I have a confession: I’m something of a spelling bee geek. It all started in eighth grade – the last year I was eligible for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Participating in that competition, held annually in Washington, had always been a dream of mine.
In elementary school, I once made it through the classroom bee to the school bee, but didn’t win. But eighth grade was going to be my year. I still remember the day of our classroom bee, the first step in the qualification process. After several rounds, I was still alive, but when my turn came, the teacher called out the word “debris.”
Total blank.
All I could think of was “degree.” I knew I was going down. Quietly, I muttered, “D-e-b-r-e-e.” Ding. Dream shattered.
So now I am left to live vicariously through the successes of other young spellers. As a newspaper reporter, I 
covered several school, local and regional bees, including having the honor of presenting a dictionary to the winner on behalf of “Queen Bee,” as we called the newspaper’s spelling bee coordinator.
Then, as publisher of The News Virginian in Waynesboro, Va., and later of the News & Messenger in Prince William County, Va., I worked with our staff and school and community volunteers to produce a half-dozen or so regional bees. I enjoyed each and every one, even persuading the local public television station to broadcast the Waynesboro bee (live, too).
My favorite event of the year
As I told the spellers and audience at the start of every bee, to me, this was the real “March Madness” (apologies to CBS and the NCAA).
Over the years of running bees, I’ve appeased angry parents upset about a judge’s ruling, listened to complaints about pronouncers, handled accusations of cheating, and dealt with a balky videotape machine. Some folks take this stuff pretty seriously.
But nothing can compare with Lori Anne Madison. At the Prince William bee in 2011, Lori Anne represented a local homeschool group. She was 5 – an age at which many children can’t even read, let alone spell.
Having had some third- and fourth-graders in previous bees and seen them drop out at a very early stage, I wasn’t expecting much. One word or two, I thought, and Lori Anne – cute as she was – would be back sitting with her mom in the audience. Boy, was I wrong. As the rounds went on, she strode up to the microphone with the confidence of a veteran, carefully pulled it down as much as possible, stood on her tippy-toes, and spelled word after word correctly, without even so much as a pause. There was no doubt she KNEW every word she was given. Other competitors, ranging up to 14 years old, were falling by the wayside.
“This girl could actually win,” I thought. But she went too fast on a word, tripped up, and was eliminated – still finishing fifth, if I remember correctly.
Complaints from other competitors, parents
There was an issue, though. The bee lasted almost two hours, and contestants were sitting on hard plastic chairs on the stage. As the event dragged on, the 5-year-old in her occasionally got the best of Lori Anne, and she fidgeted in her seat and tried to talk to some of the other competitors. Several parents complained afterward about the distractions, although the boy who sat next to Lori Anne – and potentially could have been the most distracted – won the bee.
Afterward, we double-checked the Scripps National Bee rules, but there is no minimum age requirement to compete in the National Bee. Regional bees can set local eligibility requirements, but we had set none regarding age. So Lori Anne was eligible – and probably coming back.
Sure enough, although I had left the News & Messenger, Lori Anne returned to this year’s bee as a 6-year-old and won. According to the best records the Scripps folks have, she will be the youngest competitor ever in the national bee – by two years! Making this accomplishment even more impressive is the fact that Prince William County is not some backwoods school district. It’s the second or third largest school district in the state, with the recognition, resources and awards to boot. There were 21 other competitors in the bee, ranging in age up to 14 years old, and the little 6-year-old from Woodbridge outlasted them all.
See photos and watch video of the bee from insidenova.com
Since winning that bee two weeks ago, Lori Anne has been featured on local news and was even ABC News’ person of the week. From what I can tell, she has handled it all with aplomb and shows maturity beyond her years.
At the National Bee, at the end of May, she’ll be up against almost 300 of the best spellers in the country, many of whom have been to the National Bee three or four times already. But it wouldn’t surprise me to tune in to the finals on ESPN and see Lori Anne in the spotlight, standing on tippy-toes to reach the microphone, and knocking down one word after another.
And I’m certain she would never miss “debris.”
I have a confession: I’m something of a spelling bee geek. It all started in eighth grade – the last year I was eligible for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Participating in that competition, held annually in Washington, had always been a dream of mine.
In elementary school, I once made it through the classroom bee to the school bee, but didn’t win. But eighth grade was going to be my year. I still remember the day of our classroom bee, the first step in the qualification process. After several rounds, I was still alive, but when my turn came, the teacher called out the word “debris.”
Total blank.
All I could think of was “degree.” I knew I was going down. Quietly, I muttered, “D-e-b-r-e-e.” Ding. Dream shattered.
So now I am left to live vicariously through the successes of other young spellers. As a newspaper reporter, I covered several school, local and regional bees, including having the honor of presenting a dictionary to the winner on behalf of “Queen Bee,” as we called the newspaper’s spelling bee coordinator.
Then, as publisher of The News Virginian in Waynesboro, Va., and later of the News & Messenger in Prince William County, Va., I worked with our staff and school and community volunteers to produce a half-dozen or so regional bees. I enjoyed each and every one, even persuading the local public television station to broadcast the Waynesboro bee (live, too).
My favorite event of the year
As I told the spellers and audience at the start of every bee, to me, this was the real “March Madness” (apologies to CBS and the NCAA).
Over the years of running bees, I’ve appeased angry parents upset about a judge’s ruling, listened to complaints about pronouncers, handled accusations of cheating, and dealt with a balky videotape machine. Some folks take this stuff pretty seriously.
But nothing can compare with Lori Anne Madison. At the Prince William bee in 2011, Lori Anne represented a local homeschool group. She was 5 – an age at which many children can’t even read, let alone spell.
Having had some third- and fourth-graders in previous bees and seen them drop out at a very early stage, I wasn’t expecting much. One word or two, I thought, and Lori Anne – cute as she was – would be back sitting with her mom in the audience. Boy, was I wrong. As the rounds went on, she strode up to the microphone with the confidence of a veteran, carefully pulled it down as much as possible, stood on her tippy-toes, and spelled word after word correctly, without even so much as a pause. There was no doubt she KNEW every word she was given. Other competitors, ranging up to 14 years old, were falling by the wayside.
“This girl could actually win,” I thought. But she went too fast on a word, tripped up, and was eliminated – still finishing fifth, if I remember correctly.
Complaints from other competitors, parents
There was an issue, though. The bee lasted almost two hours, and contestants were sitting on hard plastic chairs on the stage. As the event dragged on, the 5-year-old in her occasionally got the best of Lori Anne, and she fidgeted in her seat and tried to talk to some of the other competitors. Several parents complained afterward about the distractions, although the boy who sat next to Lori Anne – and potentially could have been the most distracted – won the bee.
Afterward, we double-checked the Scripps National Bee rules, but there is no minimum age requirement to compete in the National Bee. Regional bees can set local eligibility requirements, but we had set none regarding age. So Lori Anne was eligible – and probably coming back.
Sure enough, although I had left the News & Messenger, Lori Anne returned to this year’s bee as a 6-year-old and won. According to the best records the Scripps folks have, she will be the youngest competitor ever in the national bee – by two years! Making this accomplishment even more impressive is the fact that Prince William County is not some backwoods school district. It’s the second or third largest school district in the state, with the recognition, resources and awards to boot. There were 21 other competitors in the bee, ranging in age up to 14 years old, and the little 6-year-old from Woodbridge outlasted them all.
See photos and watch video of the bee from insidenova.com
Since winning that bee two weeks ago, Lori Anne has been featured on local news and was even ABC News’ person of the week. From what I can tell, she has handled all the attention with aplomb and shows maturity beyond her years.
At the National Bee, at the end of May, she’ll be up against almost 300 of the best spellers in the country, many of whom have been to the National Bee three or four times already. But it wouldn’t surprise me to tune in to the finals on ESPN and see Lori Anne in the spotlight, standing on tippy-toes to reach the microphone, and knocking down one word after another.
And I’m certain she would never miss “debris.”
I don’t have time to read a lot of magazines cover to cover, but I do take time every month to relax with the latest issue of Golf Magazine and pretend – at least for an hour or so –
that my slice will, in fact, one day go away and I can start getting my game ready for the Champions Tour.
But reading Golf (a Sports Illustrated/Time Inc. publication) has taken on new joy the past three months with the introduction of the magazine’s iPad edition. The iPad edition is smartly put together and extremely easy to read (especially for those of us with older 
eyes), and offers features that aren’t available in the print version. More importantly, though, there are some key lessons for other publishers making the shift to digital editions of their print products:
- Design for the end product. Golf’s iPad edition isn’t simply a reproduction of the print pages. Each editorial page and feature has been reformatted to fit nicely on the iPad screen, which means for starters that the vertically oriented pages are now horizontal. There’s no need to zoom or move from side to side or up and down to read an article. The edition does take advantage of the iPad’s scrolling functionality but does so only where appropriate (as in a chart), makes it clear where you should scroll, and doesn’t leave you wondering if you missed something.
- Offer features that take advantage of the medium. The iPad edition offers additional photographs (and the photos are spectacular, of course) that the editors don’t have room to run in the print edition. Sometimes these are more timely, such as a photo from a recent PGA event that ended after the print edition deadlined. Bonuses in the February iPad issue include beautiful photos with short descriptions of several holes from Donald Trump’s new course in Scotland. And the lessons that sometimes are little challenging to grasp in print come to life with links to videos on the golf.com web site. The iPad edition also doesn’t just tell readers to go to golf.com; it tells them specifically what they will find when they get there and links the content to what’s in the magazine. That kind of specificity is critical to driving traffic back to the web site without alienating readers.
- Keep it simple. Readers can page through the iPad edition just as they would the regular magazine (my preference – for serendipity’s sake) or pull up a table of contents and choose which articles to read or scroll among thumbnails of the pages to find a particular article. Also, each subscriber has a “library” of past editions, which means I can go back and review that key tip from an earlier edition (still haven’t fixed my slice, though).
- Deliver when it’s ready. The iPad app/reader for Golf magazine sends me a pop-up message when the new issue is ready. The February issue was downloaded on Thursday, and by the time the print edition arrived in my mailbox on Saturday, I was already more than halfway through it. This kind of timeliness creates additional reader engagement and would be even more valuable for publishers of daily or weekly products (imagine if you could read the next day’s newspaper at 10 p.m. – that’s what time most papers are heading to the press these days).
Despite these highlights, there are a couple of opportunities that Golf’s iPad edition still seems to be missing, although they might appear in later iterations:
- Effective digital ads. The ads in the iPad edition are not reformatted for the device but are simply reproduced from the magazine. This makes them difficult to read, although many do link directly to the advertiser’s web site. Still, the next step is for the advertisers to provide an iPad-formatted ad to go along with their print ad and maximize the value of their investment, especially as more readers transition to the digital product.
- Immediate feedback. There are no apparent ways to comment on articles or share them via social media sites. Feedback and sharing is a tremendous way to increase reader engagement, and digital media allow it to be done so effortlessly that publications should take advantage of that at every opportunity.
Still, I’m sold – to the point that I’d be willing to convert to a digital-only subscription and save Time the cost of printing and mailing my issue every month. Now, about that slice …
Virginia Republicans just can’t handle prosperity.
After potentially devastating back-to-back-to-back losses in statewide elections (Kaine in 2005, Webb in 2006 and Warner/Obama in 2008), the state GOP regained its power by sweeping the 2009 races (McDonnell, Bolling and Cuccinelli), picking up three of 11 seats in the 2010 congressional elections, and essentially taking control of the state legislature in 2011.
So what happens?
Senate Showdown
First, despite having gained only a 20-20 tie in the state Senate, the GOP asserts that it controls the body because Bill Bolling, as lieutenant governor, would cast tie-breaking votes, including those to elect leaders and form committees. The Democrats have challenged that assertion, and although a circuit court judge dismissed that challenge, stay tuned – this issue is not likely to go away quickly. If the GOP cannot compromise a little bit on some sort of power-sharing arrangement, look for Senate Democrats to use every parliamentary and judicial maneuver available to block key legislation. Even bills that are approved may be in jeopardy if the courts haven’t made a final ruling on the matter.
Cuccinelli on the Run
Then, worse, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli pre-emptively throws his hat into the ring for the GOP nomination for governor in 2013. That’s right, 2013 – still almost two years away. He did so despite the fact that Bolling stood aside in 2009 after his first term as lieutenant governor to let Bob McDonnell, then the attorney general, run for governor. Bolling’s largesse helped to contribute to a unified GOP – and a sweep of the top three statewide offices. As a second-term lieutenant governor, Bolling has been a trooper – turning the part-time job into a full-time role as the state’s “job czar” and spending countless hours on the road talking to business and community leaders.
But Cuccinelli has never been one to stand down from any challenge. So, after less than two years as attorney general, he’s set the stage for a primary or convention battle
with Bolling. This will also be a fight for the heart and soul of the Virginia GOP, because Cuccinelli is the darling of the right and the Tea Partiers – even McDonnell has distanced himself from some of Cuccinelli’s positions – while Bolling is more moderate. As is often the case with the GOP, Bolling would be more likely to win a general election, but Cuccinelli will appeal to the hard-core Republicans who will turn out for a nomination fight.
Were Cuccinelli to seek re-election as attorney general and allow Bolling to run for governor, the GOP might be well-positioned for another sweep, with no strong Democratic statewide candidates in sight (unless Tim Kaine loses to George Allen in the U.S. Senate race next year and decides he’d like to be governor again). Instead, the Cuccinelli-Bolling fight has the potential to waste valuable resources (i.e., money) and leave the winner vulnerable in November. It also leaves the GOP with untested statewide candidates for both lower offices and more potential intra-party battles. Already at least two members of the legislature have announced their intentions to run for attorney general.
Don’t Forget 2012
Finally, the GOP needs to be unified long before 2013. Next year will be pivotal for the party: The Allen-Kaine race is shaping up as a barn-burner (Allen also faces primary opposition), the state’s 11 congressmen will be running in re-drawn districts, and Virginia is likely to play a critical role again in the presidential election. But swaying and motivating key independent voters will be difficult if the GOP can’t show that it can govern effectively and fairly while in control of the legislature and if Cuccinelli is lobbing grenades from the right. For those of us who enjoy politics, though, it should be fun to watch.
What do you think?
Politico, never afraid to test the waters of new formats in journalism (and ways to make money), is at it again. This time, the inside-the-beltway web site/newspaper (yes, there is a print version)/must-read for anyone interested in national politics has produced the first in what we’re told will be an ongoing series of short e-books chronicling the 2012 presidential campaign. Now I always knew journalism was all about writing the rough draft of history, but this takes it to a new level by memorializing developments in a campaign in which the first official vote is still a month away.
“Playbook 2012: The Right Fights Back,” by Politico’s Mike Allen and retired Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, is available only on e-book ($2.99). The format obviously allows for it to be up to date, covering events as recent as Newt Gingrich’s surprising rise in the Republican polls. It is a little odd, though, to read about campaigns in the past tense, as though they are over and ancient history, when, in fact, most voters are only just beginning to take notice.
As is typical of Allen’s style, the book is replete with fascinating behind-the-scenes tidbits (some credited to named sources, but many from unnamed sources) about the candidates, their families and their campaigns. It also looks into what went into some of the decisions by candidates about whether or not to run, how (or how not) to prepare for debates and how to structure their campaigns. The book also provides some insight into the challenges the individual candidates have faced – some in their reluctance to make fund-raising calls, others in their style or their unwillingness to devote the time and energy that is so necessary to a successful presidential run. As with so much campaign coverage, the focus is on the horse race and personalities and not on the candidates’ positions on the issues. But some details do provide clues as to which candidates might make the best presidents – Gingrich, for example, is described as most likely to mess up a two-car parade. I’m not sure that’s the kind of leadership we want in the White House.
The other troubling trend is that the power of the elite media to set the agenda in these early stages comes through loud and clear. After the Iowa straw poll in August that knocked Tim Pawlenty out of the race (a straw poll, remember), the Sunday morning talk shows all wanted to interview winner Michele Bachmann, even though she only barely defeated Ron Paul. None of them wanted to talk to Paul. By just a few meaningless votes, Bachmann became the GOP flavor of the month, and Paul has continued to struggle.
Unlike the brilliant “Game Change,” the retrospective on the 2008 campaign, what’s missing from “The Right Fights Back” is a storyline. Of course, it’s difficult to write a story when you don’t know the ending. But the book doesn’t live up to its title of explaining how or why the right will fight back. Instead, it basically consists of a series of vignettes and anecdotes about each of the candidates. And although it’s certainly interesting to learn why Haley Barbour decided not to run (or why Mitt Romney decided to run), there’s no theme to tie the vignettes together.
The challenges of turning around a book on a tight deadline are evident. There are a few word usage errors (“identity” instead of “identify” and “pores” instead of “pours”). And one scene describes candidate Rick Santorum watching the last game of the World Series in “early November.” In fact, the World Series ended Oct. 28. Of course, the advantage of an e-book is that editors can fix those mistakes without having to order up a reprint.
“The Right Fights Back” does foreshadow two developments that will bear watching. One is the rise of Karl Rove’s American Crossroads “superPAC,” which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to support GOP candidates next year. The other is the revelation that the Obama campaign itself seems stuck in neutral, without even so much as a slogan and with a candidate who, as sitting president, seems uncomfortable going into attack mode.
And in that foreshadowing, Politico’s latest foray into this new style of journalism-meets-instant-book succeeds in providing some context to the campaign and whetting the appetite of any political junkie to find out what happens next.
Full disclaimer: Mike Allen and I were co-editors of the student newspaper at Washington and Lee University many, many years ago. That meant Mike wrote (a lot), and I tried to figure out how to cram it all into the paper.
Walter Isaacson’s fascinating biography of Steve Jobs leaves this reader with one thought – what would have happened if Jobs had run a newspaper company instead of a computer company? Jobs’ brilliant and intuitive marketing mind, his attention to detail, and his unwillingness to settle for anything less than perfection propelled us into the Technological Age. He introduced products we didn’t even know we needed – and made them ubiquitous. His fire made competitors (see Microsoft) better, too, if in different ways. So what if instead of tinkering with electronics in his dad’s garage, Jobs would have been introduced to newspapers at an early age? Would he have been able to head off the industry’s seemingly inevitable slide toward extinction? We’ll never know, but applying the Jobs’ basic tenets to the newspaper industry might well have charted a different course. Here are seven ways that Jobs might have transformed the industry:
- Hire “A” players and eliminate “B” and “C” players. In “Good to Great,” Jim Collins writes about “getting the right people on the bus.” Jobs took this to next level not only by getting the right people on the bus but also by getting the best people on the bus. In some cases, leaders settle for a “B” or ”C” player because he or she can do the job. But Jobs believed that “A” players want to be on teams with other “A” players. True all-stars don’t have the patience to work with substandard performers. And “A” players drive each other to be better, which raises the team’s overall performance. This is why Apple Stores have “Genius Bars” while other retailers have “Geek Squads.” Newspapers pay notoriously low salaries (the joke being that they make up for it by allowing employees to work really long hours in stressful conditions!). This applies not only to newsrooms but also to other departments. Top reporters and editors bail for better-paying jobs (with family-friendly hours) in corporate communications; top salespeople are recruited away by industries with bigger compensation packages and more sales support. As a result, attracting and retaining “A” players becomes difficult. Then as financial performances worsen, budget cuts necessitate fewer salary increases (or, worse, furloughs and layoffs), making recruiting even more of a challenge. This vicious cycle drives any remaining “A” players away, which in turn makes it even more difficult to attract additional talent. Jobs would have gone out of his way to recruit and retain “A” players and to create an environment in which they could thrive, collaborate, and innovate.
- Control the entire process, from manufacturing through distribution. A key to Apple’s success was its refusal to accept substandard products from vendors and partners and the creation of Apple Stores to highlight and sell its products. Newspapers invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in journalists and the latest computer equipment and software to produce their product and tens of millions of dollars in press equipment to print it. But then the bundles of papers are handed to guy in a scruffy t-shirt and faded blue jeans driving a rusty Ford Bronco to deliver to customers at 3 o’clock in the morning. Nothing against newspaper carriers, many of whom are the most dedicated people I’ve met (and, in fact, Jobs was one for a while during his youth). But at virtually all papers, carriers are independent contractors, not employees. This means the newspaper has little control over their performance –and no incentive to invest in systems that would make their jobs easier or their deliveries more reliable. And as the industry’s financial position worsened, newspapers began outsourcing other tasks, from fielding customer complaints to designing and editing the paper. With each outsourcing, newspaper leaders lose more control over the end product. The result may be lower costs, but there’s little proof that the product or service is improved. Jobs wasn’t afraid to eliminate positions or reduce expenses when necessary, but he also understood that cutting your way to success is not a long-term strategy.
- Focus, focus, focus. Again, channeling Collins (the “Hedgehog Principle” this time), when Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he found a company that had lost its way in part because it had too many products. Jobs quickly narrowed the focus to only four – a consumer desktop, a consumer laptop, a professional desktop and a professional laptop. Focusing on just a few products meant that each could be great, made marketing simpler, and caused less confusion for the consumer. Newspapers similarly have lost their way. Many newspapers publish scores of “special” sections designed to attract specific categories of advertisers (“Car Care” or “Home Improvement,” for example). But devoid of compelling content (these are definitely “C” products), these sections have little value to the reader and even less to the advertiser. Then as print revenues have declined, newspapers have tried a variety of other methods to grow advertising sales –venturing into sponsoring events and classes as well as selling the full spectrum of online products, including those often best left for the experts, such as search-engine marketing. It often feels as though the newspaper industry is desperately throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks, all under the guise of “innovation.” And the sales reps who are charged with pushing the product du jour are pulled in so many different directions that they only confuse their advertising clients. Jobs said, “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” One envisions Jobs throwing everything out and starting all over again with a quality, compelling newspaper and focused suite of digital products.
- Keep it simple, stupid. Have you ever tried to place a classified ad in a newspaper? How many lines is it? How many days do you want to run it? Do you want a border? Bold type? An attention-grabber? All you want to do is sell your car or advertise your yard sale, but the industry made the process so complicated that in many cases programs couldn’t even be written to allow users to place ads online. It’s no wonder the classified ad business was lost to the simplicity of Craigslist. And why do newspapers sell subscriptions in 13-week intervals? Because it aligns with their bookkeeping systems – and because they’ve always done it that way. People don’t live in 13-week increments. They think days, months, seasons, years. Jobs famously didn’t believe in market research, but he had an innate understanding about how people would use his company’s products. He worked tirelessly to make them intuitive and seamless and so simple to use that that they didn’t even need an on/off switch. One can only imagine how frustrated Jobs might have become if he ever tried to stop his newspaper delivery while he was out of town.
- Skate to where the puck will be, not where it is now. Channeling Wayne Gretzky, Jobs pushed Apple to leapfrog the competition many times. He wasn’t worried that the iMac had a CD slot instead of a tray, meaning that users couldn’t save music onto CDs. He was already thinking about transforming the music industry with the iPod. When the competition began focusing on making laptops smaller and more powerful, Jobs was thinking about a tablet that would become the iPad. Newspapers, meanwhile, were dragged begrudgingly into the 21st century with debates about whether reporters should be allowed to have e-mail and Internet access. God forbid they might actually communicate with a reader or look something up online. And instead of skating ahead of the competition in a category such as employment advertising, the best newspapers could do was to partner with the competition, leading to the odd marriage with Yahoo! Hot Jobs (now part of Monster), or to the replication of the service (CareerBuilder). Do the folks at Yahoo! or Monster have newspapers’ best interests at heart? These partnerships have since expanded to other online products, including display advertising, real estate advertising and search-engine marketing. But newspapers are simply contributing to the commoditization of these categories and being forced to share their already diminishing ad revenues with partners. Instead, Jobs would have newspaper executives thinking about how people will get news and information 10 or 20 years from now and how advertising will be delivered – and he’d have a team working on the products and services to get them there.
- Content has value. Jobs’ appreciation of good music contributed in large part to his almost singlehandedly changing the business model in the music industry with the creation of iTunes. Jobs knew that if the piracy brought about by Napster and its ilk were to continue, the quality of music in general would suffer because artists would lose their incentive. He came up with a simple price point (99 cents), negotiated a partnership in which everyone won, and refused to play ball with those who didn’t want to follow his rules (they did, eventually). As it turns out, Jobs had a fairly deep appreciation for quality journalism, as well, as Isaacson writes toward the end of his book. Jobs met with executives of The New York Times and some other large news organizations in early 2010 about a similar system to support quality journalism. Most of the executives didn’t want to play by his rules, but, more importantly, the cat had been out of the bag for too long. A generation of consumers has been raised to believe that news is free online. Many papers are now finally testing paid models, and tablets offer additional opportunities to charge for content, but online payments aren’t likely to save the industry. If only Steve Jobs had been more interested in journalism than music a decade ago…
- Details matter. Some leaders are great at strategic planning but overlook the minor details that often make a difference. They think they can run through the forest but forget about all the limbs. Others are so immersed in the details that they can’t see the big picture. Jobs was the unique leader who grasped the big picture but also understood the importance of buttoning down the details. Corners were rounded just so, products were the perfect shade of white, and the packaging was pristine. Those subtle touches create a sense of quality and pride for which consumers are willing to pay. They also send the message that the product inside – what the consumer can’t see – is crafted with equal attention to detail. And when employees know that the boss is paying attention to details, no job is too small to be done right. One wonders how many newspaper executives actually read their products. Not all newspapers are this way, but one can only imagine what Jobs would have done with a newspaper that had poor writing, blurry photos, grammatical errors and ineffective advertisements.
Steve Jobs had his faults and his quirks, but who doesn’t? For all of those, though, he was a dedicated and brilliant leader who learned from his mistakes and had a streak of showmanship that was evident at Apple’s product launches. I can see Jobs now, walking onstage at NewsWorld 2011 to introduce the latest personal news reader that fits into everyone’s pocket – but it’s not free, and it seamlessly delivers effective advertising messages, too. And millions of them will fly off the shelves at the News Store in the next year. And all the journalists will happily cash in their stock options. We can dream, can’t we?
I used to think that all of us in the news business one day would work for USA Today. Then it was AOL. Now I think it will either be Google or Facebook.
Google blew through Virginia last week with road shows designed to help small businesses learn how to use the Internet. For sitting through a presentation by a guy wearing a t-shirt, faded jeans and bright red shoes, attendees were given “free” Websites (you have to pay for the domain name and hosting after the first year) and a chance to chat with Google-ites (Googlians?) about how to list a business on Google places or use all the other features Google offers.
Most importantly among those features – at least for Google stockholders – is Google AdWords, those things that pop up at the top and the side of Google searches. Yes, the presenter assured us, we know you never click on those ads and your mother never clicks on them, but lots of people do. And to entice us to try AdWords, we were given a coupon good for $75 off an AdWords campaign. So we’ll try it, and we’ll let you know how it goes.
In the meantime, here comes Facebook, with an announcement that it, too, will be doing roadshows to persuade small businesses to advertise on Facebook (the little ads on the right side of the page – although they somehow seem to be overwhelmed by that annoying ticker in the latest iteration). Facebook, too, will be giving advertisers free ads to persuade them to try the service.
Just as Google is going after Facebook’s audience with Google-Plus, now it appears Facebook is upping the ante on the busines side. Competition is good. It will make everyone better and might even help some businesses along the way. And it sure will be interesting to watch.
valleymultimedia 