Weekly notes 08/28-09/04

Interview with Manuel Perez
Supervising Producer-Interactive
CNN Interactive
U.S. Editorial

Highlights:

Org. Structure

What's interesting is that even mega stars like CNN.com are having recruiting troubles. That's me talking again about the organizational structure and the importance of versatile and talented staff that is responsible for creating the company's major product -- content. Dot-com is on a dry land for talented online journalists, as what the "old force" learned, it learned on the spot, but there are no people who come in with specific education in online journalism and convergence -- at least, not yet, or not as many as desired.

The need is in professionals of digital storytelling, which still is a rare talent/skill to find, bus so much needed by the industry.

I produced several multimedia projects working in a team with a writer whose background is quite impressive and includes experience of working for major newspapers and wire services. But the thing is that there's no multimedia background, or knowledge, which, clearly, complicates the process of achieving goals. So, I see why dot-com is struggling to find talents.

Sustaining the product value
On a different note, there's a struggle to refine products all the time. In the late 90's video integration was crude as the videos themselves (very low quality). Now, video is integrated into interactivity and textual stories. In the latter, it is a link next to a relevant line in the story; that would pop up a video player window to show you something that's better to see than to read about. Video is also being vigorously integrated into multimedia content: photo galleries and explainers, as well as interactive maps. This only makes sense from a business perspective, where there is so much video content that is aggregated in the process of newsgathering, it would be wrong not to put it through all available channels of distribution: from cable to online.

Reputation
When nothing happens, people watch/read Fox, but when there’s breaking news – it’s always CNN, as the network, along with its other distribution channels like Internet, became almost a synonym for breaking news. The reputation of the brand name may be considered to be well deserved: CNN was the first (or the best) to have covered the Berlin Wall destruction, the Persian Gulf War, September 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina devastation to name a few. For the latter, the network even got a Peabody Award in 2005. The value of dot-com’s product in the event of breaking news is consistency, proven results, worldwide coverage, speed and accuracy. In addition, there’s a network developed perception of “the most trusted name in the news,” which translated to online beautifully. And it even got better: on the Internet people go t find out what’s breaking right this second, and, chances are, CNN.com will tell them.

Stickiness
An online metric crucial to the success of an online medium… On the editorial side of dot-com, there is a continuous effort to improve writing, headlines, provide more compelling images and frequent updates. To pull people in, there are breaking news e-mail alerts and banners.