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But do they link to magazines' web sites? Photo by Annie Mole on Flickr.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has posted a summary of its recent study “New Media, Old Media: How Blogs and Social Media Agendas Relate and Differ from the Traditional Press.”

The study compares the variety of topics included in news-related blog posts and tweets with the range included in mainstream media coverage, and found that:

Social media and the mainstream press clearly embrace different agendas. Blogs shared the same lead story with traditional media in just 13 of the 49 weeks studied. Twitter was even less likely to share the traditional media agenda – the lead story matched that of the mainstream press in just four weeks of the 29 weeks studied.

I don’t find these results particularly surprising, but – as a magazine person – I wanted to know how often social media users linked to magazine stories online. I checked out the tables summarizing the PEJ data [PDF] and found that they had added newspapers and magazines together in their breakdown of the sources of links provided by bloggers and Twitter users. Unfortunately, this means that the study – unless the raw data can be broken apart once they’re made available – doesn’t tell us much about whether social media users are linking to magazines’ sites in their conversations about news.

The researchers note that:

In producing PEJ’s New Media Index, the basis for this study, there are some challenges posed by the breath [sic] of potential outlets. There are literally millions of blogs and tweets produced each day. To make that prospect manageable, the study observes the “news” interests of those people utilizing social media, as classified by the tracking websites. PEJ did not make a determination as to what constitutes a news story as opposed to some other topic, but generally, areas outside the traditional notion of news such as gardening, sports or other hobbies are not in the purview of content.

So though newsmagazines’ web sites might be included in the analysis, we probably won’t see many other magazines in the dataset. That’s an understandable limitation of the study, given its specific interest. Magazines are also likely to be less represented because they don’t usually relate to breaking news, as Twitter users would most often be interested in sharing. But if magazines aren’t offering even slower-paced bloggers something to write about, perhaps publishers should be concerned.

I would guess that magazines’ web sites are also rarely linked to by social media users due to their typically poor layout and usability. But I’d like to see some data on social media users’ links to magazines – and think it would be helpful to the magazine industry to see how far they’re being left behind as web users share information and favorite stories using social media. (Or not. But I’m pessimistic.)

I didn’t manage to blog last week, and this week’s post is going to be a bit different; it’s probably most relevant to my fellow journalism and media educators. I’ve been struggling with the question of which readings to assign for my introductory course called “Mass Communication and Society” (admittedly not the title I’d choose), which is a course enrolling about 100 students per semester and that I’ve taught in various iterations at three institutions for the last six (six! wow – time flies) years.

Here’s our course description at CSU Fresno:

Examines the political, economic, cultural, and behavioral impacts of mass media in national and international contexts. Analyzes the historical factors that have shaped the structures, practices, and products of mass media industries, and assesses contemporary trends in media-society relations. G.E. Breadth D3.

That “G.E.” bit at the end means this is also a general education course that satisfies graduation requirements beyond just those of majors in our department – so the course needs to be of interest, and ideally lasting value, to students who may never take another media or journalism course.

The book selection project.

One of the biggest challenges for me in teaching this course has been choosing readings that are contemporary, interesting, well-written and thoughtful. I have skipped around among textbooks in my six years of playing with this course: from Media/Impact by Shirley Biagi when I taught at a community college, to Media Today by Joseph Turow when the course was required to have a more media economics focus, to The Media of Mass Communication by John Vivian in my first year at Fresno State, and then to Media Literacy by W. James Potter this year.

I’ve just never been satisfied with any of these books, though the Potter textbook has come the closest to fulfilling my hopes. I like its focus on timeless media literacy skills that will be applicable regardless of the evolution of media in the coming years, and I like its rather critical approach to media overall. But its writing style is not especially compelling to students, and it’s a bit heavy on media effects and employs a specialized terminology that I think overwhelms students, especially early on in the semester when that material is covered.

Inspired by this post by Joshua Kim at Inside Higher Ed, I started thinking more about how I could use popular nonfiction to bring both breadth and depth to this course, while also allowing myself a chance to catch up on major nonfiction relevant to my field that I could explore with my students. So then the question became: which books?

Given that incredibly broad course description, it might seem I could choose just about anything. But here’s the list I’ve come up with, and the rough order in which I might use the books this semester:

• Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths Behind America’s Favorite Addiction, by Jake Halpern
  • An engaging read to get students thinking about the real significance of media in our culture.
• Ad Nauseam: A Survivor’s Guide to American Consumer Culture, by Carrie McLaren, Jason Torchinsky and Rob Walker
  • I admit I’ve only seen the Kindle preview of this one – but it looks lighthearted and even got a good review from Advertising Age despite its critical content.
• Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy, by Alex S. Jones
  • I know Jones’ position is largely a defense of traditional journalism – but it will be a starting point for our discussions of the following books. (Newsonomics by Ken Doctor was a runner-up in this spot; I like his focus on the future of the news business, but I felt it focused a bit too much on the financial outlook of journalism and not enough on its societal role. For a more specifically journalism-focused course, I’d give it a serious look.)
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, by Clay Shirky
  • This one will help us look not just at news and media, but also more broadly to examine the power of the Internet in social interactions.
• True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, by Farhad Manjoo
  • The title says it all. That’s where our students live: better get them ready to deal with it as they venture out into the world.
• Republic.com 2.0, by Cass Sunstein
  • Probably the heaviest of the bunch, but gets into some nitty-gritty about regulation and democracy, extending our discussions into governance and politics.

Look like a lot of books? It’s about 1,800 pages, which averages out to about 60 pages per class session (and only $59 for all used copies). I think it’ll be manageable, and all of these books are written in language that should be accessible to most freshmen and sophomores. I also like that most of these books have gotten enough public attention that I can find ample articles, videos and interviews online to supplement our class discussions.

Have a suggestion of a book I should substitute or subtract? A resource that would complement one of these? I’m looking forward to keeping this class on the cutting edge by exploring these texts next fall.

Photo by Dean Meyers on Flickr.

I recently read Reuters’ new guidelines for their journalists’ use of social media.

Here’s a paragraph that stood out for me:

The advent of social media does not change your relationship with the company that employs you — do not use social media to embarrass or disparage Thomson Reuters. Our company’s brands are important; so, too, is your personal brand. Think carefully about how what you do reflects upon you as a professional and upon us as an employer of professionals.

I find it highly interesting that Reuters acknowledges their journalists’ desire to have a personal brand here. I don’t think I’ve seen an explicit reference to that emerging reality in any other media company’s social media policies/guidelines so far. (Correct me if I’m wrong about that, please.)

I recently wrote in an academic paper about the increasingly real dilemma that both journalists and their employers will face in balancing individual brands with corporate brands, particularly with regard to the use of social media to establish both. I think that as today’s young journalists come into the profession – especially those who graduate from journalism programs where personal branding and entrepreneurship are emphasized – it may be challenging to find a happy medium between using social media for self-promotion and for corporate promotion.

Can corporate policies like this one help journalists strike that balance by reminding everyone of the significance of both brands? Or does having a social media policy restrict individuals’ ability to establish their own personal brands, to the degree that they begin to resent their employers?

Overall, Reuters’ policy emphasizes the individual journalist’s role in using social media responsibly, and doesn’t set out many strict rules, suggesting instead a string of things to “think about” when using social media. It’s good to see their trust in their employees’ critical faculties, rather than some of the more draconian approaches to social media that other media organizations have employed, though Reuters does still warn that “your manager and/or senior editors will retrospectively review your professional output” and that “We reserve the right to change your beat or responsibilities if there are problems in this area. In the case of serious breaches, we may use our established disciplinary procedures.”

This question isn’t really a problem just for journalism, of course; other professions will also face the challenge of managing employees’ commitment to “take care of No. 1″ – their own personal brands – as well as their employers’, especially when long-term stable employment seems more and more a thing of the past.

Though social media policies, other than Reuters’ version, don’t yet seem to address this dilemma in quite these terms, it appears likely that this will be a more relevant issue as our workforce becomes increasingly reliant on short-term, freelance and contract projects. After all, if one’s employer isn’t going to take care of you in the long run, then you might be prepared to do it yourself, no matter what you have to tweet.

Will magazines' fancy paper tricks come back to bite them in the end? Photo by Flickr user epSos.de.

I recently read this magazine “print gimmicks” story from Folio:

“In this era, when everyone’s excited about new media, we need to do everything we can to make older media as exciting as possible,” says Granger, Esquire’s editor-in-chief. The magazine’s latest print gimmick was its May 2009 issue where it featured a mix-n-match cover. The facial features of President Obama, George Clooney and Justin Timberlake became interchangeable thanks to a tri-perforated cover.

The article also mentions 3-D covers from The Hollywood Reporter and Rolling Stone, pop-ups and bar codes in Hearst magazines, and innovative advertising inserts that try to catch readers’ attention. It describes the additional time it takes to plan and create these print “gimmicks,” as well as the additional cost for special inks, papers, and printing and folding techniques.

While it’s clever to come up with new ways to play with paper, I think these gimmicks are a misuse of magazines’ time and resources. You might gather a few more readers who pick up the magazine to play with its mix-and-match cover, or a few nerdy types (um, like me) who want to see how those barcodes work. (Hint: I never got around to doing anything with them.)

Ultimately, these gimmicks distract from what makes magazines special: the unique topic and voice of editorial content in the magazine, and the community that readers feel around that content.

I don’t think readers who might buy the magazine for these “gimmicks” are the long-term readers and subscribers magazines really need. Those aren’t the readers who identify with the magazine’s content in a deep and substantial way, who find a part of their own identity in the work of the writers, editors, photographers and artists in a magazine’s pages. Moreover, long-term readers of a magazine aren’t getting much added value with these techniques; if anything, they could be perceived as an unnecessary distraction.

My feeling is that if a magazine wants to secure a steady readership for its print edition – and for its brand, wherever it ultimately goes, online or off – it must invest in quality content, not meaningless and superficial tricks with paper that don’t connect with readers on a deeper level. The magazines that make that investment are the ones I want to keep reading and the ones that earn my loyalty.

Subscription cards from four of the magazines I receive: Sunset, Smithsonian, Triathlete and Make, all priced around $30/year.

Magazines have a serious dilemma in pricing subscriptions:

1. What’s the maximum price readers will pay? (Or, how much is this magazine experience worth to them?)
2. What’s the minimum price that will generate profit, or supplement advertising revenue adequately to add up to a profit?
3. What’s the minimum price that still communicates that the product is quality and has value?

An interesting post recently at Ad Age suggests that, although low prices might appeal to readers, magazines that cut their subscription rates may not gain subscribers; they might even lose them.

As magazines have lost circulation dramatically of late, subscription revenue will likely become increasingly important to replace declining ad revenue. However, readers are slicing away unnecessary expenses themselves – with magazine and newspaper subscriptions likely among the casualties.

I’m certainly a magazine enthusiast, and when I find a subscription card offering me a magazine for $1 an issue, that $12 per year for a fresh magazine experience is pretty tempting.

What I’ve noticed, though, is that – as the Ad Age piece calls it – I often become part of the “marginal readership” of the magazine if I take the plunge and buy the cheap subscription. I haven’t invested enough to feel motivated to take the time to read the magazine unless it turns out to be quite appealing.

When I have spent a lot of money (for me) on a subscription, as with The New Yorker, I’ve felt serious guilt over not being able to read every issue faithfully. I feel like I’ve let down my “pledge” to become a reader and am disappointed in myself and my failure to follow through on my spending. (Yes, I tend to be hard on myself; can you tell?) So, the greater the subscription expense, the greater my desire to fully invest myself in that magazine experience. The expense isn’t the only determinant of my reading enthusiasm, of course, but it is a factor.

This phenomenon is one reason why I’d argue that many magazines should charge more for their content. I think readers “buy into” a magazine’s uniquely constructed experience and offerings, and want to become part of its community through reading. Undervaluing that experience by putting a small price tag on it also undermines the sense of worth that readers ascribe to their participation with the magazine – and, as side effects, could diminish their loyalty as subscribers and their attention to advertising messages within the magazine.

In these times, magazines need to do everything possible to maintain their existing subscribers and attract new ones. Counterintuitively, the best way to do that might be to keep subscription prices at current levels or raise them slightly.

Of course, I’d also be willing to spend more on magazines to fund better content and to liberate magazines from the many editorial constraints they experience as a result of their reliance on advertising. I’d also like customizable magazines and other innovations. And, of course, it would be great to see magazines on iPads that are awesomely designed. I’ve written about all those things here. And if publishers want to have the funding to make those things happen, they need to communicate to the audience that their monetary investment is necessary to continue the creation of terrific magazine products.

My one nagging question, though, is whether it’s fair to raise subscription prices and inevitably price some readers out of the opportunity to participate in magazine readership. Would raising prices create a certain elitism around magazine subscriptions? (Maybe that already exists?)

Perhaps the growing field of print-on-demand magazines, along with the digitizing of magazines, eventually will lead to such efficiency in the publishing and distribution process that prices will adjust accordingly and remain accessible to a variety of readers. It may be that as these new approaches develop, the act of subscribing to a magazine will look so different that these concerns are no longer relevant.