Even More News You Can Use at the Post-Gazette

In the second announcement affecting Pittsburgh's online media space in nearly as many days, the Post-Gazette is launching PG+ (or Post-Gazette Plus) at www.post-gazette.com/plus.

Folks will have to pay to access the site; even current (paper) subscribers will be asked to fork over the same amount as everyone else -- $36 per year.

Potter is skeptical. Why pay twice, he asks? He's going to cancel his print subscription.

Not so fast, I think. What's really going on here?

The curious thing to me isn't the idea of paying for premium content (allegedly "premium" content). It's the fact that the PG's promotion is so into the "how" of the site (new! bloggers! social networking! user interaction!) that it just about completely ignores what the site will actually say. Sure, some good PG writers will show up.

But how often?

And what will they write about?

The PG:

Initial offerings include Ed Bouchette's blog on the Steelers, High School Edition video with Mike White, Rough Cut from editorial cartoonist Rob Rogers, Bob Hoover's Book Club, The Beat with Weekend editor Scott Mervis and a noontime Face Off with columnists Reg Henry and Jack Kelly. Mackenzie Carpenter will host the weekly Omnivore, a 10-minute Webcast on culture, politics, media and lifestyle, and Doug Oster will introduce several new features, including a gardening blog. More staffers and content will enter the mix as the site grows.

There has to be more in the works, because if this is the future of Pittsburgh's journalism, then the PG is throwing its last Hail Mary, and the pass is falling incomplete. Mackenzie Carpenter in a once-a-week webcast for 10 minutes? Where's the beef? This is a marketers' wet dream and a real journalists' nightmare.

In my view, the reason that the Post-Gazette is dying is not that people aren't being allowed enough opportunities for user interaction with the editorial staff. If you're clever enough to subscribe to PG+, then you probably have enough social networking in your life already. Even if you're a member of the target demographic, the Pittsburgh/Steelers Diaspora. Are you a member of the Diaspora who wants to satisfy a networking Jones? Come over to our LinkedIn group, IntoPittsburgh. In the early 1970s, my father wore bell bottom pants, a peace symbol, and leather sandals. That didn't make him hip.

No, the reason that the Post-Gazette is dying is that it doesn't have the ad revenue to pay for quality journalism. Some of this is simply beyond the paper's control. Someday we may see a headline that reads, "Kaufmann's Closing Killed the Post-Gazette," though I certainly hope that we won't. Some, however, is in the paper's control. The Diaspora doesn't want a playground; it wants something that's worth reading (or, as the case may be, watching or listening to). Right now, the paper's news hole is terribly small, and the copy that fills it is -- with some salient exceptions -- really mediocre. PG+ sounds to me like more of the same -- plus the power to tell that to the staff directly.

The PG has two real sources of value: One is the best and most thoughtful of its full-time writers, across all departments and sections, trained as journalists and let loose to act and write like them. Two is Steelers Nation. PG+ could, in time, marry the two: SN loves deep-diving thoughtful coverage of local politics, business, and arts and culture. That's something that few institutions can do well, and the blogosphere mostly can't. SN also loves light, snarky blogs about Pittsburgh gossip and what's happening in their neighbor's backyard. That's something that anyone can do, and anyone does. I love the idea of a well-done gardening blog. But is this the PG's competitive advantage? Right now, the PG/SN marriage feels like a shotgun wedding.

If PG+ can generate some revenue -- subscriptions and, we have to hope, higher online ad rates -- then it might begin to turn the current vicious circle (mediocre journalism depresses circulation depresses ad rates undermines journalism) into a virtuous circle. If it can do that by persuading Diasporans to come to a playground, where the readers are "talking back" to the writers, so be it, but I'm skeptical that the playground formula will be enought to save the paper. At that rate, the playground will become the PG's focus and perhaps only purpose; print -- and more important, the journalism itself -- will fade away. Instead, hope for PG+ lies in quality writing. Even Steelers fans -- perhaps Steelers fans more than anyone else -- want that.

So let us watch PG+, and let us hope for the Post-Gazette's journalistic best.

So Long, Cori Shropshire; Hello, Pittsburgh

The Post-Gazette's Cori Shropshire, who has covered the tech beat in town for the last few years, is joining the Pittsburgh Diaspora. Yesterday was her last day at the paper, and I'm told that she's moving to Houston. In today's column, she writes:

Thanks to all of you who stumbled out of bed on Saturday mornings to read Bits & Bytes. You kept me on my toes and made a tough beat challenging and fun. And to my anonymous tipsters ... you rock.

Thanks, Cori, for bringing some media sunshine and some good writing to the entrepreneurial scene in Pittsburgh, and good luck with your next gig.

Will the P-G appoint a new beat writer for tech and entrepreneurship? I hope so; the energy level surrounding entrepreneurship in Pittsburgh right now may be at an all-time high. The phrase I've heard repeatedly in face-to-face and email conversations over the last several weeks is "tipping point," as in, Pittsburgh is at a tipping point. All of these entrepeneurs and investors and technologists and researchers and artists, and even a lawyer or two, sense a window of opportunity. Will Pittsburghers seize it? Or will it pass, and will Pittsburgh remain a region of unfulfilled potential? I've heard it from media folks (though not at the P-G); from investors; from researchers; from entrepreneurs; and from local politicians.

If this really is a tipping point, then on the one hand, a good newspaper, particularly a local newspaper-of-record like the Post-Gazette, should be there in person to record and critique what's happening. Beat journalism remains key. On the other hand, several of my "tipping point" correspondents believe that the P-G is fast becoming irrelevant in this emerging space. Blogs and other, more modern communications tools are how information is being shared these days. If the New Pittsburgh is realized, the revolution will not be televised. It may be on YouTube and an RSS feed instead.

Moving Forward With the Manifesto, Part I

Back in April, when I first posted the Manifesto for a New Pittsburgh, a number of commenters wanted specifics. How is the Manifesto going to take hold? What should people do? I've owed some responses for awhile. I'll take this in small steps. Here is Part I: The Media.

"The Media" for my purposes here refers to one institution: Pittsburgh's major newspaper, the Post-Gazette. One commenter on the Manifesto wrote:

There has to be a leadership role for the Post-Gazette to help build these bridges globally. You would think that a business that is desparately looking for a life-line might see how they can re-invent themselves by identifying their customers not by a geographic region (which is so meaningless in the Internet age,) but by the people who have a connection with Pittsburgh. Just think - the number of people who used to live here is probably greater than those that still do. If their content served such people, their readership could become larger than ever, and in turn, reverse the declining ad revenues. And, it would still be called the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette! Do you think they would ever embrace the principles? I think it's important to have such a communications vehicle embracing the manifesto.

I think that's right, and I think that the Post-Gazette could be that vehicle -- or an important vehicle, in any event. The P-G's editor, David Shribman, wrote in a while later, hoping to get some suggestions. It turns out that Doc Searls, blogger and observer of things digital, preceded all three of us. Doc has this terrific post for newspapers trying to find their way in the networked world. These are great starting points for a diasporan Post-Gazette. I've included Doc's bullet points. Read his post for what each of them means. Not all of these apply to the P-G, and not all of them apply with equal force. But many do. And any other media vehicle for the diapora should take many of these points to heart.

1) Stop giving away the news and charging for the olds.
2) Start featuring archived stuff on the paper's website.
3) Link outside the paper.
4) Start following, and linking to, local bloggers and even competing papers (such as the local arts weeklies).
5) Start looking toward the best of those bloggers as potential stringers.
6) Start looking to citizen journalists (CJs) for coverage of hot breaking local news topics.
7) Stop calling everything "content."
8) Uncomplicate your websites.
9) Get hip to the Live Web
10) Publish Rivers of News for readers who use Blackberries or Treos or Nokia 770s, or other handheld Web browsers
11) Remember the higher purpose behind the most informative writing — and therefore behind newspapers as well. To review