Two stories about planned coverage of the Democratic National Convention hit me upside the head this morning.
First, from U.S. News & World Report's Washington Whispers column:
Rocked by warnings that it will cost news organizations $50,000 more per reporter to cover Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain, a growing number of journalists and press pundits are questioning why the media is staffing up coverage of the political conventions where little major news is expected. At least one paper and several Washington bureaus, we're told, have budgeted only $100,000 for political coverage, and their convention teams will eat most of it, leaving little to put reporters on the campaign trail. [Emphasis added.]
Seriously? A convention team will eat "most" of a $100,000 newspaper budget? In other words, $50,000 plus?
Good Lord. No wonder traditional media outlets are tanking. Not only are they filled with sycophantic stenographers, they are working with outrageously bloated budgets. How can you possibly send a reporter or two to a five-day convention and rack up a $50,000 bill? Now maybe each outlet is sending ... I don't know ... 20 reporters each, in which case the per-journalist cost is obviously less but the decision exponentially more stupid.
Contrast this with a story about bloggers going to the convention in the New York Times today, an article entitled The Year of the Political Blogger Has Arrived:
"Send the Blend to Denver" reads the ChipIn widget on her blog’s home page [Pam's House Blend] that tracks donations from readers; so far they have pledged more than $5,000 to transport Ms. Spaulding and three other bloggers to the convention.
**
Through contributions as small as $5 or $10, Mr. Anderson [The Albany Project] said, he was able to raise about $1,500 for his Denver trip.
**
Now a yellow "donate" icon on his site [Green Mountain Daily] links to a separate PayPal account, where readers can contribute toward Mr. Odum’s estimated $1,000 travel costs. He said he had received enough support to pay for the $400 air fare.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Traditional media outlets are claiming it costs in excess of $10,000 a day per reporter. Bloggers? Heh. An average, it looks like, of about ... $200-$300 a day, tops.
Now before I get inundated with emails and comments that I don't understand the overhead of traditional media, let me stipulate that, in fact, I do. You see, I've been a newspaper publisher, sweating over allocation of editorial budget and monthly P & L statements. I know full well there are non-obvious costs to the outsider of fronting a news organization: health care, professional dues, brick-and-mortar property costs, equipment, employee expenses that bloggers don't face. So I'm willing to ... say ... triple, even quintuple,what it should cost a professional news organization to send staff to an event. But there is no calculus in the known universe that can justify nearly 50 times the cost (unless newspaper management, in talking to Washington Whispers, fudged a bit and didn't pro-rate its annual costs).
What it does reflect is either management lying to reporters about how much they "burden" the outlet, or businesses that truly are the cumbersome, establishment, jacked-up-expense-report outfits they appear to be. Neither explanation bodes well for the future of traditional media, and visions of behemoth, slow-responding dinosaurs and scurrying little mammals come to mind.
This winnowing-out imagery may be shared by the dinosaurs as well, which might go a ways toward explaining why the New York Times has chosen to place its story on bloggers (And hey! It's even "The Year of Us!") on the front of its Fashion & Style section. What? We're a fad, like hot pants or mohawks? They can only hope so. At least we now know that the ridiculous slot in the same section that was awarded to coverage of the BlogHer conference may not have been due to sexism; hey, gang, it may have just been belittling of bloggers in general! What comfort!
And as an aside, it's hard to imagine anything more hilarious than Phillip Anderson of The Albany Project--aka Daily Kos's own lipris--posing with a brew, a dog, a Mac, and a baseball cap in his usual (how shall we say this?) casual apparel under a blazing Fashion & Style masthead.
Funny thing is, if the traditional media doesn't get its expense act together and learn how to cut costs and compete in the new media environment, the guy in the baseball cap--and all of us he represents--is going to have the last laugh.