Conventional Wisdom

Wait! More's coming. Soon. Honest.

I've got two other posts still to write (yeah, I know I missed the deadline - by about 2 weeks) focussing on video in the newsroom that I think are worth a look.
As soon as I do them.
Which will be soon.
I'll also reconfigure the blog (reverse the order of the posts so they're chronological, add an index etc)  to turn it into more of a static web site, as  a kind of ongoing record of the 2007 conference.
In the meantime, check out the work of the two Red River Community College journalism students — Helen Cholakis and Jennifer Ryan —  who covered a pile of the conference sessions - including hotshots like Juan Antonio Giner, Rob Curley and Bruce Annan. 
You can access their stories here on the Canadian Newspaper Association's "Conference Presentations" page. Links to their reports are intermingled among links to presenter's blogs and websites, so look for those authored by Helen and Jennifer.
And check back here next week when I should have this thing all buffed up and ready for summer. Honest.
Bill
(photo is from Chris Buschap's Flickr photostream)

Moving Pictures II

I'm posting this on-the-spot video report from Visuals Editor Robb Montgomery despite the fact that he stole my idea to ennumerate the swell swag handed out at this year's joint CNA/CCNA/CCMA convention.  The point here ain't the topic or who thought of it first, rather it's the ease and speed with which he was able to produce this brief video report - and others.
(See his Visualeditors.com web site for other videos - include senior newspaper people dancing. WARNING: seeing senior newspaper people dancing may cause drowsieness, headaches and a complete loss of hope that we can ever be seen as anything other than hopelessly outdated by the "young kids" of Canada.)
More later
Bill

Click To Play Video

                                                                                                            
         

And the winners are?

Friday evening  I stood on the second floor of Delta Winnipeg lobby with my bags at my feet, and the taxi that would take me to the airport waiting just beyond the front door. As I watched the National Newspaper Award nominees arriving for their gala, dressed to the nines, their spirits bright and tightly wound, I felt a little like Moses watching his compatriots cross the valley into the promised land. Not that we've had to endure any plagues this past week during the convention — from what I've read the locust don't hit Winnipeg until June.
No, it's just that for the past several days it's been all about the business of newspapering — readership and circultation and innovation; moving online and finding the "jobs" our readers need done for them. Not a word, really, about the quality of the writing, the picture making, the digging.
Hell, my online hero Rob Curley even suggested we make sure to drop "writer" from our staff titles and replace it with "reporter", a not-so-subtle way of reminding everybody that their jobs, their roles, have changed.
I can't argue the last bit — in my newsroom they hand out earplugs to the unfortunates sitting near me so they don't have to endure my endless repetition of that mantra.
But as someone who chose this career as a teenager precisely because it meant writing for a living, I'd argue long and loud for the necessity of  recognizing and celebrating great writing (and photography). Happily, I don't have to — we have the National Newspaper Awards. Founded in 1949 by the Toronto Press Club, they're now housed in the CNA offices and administered by an independent board of governors (since 1989).   Here is a list of  the winners. Oh, and don't forget the Edward Goff Penny awards for  promising young journalists. Although they were announced in March, both winners — Elisabeth Johns, a reporter with the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder, and the Ottawa Citizen's Katie Lewis — were presented at last night's gala. (That's Elisabeth with CNA president Anne Kothawala at the gala.)
(As an aside - am I the only one who thinks we all cheapen the awards by only publishing details of our own paper's winners, rather than offering readers the whole list and maybe reprinting an award winning photo or two? It turns it form a celebration of the best of our work into something of a jingoistic excercise...)
Bill
(Photos courtesy David Gollob)
ps: check back Sunday - I'll be posting some more on what we learned in the seminars about video and the newspaper.

Moving Pictures 1

Rob Curley, the disarmingly candid news web guru behind LJ World and the washingtonpost.com's fabulous "On Being" site, talked about running an ad in Naples, Florida, when he was working there and they were launching Studio 55, a daily newscast.
I'm paraphrasing badly, but the ad featured photos, headshots, of every single member of the Naples Daily News newsroom, all 100 of them, and then pointed out that the local TV news station had a newsroom staff of 10. "Who would you rather get your news from?" the ad asked.
"Yeah, they hated us for that one," Rob said with that dry smile of his.
The local TV folks may have hated them, but I'm betting their web users don't. Studio 55 is a simple, low cost, perfectly serviceable newscast, covering 3 items or so, plus the weather, and incorporating readers and staff photos, staff video and in-studio narration - all stitched together with some very slick graphics and sound. (More on the philosphy and mechanics of Studio 55 in a minute.)
Folks, this is your future.
In yesterday's lunch Leonard Asper talked about adding video capabilities to the CanWest newsrooms and, half jokingly said, "The CRTC (Canadian Radio Television Commission) will probably never allow us to have a television station in Ottawa, but there's nothing to stop the Ottawa Citizen from becoming a local TV station," and of course he's right.
Think of the size and reach of your newsroom — compare it to your local TV news operation. "Who would you rather get your news from?" indeed.
Up next: Moving Picures II - how to build your own newscast - the Rob Curley way
Bill

No, I didn't get lost

I really wanted to attend the Video Newspaper session despite this being an 'editorial' focus and my being a 'sales gal'...I was very interested to see how low cost video could be produced both for the newsroom (and also see if this as a tool for advertising!!).
I appreciated CEO of Visual Editors, Robb Montgomery's casual style and "(minimal) bullet points" — I think I'm just about conferenced out!!
Robb had good examples and lots of reference to sites and tools to check out. He made reference to a  European newspaper/web site produced by a 29 year old editor: 24 Video that fits everything on one screen — "thinking of the consumer" who likely does not want to scroll down. Good examples of innovation...let's get moving!!!
Kelly
kmontague@thespec.com

Web 2.0 is already old, and where are we?

Bruce Annan - consultant with Classified Intelligence Inc. (and a fellow blogger here - thanks Bruce!) offered a whirlwind tour of the Web 2.0 world in his session: Personalization of Online Content and Advertising, that was worth attending for the url's alone.
I've added some of my own in this list - if the names and sites are unfamiliar to you, spend some time clicking through and looking around — you'll end up with a good sense of where our end of the web is headed.
Bruce is a deceptively unpolished, naturalistic speaker with a self-effacing style that tends to mask what seems like a  decent grasp on where the web is going and what we ought to be looking at.
You're not alone if you're a little confused by the fuzzy Web 2.0 term. It was coined six or seven years ago by that brilliant tech publisher, Tim O'Reilly in a brainstorming session about the future of a post Dot.Com bust world.
(ed note: Tim is the fellow behind one of the absolutely smartest tech blogs, O'Reilly Radar. If you don't read it, you'll be getting your tech and web innovation news six months after the smart people do.)
Simply speaking Web 2.0 covers the post dot.com boom and bust web innovations that focus on the web as platform and the user as participant, not consumer.
Newspapers are still very slow to understand that final, key sea change - although people like Doc Searls (see the ClueTrain manifesto - which was written in 1999),  Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen have been screaming about it for several years. 

Lunch with the Aspers

Okay. This "live" blogging stuff gets harder and harder when you're half dead.
And even harder when you spent the night umm sipping, yeah, sipping, scotch and debating journalism with executive editors, publishers and other journalists.
So I'm running a little behind and will try and catch up with a couple of  quick posts before heading back into the fray for the "Opportunities Through Effective Partnerships" seminar. (I'm sure it will be more interesting than it sounds.)
Yesterday's lunch, (sponsored by the Abitti people, who, like the Tembec people must hate listening to all these newspaper people talk about new delivery platforms and web -only products and e-paper...) was, well, a hotel lunch with a couple hundred folks sitting around round tables. You've been there. Food was fine, so was the company.
After the Bryan Cantley tribute, our luncheon speaker Leonard Asper, president and CEO of CanWest Global Communications, bounded to the podium.
Asper went to some length to entertain his crowd as much as inform them. He had two short, humourous videos (I'm trying to get my hands on them to post them here): a mock 50s style public service announcement by the "Winnipeg Film Board" with emergency and disaster survival instructions that paired up with a bag of swag they'd taped under every chair (water wings for floods, repellant for mosquitoes etc), and a collection of newspaper front pages showing the way Canada supposedly thinks of Winnipeg and the Aspers and the way those paper's would look if the Aspers every really exerted editorial control across their chain ("Winnipeg the Real Paris of the Prairies" "Jets down Flames to take the Stanley Cup" etc.)
And then he got down to business.

The Business of Free

Juan Antonio Giner is a provocative and innovative newspaper editor and consultant. He is partner-director of INNOVATION International Media Consulting and his talk this morning was called To be Free and Compact.
He says: "The question is not whether your paper should be free or not free, the question is to read or not to read." Surveys of newspaper readers show this is what they say about us: We are boring, angry, frustrating and irritating. "If we are in the business of satisfying a sado-masochist audience, we are doing well."
Okay, that was fun, but here's the heart of his message — Free and compact papers are a business model. A smart paper that provides intelligent and insightful content will compete.
The problem with many dailies is they think more pages are better, but that not the case. Most readers are only reading 10 per cent of a paper's content. Throwing more stuff at them doesn't help. French paper Libre lll  went from 200,000 circ to 85,000 in five weeks after doubling pages. He cited examples of compact papers that offer fewer pages and gained higher readership.  A paper in Madrid went to 40 from 48 pages and readership increased. Smaller paper, people read more.
He says the internet is not killing us, free papers are not killing us, we are killing ourselves.
As proof he offered several examples of papers around the world and examined their coverage of major stories. The papers were all the same. Same headlines, same quotes, same pix.
When Saddam Hussein was captured paper after paper ran headlines that said: "We got him" the pix was Saddam's head shot. One paper, The Detroit Free Press declared: The Face of Defeat.—  The pix showed someone from its local Iraqi community tearing up a photo of Saddam. The story was intelligent and different and Giner says this is what readers want.
Too many papers are a mirror -  they say their goal is reflect reality. Wrong, wrong, wrong says Giner. "I don't want to reflect reality, I want to understand reality. I want deeper."  Don't record the news, find the news. Giner says be smart and think about what you are giving readers. As an example he showed a story about breast cancer. One cover had a stunning picture of a woman, half-naked and posed from the side. You couldn't see her face, but you could see the side of her breast. It was tasteful and a lovely portrait. He contrasted it with a cover from the New York Times Magazine. Same issue. The pix showed a woman standing, one breast covered by a cloth, the other exposed showing the scar where her breast had been cut off. That's the story, Giner said. The first one — that's soft news. Readers don't want it. The NYT cover — This is hard news. This is what breast cancer looks like, he said.
Quoteable: "We are moving from readers, to audience and audiences to communities."
"The black hole of the newspaper industry today is distribution. We have a lot to learn from free newspapers."
"Our competitors are the 90 per cent of the public who do not read newspapers."
"We need to be better than ever and better than anyone else at collecting, editing, filtering and presenting real information."
"Readers take in 10 per cent of what you produce — 90 per cent is not used."
Juan Antonio Giner can be reached at: giner@innovation-mediaconsulting.com
Blogged by jpscribbler
(The images of the papers' front pages comes, not from Giner, but from the Brass Tacks Design website's "New Rules for Newspapers" where they make very similar points re: being smart and different)

Ka-Boomer ? Talking about MY generation.

Your 50+ year-old readers are paying attention and this is what they are saying " It's all about me."
Matt Thornhill is a market researcher who started the Boomer Project three years ago to get a better handle on Boomer consumers. He says pay attention.
They have money, flexibility, want to be engaged, and will pay attention to you if you serve them. Boomers know they are not getting younger and are searching for ways to leave their mark. They want to serve and want to make the earth a better place, socially and environmentally.
"This is the generation that started the environmental movement," says Thornhill.
"They've spent the bulk of their life consuming and now they are saying, "How can I give back? How can I contribute?"
Anyway newspapers can go green will be asset to these socially-conscious consumers, he says. The Boomer mantra: Viva The Vital. Boomers are a force and smart marketers will find ways to tap their vitality in the following areas: Financial
Physical (they are going to the gym, watch what they eat)
Mental (watch for mental gyms)
Social (they've spent 40-50 years developing social networks are not about to let that go
They want to stay involved (volunteer rates in this group are way up)
Spiritual (sales of spiritual and religious books are way up. This group is looking to see what's beyond the white light).
Thornhill's research can be found at his Boomer Project website, where you can also listen to him yourself in a short two minute video.
He says if you email him matt@boomerproject.com, he will send you a copy of his 24-page report.
Blogged by jpscribbler
(photo is from Kevin Slavin's Flickr photostream)

Tourist Time

It's waaay too early Friday morning for me to file the conference report I'd planned on filing. CanWest Global Communications sponsored a fun night at a local nightclub — complete with  a Scotch and cigar tent outside and a live performance by Purity, a local garage band composed of precocious 13 year olds. A fine evening. Really. (Actually the kids were pretty impressive, even if they're musical style - think Greenday meets The Tombstones. Sort of. Nice moment: when the drummer's mom took to the dance floor in an effort to kickstart the crowd, which was having none of it. The kids ignored her just like a real band would.)
So.
Instead of my report, I offer you three pictures taken by Spec managing editor (News) Jim Poling during a morning walkabout this week.
(Click on the thumbnails for a good look at the pic. Or not.)
The first is the marker for the burial site of Louis Riel. While much of Canada thinks of him merely as "that fellow who led the revolt and got hanged" out here in Manitoba, he's regarded more as the father of Manitoba.
Next is the home of Bishop Tache,  the second bishop of saint-Boniface. Someone needs to take responsibility for that roof. I'm not being critical, I'm just saying ....
And lastly, and keeping with Jim's religious theme, we have .. Saint-Boniface Cathedral. This is the outer shell and all that remains after two fires. If you look closely, you can see that there is a new church built into the back of the building.
The hotel is now being overrun by eager NNA nominees, shoes shined, hair licked down and hope gleaming in their eyes - not that there's anything wrong with that. I'll return after a few hours of sleep.
Bill
(Photos by Jim "shutterbug" Poling)

Opportunities galore!!

The only problem with conferences that trigger great ideas is that I want to get back NOW and try them all!!
My choice of sessions today focused on the world of sales opportunities. I attended a talk by Peter Jackson (president of SalesSTAR corp.)  on How Newspapers Can Gain Their Competitive Edge and found his 12 steps to being more effective very relevant.
(While I won't be listing them here, Jackson will be e-mailing his presentation and I can gladly forward it to anyone who asks)
Once again on-line is front and centre and Jackson stressed that the days of "supporting the local paper are gone". Advertisers want innovation and results. They want internet, even if they don't know what that means exactly. In fact, many Mom and Pop shops don't even have a web site. Jackson stressed that we have to bring them the web solutions... pronto!
We also need to simplify the buying process for advertisers...how long will it take us to realize local businesses don't care what an agate is?! We need to see small advertisers and non-advertisers as huge potential and not rely on our top 25 advertisers to carry our business.
This small advertiser market was the topic of discussion for my next session too that addressed Effective Management of Small Accounts and featured: Denise Tucker, Barrie Examiner; John Hay, Links Information Management; and Katherine Wiggett, City Media. All reinforced the earlier themes of print and online solutions and looking for opportunities in non-advertisers.
"Try to fit them in the newspaper any way you can", advised Denise. I hear ya girlfriend! We need to take advantage of this revenue stream and get moving now!!
Kelly 
kmontague@thespec.com

Your strategy is all wrong

Sitting here in the Newspaper Next seminar, listening to Steve Buttrey (from API) talk about the strategy for disruptive innovation developed for newspapers by Clayton Christensen (yeah, him again) and I just love this approach to innovation: Fail Fast.
Christensen says that research shows that 90 per cent of successful new disruptive ventures (new ways of meeting unmet or unrecognized customer needs that threaten traditional business models) start off with the WRONG strategy.
And, need it be said, 100 per cent of failed ventures started off with - and ended with - the wrong strategy.
In fact, on average, successful new ventures change strategies FOUR TIMES before finding success.
To succeed at creating new, disruptive projects then, give yourself permission to fail and pay careful attention as you do, because for sure you will. Another way of summarizing this really useful approach:
Invest a Little, Learn a Lot.
It reminds me of a piece I read by Bob Young, owner of self-publication site Lulu.com (and the Hamilton Ticats), who made a massive pile of millions with his start-up company Red Hat Linux who wrote that he attributes his successes to his willingness to fail over and over again - something that began in high school. He figured he got a much better education much faster than others who had less trouble.
More later.
Bill

Cantley Tribute

Today's luncheon began with an emotional tribute to Bryan Cantley, vice-president of member services for the Canadian Newspaper Association who is "retiring" this June after nearly 30 years with the CNA. (Although there's some doubts as to how "retired" he'll actually be - as Steve Buttrey of  the American Press Institute put it 10 minutes ago - "I think he's doing what we call 'retiring to full time hours'")
The tribute included video greetings from across the counry from the likes of John Honderich and Paul Godfrey (who held up a Toronto Blue Jays jersey #26 with Cantley's name on the back). Clark Davies called Bryan "a great and giving respository of institutional memory aabout the black art we call journalism ... where will we ever find his like again?"  Several other speakers spoke of him as a valuable mentor.
Video ended, Cantley was brought to the podium and presented with the original of an Aslin cartoon of Cantley,  ripping open his suit and shirt to reveal a Montreal Canadians sweatshirt beneath. "Where's my Blue Jay shirt?" Bryan grumbled good naturedly before thanking everyone for their thoughts and applause.
Bill

Online sigh of relief

Rob Curley, vice-president of product development for the Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive was by far my favourite speaker so far. What innovation!
Curley spoke of the ever popular 'hyper-local' concept and gave some brilliant examples that were adopted by the Naples Daily News and Lawrence Journal-World in Kansas. Check out the video online program: On Being-brilliant!
Great advice about tapping into our intern resources and "every newspaper must have a supply of nerds". 
I must admit that while I was encouraged throughout the presentation that someone out there is doing this online stuff very well, my spidey sales senses were in high gear waiting for some indication of revenue success. Curley did not disappoint with a great finish alerting the audience that every city or newspaper has to have their own unique strategy and do what makes sense in their market.
While it appeared a ton of resources and revenue were being thrown at all of his wonderful projects, he also spoke of web revenue success!!!! Whew!
Kelly

Learning and Strategy

In session with Bill Dunphy (Hamilton Spectator) and Vickey Williams (API Learning Newsroom Project Director): Documenting success of Learning Newsroom, of which The Hamilton Spectator was a student. Only Canadian paper to be part of 10 newsroom project.
The duo talked about changing power shift in newsrooms, and the value of giving staff more input and and control in decision-making. It means huge culural shift, but by giving staff an opportunity to pull on the levers, you get a more responsive staff, tons of creativity and engagement. Dunphy, a reporter with the Spec's newsroom, gave several examples of how his paper has used the Learning Newsroom to better connect with readers and its newsroom.
Check out a recent interivew: 5 minutes with Vickey Williams:
You can read more about the experience by checking out Vickey's book: It's called All Eyes Forward: How to Get Youir Newsroom Where It Wants to Go Faster. It's $10 and the price cover the cost of printing. You can get it through ther ASNE website. Blogged by Jpscribbler

News is NOW

Rob Curley is the uber-in-demand online guy. He starts his talks with this quote: My name is Rob Curley I'm an internet nerd from Kansas who is in love with local news and the evolution of traditional media. His message: if you are not online, get on it NOW.
It's where the growth, money and readers are. If you are among the people saying,  "Hey we have a good story, we are going to hold it for tomorrow's paper." Rob says: Don't. "If readers see smoke and they log onto your website and don't see it there, they don't think you are holding it for tomorrow's paper, they think YOU SUCK."
That pretty much sums up Rob's message. Get online and use it for hyper local content. We are in the news business and we should be giving our readers every single scrap of content we can.
He says publishing online is easy (9-year-old girls with cells phone are posting photos and video to you tube 52 seconds after they've captured their content). I've got some of his recommendations, after the jump:

Curley's off and running

Web news guru Rob Curley has just begun his talk, warning the room that he usually takes 3 hours but since he only has 70 minutes, he's downed 3 red bulls and a mountain dew...
Rob's the guy behind the LJ World site that set the news business on it's ear a few years back (the NYT called the tiny paper "the newspaper of the future") and now at the age of about 17 it seems, has become a vp of washingtonpost.com.
We'll have more (lots more) on Curley - the convention's marquee speaker - but for now I give you one of his opening comments, underlining the need for newspapers to "own local breaking news", and dealing with the still current thinking that if you have a really good scoop you should save it for the print edition.
"If there's a really big fire in your town and people can see the smoke for miles and they go to your website and don't see anything — they don't think you're holding it for tomorrow's paper. They think you SUCK."
(caps in original- he speaks like that.)
More to come...
Bill

Passports and peanuts - US Ambassador speaks

The formal part of Wednesday's agenda  concluded with a speech from Dennis Wilkins, US Ambassador to Canada.
He was engaging, well-spoken, well-meaning, defensive and on one point, wrong. He referred to Michael Wilson, Canadian Ambassador to the US, as Michael Jackson.
Wilkins has been ambassador to Canada for 22 months and has logged more than 150,000 miles in this country. He said, respectfully, he has seen more parts of Canada than the average Canadian and is in a good position to reflect Canadian views to his US constituents.
He called Canada and the US, "two great, but different democracies" and continually referred to Canada as a good partner and friend. He visited Shilo, Man. earlier this week and thanked Canadian soldiers for their participation in the conflict in Afghanistan.
During the conference, Wilkins took questions from the floor. He acknowledged tensions at the border over the US requirement that all people crossing have passports, but he said that is now the law and encourages people to obey. He urged folks to get a passport and said 1.5 million passports a month are being issued in the US and eventually narrowing the necessary id to present to border patrols will make it speedier to cross. He said driver's licences containing personal data, or a wallet passport card, would be a better way too. He said border guards now have hundreds of types of documents to examines and reducing the number of options to two or three would be more efficient. "We are in a post-9/11 era and we cannot turn back the clock," Wilkins said.
He left the conference with an insight into a southern US favourite: boiled peanuts are a popular and favourite snack food. Not salted in the shell, roasted or ground into peanut butter, but boiled and canned.
Blogged by jpscribbler
jpoling@thespec.com

Change Leadership

Wednesday afternoon panel chat with Jagoda Pike, Publisher Toronto Star,;Dennis Skulsky, pres. Canwest MediaWorks; Phillip Crawley, Pub, Globe and Mail,; Peter Kvarnstrom- Glacier Canadian Newspapers,; Andy Ritchie, Pub. Winnipeg Free Press. Moderated by Alan Allnutt, Montreal Gazette.
General tone was optimism for newspaper future. Phillip Crawley warned about buying into bleak view of newspapering. Encouraged people to look to UK where media is thriving and where there is significant investment in papers and presses. Jagoda Pike of Star agreed, but warned of polyanna outlook. She said there is a sea change coming in the business. She said Classified advertising is in decline and has been for at least the past two years. She said there are huge opportunities online, but the traditional classified model for major metros is worrisome. She said the newspaper industry must move quickly, aggressively and continue to be innovative. When asked if she should be competing with free services (i.e Craig's List), Pike said: "Free is not a business model. Free drives traffic and audience, but the notion that you go on a site and up sell yourself doesn't work." Her advice is for media models to be innovative and diversified.
Said Ritchie of the Winnipeg Free Press: "Local is King. We play to our strength."
Blooged by jpscribbler
jpoling@thespec.com

Morning History Lesson

I decided to burn off the Manitoba 'spirits' from last night with an early morning run to the Parliament buildings. 
Said hello to Riel and bumped into Kitchener Waterloo Publisher Dana Robbins who also took in the beautiful trail around the buildings.
Quick history lesson for those who can't recall Grade 7 History.In 1869, Riel founded the Comité National des Métis to protect his people's rights, and helped stage the Red River Uprising for which he was exiled to the United States. Entreatied by settlers, he eventually returned to set up a provisional government and, as the self-declared prophet of his people, became embroiled in the 1885 rebellion.

When the Canadian government finally responded with military force, the rebellion was quickly crushed and Riel surrendered. His subsequent trial and execution aroused bitterness and debate. Alternately described as visionary and madman, victim and villain, he remained a controversial figure in death as in life. With the perspective of time, Louis Riel has come to be seen as a combination of martyr and hero in the eyes of many Canadians.
Kelly

(photo courtesy Canada Collections)

Knowing when to jump

“The dirty little secret of futurists is that we can’t predict the future”
- Ian Morrison, futurist
Ian Morrison is a self-described “Scottish Canadian Californian, married to a Winnipegger” who got several degrees in urban planning (thesis topic: “Geographic and Economic Change in Scotland, 1580-1830”) but has soon moved on to a successful career as author and futurist, consulting to “100’s of companies,” with a recent focus on the health care industry.
He based yesterday’s presentation on his book “The Second Curve: Managing the Velocity of Change” which came across in the seminar as a kind of poor man’s version of Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen’s work on disruptive technologies. Morrison didn't borrow his ideas, both men are trying to explain some readily observable phenomena.
(If you don’t know Christensen’s work by the way - you should.  Here's a great podcast  that converted me two years ago. It's  a talk he gave setting out his theories very nicely. His notion of disruptive change offer really useful ways of understanding everything from the deep trouble Stelco is in, to the rise of cell phones and, yes, the decline of newspapers - of which more after the jump.)
In a nutshell, Morrison says business life (profits, activity, opportunities) can be plotted on a set of curves: The first curve is the line an established business is riding - things are working, profits are coming, customers are happy. The second curve is the radically new way of doing business that sneaks up on you from below, gradually building steam until at some point it crosses the first curve and surpasses it.  That second curve is the source of future growth and profits.
IBM’s curves look more like a double helix, he said, noting how they’d gone from adding machines to main frame computers to personal computers to becoming “one of the largest consulting firms in the world.”
The trick is knowing when to hop off one curve and on to the next, apparently.

Extravaganza- Manitoba Style!

I'm feeling the pressure from my Blog colleagues to pull myself away from the fun and festivities of "the Peg" and post some Day 1 content for our CNA friends ...
I found David Wilkins, US Ambassador to Canada a dynamic speaker despite his faux pas in calling Michael Wilson the slightly more flamboyant Michael Jackson. Wilkins speech had political undertones, yet he managed to entertain the audience quite well with amusing tales of how the Canadian media have portrayed him.   
Toronto Star Editor in Chief Fred Kuntz stumped Wilkins with a question about what qualities Americans could aspire to adopt from their Northern neighbours. Wilkins recovered with a response about talented Canadian performers and the ability of Canadians to respond to our American friends in times of need. Post 911 and Katrina were used as examples.
We were lucky to secure front row seats (thanks to Hamilton Spec. Editor-in-Chief David Estok who spotted Wilkins sneaking out of the entertainment portion of the evening and grabbed his table) and be entertained 'Winnipeg Style with the Opening Extravaganza hosted by the Winnipeg Free Press. Kudos to the organizers who coordinated this opening night social held at the Regent Casino. The food was delicious and entertainment very impressive.
Fiddler Sierra Noble had us all foot-tapping and the world-renowned Royal Winnipeg Ballet presented an outstanding performance. The Ukrainian Men's Chorus and Russalka Dance Ensemble closed the evening's entertainment. I'm positive that the entertainers thought Managing Editor Jim Poling was the Ambassador and performed their hearts out for him!! (an honest mistake considering we stole the Ambassador's table) Between the entertainment, our table had lively conversation about the day's program. We compared notes on whose children under 30 actually read newspapers (not so many!) echoing the content of futurist Ian Morrison and also managed to conjure up some great new ideas to capture these readers and support our 'second curve' (see Jim's earlier blog). Looking forward to another full day tomorrow...
Kelly

Manitoba Nights

Just back from the "Opening Extravaganza".
The Winnipeg Freep threw together a higher class of party than most journalists are used to— offering a 3 1/2 hour parade of local talent that ranged from an illusionist to stomp your feet Ukrainian dancers to a powerful male choir and a marvellous Leonard Cohen set danced by young members of the Winnipeg Royal Ballet. We were greeted by the lieutenant governor and the premier and were joined by US ambassador David Wilcox, er Wilkins.
We noshed on bison and turkey and sushi in the cavernous lower level of the Regent Casino.
No jokes  here - just a tip of the hat to the Free Press folks who obviously put in a lot of hours to pull this off.
Thanks.
Bill

Throwing Curve Balls

Keynote address from Ian Morrison - social scientist Ian is a "futurist" who specializes in providing  strategic business advice to companies.
He talked about a business model involving two intersecting curves. The first curve, is a business curve that is eventually in decline. But pay attention to your fundamentals - they are what got you in the phone book in the first place. The second is a new curve is a new business model driven by new technology and new consumers. The trick is to figure out when to jump from the first curve to the second.
Morrison offered an optimistic view of newspaper industry. Said industry as a whole owns some powerful brands and coaxed industry leaders to be aware of opportunities on second curve. He said there are tremendous on-line opportunities and said content does matter.
"But content is yours, mine, theirs," he warned.
He said today's consumers want a broader view and are savvy enough to search out the content they want. A successful model will harness a variety of content and present it intelligently.
Some key points:

• 2/3 of people online do not speak english.
• Successful entrepreneurs will extend their brand.
• Thinkof news and content for the Blackberry generation.
• Should there be an "American Idol" for citizen journalists (recognizing the best and the brightest)
• People want good content.
• Blog aggregators offer more than the single views (which may be rantings of a mad typist).

Whimsical Learning moment: "If you don't answer email, people stop sending it to you."
Thinking Moment of the Day: Morrison offered biz advice he ripped off from the back label of a condiment jar: "Keep cool. Don't freeze."
blogged by Jpscribbler
jpoling@thespec.com

Guess who else is coming to lunch?

Bruce Annan, managing director of Classified Intelligence LLC (and a presenter tomorrow, viz: Thee Personalization of Online Content and Advertising") wins the prize for the first (and we hope not the last) bit of user generated content:
"After his excellent presentation Wednesday morning ("How Brand Diversity & Consumer Insight Drive Growth"), NYT Regional Media VP James Gold was asked whether their regional papers are seeing the same erosion of classifieds as have metro dailies.
His answer: "not yet."
Meanwhile, do you suppose it was coincidental that when Kijiji.ca this week awarded $5,000 for charity to celebrate its "500,000th listing", it chose a Winnipeg woman?
Kijiji is the two-year-old, EBay-owned version of Craigslist, operating in 22 countries (but not the U.S.). It claims 3.2 million users in Canada.
You can read all about it on page B2 of today's Winnipeg Free Press. God bless newspapers that can be counted on to give glowing coverage to the competitors coming to eat their lunch.
Is Kijiji eating your lunch? Perhaps 'not yet'."
Thanks, Bruce. If anyone else is interested in offering thoughts, reports, gossip or news from the convention - this is a group blog and everyone's in the group. Email your post to me at - bdunphy@thespec.com , or, if you want to do more than a single post, let me know that, and I'll add you to our list so you can post directly via email.
Bill

The missionary position

Here’s the thing.
I'm here on a mission and here's my position: I don’t think newspapers get it yet. The web that is. Or maybe that should be that too many newspaper people don't get it yet.
So I'm going to nose around while I'm here.
Ten, 12 years after first dipping their toes into the river of info the web was, many are still figuring out even more clever ways to dump their newspaper into ever more clever internet boxes — instead of understanding the fundamental shifts that have occurred as our audience discovers and embraces the “I” in interactive.
The web, it’s increasing speed and ubiquity, and the emerging “good enough” browser-based software tools, are creating an online space where users can connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime and perform tasks that as little as a decade ago required a doctorate and more dollars than most of us could stuff into a typewriter case.
And people have not been slow to seize those tools.

Stylin'

We've landed.
I shared a ride in from the Winnipeg International Airport (4 minute wait for my bags) with Spectator editor-in-chief David Estok, advertising VP and (now) erstwhile co-blogger, Kelly Montague and two other nice people who have done nothing to deserve having their names dragged through this blog.
We didn't just share a ride, however.
We shared a sttttreeeeeeetch limo. White. With a bar, a sunroof, and loooong leather seats. I think there was an 8 track.
Someone suggested popping up through the sunroof, and whooping loudly as we arrived.  David made everybody promise not to tell we'd taken a limo.
Ooops.
Bill

You Can Get there from Here....

....but are you sure you want to do it wearing that tie?
For those new to Winnipeg (or just those who like their information geo-spatially anchored) we've built a little annotated map  with push pins at relevant locations and pop up info boxes containing information that may or may not be useful (i.e. photos, phone numbers web links etc.) . I'm not sure this convention will range widely enough about this city's downtown to make the map terribly useful, but you never know. So I built one, just in case.
You can see our Winnipeg '07 interactive map by going .... here. Click on the index of  links on the left to navigate to that spot on the map, or push one of the push pins.
Bill

Red River Serial

When I first asked the Canadian Newspaper Association's indefatigable director of member services, Bryan Cantley, if he'd be interested in having the upcoming convention "blogged" he demurred gently, thinking, I guess, that I was asking him to do it, or maybe fishing for some kind of freelance gig.
"We're a pretty small organization, Bill" he said, "we don't have a lot of staff."
But when I suggested I would put it together for him, he fairly jumped at the chance.
So here we are.
I'm Bill Dunphy, the poverty reporter for the Hamilton Spectator newspaper. And I was invited out to Winnipeg and the convention (more formally entitled, "Newspaper '07 - Taking Care of Business" - an apparent homage to Winnipeg native son, Randy Bachman. Or is that Burton Cummings?) to join a panel discussing the Learning Newsroom project my paper was part of. (Look for us Thursday morning during one of the breakout sessions, I'll be presenting with Vickey Williams, the den mother for the Learning Newsroom experiment.)