Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

When it relaunched with a new design, CNN.com was generally praised for readability and clarity. Some designers held it as an example that news-oriented sites didn't need to be an patchwork quilt of information buckets.

So I checked back in on the site, mainly for some inspiration around how they manage to serve content to a diverse range of audiences--with equally diverse interests and reading styles.

But this time, what struck me wasn't the design. It was the headlines. I never thought that writers from TheOnion.com got promoted up to CNN, but that is evidently the case. I mean, check these headlines:

A brand with the fangs of a dragon and the sights of a Stinger Missile is back. It's one of my favorite brands of all time -- especially when its tough and unflinching. It's The News and Observer. And over the last three months, it's reminded everyone from the governor to the Joe & Jane Public just how it earned its reputation as one of the nation's best dailies. This even as it lays off staff. In fact, because of the challenges facing the N&O, its fire-breathing return to fighting form should be an inspiration to all businesses.

A newspaper -- like a lot of enterprises -- serves many audiences and often shifts its brand identity to meet different needs. The brand identity that's conspicuously roared back at the N&O isn't the USA Today-style shorts and tips. It's the investigative reporting, agitator-for-the-public-good brand that made the paper's bones under the leadership of its founders and legendary editors like Pulitzer-winner Claude Sitton. The firebrand brand, if you will.

This isn't to say the N&O ever lost that element of its character. It's just that recently the paper has become a must-read thanks to coverage of stumbles on mental health policy and other government goofs. Did you catch the phrase "must-read"? What print publication in America wouldn't kill for that description?

So what? Well, the big biz lesson here is the wisdom in tough times of identifying and seizing on your strongest value proposition, the one thing that makes you close to indispensable. The N&O is apparently betting its key value is uncovering and righting wrongs. Considering how much buzz I've heard about the paper's recent front page stories, I'd be hard pressed to disagree.

On another front, Starbucks is going through a similar process. As it closes stores, the kingdom of caffeine is re-evaluating what it does best -- is it the half-caff skinny mochas or classic rock CDs? Thousands of companies big and small across recession-wracked America face similar challenges. I'm impressed and thankful the N&O is answering the questions with an exclamation point.

(Full disclosure: I was a reporter at the N&O for two years under the aforementioned Claude Sitton and alongside some of the guys still running the paper's investigative operations. And yes, I still love them, the paper and the whole notion of daily journalism.)

I like my morning newspapers.  And I mean the original – the ones I can hold in my hands, get ink stains on my finger and read at the breakfast table with my morning cup of coffee.    I pay attention to where stories are placed on the page, how large the headline type is and what sidebar stories accompany them.  So I have been intrigued and interested in learning more about why so many of my younger colleagues and friends get their news online.  What are they missing by not picking the paper up out of the driveway each morning?  What am I missing by not getting my morning news from my desktop?

Each morning, by habit, I quickly scan the front page, the local and state sections, the obituaries and the editorial pages before I settle on which stories will claim my initial attention and the majority of my limited time.  My impression is that online readers may be more disciplined than I am about reading one “section” of the paper before going on to the next “page.”  

In my reading, I’m sometimes drawn to stories on a page – because of pictures or key words - that I’m not sure would catch my attention the way stories appear in the online version.  So my theory is that I’m getting a few extra “tidbits” that either enlighten and inform me or at the very least serve as interesting conversational items for a later time.   

But when I talk to folks who read the paper online, they remind me how easy it is if you’re reading a story and want more information to navigate away from that page and get more in-depth analysis or a different take on the same story reported in several different publications.

As my husband will attest, I also love to share the stories I’m reading with him, by pulling out quotes or sections to read aloud or engage in my own analysis of the stories I’m readying – interrupting his reading of the Wall Street Journal just long enough for him to lose his complete train of thought – but that’s another story.

But I’m still exploring the pros and cons of the way news is being delivered.  While I still love my “hands-on” experience with the morning paper, I’m open to the new on-line experience as well.  I don’t want to miss anything, so I find myself checking out the on-line version of the morning newspaper several times through the day for updates and new stories.

For folks like me I think there is not only room for both, but a need for both.  I don’t want to give up my morning routine but I also want to have the most current information.  How we get our news, how it impacts our lives, how it influences the decisions we make, how it affects politics and economics and so many other things is all a part of the mix for me as I continue to explore.  

Charles McGrath, in his Feb 17 New York Times article, points out that while National Public Radio's listenership is growing, PBS television, he believes, has seen it's best days, and may perhaps be no longer relevant or necessary.

I couldn't disagree more.

We now live in a climate where local printed newspapers are in sharp decline, and where the cynical irony in Fox News Channel's name and slogan goes unchallenged. Even my parent's nightly network news broadcasts have devolved into 15 minutes of entertainment interspersed between 15 minutes of drug company commercials. In this climate where journalistic integrity and high standards are the exception rather than the rule, it seems to me that shows like the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, NC Now, and Frontline are now more important than ever - certainly not less.

Despite years of siege by politicians who seem to prefer the tractibility and journalistic abdication prevalent on Britney-obsessed cable news outlets - and make no mistake, their issue with PBS is the news - PBS television remains one of the only places to get trustworthy news on television.

As McGrath points out in his article (the title is sharper than the content of the piece itself), the answer to whatever woes PBS television may be facing is more public funding, not less. It seems miraculous to me that PBS can, on pennies, continue to do what Big Corporate Media seems unable to do with all it's billions of dollars. In truth, perhaps the absence of billions is the secret of PBS' success. But while we wait for more public funding for PBS television, that miracle has an earthly foundation.