MSNBC.com brings you to the news
by Marti Howell
MSNBC and MSNBC.com have been bringing the news to its audience 24 hours a day since Monday, July 15, 1996. Now, MSNBC.com will bring its audience – in the form of the “citizen journalist” – to the news.
MSNBC has long been a leader in news production. A joint venture of Microsoft and NBC, MSNBC cable news network and MSNBC.com news site on the Internet employ the newsgathering resources of more than 200 NBC-affiliate stations and reach an estimated 82 million American households with its 24-hour news coverage on television alone.
MSNBC.com is a news web site featuring national and international news coverage and on-demand streaming video from correspondents around the world. It has clear navigation options and news is delivered in a wide variety of formats – from morning news talk show clips to complete written packages. Included within the site are Newsweek scientific and technical articles and photos, and news reports by Brian Williams. There are pictures of Paul Newman and video of a rare giant squid. Personalized user pages are easy to build.
NBC News maintains editorial control over the content on MSNBC.com and local NBC affiliates have the option to insert local news content.
In the news game, journalism has not come so far as to be able to cast off old strategies entirely. It remains crucial that a news entity – in any form – reach an audience in a timely fashion with news content of value. That often means getting the news first and then disseminating it to the largest audience possible as quickly as possible.
MSNBC.com knows this formula and uses it wisely. This year alone, MSNBC.com snatched up several huge Web crowds. The terrorist bombings in London on July 7, 2005 resulted in the on-demand generation of 4.4 million video streams featuring coverage of events throughout the day. MSNBC.com sent e-mail news alerts regarding the London explosions to consumers more than 45 minutes before one of its fiercest competitors, CNN.com, broke the story on their website. MSNBC.com sources reported that on that day alone, the site saw 10.3 “unique” viewers (news consumers who were alerted to the bombings via personalized MSNBC.com news alerts or who regularly use MSNBC.com as their primary news source) and 51 million total page views. That also included a 400 percent increase in international viewers, MSNBC.com sources said.
Earlier in the year, a June interview of Tom Cruise on the “Today” show by Matt Lauer and streamed on MSNBC.com the following day garnered 2.5 million viewers. MSNBC.com delivered the Michael Jackson verdict on 630,000 video steams on June 17.
“Whether the news of the day is a tragic world event or a celebrity making headlines, consumers know they can trust NBC News and come to MSNBC.com for the information they want,” General Manager and Publisher of MSNBC.com Charlie Tillinghast said in a July press release.
MSNBC.com has invested in another key area of the news business – the bottom line. Another aspect of a successful news organization is its ability to market itself and to attract advertisers. MSNBC.com hired Catherine Captain, former Director of Marketing Research for USA Today, to head their marketing division in May.
“I have left the number one print newspaper in the country to join the number one news site in the country,” Captain said at a May press conference. “I am inspired by the undeniable success of this medium and the opportunity for marketing to fuel MSNBC.com’s growth.
“Who could ask for more?” she added.
MSNBC.com is also an industry leader in pod casting, allowing users to subscribe to a number of scheduled programs that can be easily transferred to iPod and other MP3 players. This feature alone is likely to make MSNBC.com popular with a whole new audience.
It would indeed seem that MSNBC.com has it all – news, an audience willing and able to consume it, a keen eye on future goals and careful attention to profit, a reputation for solid journalism, a skilled team of media professionals… and even the latest in tech comforts.
Why, then, would MSNBC.com choose to enter the participatory journalism game? Non-journalist contributors writing for MSNBC? Will they require constant handholding – read untold hours of editing – or will the pieces be hopelessly unreadable? Will these unschooled masses bring down the wrath of libel lawsuits on NBC? Will they elect to post obscenities? A similar undertaking failed at the Los Angeles Times.
MSNBC.com is electing to take the gamble.
MSNBC.com is now bringing you to the news.
Citizen journalists can currently submit stories to MSNBC.com’s “Citizen Journalists Report” web page. So far, anyway, the more intimate partnership of MSNBC.com and its civilian reporters seems to be going well.
The “Citizen Journalists Report” features stories on everything from hurricane troubles to high prices at the gas pump to the impact of military base closings on local populations. The stories all have one thing in common – they have already passed the consumer-interest test. At least a portion of the audience is interested enough in these subjects to write about them. In the news business, this is a reliable – if not always failsafe – indicator of what is important to the citizenry at large. Editors have long used letters to the editor as an informal barometer of public opinion.
Another advantage: citizen journalist can often file stories in a more timely manner as they are usually residents of the area about which they write. They frequently have the story before mainstream journalists board their planes. Such was the case during 2005’s Hurricane Katrina… and the news world took notice.
“These are the images that will be critical in the future,” NBC Executive Producer Mark Lukasiewicz said.
In this way, MSNBC.com is poised to be one of the pioneers whose efforts in this arena will change the face of modern journalism.
“It’s very clearly going to be something that’s going to have a big impact on how we do our work,” Lukasiewicz predicted.
In general, more and more consumers turn to the Internet as their primary source of news. Many media researchers point to the events of 9/11 as the defining moment in this market shift.
“Every time an event like this happens, people are motivated to try the web,” Internet analyst and researcher Christopher Kelly said.
Increasingly, citizen journalists are becoming a part of that equation, Kelly noted.
Recently, citizen journalist Shelley Page from Ottawa, Canada, won a national journalism award there for a three-part series on women’s health. The future for the citizen journalist does indeed look bright.
But what about the future of MSNBC.com and its brigade of citizen journalists? Faster dissemination of news? More local coverage? More diverse coverage of social and political issues? A whole new world based on the view of the true “average man”? It looks like NBC’s MSNBC.com is going to find out.
“MSNBC.com is the destination of choice for millions of informed, educated and active citizens,” MSNBC.com GM and Publisher Charlie Tillinghast said.
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MSNBC and MSNBC.com have been bringing the news to its audience 24 hours a day since Monday, July 15, 1996. Now, MSNBC.com will bring its audience – in the form of the “citizen journalist” – to the news.
MSNBC has long been a leader in news production. A joint venture of Microsoft and NBC, MSNBC cable news network and MSNBC.com news site on the Internet employ the newsgathering resources of more than 200 NBC-affiliate stations and reach an estimated 82 million American households with its 24-hour news coverage on television alone.
MSNBC.com is a news web site featuring national and international news coverage and on-demand streaming video from correspondents around the world. It has clear navigation options and news is delivered in a wide variety of formats – from morning news talk show clips to complete written packages. Included within the site are Newsweek scientific and technical articles and photos, and news reports by Brian Williams. There are pictures of Paul Newman and video of a rare giant squid. Personalized user pages are easy to build.
NBC News maintains editorial control over the content on MSNBC.com and local NBC affiliates have the option to insert local news content.
In the news game, journalism has not come so far as to be able to cast off old strategies entirely. It remains crucial that a news entity – in any form – reach an audience in a timely fashion with news content of value. That often means getting the news first and then disseminating it to the largest audience possible as quickly as possible.
MSNBC.com knows this formula and uses it wisely. This year alone, MSNBC.com snatched up several huge Web crowds. The terrorist bombings in London on July 7, 2005 resulted in the on-demand generation of 4.4 million video streams featuring coverage of events throughout the day. MSNBC.com sent e-mail news alerts regarding the London explosions to consumers more than 45 minutes before one of its fiercest competitors, CNN.com, broke the story on their website. MSNBC.com sources reported that on that day alone, the site saw 10.3 “unique” viewers (news consumers who were alerted to the bombings via personalized MSNBC.com news alerts or who regularly use MSNBC.com as their primary news source) and 51 million total page views. That also included a 400 percent increase in international viewers, MSNBC.com sources said.
Earlier in the year, a June interview of Tom Cruise on the “Today” show by Matt Lauer and streamed on MSNBC.com the following day garnered 2.5 million viewers. MSNBC.com delivered the Michael Jackson verdict on 630,000 video steams on June 17.
“Whether the news of the day is a tragic world event or a celebrity making headlines, consumers know they can trust NBC News and come to MSNBC.com for the information they want,” General Manager and Publisher of MSNBC.com Charlie Tillinghast said in a July press release.
MSNBC.com has invested in another key area of the news business – the bottom line. Another aspect of a successful news organization is its ability to market itself and to attract advertisers. MSNBC.com hired Catherine Captain, former Director of Marketing Research for USA Today, to head their marketing division in May.
“I have left the number one print newspaper in the country to join the number one news site in the country,” Captain said at a May press conference. “I am inspired by the undeniable success of this medium and the opportunity for marketing to fuel MSNBC.com’s growth.
“Who could ask for more?” she added.
MSNBC.com is also an industry leader in pod casting, allowing users to subscribe to a number of scheduled programs that can be easily transferred to iPod and other MP3 players. This feature alone is likely to make MSNBC.com popular with a whole new audience.
It would indeed seem that MSNBC.com has it all – news, an audience willing and able to consume it, a keen eye on future goals and careful attention to profit, a reputation for solid journalism, a skilled team of media professionals… and even the latest in tech comforts.
Why, then, would MSNBC.com choose to enter the participatory journalism game? Non-journalist contributors writing for MSNBC? Will they require constant handholding – read untold hours of editing – or will the pieces be hopelessly unreadable? Will these unschooled masses bring down the wrath of libel lawsuits on NBC? Will they elect to post obscenities? A similar undertaking failed at the Los Angeles Times.
MSNBC.com is electing to take the gamble.
MSNBC.com is now bringing you to the news.
Citizen journalists can currently submit stories to MSNBC.com’s “Citizen Journalists Report” web page. So far, anyway, the more intimate partnership of MSNBC.com and its civilian reporters seems to be going well.
The “Citizen Journalists Report” features stories on everything from hurricane troubles to high prices at the gas pump to the impact of military base closings on local populations. The stories all have one thing in common – they have already passed the consumer-interest test. At least a portion of the audience is interested enough in these subjects to write about them. In the news business, this is a reliable – if not always failsafe – indicator of what is important to the citizenry at large. Editors have long used letters to the editor as an informal barometer of public opinion.
Another advantage: citizen journalist can often file stories in a more timely manner as they are usually residents of the area about which they write. They frequently have the story before mainstream journalists board their planes. Such was the case during 2005’s Hurricane Katrina… and the news world took notice.
“These are the images that will be critical in the future,” NBC Executive Producer Mark Lukasiewicz said.
In this way, MSNBC.com is poised to be one of the pioneers whose efforts in this arena will change the face of modern journalism.
“It’s very clearly going to be something that’s going to have a big impact on how we do our work,” Lukasiewicz predicted.
In general, more and more consumers turn to the Internet as their primary source of news. Many media researchers point to the events of 9/11 as the defining moment in this market shift.
“Every time an event like this happens, people are motivated to try the web,” Internet analyst and researcher Christopher Kelly said.
Increasingly, citizen journalists are becoming a part of that equation, Kelly noted.
Recently, citizen journalist Shelley Page from Ottawa, Canada, won a national journalism award there for a three-part series on women’s health. The future for the citizen journalist does indeed look bright.
But what about the future of MSNBC.com and its brigade of citizen journalists? Faster dissemination of news? More local coverage? More diverse coverage of social and political issues? A whole new world based on the view of the true “average man”? It looks like NBC’s MSNBC.com is going to find out.
“MSNBC.com is the destination of choice for millions of informed, educated and active citizens,” MSNBC.com GM and Publisher Charlie Tillinghast said.
-30-
posted by Marti at 6:06 PM
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