Given the widespread nature of the problem, it’s no surprise that these Asian countries already treat people for Internet addiction. As Internet use has exploded in China, particularly among the country’s teens, parents have turned to hundreds of training camps to cure their kids of their addictive Internet behaviors, CNN reports.

Although some treatment centers have been successful, others have recently come under scrutiny for extreme behaviors, such as electroshock therapy and military-style drills. In August, a teenage boy died from physical abuse at an Internet addiction camp; at another camp, a boy was beaten, leaving him in critical condition.

The effectiveness of treatment for Internet addiction is still up for debate. Internet addiction has a relatively high rate of co-morbidity, the simultaneous presence of two of more illnesses in a patient. Among Internet addicts, 86 percent also suffer from some other psychiatric problem. Co-morbidity is common in many forms of addiction, but it does raise the argument that treatment for Internet addiction is merely addressing a symptom and not the cause. Is an executive who obsessively checks his e-mail on his Blackberry an Internet addict or a workaholic? How does compulsive gambling online differ from compulsive gambling in a casino? If a new mom spends all her time visiting a message board to alleviate her postpartum depression, should she be treated for depression, addiction or both?

Regardless, in an increasingly digital reality, excessive Internet use is likely to become more common. If someone is hiding time online from a loved one or missing important deadlines because he’s immersed in an online activity, he may be afflicted. ReSTART offers an online diagnostic test to help identify one’s risk.

Helen Pitlick has been a student in the MCDM program since spring 2009. She works with social media as an intern at Foodista.com, and in her spare time she reviews craft beer.

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Sponsored posts — endorsements by bloggers in exchange for compensation from marketers, dubbed “blog-ola” for “blogger payola” – have become a reality. Flip the Media is great, but can it really do everything described above? Probably not. To combat deceptive sponsored posts, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced last year that it plans to revise its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (“the Guides”) to regulate how bloggers and other social media users endorse products. This could strike a blow to both the companies who crowdsource using social media and the bloggers who supplement their income with freebies.

The changes mandate full disclosure of any monetary relationship between the blogger and the sponsor, and will make bloggers responsible for any unsubstantiated statements they make (ie, that FTM cures cancer). The amendments do not completely ban bloggers from accepting gifts or cash; they simply ensure that bloggers are upfront about the transaction and make accurate claims. The updates also apply to infomercials, celebrity endorsements and “results not typical” advertising.

While the FTC admits that this is a controversial proposal, it views the changes as a way to update its mission of consumer protection for the 21st century. From the FTC’s angle, the regulation appears logical: A review that does not accurately reflect the blogger’s experience is dishonest, as is a review that presents the blogger as an actual customer when in fact he or she a paid spokesperson. Still, many bloggers, readers and the companies that depend on sponsored posts are heavily divided over the proposed amendment.

Some people fear that the FTC will turn into Big Brother, scrutinizing every product mention regardless of intent. Eric Robinson of the Media Law Resource Center writes, “It’s dangerous for the FTC to be regulating editorial content and ethics, rather than straight ad content. FTC regulations on advertisers, barring them from giving freebies, for example, may be legitimate; regulating bloggers for what is essentially an ethical issue is a dangerous precedent of government encroaching on First Amendment speech.”

Many bloggers, particularly those who run product review sites, depend on free products and rely on sponsored posts to supplement their income. Newspapers have codes of ethics preventing their journalists from receiving freebies and bribes, and the FTC defers to this independent regulation. However, newspapers traditionally have had deep enough pockets to pay for products to review. Plus, many social media groups, such as the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, have their own guidelines that state how to ethically accept and review products. Some bloggers feel that the FTC is demeaning their legitimacy by not deferring to the judgment of professional industry groups as the FTC has done with newspapers.

Regardless of the law, transparency is generally the best option. Google downgrades paid blogs because it feels that they do not provide accurate search results. In a world where SEO is king, you don’t want to upset the largest search engine. Plus, if bloggers write sponsored posts and do not freely reveal the connection, they risk a backlash from their constituents. Wal-Mart experienced such a fallout after muckrakers uncovered that their “Wal-Marting Across America” campaign was a fraud. As the saying goes, honesty is the best policy — in real life and on the net.

The FTC will decide whether to adopt the revisions regulating bloggers shorty; their original deadline was the end of the summer. If you’re interested in learning more, read my final project for this summer’s U.S. Digital Media Law class. It won’t cure cancer, but it has a bit more information on the FTC’s proposal.

Helen Pitlick has been a student in the MCDM program since spring 2009. She works with social media as an intern at Foodista.com, and in her spare time, she reviews craft beer.

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