Jane Hamsher’s appearance at yesterday’s AAN confab reminds me of the spot-on post one of her Firedoglake cohorts did last month. If you’re looking for ways to build community, comments, etc. on your alt.blog, you could do a lot worse than follow some of these simple suggestions.

Everyone on the platform seemed to agree: political coverage by and large sucks.

In a session that was moderated by Willamette Week editor Mark Zusman, Arianna Huffington (huffingtonpost.com), Jane Hamsher (firedoglake.com) and Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone) had a wide-ranging discussion on covering politics and offered some tips on how AAN members can work to fix the process.

Taibbi, who famously left the New York Press not long after his “52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope” story, said he “wouldn’t have bet three cents” he would’ve ever been back at an AAN convention after that ruckus. While he admitted alt-weeklies are hampered in electoral coverage by a lack of resources (his reporting from the Kerry campaign ran $3,000 per day in expenses) that supposed weakness is also where he sees alts’ strength. Rather than covering the “reality show” that counts as political discourse in the mainstream press, he said, alts have a real opportunity to talk to regular people in their area, find out what policy issues matter to them, and push coverage of that, rather than ridiculous stories like Hillary Clinton’s “likeability gap” or John Kerry’s “toughness gap.”

Largely agreeing with that sentiment, Hamsher talked about how, on FireDogLake, they often set the agenda for what’ll be covered by paying attention to their community and following their interests. She cited the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, she said that discussion in the blog’s comments led them to pursue the story, which they’d already decided wasn’t worth the fight.

Blogs and alt-weeklies “come from the same DNA,” Huffington said. She talked about her upcoming July launch of “Off the Bus,” a citizen journalism project with Jay Rosen for campaign coverage. They’re hoping to have between 50-100 people covering each campaign for the site, and encouraged the reporters in the audience to sign up. She said the future of online news is in link swapping and cross-posting, which is “the opposite of competitive,” and that for a site to be successful, it has to offer the three essentials: news, opinion, and community.

What does it mean for my paper?

Community was the common bond linking the three guests’ remedies for what ails political journalism. By identifying the things conventional politics coverage fails to do (letting commenters set the agenda, giving people a place to discuss issues, or interviewing laid-off auto workers for something more than a soundbite), they touched on something key for alt-weeklies: Don’t condescend to your audience. Respect them. Include them. They might be smarter than you think.

Quotable:

“We don’t make it up; it’s real news. It’s not Fox.”
- Arianna Huffington on the difference between having a perspective and being inaccurate

“It’s a lot like Mean Girls or Heathers.”
- Matt Taibbi on the atmosphere of a presidential candidate’s campaign plane

Lifted utterly without permission from LastBlogOnEarth.com, a blog from the San Diego CityBeat.

By David Rolland

“I’m in Portland, Ore., for the annual convention of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, otherwise known as the Great Journalist Drinkfest. The first session for us editorial folks was a primer on Portland. On the panel was one of the city commissioners, a medicinal marijuana advocate and a “death with dignity” advocate. The lobbyist for the homes builders was a no-show. We learned a couple of things that are interesting vis-a-vis San Diego:

• Portlanders have repeatedly voted down attempts to change to a “strong mayor” form of government. They believe it concentrates too much power into one office. The last attempt went down by a 3-1 margin.
• Portland’s medicinal marijuana law doesn’t allow for dispensaries, so they don’t have any problem with troublesome DEA agents, like San Diego has. However, that made access to “medicine” a little tougher for some patients.
• The city has a program wherein a couple hundred or so homeless people can get subsidized housing for 18 months. Nonprofits carefully screen for the people most likely to take that hand up and do something with it.
• Portland has a law allowing for public financing of campaigns. (A group in San Diego wants it for our city [San Diego], too.)
• Also interesting, although having nothing to do with San Diego: Under Oregon’s death-with-dignity law, I think it was last year that only 35 people opted to take their own lives rather than deal with pain and differing in their last months of life. This out of about 12,000 eligible patients.”
  

Adam Fine of Move.com presented this session this morning, giving a broad overview of the real estate market, the moving audience and how the web has really changed real estate marketing. But the key part of the presentation was when he talked about how AAN members can use this knowledge to gain a larger piece of the real estate ad pie.

Fun background facts:
* 49.4 million people move each year in the U.S.
* The demographic is a damn good one, for three big reasons. 1) It skews to a higher-than-average income. 2) Not only is there high income, but movers spend $crilla like crazy. Movers spend more money in the three-month move period on other goods related to the home or apartment than non-movers spend in 5 years. 3) People often move based on a life change, which puts them “at a point of brand reflection,” and more likely to switch their pesky brand allegiances (50 percent of people who move switch banks, for example).
* Ad dollars, as we all know, are migrating from print to web. In 2006, real estate ad dollars are up to 2 billion for online and down to 4 billion for newspapers. It’s only a matter of time ’till online is on top there.
* At least 80 percent of consumers use the web for real estate info, including much of the work traditionally done by brokers.

What does it mean for my paper?

Fine noted that real estate, despite the existence of large national players, is still an inherently local experience. This is where we can “win.” Every alt-weekly is the authoritative voice of its community. We need to work on using this editorial authority and using it to sell our real estate sections.

* Build out your real estate sections, especially online. Work with local firms (MLS services, individual brokers, etc.) to get their listings. You can even use brokers’ RSS feeds to build out (for those few brokers that may understand an RSS feed). Also, the basic real estate ad should really be free. Which brings me to the next point.

* Upsell online. Use all sorts of cool 2.0 tools and build a kick-ass real estate section. Alt-weeklies already have the leg up here on traditional real estate websites. We have the editorial content, the neighborhood guides, the annual manuals. The key is to figure out a way to merge all of this disparate info together and package what a real estate user will need. Maps, links to recent stories about the neighborhood, and, of course, photos and all the traditional real estate jazz are a start here. This seems like the real revenue opportunity; selling users/brokers the premium product.

* Sell to advertisers who want the moving audience. This is another area where there is huge potential for alt-weeklies. The main reason is simple: Movers turn to the local alt-weekly after they move, not just before, for listings, for info about their new locale. They don’t do that with traditional real estate sites. And, maybe my social network is the exception, but no one I know takes care of these peripheral services (phone, furniture, TV, banking, insurance, hardware/home improvement) before the move. It always happens after. We pride ourselves on being the definitive guides to our cities — this is yet another way to sell it.

Lastly, Fine suggested that AAN work on a master online real estate listings template for members to use, which would include all the bells and whistles. I think that could also be a national web portal, perhaps tied into the soon-to-come new-and-improved AltWeeklies.com, where we could attract big national advertising dollars and start to stem the tide of revenue loss from the AAN CAN network. Clearly there are some details to be hashed out, but I’d say it sounds like a worthwhile project.

I’m curious though, how many of your papers have an online real estate section that is anything more than simple listings? How many are even using photos? Maps? Other tools?

It’s your second day in Portland, AAN convention-goers, and by now you’ve likely noticed that this city is, well… weird.

And that weirdness doesn’t stop at our sense of style, appreciation of nature, or deep love of coffee. It’s in our city and state politics, too.

Yesterday, Erik Sten (Portland City Commissioner), George Eighmey (director of Compassion and Choices of Oregon, leading supporters of the state’s Death with Dignity Law), and Madeleine Martinez (executive director and card-carrying member of the Oregon Chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) joined a panel discussion moderated by Willamette Week’s Hank Stern. They discussed how bi-partisan support and grassroots efforts keep Oregon progressive.

We know how different we are here in Oregon. As Eighmey put, “To us, there’s only Oregonians and non-Oregonians.” Here’s some of our most unique–and endearing–qualities:

We’ve never voted for a Bush family member.

We proudly boast the only assisted sucide law in the US, known as Death with Dignity. Of the 31,000 people who die in Oregon each year, according to Eighmey, only 12,000 are eligible to take advantage of the law (which means they’re over 18, dying of a terminal illness in six months, of sound mind and body, and make three separate requests to self-administer a lethal dose of drugs). Eighmey points out that “suicide” is a misnomer, since it connotes a rash decision and unhappiness with life, whereas the 35 Oregon residents who choose to die each year generally love and respect life and don’t want to fade away slowly and painfully.

6% of our citizens bike to work, compared with a 3.5% national average.

For the past eight years, medical marijuana has been legal. The law passed by a 54.6% average in 1994. Currently, approved patients grow their own “medicine,” as Martinez calls it, and the biggest challenge is the lack of state-run dispensaries. The DEA has never taken an Oregon patient to federal court over possessing medical marijuana–unless, of course, a patient is outside the guidelines, like posessing over 24 ounces of usable cannabis at any time.

80% of the state’s population lives within 10 miles of the 1-5 corridor.

We consider ourselves religious in belief but not in practice.

And finally, good news for journalists: Oregon has one of the highest reading rates in the nation.

photo by David Reamer

The Callahan film Touch Me Someplace I Can Feel was a really interesting look at the man, his cartoons, his music, and his worldview. Kinda wish more people had gone, but it was such a nice night for being outside (rather than in an underground auditorium, say) that I can hardly blame the folks who didn’t show.

Beyond the film, which showed the power of thoughtful commentary to engage people more deeply in society, I remain really intrigued by the fact that the Dutch government funded (or helped fund, at least) its production.

Maybe I’m naive, but I didn’t expect a foreign government to fund a documentary about an artist so fundamentally American in his worldview - particularly in his insistence on depicting the world as he sees it, largely uncensored.

What were your reactions to the film?

Pulitizer-prize winner Jonathan Gold, the food critic for the L.A. Weekly, joined alt-weekly editors Margaret Downing (Houston Press), Jennifer Strom (Independent Weekly, NC), and Erik Wemple (Washington City Paper) for a panel discussion moderated by Willamette Week’s Kelly Clarke on the merits of restaurant reviews in alternative papers.

The alt-weeklies on the panel represented a wide range of approaches to their food content:

• L.A. Weekly, anchored by Gold’s reviews, focuses on experiential coverage, from high end dining to taco trucks. Gold avoids the “80 percent of the middle” which tend to be alt-advertisers - neatly sidestepping controversy. “I come at it more as a critic than a reporter,” noted Gold.
• Washington City Paper has a staff food columnist, who writes both reviews and restaurant industry pieces, which are about 70 percent of the coverage. Another staffer manages the restaurant database, which features a substantial amount of user contributed reviews. These reviews are often encapsulated in the print product, without attempting authority.
• Houston Press runs both restaurant reviews and a drinks column - which has a shelf life for the various participants, Downing joked. Critic Robb Walsh occasionally contributes investigative features, such as his infamous Fish Fraud piece which determined which restaurants were charging sea bass for tilapia.
• The Independent Weekly has not run restaurant reviews for ten years, offered Strom - due to the costs of feeding a critic and fighting with angry advertisers. Instead, the Weekly compiles a local restaurant news column and rotates a set of food features with a stable of freelancers. “The best food writer we ever had Creative Loafing [Atlanta] stole,” Strom explained.

As could be expected, Gold spoke with authority on many of the questions posed to the panel.

Q. Is it fair to review a restaurant on a curve? After all, our city isn’t New York.
A. if you’re going to be serious about it, you have to hold restaurants to world standards, Gold replied. If the French restaurant in the city is good, but you wouldn’t cross the street for it in New York, you ought to convey that. But Gold was quick to note that he puts the “same kind of thinking” into his meals for the Weekly as he did when writing for Gourmet, with a $8,000 a month expense account.

Q. How are blogs impacting restaurant reviews?
A. Gold compared foodie blogs to a feeding frenzy - where one bad review of a newly-opened restaurant spawns another, and aggregators declare that the ‘consensus is overwhelming.’ “The problem with blogs is nobody knows anything - it’s not just rumors, it’s getting beyond meta, it’s rumors of rumors of rumors […] When there is something real, it is refreshing.” Gold concedes that food blog reviewing could potentially be done well, but offers that bloggers are figuring out that it is not as easy as they thought.

Q. What’s the difference between a blogger and a food critic?
A. Experience, and thought, answered Gold. He rolled out the numbers: he has reviewed 2,000 restaurants, eats out 10-12 times a week, owns thousands of cookbooks, and reads almost everything there is to read about a subject before writing about it.

Q. How long after a restaurant opens can you review it? And how often do you go before writing the review?
A. With a celebrity chef, after two weeks, a restaurant is “as good as it’s gonna get,” said Gold. After six weeks, it’s fair to review a less-celebrated restaurant. But restaurant openings are cultural news, and it’s often relevant to cover them sooner. While Gold visits a restaurant 3 to 5 times before reviewing it, and will expense perhaps four restaurants before finding one to review, he says it’s possible for cash-strapped critics to visit a restaurant once and cover it fairly in a narrative fashion. “The thing that is wrong is to go once and pretend to be authoritative.”

But, of course, not every paper has the access to a critic of Gold’s caliber - nor the budget to fund his reviews. The panel offered suggestions for less-expensive editorial content in the food section:

• User-generated reviews
• Reported food coverage. People want to know about the guy down the street who makes a bread oven in his backyard, said Strom.
• Restaurant news coverage
• Chef-written content, such as Q & As.

Kim Sheehan, a professor at the University of Oregon, led the session Viral Marketing for Newspapers on Thursday afternoon. The author of the forthcoming book, “Building Buzz to Beat the Big Boys,” Sheehan urged the audience to think about how to get the newspaper brand to be a part of the conversations people have every day.

“People think about brands 5 to 6 times a day,” Sheehan said. “We don’t even realize how much of our conversations are about brands.” The trick then becomes to figure out the best way to get whatever message you want into the conversations.

The Six Is of viral marketing

• Itemize: Set specific goals for your viral efforts - what do you want to accomplish?
• Identify: Find people to ask to join the conversation. Think about ways people already interact with your paper (like sending letters to the editors or commenting on the site), and brainstorm ways to involve them further.
• Invite: Invite folks in the community to participate further. People are flattered by the attention, and want to be a stronger part of your brand.
• Inform: Give your advocates something to talk about.
• Incentivize: Think about ways to reward your readers, with small monetary measures like coupons or movie schwag, or recognition, such as a “Reader of the Week” feature.
• re-Inforce: Echo your brand message throughout your interaction with your users - participate in conversations, send emails. Sheenan cautioned: “If you’re going to have a community, you have to be a part of it. It’s a small group in a big world. Keep involved in the conversations. ”

Q. Viral marketing seems aimed at frequent readers … how can we get people who arent talking to us at all involved?

A. Get your readers to get the nonreaders to become readers, responded Sheehan. It’s difficult to find the nonreaders yourself, but your readers have their networks of family and friends - they are much better at identifying nonreaders and matching them with your content.

This question got brought up in the discussion following the Viral Marketing session Thursday afternoon.

Here’s a few snippets of the discussion:

• Maui Times Weekly is producing Beyond the Ink. It’s not something they put a lot of preparation into - they are in and out in 25 minutes. They talk about behind-the-scenes paper stuff - why they chose a story, why they did a special issue. Publisher Tommy Russo says they spent $500 on equipment, and about 6-8 hours learning the technology. “We need to start thinking of ourselves as content companies,” said Russo in the session, emphasizing that alts should deliver content in whatever medium the readers want it in. [more bout Beyond the Ink on aan.org]
• The Chattanooga Pulse commented they had great success with creating a podcast using a local DJ whose radio program was cut due to programming changes at his station. DJ Joshua Daniels brought his listening audience to the Pulse’s site for the Pulsecast. In addition to driving traffic, the debut of the podcast created viral buzz, and strengthened the Pulse’s reputation among the community.
• Smiley Pete Publishing (which is applying for AAN membership this year) commented that they released soundbites of their podcasts to talk radio shows for use on-air, along with a press release about the content of their ‘casts.

What’s your paper doing with podcasts - and how is this driving viral buzz for your brand?

After seeing the success of South by Southwest Interactive’s Community Blog, we decided to put together a similar blog for the upcoming 2007 Portland AAN convention.

The folks at sxswi did a great job - but we’re alt-people! We can do better.

So, in addition to the free-for all community blog postings about meetups, Portland adventures and othermessage-board-esque content, Portland2007.AAN.org will feature coverage of convention sessions, nightlife and industry musings from AAN members like yourself.

We’re also creating a print newsletter from the content on this blog, as a real-time example of creating content once and publishing it in multiple mediums.

If you’re reading this post, it’s likely that we’ve asked you to contribute a post regarding convention sessions and/or your thoughts to the blog during the AAN convention. If you’ve stumbled across this randomly, and would like to contribute, please let us know!

I’ve created some sample posts on this blog to illustrate the various ways folks can use the blog.

Please let me know if you have any questions - or ideas on improving what we’ve already started!

Sincerely,

LauraFries.com
Web Director, AAN