Nov/Dec 2019
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www.newsandtech.com www.newsandtech.com November/December 2019 The premier resource for insight, analysis and technology integration in newspaper and hybrid operations and production. Raised from the dead: The Bigfork Eagle lives! u BY MARC WILSON SPECIAL TO NEWS & TECH Editor’s Note: The Bigfork, Montana, half that in the winter. The town Eagle resumed publication on Oct. 30. — some call it a village — sits on What’s the big deal with the rebirth of a small-town weekly newspaper? Our Marc the shores of Flathead Lake near Wilson tells you the back story. the confluence of the Swan and Flathead rivers. The snow-capped The most difficult — and re- Swan Mountains rise over the warding — job I ever had was edi- town to the west. Bigfork is used tor/publisher/janitor of the Bigfork by many as a gateway to Glacier Eagle, a small weekly newspaper National Park and the Bob Mar- in rural northwest Montana. shall Wilderness. Gourmet restau- My wife and I ran and co- rants serve a clientele that lives or owned the Eagle for 14 years be- camps on the edge of wilderness. fore selling it in 1997 so I could Visitors are reminded that grizzly devote fulltime to building Town- bears are first on the food chain in News, which we’d started in the Montana. No joke. back shop of the Eagle in 1989. It’s a beautiful place to live or Lee Enterprises bought the visit, but a very difficult place to Eagle from us before selling it to make a living or run a business, Hagadone Newspapers in the including a weekly newspaper. early 2000s. Hagadone also owns Four years ago, Hagadone shut the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, down the Eagle, citing financial 17 miles from Bigfork. losses. Bigfork is an unincorporated Although disappointed, I un- community of some 10,000 resi- derstood. dents in the summer and about Bigfork continues on page 8 FTI’s Doucette on evolving paywalls, models u BY MARY REARDON NEWS & TECH MANAGING EDITOR News & Tech caught up with Pete Douc- Technology at oft-cited FTI Consulting, head- his firm has completed and provides his takes ette, managing director of Telecom, Media & quartered in Washington, D.C. on paywalls and subscriptions. At FTI, Doucette recently developed the Subscriptions News & Tech: What can you tell us about Lab, a partnership with the studies or material FTI has produced recently Google News Initiative. Before or will produce? Turn to joining FTI, Doucette was the Doucette: Two major focus areas of FTI Con- chief consumer revenue offi- sulting’s current work with the newspaper in- page 37 cer at Boston Globe Media. He dustry are the growth of digital subscriptions for expanded speaks globally on subscription for publishers along with the digital transfor- models, digital transformation mation of the traditional seven-day printing industry and other industry matters. and distribution operating model. coverage Doucette updates News & With regard to digital subscriptions, FTI Tech readers on recent research Doucette continues on page 6 News & Tech November/December 2019 u 1 www.newsandtech.com — Let’s write the future. With retrofit solutions that give your press another ten years of life. ABB’s retrofit solutions for newspaper presses will extend the productive life of your press, improve print quality, reduce waste and improve efficiency — for a fraction of the cost of a new press. Worried about the availability of spare parts for your existing controls? With an ABB retrofit you know that spares will be available worldwide for ten to fifteen years. Whether looking for replacement drives, new controls, conversion to shaftless or a complete press reconfiguration, ABB has the right solution for you. The key to the future of your printing business lies with ABB. www.abb.com/printing 2 t November/December 2019 News & Tech ABB-Ad_Newsandtech_228x276_a.indd 1 21.07.2017 07:51:57 www.newsandtech.com Yearlong project aims to keep digital news from disappearing u BY TARA MCMEEKIN CONTRIBUTIng WRITER The Reynolds Journalism Institute is doing its part to ensure that In a nutshell, he said the project comes down to making sure digital news doesn’t lose its place in the annals of history. To cham- that digital news content is available, identifiable, uncorrupted, pion that cause, RJI and its home-base school — the University of and ultimately retrievable. And McCain warns that the cloud isn’t Missouri — have partnered on a project that calls on news outlets foolproof. to take a key role in preserving digital news. “Even though we think of the cloud as this virtual ether, there are The project — funded by a $250,000 grant from The Andrew W. still physical devices involved and those things can break down,” Mellon Foundation — builds on work done by RJI’s Journalism Dig- he said. ital News Archive and the Dodging the Memory Hole conferences. Furthermore, he said digital content has to be renderable, which From 2014 to 2017, those conference brought together librarians, can become a major challenge as software and systems change and memory institutions, newsroom leaders and others to engage in a evolve. dialogue about preserving and protecting news content. Over the course of a year, the team will visit news outlets across Competitive advantage the U.S. and Europe to identify and pose solutions to the techno- Besides helping to document history, maintaining thorough ar- logical and other obstacles hampering the preservation of online chives gives news organizations a great competitive advantage that content. sets them apart. “This is an impending problem,” Edward McCain, digital curator “Organizations like The New York Times are using theirs as a prof- of journalism at RJI and the University of Missouri Libraries told it center,” McCain said, citing Amazon’s “Modern Love,” which is News & Tech. McCain heads up the Journalism Digital News Ar- based on the longtime NYT weekly column-turned-podcast — and chive — or Journalism DNA as it referred to in a clever nod to the now turned television series. essence of news. Other organizations stand to benefit as well, he said, citing the “For thousands of years we’ve been used to storing information NFL and NBA, which have also invested in systems to preserve and on paper, so we know what we’re doing with that,” he said. “If you access content. This should be a large priority, but McCain knows store a paper in a cool, dry place you will be able to read it — the that it must also make financial sense for news outlets. language may be different, but it will be there.” “That’s why we are looking at those issues of profitability and Through the project, McCain said he hopes to establish a robust how it can be leveraged — and it goes to the core of what differenti- and complete news archive that enables thorough and responsible ates journalists vs. someone just spouting off on a blog somewhere. reporting now and into the future. We have this record of our communities, and we worked hard to “The way of preserving things is different now as is the way that get it right, so there is certainly value there.” things can break or disappear — for example in migrating from one CMS to another,” McCain said. “It takes a lot of careful planning to Finding partners not lose information.” Journalism DNA is interested in working with vendors including For Journalism DNA’s part, McCain said it’s key to work with the TownNews and its partner newspapers to find out how they’re solv- technologists in the newsroom as well as the journalists — although ing archiving challenges, and in turn, share those solutions with the journalists are ultimately the ones that must drive this. other organizations. It’s also tapping into large publishers includ- ing McClatchy and its technology and data center in Raleigh, North Newsroom response Carolina, as well as public radio affiliates and other news organiza- So far, the news organizations McCain has reached out to have tions. been receptive to participating in the project, and are largely “My goal is to give the news industry great information about bought into the notion that there is a need to safeguard digital and what they can do,” McCain said. “We all have an interest in hang- online news. ing onto our work, and as individuals we have to take charge of “There are still some challenges because it’s still early days, so what we’ve done. We want all of the hard work that went into the most people are unsure what digital preservation really means,” recording of history to survive and not be in vain.” McCain said. “There are different models and different ways.” The ultimate vision is to use the insights gained over the coming To that end, the group is looking at a variety of activities and year to improve CMS systems and other platforms to ensure the goals for archiving news that address myriad challenges. Among survival and future use of content. The results of the study will be them, McCain pointed to the pitfalls of digital, including the ease published in a report to be released a year from now. with which content can be changed or altered, whether intention- Any news outlets or newspaper industry vendors interested in ally or unintentionally. He said he’s even heard from newspapers participating in the study are encouraged to contact RJI. p that are shutting down and have no plan for preserving or archiving their content and preventing it from disappearing. News & Tech November/December 2019 u 3 November/December 2019 CONTENTS Volume 31, No.