Raise the Hammer

This problem needs attention from the top-of-the-house CBC executives responsible for this national experiment.

Actually, I suspect it's these 'top 'o the house' executives who are insisting on 'dial-moving' as the measure of success. I agree that there needs to be more focus, innovation, and good old-fashioned investigative journalism at the local level, but my sense is that the real lack of vision is much further up.

To be charitable, it's been five months since the full team (two producers, two reporters, videographer) was put in place.

Having listened to the broadcast and the web replay (metrics, yo) I was struck by the distinction between the blank cheque enthusiasm CBC HQ has reportedly evinced for this digital foray, RG's blue sky digital-is-synonymous-with-evolution spiel and the pervasive worship of traffic.


~3 min

Gillespie: “I see the metrics every morning and I know what worked and what didn’t work. Worked and didn’t work in the sense of audience went to and what the audience did not go to… one of the fascinating things about working on this platform is that my gut instinct as a traditional journalist – I am trained in traditional journalism – is sometimes wrong. Things that traditional journalists think will resonate with the audience don’t…. I think that there’s a real gulf between big traditional media and the audience…. People don’t see themselves in the media often enough… So I’m very sensitive to that….”

~10 min

Gillespie: “I don’t think the message is, people aren’t interested in it, I think the message is, you didn’t get it right. So that’s fine. I don’t throw out the whole concept, I go back to the drawing board…”

~17 min

Gillespie: “They, the big they [CBC], are just trying to figure out metrics now, because there’s no such thing as us. We don’t exist. Every other market, there is cross-promotional work. They have a radio station or a television station. In many cases, they have both. We have nothing except what we do down on James Street. The challenge we face… is how do we get our message out?”

~19m

Smith: Do you decide your stories on what other mediums are doing or not doing?

Gillespie: No.

Smith: No. It’s just, this is your formula and this is how you’re going to approach it.

Gillespie: Well, formula’s the wrong word. It’s more like what’s in my gut.

Smith: So you’re going by gut when you’re finding what stories…

Gillespie: But I see where my gut is right and wrong. When I came here I knew that the community was undervalued by journalists. That journalists make the mistake of having a very niche view of what journalism is. That community was somehow soft news or unimportant news. But the truth is that what traditional news – and I’m a news journalist – what they generally think of as important is not the same level of importance as the same level of importance of people I work with on the street, of people I have coffee with, it’s not the centre of their world. And unless journalists can understand that they need to have a broader perspective on what is important to people, how would you ever expect an audience if you can’t… you know, it’s like I said earlier: I don’t see myself reflected in it. People don’t see themselves reflected in it…. So, the view from the people who say, you should be at City Hall all the time, We could be at City Hall for the 200 people who read about every small thing that happens at City Hall, but that’s not where the audience in Hamilton is at…"

I attended the panel discussion on the future of the CBC at MIP a couple of weeks ago, and was very disturbed by something Paul Berton said. He gave the CBC back-handed praise for crediting their audience with intelligence, but then claimed that all the smart talk makes the average person feel the CBC is "arrogant".

Leaving aside the disturbing revelation that the editor of our most influential media outlet thinks that not talking down to your audience is arrogant, I was struck again by this as I listened to RG's dilemma.

Here is a guy who is likely cognizant of the kind of criticism expressed by Berton (and probably under pressure from higher-ups to increase readership as well), and is trying to address it by providing content that is more 'popular', only to alienate the core audience they've cultivated over the years by providing quality journalism. He can't win.

Comment edited by highwater on 2012-10-19 14:02:38

Succinctly captured in the CBC's new five-year strategy and its guaranteed-to-disappoint slogan, "Everyone, Every way".

Oh God, are you serious? That is the worst. Smacks of desperation.

"Everything At The Wall, At Once" evidently tested poorly.

@Highwater

I think Roger (CBC Hamilton) can win, but they can't have it all. Like anyone who does anything these days, they must have a clearly defined audience, and it can't just be the general public. Even companies that sell dog food don't just sell to the generic audience of pet owners.

For the life of me, I can't tell who CBC Hamilton's intended audience is. What I hope is not the case is that the CBC is throwing out a brand that's worth something; a brand that's already differentiated; a brand that does not now, and never has, connoted lowest common denominator.

If CBC HQ is thinking that online is only of interest to people who have a short attention span and don't care about depth or detail, then I guess you structure your offering accordingly. But why throw out the brand essence and join the crowd instead of playing to your proven strengths. This is starting to look like a case of brand confusion simply because it's a new medium. Anyone who knows anything about branding knows that brand extensions are what smart organizations do, especially if they have limited resources. They build on what they've already got. Creating a new brand is very expensive. Extending an existing one is not only smarter, it's a lot more economical.

For the life of me, I can't tell who CBC Hamilton's intended audience is.

Aye, there's the rub. Problem is, on the local level, the audience for more in-depth reportage and higher-brow cultural offerings tends not to be evenly distributed geographically, which opens them up to the criticism that they are not serving all the communities across Hamilton.

They're already being accused of being James N-centric, but let's face it; the kind of people plugged into the cultural and economic evolution of our city (still symbolically centred around James N at least for the time being), are also more likely to be representative of the CBC's historic audience. Providing more of the kind of content that audience demands runs the risk of confirming the perceptions of the CBC as being too focused on the urban/elitist/James N hipster/lefty tree-hugger/whatever demographic.

Their 'brand' may serve them well on the national level, but it's alot harder to stick to it and still be relevant to a large cross section of the community at the local level. 'Can't win' may be a bit defeatist I admit, but I sure wouldn't want to be in his shoes.

Comment edited by highwater on 2012-10-19 14:38:37

I don't think we should over complicate this. As mentioned earlier, create a reason for people to habitually check into CBC Hamilton and a podcast that could be simulcast on another community station is a very easy way to achieve this. Plus, through the variety of guests and topics, you are going to hit a diversity of people and demographics.

Frankly, if that's the only change they make, their brand would expand significantly in Hamilton as they would not just be reprinting or re tweeting other stories but using existing community people and knowledge to create new stories through every broadcast/podcast.

Roger talked about a video interview he did months ago with Bob Bratina and that it "didn't move the dial" (I guess I was one of the apparently few people who saw it). It was the last one CBC Hamilton did for months. It wasn't until last week that another one was posted, this time with Rob MacIsaac that, according to Gillespie, also "didn't move the dial" either.

Now, I'm in a bit of an echo chamber when it comes to Hamilton news/politics (here, reddit, my twitter feed, and the Hamilton Dissidents page), but I saw the Bob Bratina video all over the place. I'm surprised that it "didn't move the dial."

The Rob MacIssac one, though, I didn't hear about until right now.

Imho, the problem is a fundamnetal lack of understanding of how people use web-based content. The terrible usability of the newsmap revealed that... interaction without any kind of "back" button is an obvious sign that their designers never had usability at heart. I mean, how can you have a news website where the latest headlines crushed into a left sidebar below the fold?

The newsmap would be a great feature for a market where there was content coming in from every corner of the city, and especially a heavily de-centralized market. If you were setting up a site for the K-W tri-city? Newsmap might work there.... but not Hamilton, and especially with only 2.5 reporters and a grab-bag of non-news twitter sources.

You look all over and you'll see that video, audio, and written content do best when they're segregated. Folks who want audio want it all audio, folks who want written want it all written, and folks who want video want all video. Posting video or audio content once in a blue moon will obviously not move the dial since you lost those people weeks ago.

Users want content they can build habits around. They want a daily podcast, or daily updates they can read over their morning coffee. This "try everything once" approach means there's no way to build these habits around their site.

In my dreams, CBC hamilton would have launched as streaming radio with tie-ins to have the best of their programs simulcast on college radio and all content available as podcasts almost immediately. As a bonus they could have expanded their streaming technology to allow pause and resume of live feeds (like a home PVR).

I totally agree with you on content types. You gotta be all in one (or all) -you can't mishmash.

They can be in multiple content types, but they have to offer each one as a complete service on its own. Something that would stand alone apart from the others. Even a weekly podcast would be something worthy of standing on its own separate from the webpage, for example, and would a reasonable goal for something to offer alongside the website with their present staffing. But just randomly posting video and audio content on the web occasionally? Your page has readers, not viewers and listeners.

Comment edited by Pxtl on 2012-10-19 17:41:19

It's interesting this discussion is occurring today when 'Hamilton' (or perhaps a Hamiltonian) is actually in the national spotlight.

Heres the article on the CBC regarding Linc http://www.cbc.ca/hamilton/news/story/20...

Heres the Globe and Mails take on the same story http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nati...

One of these articles is basically Oh! the Linc died. The other is an in depth article regarding the life and times of someone who was truly impressive and a Hamiltonian to boot

While I'm sure much of the globes article was prewritten, It far out weighs the CBC article in quality and quantity. The Hamilton branch of the CBC seems to be more concerned about itself than Hamilton.

If you removed all of the police press releases (they don't write these the police do) from CBC Hamilton and you would be left with pretty much nothing.

In my eyes the only good part about the whole thing is Paul Wilson, who I think is only native Hamiltonian on staff.

Yep it wasn't too long after CBC Hammer started that it basically reported nothing but what was on the police scanner. With the exception of reporting on a weekend event or two, they haven't done anything to "raise the hammer." In fact I'd be willing to bet if you read only CBC Hamilton you become completely negative....and maybe want to move to Toronto.

CBC Hamilton may only have 2.5 reporters, but it also has 2 producers who are surely possessed of some writing ability beyond tweeting links. And quite possibly access to CBC researchers and reportage.

I don't think they actually tweet the links themselves, they probably have some script that does that when they throw a new article on the site.

Am I wrong to think the "Mountain News" and its various equivalents seem to have more content (and more interesting content) than CBC Hamilton?

And yes, I check CBC Hamilton everyday, and hope that they improve their product soon.

I don't think they actually tweet the links themselves, they probably have some script that does that when they throw a new article on the site.

That's probably true, given the bloodless bot-speak and Borg-like RT activity of @RogerGillespie and @CBCHamilton. ‏@ConradCollaco, being a non-executive producer, is more real and hands-on (even if his signature "you've been quoted in my story" routine is robotic).

What I don't quite get is why the institutional account (@CBCHamilton) seems to carry RG's personal voice, such as it is, while @RogerGillespie is just a cascade of impersonal site links. Seems backwards, but maybe that's the point. (Paradigm shift!)

And no, you're not wrong to think that the community weeklies are running circles around CBC Hamilton. They're offering more substance and they're actually making good on the promise of "news on the street where you live".

To me, what I would have liked to hear from Roger, was his idea of what "success" would look like. We could then judge how effective CBC Hamilton has been so far in terms of deploying limited resources to those ends.

I think they have done some things well: good coverage of farming/food issues, good coverage of social trends.

I think we also need to remember that most Hamiltonians still get their Hamilton news via the Spec and CHCH - how you reach a broad audience from a digital service is not clear to me, and so it is not surprising that Roger may try things that don't make sense if all you are doing is trying to reach the on-line community.

I haven't been knocked out of my chair by CBC hamilton, and I think it is worth having a public conversation about it, but I do think there needs to be a distinction between criticizing what Roger is doing, and criticizing a funding and mandate context which limits what any head of CBC Hamilton could go.

If the the CFMU interview is anything to go on, mandate was never a constrictive limit. His description of the mothership's expectations seemed pretty blank-cheque.

On a more mundane level, the CBC's aims were described on RTH almost a year ago:

CBC spokesperson Chris Ball explains that the new service will be "more than a website. It will provide weather, local business information/listings and news (and more). At street level, you'll be able to know what's happening not just in your city, but in your neighbourhood, on your street."

News reporting will "cover a wide spectrum" of topics of local interest.

The site will have a dedicated Hamilton staff who will publish stories daily, seven days a week. Some stories will include audio/video segments, but the service will not run as a live-streamed 'broadcast'.

According to Ball, the CBC is looking to hire staff "with a connection to the city/region" and "there will also be ample opportunity for Hamiltonians to contribute. We want to collaborate with the community, asking them to contribute to our coverage through news tips, photos, video, commentary and conversation" around the issues.

http://raisethehammer.org/blog/2319/cbc_plans_new_digital_service_for_hamilton

*

Funding is another matter, obviously, but there are any number of local examples of informative, timely, hyperlocal digital reportage that is produced for next to nothing, if not nothing.

CBC Hamilton is a small startup. RG acknowledges this, along with the advantage of small startups: agility, freedom to innovate, speed of implementation. the CBC Hamilton team have that and around a half-century of experience in the life of the city. In light of these advantages, I find it kind of perplexing that they haven't made further inroads.

CBC K-W appears to continue the producer-rich trend....

Host (Radio & Digital Media)- WAT00011
Producer (assigned as Senior Producer) - WAT00004
Producer (Online Curator) - WAT00005

https://cbc.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl