Those were the days…. and they were a long time ago…
The Washington Post announced yesterday that they were firing VJs Pierre Kattar and Travis Fox.
Matthew Ingram blogs that this is really about a fight between the paper and the online group.
Says Ingram
The fear about the Washington Post is that creative online and multimedia journalists have been cut loose in favour of newspaper loyalists who may have little or no clue about what working online really involves.
If this is the case, it is no surprise.
First, let’s talk about The Washington Post, the newspaper.
In the first half of  this year, the Washington Post ran an operating loss of $86.3 million.  Its newsroom has been slashed from 900 to 500. This is no stable operation. This is no crying example of a newspaper that works. It very much does not work.
What keeps the Washington Post alive at all in fact is that The Washington Post Company owns Stanley Kaplan, the SAT review course. Â The New York Times Company currently has a market value of $1.1 billion. The Washington Post Company has a market value of $4.5 billion, because of Kapan.
Had the paper announced that they were firing the entire editorial staff and replacing the front page headlines with lists of vocabulary words, it might have made more sense.
The old has a hard time letting go.
In fact, it would seem that they would rather go down ‘fighting the good fight’ than making the reforms necessary to restructure The Washington Post to a journalism institution that was commensurate with the 21st Century.
Apparently that is not their intention.
Many years ago, Punch Sulzberger bought one of my companies, VNI. Â It became New York Times TV. Â After the deal was done, I was invited to lunch with Joe Lelyveld, then the Executive Editor of the paper. Â We ate in the executive dining room – salmon on silver trays, waiters with white gloves.
Lelyveld told me, with great pride, that he did not even own a TV. Â He then wished me good luck but warned me that the newspaper, the newsroom and its content were strictly hands-off for the new TV venture.
Good luck indeed.
Now, the newspaper newsroom at the WaPo has made a power play for the only future that the paper might have, and something they don’t understand at all. So here’s a question for you:
The Washington Post is
A) Short sighted
B) Making a big mistake
C) Finished
D) All of the above
Pencils down.
14 Comments
digger November 24, 2009
The business of making video that works online is far more complex than most want to believe.
Wapo invested a lot of time and resources in trying to develop a sustainable model, and now they’ve now made a U-turn of some sort.
After 4 or 5 years of pioneering web video they have a lot of hard data on viewing habits. We don’t have access to that data.
If we did we we could make an intelligent assessment of their decision.
We don’t so we can’t.
Michael Rosenblum November 24, 2009
Let us bear in mind in this discussion that were it not for Stanley H Kaplan and his SAT review courses, The Washington Post would be effectively bankrupt and quite possibly out of business. The ‘old business works’ defense does not sit very well. Youtube was never designed to make money. No one really knows what the new order is going to look like, but it is pretty clear that the old one no longer works the way it used to.
pencilgod November 24, 2009
Kevin over the years I’ve worked through a lot of changes. The last decade as a freelancer so the money I’ve invested in change has been my own. That makes me careful. I look around I see what is working and I go with it. I don’t reap the rewards of being first with the next big thing but I don’t risk losing it all hanging out on the bleeding edge.
So when I look at something that has been tried and failed time and time again I don’t keep backing it on the hope that this time somehow it might work out. Just look at the racetracks and you will find plenty of people who have lost their shirt trying that approach.
The irony to me is when I come here and see the same people stuck in a rut, slavishly walking the same well trod path to the same dead end, I know they are the same ones who will accuse me of not being able to change.
Kevin November 23, 2009
This is to all of you. This is a major transition period in media. It’s not just Michael talking about this. Much like evolution, the world of media as it is known is changing, and rapidly. People who will utilize new media are not on your radar and because this is fact and a known quantity, the whigs running major media outlets are thinking the same way and directing you how to think (Job Security). You will never convince 40 year olds and up to watch new media. You will never get the Titans of media to change their way of thinking or way of doing business. You will never convince those in the employ of these media Titans to think any other way, again job security. Kattar and Fox were scapegoats, those to be made an example of. How dare they suggest that the beloved Washington Post change or die. Michael has been ramming it down your throats as long as I’ve been following this blog, which is quite a while, it’s about the ability to make money from it. The Post along with other former major media outlets are refusing to die or change, and they are losing market share and as a result ad revenue; who better to fire than the new guys, they guys wanting to make a positive change.
It’s like you guys who blast Michael about making money from teaching at the Travel Channel Academy and other New Media/VJ courses. If the guy can make a living from it, people are willing to pay and learn, there is obviously a demand for it and people are obviously getting a benefit from it. What a perfect business. It’s a win/win.
Back on point. Marketing is more than just selling ads. It’s knowing who your audience is. Demographics. If the Post’s readership is 40 and up, they should market to the 40 and ups; and realize that as the years go by their readship dwindles. If they don’t have a product that caters to a younger audience they will never get that audience and will in fact die. What is the biggest campaign from Pepsi you remember…. …The choice of a new generation??? Pepsi’s market share boomed. Get a Clue!
Look at YouTube. Look at the most viewed videos. Who’s watching? Not old farts. It’s the generation that will drive New Media and what New Media is all about; that’s who’s watching. When you were kids, did you sit down with your parents and watch Charles Kuralt, or Brinkley. NO! You were watcing the A-Team, Charlies Angels, or Bonanza. Nat Geo specials and Disney grabbed more attention than local news. Is New Media content unique, does it grab attention, are you putting your content in front of people who will watch? Or are you preaching to the choir. Disney has built an empire by developing young audiences. Nat Geo created the opportunity to exploit Travel, Adventure and Knowledge as a media genre, think Travel Channel, Discovery, Animal Planet, History, Food, Everything Viacom owns and the multitude of other such networks. You have to get the business side right to make it all work. Don’t get the business side right, you will die a slow and painful economic death.
To answer Michaels questions, I would have to say all of the above.
$ November 24, 2009
Marketing is more than selling ads Kevin.
But it can not be ignored.
In order to run a business, key word “business”, you can not operate without cash flow.
No cash.
No business.
No business, no jobs.
Once again you, like others without experience, rush to bring up youtube as some example of how the business will be run.
Sorry Kevin.
Youtube does not produce content and the content it does showcase gets so few hits it is not a viable platform to distribute original content with enough interest to draw a truly large audience.
Even Travis Fox has such a low count on his work that he would starve if Youtube was his only outlet.
In fact he makes no money from youtube for his efforts.
People grow up Kevin.
They do not maintain the same habits in their later years as they do in their college age years.
You will discover this as you mature.
When that happens, and you decide to try and make a living doing something on your own, the obvious will be revealed to you.
There are hobbies and their are jobs which pay bills.
You and Cliff are hobbyists.
As Cliff has discovered, it takes talent and drive to produce a quality product which people will actually take time to watch day after day.
Just because you spout uninformed logic from others, who themselves have never been able to do what they preach, so too shall you face the reality of understanding basic business sense and needs can not be ignored if one wants to stay in business.
By the way Kevin, all television networks currently exist on the internet.
My work along with thousands of other professionals is already on the internet as well as broadcast.
We are not the ones who are behind.
It is you.
You are the one who still has yet to claim to make a long term living producing video product of a high enough quality that people will seek you out to do it again and again.
Ask Mr. Rosenblum this simple question.
“Please show us VJ work that Mr. Rosenblum himself has done that generated an income apart from running a school to train others something he himself is unable to do.
He talks quite a bit about how easy it is, yet, he is unable to show anything of his own that could ever be considered compelling, yet alone professional.
He can’t.
You can’t.
Get back to us when you’ve entered the real world and can generate a regular income doing anything.
Until then I’ll feel quite comfortable knowing I and other professionals will continue to generate a living wage doing what we are good at.
Whether it’s on the internet, broadcast or both.
$ November 24, 2009
Marketing is more than selling ads Kevin.
But it can not be ignored.
In order to run a business, key word “business”, you can not operate without cash flow.
No cash.
No business.
No business, no jobs.
Once again you, like others without experience, rush to bring up youtube as some example of how the business will be run.
Sorry Kevin.
Youtube does not produce content and the content it does showcase gets so few hits it is not a viable platform to distribute original content with enough interest to draw a truly large audience.
Even Travis Fox has such a low count on his work that he would starve if Youtube was his only outlet.
In fact he makes no money from youtube for his efforts.
People grow up Kevin.
They do not maintain the same habits in their later years as they do in their college age years.
You will discover this as you mature.
When that happens, and you decide to try and make a living doing something on your own, the obvious will be revealed to you.
There are hobbies and their are jobs which pay bills.
You and Cliff are hobbyists.
As Cliff has discovered, it takes talent and drive to produce a quality product which people will actually take time to watch day after day.
Just because you spout uninformed logic from others, who themselves have never been able to do what they preach, so too shall you face the reality of understanding basic business sense and needs can not be ignored if one wants to stay in business.
By the way Kevin, all television networks currently exist on the internet.
My work along with thousands of other professionals is already on the internet as well as broadcast.
We are not the ones who are behind.
It is you.
You are the one who still has yet to claim to make a long term living producing video product of a high enough quality that people will seek you out to do it again and again.
Ask Mr. Rosenblum this simple question.
“Please show us VJ work that Mr. Rosenblum himself has done that generated an income apart from running a school to train others something he himself is unable to do.
He talks quite a bit about how easy it is, yet, he is unable to show anything of his own that could ever be considered compelling, let alone professional.
He can’t.
You can’t.
Get back to us when you’ve entered the real world and can generate a regular income doing anything.
Until then I’ll feel quite comfortable knowing I and other professionals will continue to generate a living wage doing what we are good at.
Whether it’s on the internet, broadcast or both.
$ November 24, 2009
Sorry for the double post.
Unintended result due to a power hit.
Cliff Etzel November 23, 2009
Same detractors, different day…
$ November 23, 2009
While Mr. Fox is an Emmy Award winning documentary maker, I know plenty of other Emmy Award winners just like him.
All out of work.
The awards mean nothing.
Doing documentaries does not equal covering daily news.
That’s what the Washington Post does the most.
If the VJs can’t cover what’s happening that day and get it produced to be watched that day, I’m not surprised to hear he is now looking for work somewhere else.
Sounds to me like those let go couldn’t do what was most important.
Produce a compelling product which would bring paying customers back for more every day.
Business is tough.
Either you meet the need or find something else to do while gazing at your awards and starve.
Awards don’t pay bills.
Awards don’t mean squat in business.
But I’m pretty sure knows Pierre Kattar and Travis Fox know that all too well.
Paco November 23, 2009
If those viewership stats are accurate, it’s a scary comment on the state of American media, or should I say, the willfull ignorance…
pencilgod November 23, 2009
On youtube he has 103 subscribers and views of stories range from one over 5,000, a few 3,000 right down to just 70 views. Most seem around the 300 viewer mark.
It’s still a shame nobodies watching as he seems to do good work. You have to wonder if someone like him can’t make it work, who can?
digger November 23, 2009
Who cares about his bio if no-one is watching his videos?
Michael Rosenblum November 23, 2009
Here’s a bio on Fox.
This is not the kind of person you let go if you intend to build a serious online presence:
Travis Fox is an Emmy Award-winning video producer for The Washington Post. His distinctive web video and multimedia stories have been instrumental in establishing a new form of multimedia storytelling on the Internet. Kurt Andersen of New York Magazine calls Fox a “natural-born Web-video genius” and describes his work as “ambitious, subtle, tough, and remarkably beautiful.” In 2006, Fox received the first Emmy Award awarded to a web video producer for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina. In 2002, his documentary Rebuilding a Fortress, Rebuilding a Life was the first web-based production to air on national television. ABC aired the documentary twice, on UpClose and Nightline. Veteran Nightline producer Tom Bettag described the story as “extraordinary†as well as “sensitive and insightful.†The Rebuilding documentary helped Fox win both the Editor of the Year and Videographer of the Year awards from the White House News Photographers Association, the first and only time the same person has earned both distinctions in the organization’s history. The WHNPA awarded Fox Editor of the Year two other times. He has won dozens of National Press Photographers Association, Pictures of the Year International and CINE awards and has been nominated for a total of six Emmys. More than anything else, Fox is known for creating multimedia stories that combine video with interactive elements. In-depth projects such as Hard Times and Crisis in Darfur are examples of this method as is the daily news coverage he produces, such as his work from China during the 2008 earthquake. While in the field, Fox often works in conjunction with Washington Post reporters, helping adapt their expertise to washingtonpost.com in new ways. Fox graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism and lives in New York.
digger November 23, 2009
Before you could know that sacking those VJs was a mistake, wouldn’t you have to know how many views their videos were getting?