Numbers reinforce Enterprise's status

One million. These days it might be the prize in any number of reality TV shows. In this case, it’s Southeast Texans who are the winners.

Last week BeaumontEnterprise.com recorded more than one million page views in a single week, a number that is expected to continue to climb at a double-digit clip.

The feat is one more confirmation that The Enterprise is the No. 1 news and information source in Southeast Texas and the media Web site with the largest audience in the region.

“What this number says about BeaumontEnterprise.com is that our indispensability extends far beyond news — which no one can dispute — to information, entertainment, advertising and all manner of invaluable content that helps people live their lives,” said John E. Newhouse II, Enterprise president and publisher.

Despite overwhelming evidence that newspapers are changing, not dying, people continue to wonder if they are viable. This one is.

This past week more people looked at Enterprise-produced products than ever in the newspaper’s entire 129 years of operation. That includes not only the
newspaper and Beaumont Enterprise.com, but also our eEdition, VIP magazine, the Hardin County News, Jasper Newsboy and Lakecaster, with more new products launching later this year.

This isn’t a fluke or an accident. It is part of a carefully considered and executed plan to meet users’ needs while encouraging newcomers and reminding long-time fans about the value of our products on all platforms.

For years, our Web site offered delayed duplication of the printed edition of the newspaper. Now that’s changed. We post 20 to 40 brief news updates a day, complemented by e-mail alerts, Facebook postings and Tweets.

At the same time, BeaumontEnterprise.com has developed the most robust selection of databases, blogs, photos and user-generated content in the Southeast Texas market.

The results: Page views doubled in the last six months of 2009, and 2010 will see twice the traffic of 2009. One of the fastest-growing areas is home page views, meaning people come to the site by choice, not arriving by way of a Google search for gumbo or the Big Bopper.

Unique visitors have risen by a third in the past six months, and people spend 50 percent more time at the site.

Those figures say readers find a lot about BeaumontEnterprise.com useful and entertaining. That is more revealing when you consider that across the nation, newspaper Web sites are seeing slight dips in page views.

“It provides proof positive that we are the major source of information in Southeast Texas, and it reinforces the value of our brand to our clients and the customers they want to reach,” said advertising director Dwight Brown, who encourages advertisers to contact their Hearst Media Consultant to hitch their companies’ growth to BeaumontEnterprise.com’s.

Offering different content online than in print has not only enabled us to feature information that doesn’t fit in the print product but has helped provide a more genuine Internet experience for our readers. That increased involvement has been to the benefit of the whole community.

BeaumontEnterprise.com is seeing great gains across the depth and breadth of the site. To the confoundment of newspaper naysayers, page views of Kaango classifieds have doubled in the past six months. Users can capitalize on that by posting a free ad every month.

The real estate page has been revitalized in partnership with Zillow.com, the largest real estate Web site in the nation, with more listings in an easier-to-use format. Soon a new auto site will offer shoppers the most comprehensive inventory of new and used vehicles for sale in Southeast Texas, accompanied by the kinds of content features that have driven the success of the rest of the site.

Reader comments are one of the most popular parts of the Web site, with a live feed on the home page showing the most recent comments. Hundreds of comments are posted each day, proof of how important the exchange of information and ideas is to those visiting the site.

The burgeoning popularity of viewing and sharing photos on the Internet is reflected in our Seen area, which has hundreds of photos from local events, and the Photo Share area, where you can put your own photos online and even see some published in print.

An ever-growing number of Enterprise Facebook fans and Twitter followers shows the power of the social media movement.

Being an industry of change, we’re certainly not done yet.

In the next month, we will launch Coupons.com, which will give readers one place to find both coupons from local businesses and hundreds of national coupons. They also will be able to answer the question “What’s for dinner?” from a database of more than 88,000 recipes.

Heard a siren in your neighborhood? We’ll tell you where exactly and why with detailed crime information available in real time.

Thanks to you, BeaumontEnterprise.com has come a long way in a short time, but this isn’t the half of it.

We’re not going anywhere — except up.

Song lyrics, reality TV keep job fun

Though the purpose of this column is to give readers explanations and insight into the behind-the-scenes working of a newspaper, it sometimes seems to turn into a personal whine about my job.

For that I apologize.

It gets some sympathy from callers, who sometimes, though they have called to complain, also readily acknowledge that they wouldn’t have my job for a million dollars.

That only tells part of the story. This job, like most things in life, has both negatives and positives.

Parenting is a good example: If everyone spent their time pondering sleepless nights, dirty diapers, runny noses and teenage hormones, nobody would have children. But as every parent will tell you, the rewards far outweigh the sacrifices.

Since I don’t want to pay them to let me work here, I wouldn’t go quite that far in describing my job, but sometimes, it can be fun and/or rewarding — and it keeps me on my toes.

Such was the case when a recent caller, a grandmother of young adults, called to say she was puzzled about something and didn’t know who else to call.

What, she said, was this “pants on the floor” thing all about?

Though I’d heard the phrase and knew bits and pieces — like that it had “gone viral” on the Internet — my information wasn’t authoritative enough to pass along without first doing some fact-checking.

After some quick online research, I filled the caller in on the phrase and its origins:

• Though some sources said the work was not original, the words are part of the lyrics of a song by 62-year-old veteran Larry Platt who performed it at the Atlanta auditions of “American Idol.”

• The lyrics include: “Pants on the ground/Pants on the ground/Lookin’ like a fool with your pants on the ground/ . . . Call yourself a cool cat/Looking like a fool/Walk around town with your pants on the ground.”

• He was voted off the television show, but Platt was an instant Internet success and has been imitated by both late night talk show host Jimmy Fallon and Vikings quarterback Brett Favre.

• Platt performed the song for members of the Atlanta City Council, who gave him a standing ovation.

In seeking an answer to her question, I had a little fun myself, made a very grateful reader very happy and updated my small talk repertoire a bit.

Is chasing down such information actually my job?

Not really. My boss will be the first to tell you (and me) that I have more important things to do with my time — and I do.

But sometimes, in the midst of the serious business of newspapering, a little diversion, especially in the interest of reader satisfaction, is worth the few minutes it takes.
• • •
A correction in today’s paper generated an interesting discussion.
With today’s fast-paced news environment, isn’t news worth sharing the moment it becomes available?

In most cases, the answer would be an emphatic yes.

Last Friday, because it was available to them, The Associated Press moved a story about Sunday night’s premiere episode of “The Amazing Race.”

We put it in Saturday’s paper. After our deadlines, The Associated Press issued a recall on that story and embargoed it or set a release time after 7 p.m. Sunday.

Basically, the story about who got eliminated from the show was not supposed to run before the television show aired.

For some of our readers, we ruined the surprise.

Undoubtedly, if anyone had wanted to know the outcome of the show, which was filmed weeks (or months) ago, an Internet search could have provided that information.

Though the credibility of the information might have been in question, it’s out there.

More traditional media, like the newspaper, or The Associated Press, get that information in advance in exchange for agreeing not to release it until a set time.

The question, as discussed, is should we agree to that? Should we hold news that we already know about? If we aren’t going to, should we at least provide a “spoiler alert” for our readers who don’t want to know all the answers?

The bottom line is, for the time being, we will. But it’s just one more thing to pay attention to as the business continues to evolve and compete in this ever-changing news climate.

Identifiable sources separate news, gossip

Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010

When does a story become news?

If your hairstylist tells you something, is that news? What if you overhear it in the grocery store aisle?

If it’s posted on Facebook, or mentioned in a blog, is that news?

In this ever-changing, fast-paced media world, “news” seems to be constantly redefined.

These days it is common for what might be termed nontraditional news sources to break stories that end up being big news.

A good example would be The National Enquirer breaking the story about Sen. John Edwards admitting he fathered a child with a mistress. They published the story before any other media. Turns out they were not only first, but they were right — something that doesn’t always happen.

The publication has settled a fair number of lawsuits in the past for publishing false, unsubstantiated information, but it hasn’t stopped them. Their stock and trade are rumor, innuendo and unidentified sources.

It’s not unlike a discussion I once had about high scorers in the game of basketball: You have to look at percentages. A high score doesn’t always mean the players are better shooters — just that they have the opportunity to take more shots.

The Enquirer takes enough shots that they are bound to hit one occasionally.

Years ago I worked on some long-term projects with middle school and junior high school students interested in journalism careers. In every instance there were students who were interested in writing “gossip columns” for the school papers.

They wanted to identify who was “going with” whom and new breakups (with full details) in the tween population. With the teachers standing firmly behind me I had to make it clear to them that gossip was not the same thing as news. (Not to mention the relationships at that age change almost hourly.)

I now repeat that information.

Gossip is not news. Unsubstantiated rumors are one step above gossip. The Enterprise doesn’t print either — for a number of reasons.

Specifically, we do not use unnamed or unidentified sources. We believe our readers have a right to know where we got our information and that person’s relationship to the story.

If we, for example, were going to run a story about a shortage of frozen waffles, we’d want to make sure you knew that information included facts about the shortage and came from the manufacturer — not a grocery store operator who simply ordered too many waffles and was running them on sale.

Studies have shown that readers expect to know the source of their news. Reliable and respected news sources who have earned the right to the public trust don’t use unnamed sources because they want to continue to be trusted.

Even if unnamed sources end up being correct, we know they sound like we made them up and that they have something to hide. We don’t print information from people we think have something to hide.

Our newspaper code of ethics and principles specifies: “Sources of information should be clearly identified in the newspaper. Unnamed, unidentified and/or unattributed sources of information undermine The Enterprise’s credibility. Anonymous sources should be used only under extraordinary circumstances and only to express fact, not opinion. We should consider a source’s possible motives and agenda in providing us information. Offers of confidentiality, as well as the use of information obtained through such offers, require the approval of the editor.”

When we have strong knowledge that something is happening, but we cannot obtain official verification from anybody in authority, we hold the story. We do not run unverified information or information from anonymous sources.

A few times in my tenure that means we haven’t been first with a big, breaking news story.

But there’s a saying in serious journalism circles, and it’s one we live by. “Best to be first. Better to be right.”
•
Now that I’ve lauded our efforts to make sure we get the news right, I will acknowledge the fact we all recognize: We still make mistakes.

More than one reader has called to complain about an error and encourage us to “fire our proofreaders.” Problem is, we haven’t employed proofreaders in decades. We continue to try to deliver a mistake-proof paper and plainly point out when we fail to meet that goal.

In an effort to make sure we run the complete “Today in History,” so popular with our readers, those corrections will, on most days, move from page 2A to page 3A, prominently displayed, and reflecting our red faces.

Newspapers never have a "typical" week

One of the best things about the job of Reader Representative is that, unlike an editor who actually participates in the daily production of the newspaper, I have a fair amount of control on my schedule.

One of the worst things about the job of Reader Representative is that, unlike an editor who can plan and schedule and assign reporters to cover stories that need to be in the paper, sometimes someone else’s mistake can completely destroy my plans for the day.

Mondays, in general, can be a challenge, but last week was full of those kind of days.
•
A very nice gentleman called the Reader Representative line Monday to check on the Louisiana Power Ball numbers and to ask why we “never” get them right.
I dug a bit deeper into the conversation, because sometimes a caller’s “never” means we messed up one other time two years ago.

He said, specifically, that he knew we hadn’t had the results of the Wednesday and Saturday drawings (published in the Thursday and Sunday newspapers) correct in at least the last two weeks.

Promising him I’d check his facts, I discovered he was absolutely right.
In fact, he was more than right. Going back more than a month, we’d had many Powerball results left out because of deadline, but we hadn’t managed to get many of the ones we published correct.

As a problem solver, I thought I had this one figured.

I assumed that we’d instead run results from the previous drawing because we’d checked the lottery Web site before current results were posted.

No, not at all. The numbers we printed appeared to be pulled out of thin air.

So, we were wrong and we’re sorry. We’re watching that much more closely, but I’d be happier if we had an explanation for that long-term error.
•
Running the Powerball correction along with three others on Tuesday meant that corrections took up so much space that we left out the “Today in History” column popular with many readers.

Tuesday brought calls about the omission of that column. As one reader put it, “Why don’t you just leave out an ad, but don’t leave out the history?”

Of course, we can’t just leave out an ad: Advertisements are paid space.

But what we can do is rearrange things a bit and make sure that we have room both for corrections and for the “Today in History” column, so that’s what we are doing now.
•
Wednesday, yeah, we had the “Today in History” column in the paper. The problem was, it was Wednesday, Jan. 27, and the column clearly contained the history for Wednesday, Feb. 3.

It marked the anniversary, a week early, of “the day the music died,” the tragic plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and Beaumont native J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson.

If you missed it, don’t worry. It will be back in the paper this Wednesday.

We made good on the missed history column in Thursday’s paper.
•
Thursday was the day Martians, or gremlins, visited The Enterprise, wreaking havoc on our Jumble puzzle, which appeared to have been written in complete gibberish.

Those designing the pages assured all concerned that it looked fine not only on the computer screen but in the printed proof as well. Somewhere in computer world, between printing the proof and outputting the page for publication, chaos reigned.

The only explanation we had was that it was a computer processing error.
•
In between all the errors and problems, I had many discussions with readers, including one who was disappointed that we did not have front page coverage of the Hot Hearts Christian youth rally that took place the previous Friday and Saturday at Ford Arena and Ford Exhibit Hall.

The Enterprise did send a staff member to the event, and that staff member posted more than 30 “Seen” photos Beaumont Enterprise.com

Didn’t matter. It wasn’t a full story with photos on the front page.

When I explained to the caller that the electronic media — the Seen photos — was a much more likely venue for the program’s audience of young people, she was still offended that it wasn’t on the front page.

It gives me one more chance to reemphasize the rapidly changing media.

There are many platforms and many outlets for us to share photos, stories and reader comments. The printed paper is just one of those.

Not everything can be in the printed paper and, certainly, not everything can be on the front page.

Today’s news is multimedia. So is The Enterprise.