Category Archives: Helpful Hints

March 12, 2013 · 9:04 am

What Do You Wrap Something Fishy In? Newspaper!

You might have heard something about the study that was released yesterday by the folks at the Newspaper National Network.  It proclaimed in large type that “Sports Fans Rank Local Newspaper Sports Pages #1” and that “The Study Validates the Unique Benefits of Newspaper Sports Content to Advertisers.” You can read the study here.

Logo of the Newspaper National Network.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now being the open-minded sort of guy that I am, I read through the study with great interest but also with a very large wad of skepticism. You see, it strikes me that everything we read about newspapers has to do with the decline of daily readership. Given the “right now” nature of sports information in particular, I was surprised that the study found that newspapers are still the top source for sports news for sports fans. Let’s see what you think.

Sports news and information is one of the most hotly-contested content areas.  Having lived in it for decades, I know that the competition is fierce.  Other than the big guys – USAToday and Sports Illustrated, I can’t think of a single daily or even weekly print source that can compete for the sports audience.  Still, according to the study:

Wow!  Now I read a couple of newspapers every day but I must admit that I don’t do so for the sports scores.  I’m also out of the demo that was surveyed – Men 18-54.  I was also quite surprised by the second point.  The study shows that 76% of the respondents identified newspaper websites when asked to identify all the places you typically go to for sports news, information, and/or analysis, not including live games or competitions.  Only 65% mentioned ESPN.com and 46% identified either Yahoo Sports or a league website. Given everything I know about traffic numbers in sports, that 76% seems weird, even aggregating all of the newspaper sites (except USAToday) into a number.

That’s when I took the advice I’ve given you here on the screed a number of times:  when the results seem weird, check who was asked the question and how the question was asked.  In this case, half the men surveyed identified themselves as regular sports pages readers (2x or more/week).  Given that the ongoing Pew Study found late last year that only 29% now say they read a newspaper yesterday – with just 23% reading a print newspaper that seems like a skewed sample to me.  In fact, it’s hard to accept that 69% of male sports fans identify the print sports section as the “go to” source when over half of those who read the newspaper do so electronically according to Pew.

The best research is enlightening and can’t be picked apart very easily.  Unfortunately, this does neither.  Do you agree?

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March 11, 2013 · 10:00 am

The CW

You might have read this morning that the online betting site InTrade is shutting down.

Intrade $ predictions - Nov 3

(Photo credit: New England Secession)

Unlike many of the gambling sites with which you might be familiar, InTrade lets users place wagers on non-sports-related upcoming events.  It was a lot of fun to read the site during the election season because you could see the odds of various candidates’ success changing with each news cycle.  You can read about why the business is shutting down here or here.  We can debate if it’s for legitimate concerns or just because it seemed to be operating outside of the long arm of the law but that’s not really my topic this morning.

What interests me about this site is that it was sometimes criticized for “getting it wrong”, as if the odds it offered were some kind of prediction.  That’s as off-base as thinking that a Las Vegas betting line is a prediction of the outcome.  Neither of those things are true.  InTrade’s odds simply reflected the conventional wisdom – how people saw the outcome and were betting.  It was not any sort of analysis of polling and other data to make predictions.  The Vegas line is similar.  It’s not a prediction – it’s an inducement.  It reflects how the conventional wisdom perceives the event’s outcome and is there to induce an equal number of people to bet on either side.  That’s why the odds change and the line changes.

We do the same thing in business a lot of the time and it’s often to our detriment.  We don’t “bet” on the outcome because we often confuse it with the conventional wisdom.  It’s the old expression about no one ever getting fired for buying IBM or ATT back when those services were the “go to” providers.  We see it today in media plans – start with TV and see whats left.  Even in digital we see it with the “buy Facebook” thinking I run into all the time.  “Winning” in my mind means trying new things all the time, measuring them with data, and not worrying a whole lot if the outcomes defy the conventional wisdom.  After all, it’s easy to get lost in a herd (or to get trampled).

What do you think?

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March 7, 2013 · 12:20 pm

Why You Can’t Find A Great Person To Hire

One of my favorite Shakespeare quotes is from Julius Caesar and is spoken by Cassius. He’s trying to get Brutus to stop Caesar and reminds him that “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings”. In other words, we control our own destinies, not fate.

 

Employment Exhibition

(Photo credit: Modern_Language_Center)

 

I thought of that this morning as I saw some research on recruiting from the folks at Bullhorn. It’s an annual survey of recruiting professionals and in it they asked about what those folks perceived to be the biggest challenge they would face this year.  As MediaPost reported:

 

Recruiting professionals listed their biggest challenge for 2013 as a lack of skilled candidates (33%). Additionally, in a separate question, 76.1% of respondents claimed to have a shortage of skilled candidates in their respective recruiting sectors.

 

What does this have to do with the Shakespeare quote?  We’re in the midst of a nasty employment cycle.  You’ll notice I said “employment” cycle, not economic.  The stock market is back to where it was in 2000 and  corporate earnings have doubled since then.  Even so, employment is soft.  Part of that has to do with how technology has made many processes way more efficient.  I think it’s had another effect which has to do with why qualified job candidates are so hard to find.

 

Many managers have come to think of employees as disposable.  They’re lucky to have jobs and if they’re not happy there are lots of people available.   Due to this, there’s less of an emphasis on training and development   The tech factor is at work here as well – think about how many people can’t write properly because the machine checks spelling and grammar (but not meaning or homophones or homonyms).   We don’t train so people are less skilled.  Because they’re less skilled, the recruiters have a small pool from which to draw.  The fault, dear hiring employer, is in ourselves.  You agree?

 

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