The News & Observer announced yesterday a third round of job cuts, but that’s not the topic for today because you already read about it here at WAW three weeks ago. Instead, I’ll steer you to a report on WUNC-FM, also from yesterday, which examines how the N&O — which once had the leading Web presence in the Triangle — found itself in second place behind a television station WRAL. (Go here to listen.)

I was interviewed for the WUNC story. Although I spent an hour talking with the station’s reporter, my comments were reduced to a pair of small (but tasty) sound bites. That’s not a complaint. I know how the broadcast world works. But now I’ll summarize the things I expressed, with no real verbal skill, in the WUNC studio last week. (Hey, I’m a better writer than talker.)

How did the N&O fumble away its local Web supremacy? Four things figured into it:

First, the fellow who steered the N&O into the digital age, Frank Daniels III, left the paper in 1995 when his father, owner/publisher Frank Daniels Jr., sold the company to McClatchy. During Frank III’s time as editor of the N&O it was clear to all in the newsroom that he was disinterested, and sometimes even contemptuous, of the paper-and-ink news business. But the guy was a Web visionary, and it’s right to give him his due in that regard. When Frank III left, the N&O’s online effort started its long period of drift, leaving the door open to more agile competitors.

Second, the N&O for years treated its Web site as a threat rather than an opportunity. The widespread belief was that if stories were posted online before they appeared in the print edition, readers would cancel their subscriptions and opt for the freebie. Worse yet, the hated TV competitors would use the N&O’s Web site as a news tip sheet. Those were firmly held convictions, which is why the N&O’s site for years was simply a digital version of the morning paper — and hence always at least one news cycle behind WRAL’s site.

Third, the N&O (like most other newspapers) demanded that online readers go through a register-and-log-in routine. The effect of that was to put up barriers to the Web site, driving people away at a time when the paper should have instead been opening the door wide. As far as I know, WRAL never blocked access to its site. Then again, that was business as usual for the TV people. After all, no television station demands that you register and log in before watching its shows.

Last is the fact that the Web — a graphics- and image-heavy medium that can accommodate both sound and video — is more like television than it is like printed publications. What for the N&O was a radical re-adjustment in the way it packaged and presented its product was for WRAL a relatively minor tweak. The Web simply came more naturally to the TV bunch.

The result of those factors was that WRAL eventually came to have the biggest local Web presence, at the N&O’s expense. That point was driven home yesterday in an especially ironic way when I compared WRAL’s story on the N&O’s cutbacks to the paper’s own version. There were five times as many reader comments posted on the WRAL site than on the N&O’s site.

Even when the N&O has news about itself, most people apparently go to WRAL to learn about it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 1:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.