steezyjibber
Active member
Why?
No longer a purple name
- Thread starter steezyjibber
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Basically the main thing happening right now is programs are completely changing, we're pivoting a bit with how we are using budget to supply content. As of now we have a short list of people helping us produce very specific articles and the programs for photo and journalism have been cut, meaning they will not run this year at all. The people helping us with the articles are the people who did the most last year with the journalism program and thats the bottom line, its completely based on numbers. If you have any questions feel free to hit me up evan@newschoolers.com
steezyjibber
Active member
had a hunch something was changing
13736218:eheath said:
13736612:steezyjibber said:
Something had to change. For reference, the people who are still involved in some capacity produced more than 97% of the total traffic from the program last year.
We're still very much hoping to see people contributing content and if someone does regularly impress us, they will 100% be included in what we're doing moving forward.
steezyjibber
Active member
13736673:Twig said:
For what reasons exactly? I don't mean that in a harsh way, just trying to understand
13736824:SDrvper said:
Stephen, honestly I am sad to see the programs as they were disappear. But the fact that the reality of the numbers is the exact opposite of what you just said, and that is the reason they are gone.
Everyone who actually did work hard, is still involved. The people who haven't made the cut essentially had a chance and didn't take it. I'm going to use Ben as an example simply because he made this post. Last year in our 6 month program period he posted two articles total (both of which went out on FB btw). The reason the people who got 97% of the views did so is nothing to do with what got posted on social media, it's because they wrote the overwhelming majority of the content, plain and simple.
Honestly, it makes total sense. There were a pretty large number of purple names floating around for a while - and only a fraction of them putting out content. Compared to the standard for journalism both in and out of the industry is was really disproportionate.
The program idea was a good concept, it's a bummer that it didn't work out, but it makes way more sense to just focus on certain people who you know will put out major content.
The program idea was a good concept, it's a bummer that it didn't work out, but it makes way more sense to just focus on certain people who you know will put out major content.
13736824:SDrvper said:
I will emphasis that this is just not true, at all. As twig said, the people who are involved are the only people who actually put out content both in volume and consistency. The way you get views and traction on articles isn't just posting them on social media, the volume of content you produce is huge as well. Producing articles online isn't about putting out one piece of good content a week hoping it will do well, its about an onslaught of articles of which some hit but most are lackluster, blogging for lack of a better term is what gets traction for news and the people who are involved are helping us with this kind of effort.
13736824:SDrvper said:
I'd also like to clarify that the old programs are still around, there's just much fewer people involved in them. Two to be exact, plus four other graduates working on a different stuff for us.
Second point of clarity is this happened because, in addition, we took three high performers out of the programs and gave them full-time jobs.
It was my dream to get the full-time job part of it done, while having a huge program on top of that... but sadly that hasn't come to fruition... yet.
Twig already addressed this, but the fact is that almost everyone didn't put much effort into this thing. I had designed it with the idea that if we allowed open submissions we could find good people. We then take a bunch of those people and give them money based off of how much we made off the articles. I hypothesized that people would in turn then churn out articles like bloggers on crystal meth and make good dough doing it. I thought they would look at the successes and failures and tune what they were writing to knock out success....
Problem is, on all of the programs it didn't work out like that for about 95% of the participants.
People would create something, put it on the site and it would fail. They would immediately get discouraged and either stop or hold off on doing something else. They would spend countless hours perfecting a piece, and it would fail and make them $4. Most of the attitude we saw wasn't "Hmmmm.... maybe I did the wrong thing, I should do something different..." it was "The system is rigged, readers are idiots and this program is worthless." Yes, I'm being a bit over dramatic here, but how else do you explain people who could make money creating content submitting two pieces?
That left me in a really hard spot. I have believed that the programs were the best idea ever to hit the internet. I believed that letting the masses decide what content creators are good and who isn't, and sharing revenue with these people was the future. I believed in the programs to the fullest extent possible. The problem came looking at the numbers. It was plain and simple that a very tiny amount of program members were creating 95% of the advertising revenue. One of the big reasons was because they took the time to do it. The more time they had, the more they could engage in risky ideas.
As well, it was very difficult to convey an editorial voice with no leader heading it up. Consistency was difficult, and we constantly had multiple people launching 3-5 articles in a day on Monday, then absolutely nothing until next week. Quality was all over the place, and the constant thought that your piece of content did shitty compared to how good you thought it was loomed like a dark cloud.
We had guys overseeing the programs, but to be perfectly clear they were making like a hundred bucks a month to do that. There wasn't the resources to properly manage it, and the consistency of content was all over the place.
I thought for an extremely long time about what we did this year. It was not an easy decision. I have sunk the last 5 years of my professional career fighting to get this whole idea of an open system with revenue share working. I still highly believe in it, because the fact of the matter is we actually uncovered a huge amount of talent. I would have easily hired 5 more people full-time if I could have afforded it. Not a sprinkle of a question in my mind. But reality of the matter is, we don't have that kind of cash.
So I made the call that we were going to pull the trigger on three important positions - Content Director, Managing Editor and Social Media Director. Evan Heath, Adam Spensley and Matt Kretzchmar were hired into these roles on a full-time basis with as much of a salary as we could possibly give them.
As such, we drained the budget for a properly functioning program. There's a couple of people still making a bit of cash, but it is dramatically reduced.
Here's the thing though - What this all taught me is that the programs had the wrong focus. I tried to focus on getting money to people who were contributing content for free... thinking that they could earn themselves a living if they wanted to. What it should have been focused on is the idea that we need to consistently produce high-quality content and have the best editorial team on the planet. In order to do that, people need to work for the site full-time and make good money. Its what allows us to take risks on content, and the site eats the losses if content fails. It allows us to build an editorial voice, to schedule content properly, to curate the community. It allows us to have a professional edit staff.
The programs and the open system shouldn't be focused around allowing random people to make a bit of money... they should be focused on finding the new people we need to hire as our success creates new jobs. They should focus on finding us top-notch freelancers who can be assigned budget and travel to work on vetted pieces we know are going to work. The more we build on this part of the business, the more it grows and the more we spend on content.
So from this day forwards, you don't submit content to Newschoolers in the hopes of getting on a program that makes you a few bucks in revenue share... you submit it because its the testing ground of who has what it takes to join what is shaping up to be the best editorial staff on the planet. Show us you have what it takes to succeed, and you will join our ranks eventually.
Its a change, but I think its something that is going to end up being fantastically better over time.
Final note: One of the hardest parts of being an editorial person is when something you do fails for no other reason than nobody cared. The hardest thing to do is to not blame other factors for your content failing - when your content failed, you failed. Schmuck battled with this constantly. Hell, I battle with it. I mean On The Road was one of the first times I've ever really fully crawled out and done something so focused on me. In my mind, I thought that series was going to re-define the sport. When I look at the performance, frankly it sucked. Sure it was awesome in some respects, but the bottom line was that it was a mediocre success at best.
I want to say people didn't get it, I want to say it deserved better exposure, I want to say a million things that explain why it didn't perform a quarter of as well as it would have needed to justify doing it all the time... but I'd be lying to myself. It was mediocre and it performed mediocre because of it.
If you want to hack it in the ranks of a content creator, you can never blame external factors for failure. You fail because what you did wasn't a fit with the audience, end of story. You don't stop trying because something you loved didn't work - you refine, tweak, measure, analyze and do it again. The emotional toll of creating content is massive, and I think a lot of people weren't ready for it.
So get ready boys and girls, because the new newschoolers content plan is out of the bag. Its going to be pretty mind blowing, and if you still want to get involved we're always watching what you do to pick the next breed of content rock stars.
**This post was edited on Oct 18th 2016 at 7:22:35pm
steezyjibber
Active member
13736976:Mr.Bishop said:
13737053:Ito said:
Pretty much what lto said - I was never in the program to make money. For me, it was about getting experience writing in the ski industry, building connections, seeing my content on NS's social media, and reading the comments from members.
Why didn't I write more? Well, a variety of reasons, but really I just like writing articles I actually care about. I always understood the goal was to churn out short-form content, and I believe in that whole idea for sure (as long as some long-form articles are getting pumped out too!), but I simply never had a huge drive to create super short articles.
More funds for travel, assignments, etc. sounds like a great idea, personally speaking.
So in conclusion, NS is awesome and always will be. Definitely appreciate the content team opportunity. I'll continue posting articles from time to time, and videos and photos obviously as well.
In other news, I'm stoked for winter and stoked to shred.
cydwhit
Active member
13736976:Mr.Bishop said:
I know I'm out of the programs and not really involved (other than throwing stuff on the site when I get bored) but this is freaking awesome.
Some of the best words about content creation and surviving in the current media environment I've ever read.
Huge props to the full time boys and I can't wait to see the next generation step it up.
Thanks for everything.
13737053:Ito said:
Photos is a bit of a question mark right now to be perfectly honest. People still hold their best shit for mags, though that is not going to last long as a viable source of money if you ask me. Instagram is the popular dumping ground for free photos... and our photo section has lagged other than the splash page.
The hopes are that essentially we'll be starting to pay web-reasonable rates for our news articles and instagram channels. The photo program was amazing, but it didn't net a ton of great results. We had the oakley sponsorship last year of Photo of the Day, but sadly they didn't renew it.
Very open to hear theories on the future of photos on the internet.
13737065:steezyjibber said:
Yeah I mean I think that was the case - we built a program which was designed around the idea people would be in it for the money and outputting to do so. That didn't seem to be the case, more the case was that there's sleeping talent out there that just wants to fuck around with it every now and then to see if its a fit.
I actually think the new setup is going to serve that type of a person better. If you want to just get something out there - do it. If it works out, then you can join something much larger and more well-oiled. If not, then you got your story out there and either you want to do it again or not.
steezyjibber
Active member
13737098:Mr.Bishop said:
Right on
LynxNation
Member
13737098:Mr.Bishop said:
Understood. But I hope I can help you guys if you ever need any in the future! Will never thank you enough for the help in getting me to Nine Knights. Best moment of my life.
13737760:LynxNation said:
Yeah I mean I can't give enough respect for those who have been a part of it. Honestly I hope you will continue to do so... trust me when I say that anyone who continues to contribute is first in line for any opportunities that we get presented to us.
As well, I'm really confident that this new content initiative on Newschoolers is going to grow rapidly. Our #1 goal is to start to give back to those who continue to be the most successful and give you the choice assignments.
Many apologies that things are a bit all over the place right now. We're transitioning strategies and there's always a bit of trouble while that happens.
For everyone just dropping into this forum, this discussion was around what happened to the monetization programs this year.
TL;DR:
-Video is still running
-We hired a bunch of people full-time
-Journalist program is really small
-Photos isn't happening this year
-If you contribute content (and you're good), you can join the editorial team for Newschoolers
TL;DR:
-Video is still running
-We hired a bunch of people full-time
-Journalist program is really small
-Photos isn't happening this year
-If you contribute content (and you're good), you can join the editorial team for Newschoolers
ChoomaChad
Member
13736673:Twig said:
Best way for a photographer to get their stuff known? Is posting a lot of photos the only option, or what are you guys looking for?
13778043:LJ.Corrales said:
Currently, posting in the photo galleries is the best way to get your stuff known on the site. Photo galleries need a serious overhaul, because they have been lagging in traction for quite a while now. We gave them a bit of a boost by putting them back on the homepage in a more photo-appropriate way... but there's a long way to go.
If you bag multiple POTD, and you're consistently adding photos, the editors will start to get to know you.
The main opportunity right now for photogs to make money is by going out and shooting events and/or going on content trips that we're looking to hire. The budget for photos online is minimal... but we're trying to expand that and make it work for both parties.
I know the opportunities for photographers aren't great right now - but its because photos have had a hard time on the internet. People hold out for print, or they just share it on instagram for free.
We should actually open up a separate thread here to discuss what a new future for photography on the internet can look like.
