Law & Business Podcast Episode 49: Local Journalism with John Knebels

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In Episode 49 of the “Law & Business” podcast, we have a chat with John Knebels. Knebs – as he is affectionately known – is a long-time local sports journalist in the Philadelphia metropolitan area.

Anthony and Knebs sat down in the public view in a local Panera and talked about: How has his job changed as technology changed? What keeps him going in journalism? How are journalism and law – and being a journalist and being a lawyer – similar?

Enjoy!

Anthony Verna:
All right. We are live and kicking in our favorite Panera. Welcome to the Law and Business podcast. Everybody out there knows I’m Anthony Verna. With me, John Knebels. How are you doing, sir?

John Knebels:
I’m doing well. Nice to be here.

Anthony Verna:
 Thank you very much. And look, just to get everybody up to speed… You’ve got local journalism in your blood, right? Who are you writing for right now?

John Knebels:
So right now I’m doing Catholicphilly.com. It is a diocesan website in Philadelphia. I’ve been doing that since 1982. Basically covering all of Catholic stories: Catholic schools, personality profiles, features, news stories, sporting events, and then I’m writing for a wonderful website and it’s called Philadelphiasportsdigest.com and it’s run by a mother-daughter team. Like every human being on the planet should have bosses like this. They just really, really great people. And that covers in Philadelphia the Philadelphia Catholic league, and inter-academic league are the two that have maiden leagues. So, the boys and girls they cover and there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity for people who get involved with them because there’s so much to do.

Anthony Verna:
Sure. I mean, I’ve totally forgotten the Philadelphia high school athletics in my time. So, what else needs to be covered? If you’re saying there’s a lot of work to do in the local scene, what else wants to be done?

John Knebels:
There’s a couple of different things. It’s interesting like the Philadelphia Inquirer no longer really has a high school sports section.

Anthony Verna:
That’s still amazes me.

John Knebels:
Yeah. Now let me be clear, they’ll do stories and they have a couple of really good writers, but they no longer do things like standings and updates and previews and we’ll do a preview for maybe a tournament. But back in the day you would get so much information about what happened the night before: who did what, the box scores. They don’t have that anymore.

Anthony Verna:
Sure, sure. I remember when I was first home from college and in law school I was part time at the Bucks County Courier Times and that’s all they had me do was go write high school sports.

John Knebels:
And, and you know, it’s interesting because 95% of high school athletes are not going to play in college. So, mom and dad are going to really like seeing Bobby Schmidt’s name scoring two points in the box score. There’s something to be said for that. I’m sure if my kid had scored two points for St Joe’s prep, I’d be like, Oh my God, I’d be taking pictures and sending them or his name mentioned somewhere. So, what you’re finding is that a lot of these companies are desperately trying to find good strategies to get readers, but the problem is the monetary part of it. So, people are not making a whole lot of money doing this, obviously from the advertising standpoint is the most important part of it. But you’re seeing these people, you have a lot of people who are pretending to be journalists. And I would say that they have no training and they’re like, you know what, how hard is it to sit there and cover a wrestling event and they’ll go up and you know, say, Oh this one did that, that would that with no training which is a little aggravating for people who’ve done it for their whole life, but some companies are just taking whatever they can get.

Anthony Verna:
But there still is a bit of a hole in the market for people who are invested in high school sports. And let’s be honest, there are still plenty of adults who will go visit their alma maters and watch the soccer game. II do have a client who called me and asked me if I were going to a Holy Ghost Prep soccer game. And I was like, um, no. There still are adults who go see their high school football team, their high school soccer team, high school basketball team. So it does feel as if there is a market inefficiency and a hole there to fill up.

John Knebels:
It also comes down to a lot of people are not thinking outside the box, like back to this Philadelphia Sports Digest. What they do is, they’re really big on interviews and face to face interviews on camera. And it’s really one of the first companies that did that. And a lot of companies kind of fed off of that because people like to see that type of thing. Like, Oh my God, there’s Bob talking about the game winning shot. You know, there’s Laura talking about the loss that she feels sad about. There’s human interest in it. So there the days of being like, I’m going to pump out 15 inches of article, which is a journalism term for how much space, so 15 inches, like 700 words, right? You don’t have the readership anymore. Or people interested in reading 700 words or like what’s the visual that I can see?


You need a visual that go attract people to your content and in journalism, okay, what kind of journalism it is, sports, news, features, whatever. If you don’t have that, you’re going to lose tremendous amount of possibilities. But I also think that, in the writing aspect of it and our society is busy, quote unquote busy, but they are, I guess the strategy of using bullets. There’s 10 things you want to say. If you have a narrative of a thousand words, most people are just going to stop reading. But if you break that up into 12 80-word segments by osmosis almost, they end up reading the thing. But you have to draw them first. You have to draw them in. And it could be a great picture. It could be a video, it could be a great highlight. We’re constantly tweeting out highlights and that’s really where you see the Twitter hits.

Anthony Verna:
I think the Twitter is a good point, but to me I also think that video and the pictures are important as well. It really isn’t all that different. First off, on my website the average trip for somebody is a minute and a half and that’s triple from what it was a month ago. Like only in the last month have people started to sit on the website and actually read my blog posts. Right. It’s really the strange phenomenon. Before that if people would bounce, some people would bounce. So that has to be the same fear. You have to have enough words to have the story, but that hook to keep people in and also the right kind of words to keep the story alive cause you need the right search engine optimization for journalism and especially with journalism really effectively being of the moment rather than long term. But you still have to think about it.

John Knebels:
I mean, yeah, you totally killed that because it’s the same thing. For instance, the advertising. If you have a big advertise, some guy talking about something, people are not going to get a cup of coffee during the watching TV or whatever. But if they have a really funny… Look at the Superbowl, like they always have these goofy crazy things, they kind of draw you in. But then in line with what you’re saying, do they have the wherewithal to make sure that the end of this 30 second or one minute commercial, are they able to recall this is for Sonic and not, Oh there was a funny guy on a horse. What was it about? I don’t even know what it was about when they lost our audience. What’s the point? So, it’s really about strategizing and I think it’s about recognizing. And one last one. One thing I will say though is I think it’s important for people who we could evolve with this to ask themselves what would they, what would inspire them to click on a website and then, cause you’re probably pretty much every man, I mean they understand or talk to trusted people and then go about it. But the bottom line is it can’t rest on laurels and they can’t get lazy because nothing’s going to happen.

Anthony Verna:
I think one of the aspects of local journalism that I’ve learned is that a lot of people still who move away check in on their hometown. So, if you’re looking at a publication like the ones that you write for, what are you looking for to keep reading those stories?

John Knebels:
So I mean like if discovery, repeat the question.

Anthony Verna:
Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. If you are putting yourself in the position of the reader, what are you looking for to read in the publications that you write?

John Knebels:
I am looking for, to be honest with you, a big part of it is what are the other people not saying? I’ll give you a classic example. Roman Catholic High School just won a state tournament game. There’s one kid, Justice Williams for 27 points. Great kid, everybody loves Justice Williams, he’s a great interview. But I’ve developed a thing where I’m looking around and I see that this freshman, named Will Norma had six points, seven or eight rebounds. That’s a story. No one else is doing that story yet to find a story no one else is doing because everybody’s doing… you have to think outside the box.

Anthony Verna:

But it’s only a six point stat line.

John Knebels:
It is. But the point is that how much they win, why they won by six. So you think without that little quote unquote little contribution of six points and eight rebounds, do they win that game? Maybe not. But you know, without Justice Williams. But the point is it’s not like disk. It’s good. Plenty of really good game. But no one really knows about it because people don’t report on it, you know? Or a football game is a perfect example. Somebody goes seven, I won an award for an article I wrote you a hundred years ago, guy busts 75 yards for a touchdown to win the game in overtime and I forget the kid’s name. But I do remember specifically that my story was on the block that freed him for the 75 yard run. And that was my story because no one else was doing that story. It was the kid that made the block. Without the block, that kid goes three yards on a second and seven say go 75 yards for a touchdown. Nobody even talked to the kid who made this key block in the open field. So, my point is that you have to constantly look for something while is going to do that. I have to do something unique and I think you can find it in some of these websites. Unique stories don’t do what everybody else is doing because it’s overkill.

Anthony Vera:
I mean that almost sounds like a journalism problem period. Not just like a problem because I’m at a niche publication or website. I mean trying to find the story that others aren’t doing

John Knebels:
Well. Okay.

Anthony Verna:
And especially in today’s world where even the bigger local publications are cash strapped and it’s just easy to write the lazy thing. I’ll let you think about that, answer that. Then I’ll give you an example.

John Knebels:
Well, I mean I think again though, I think it has to do with not being lazy. You’re absolutely right. For instance, if you did this, my example, if I do a whole thing on Will Norman, basically a few of his friends at his family and he will read that. But so I have to strategically be like, I need to recognize what everybody wants to read, which is what’s the obvious thing that this kid had 27 points and this is what he did, blah, blah, blah. So by writing it, that’s what I meant before. But people think, well they’re there, they’re journalists. And the writers, not necessarily because you have to have strategy. I’m sure you do in law. You can’t just go in there and go, well, I’m going to wing it. You’re like, how am I gonna make this case stand? Or how am I going to, you got to go circumvent all these different areas. And at the end of it, if you’re good or if you’ve had luck experience, not only for the people gonna read or read your stuff because you’re recognizing the obvious, but at the same time they’re going to say, wow, there’s a tie in to this little story. And you have to hope that people like to read little stories. About the little man, I mean…

Anthony Verna:
To give you an example I was thinking of: in Putnam County, in New York, the County North of where of where I live, the district attorney for several years was a man named Adam Levy, son of Judge Judy. And the Sheriff’s office had Adam Levy’s trainer arrested. Eventually it was deemed to be a wrongful arrest. It was deemed that… I know that there was a settlement paid to the trainer, but for a year, all the story started with Adam Levy comma, Putnam County district attorney comma, son of TV’s Judge Judy comma, whose live in trainer was arrested, comma and well, timeout.

His trainer was not living in his house. That actually turned out to be paperwork that the sheriff doctored to put Adam Levy’s address on the arrest papers because the man was actually living illegally in a commercial office. Yes, exactly. But what was sensational, and also what was easy for somebody who had to pump out three stories a day, it was easy to say, I believe Adam Levy comma the son of TV’s Judge Judy comma, who’s live in trainer, was arrested even though one third of that sentence was wrong.

John Knebels:
Yeah. And it’s, I mean, and the question is about integrity. Yes. Okay. You know, when I teach a journalism class, one of the first thing I always bring up is November 22nd, 1963 and I’ll show them Walter Cronkite talking about John F Kennedy’s death. And if you watch that, like basically they know he’s dead, but until they are confirmed literally to the letter, he refuses to really announce that he’s dead. Even though all his correspondents continue to say, we have where we have words, well that’s not efficient, that’s not official. That time is no longer here. Look at. And then you look at what happened to princess Diana 25 years ago and they basically were just winging it, it is a matter of integrity because you look at these organizations, it’s not about, it’s not about accuracy, it’s about getting, being the first to get it.


The question is do people care about integrity? I don’t necessarily know that they do. I mean, maybe it depends on your clientele, but I don’t necessarily know that there’s a lot of demand for really good journalism. You might get some comments here and there, but I think people are so used to kind of bullcrap that they just roll their eyes and they move on to something else right now. But like you as an attorney and your firm, I think I do think though, and in myself and I write, so my name is out there, so if you establish yourself in a certain area as being legitimate, I think you’ll have a better opportunity for good. But you know, I know this is not going to be nasty. Like we have a tendency like real little silly thing. Like it’s off the sports guys. One of things we never do is use words like blowout, crushed, annihilate.

Anthony Verna:
I think that’s, I think that’s a very good policy.

John Knebels:
It is. Now you want to say like the Flyers annihilated the Islanders, knock yourself out. But these are big strong men athletes. These kids are high school. Don’t need to be know. And there’s some times, for instance, we’ve had things, some team beats somebody 75 to 19, we simply said a team won. I don’t need to tell you the score now. If that’s bad journalism, find it somewhere else.

Anthony Verna:
Well, I think it’s a little different when you’re in a niche like that because you understand who your subject is. You also understand then who your customer is. I should say your reader. But from a business standpoint, it’s no different. So that this way you have the story that is targeted to your niche. I mean, in a way it’s exactly what happens when we’re doing the business consulting side of when I help my business consulting friends, what’s the niche and in your particular case with journalism, it’s what’s the niche and can we build our readership based on the niche?

John Knebels:
Right. That’s a good way to put it.

Anthony Verna:
But what is it about the local journalism scene that keeps you going back for it?

John Knebels:
Well I think certainly, well, living in Philadelphia, there’s so much. I mean there’s, I don’t know, 40, 50 schools that you could do things on a mag. I was in North Carolina with my daughter and then the day, like a couple weeks ago actually, and we were talking about the high schools in Wilmington and there’s like five high schools in the entire city in some real low number. I’m like, Oh my God, I would die here. Like I couldn’t believe it. But there is so there is so much to do and here’s what I think that the local part gets into the smaller schools that have no suburban advantage. So schools in the suburbs always have always have newspapers that write about them. Your city schools, the Roman Catholic to Hallahans and this is obviously to Philadelphia’s, but the small, the Little Flowers, they don’t have anybody writing about them other than themselves.

And basically that becomes almost a puff piece because they’re saying how great their school is. It’s an advertising ploy almost, even if it’s legit or at least it’s perceived to be an advertising thing. So that’s the kind of thing that keeps me going too, to be like, no one else is really hearing about that stuff. But no one’s hearing about these great people that do different things. And so you’re exactly right. Like if I, if I was in New York and I picked up the newspaper, it was about St Anthony’s, right? I probably like whatever, it doesn’t really matter to me. Sure. You know? Sure. But I’ll tell you one thing. As a journalist, I would then look at it and be like, what are they doing that’s effective? What are they doing it that’s effective? Why am I reading this thing?
What drew me to this day? I think you have to do that. Oh, and one other thing is really important, I think, is to take the opportunity, really, really try to bridge a bridge of relationships of recognizing other people’s work. The other day I tweeted out there’s one guy who wrote a phenomenal piece. He’s one of our competitors. Hmm. I tweeted out phenomenal piece by at such and such part. And that’s just integrity. That’s being like, we don’t have the only answers, but I think if you do that, chances are good things happen.

Anthony Verna:
It’s one of those things I see all the time on intellectual property lawyer Twitter all the time is that our colleagues will certainly praise each other when we have decisions. We will argue about each other. I know I got raked over the coals a couple of times for the Kylie Jenner suit, which we won’t be talking to about, but after it was filed, I had a couple of law professors that would be very critical of the complaint. Yeah. But you know the interaction with colleagues I have noticed on Twitter has to be there in order for your own reputation to keep up.

John Knebels:
Absolutely. And it’s what you tweet out, what you don’t tweet out and the willingness to take it off. Anything public. But I will say one thing about that, the critical thing you said, what I like about that is because some people would say, well, you wrote the story and you know 14 people hated it. Well that means 14 people read it. So, in your situation, that means your critics who may not have, they’ve studied whatever these you did. Yes, they did. And on Tuesday they were critical of it. That’s more than likely on metaphorically Thursday and you’re doing something else. They more likely to say, “Oh, by the way, , now that is something I agree with.” and I think it’s about getting it out there. And being able to be criticized and not feeling badly about it. No, no. It’s like, if somebody didn’t like something, I remember one person. Yeah, you’re a little like my grandfather in law and he met me, right? My wife said, “Hey Pop, this is John Knebels from the Catholic Standard Times, which we used to be before Catholic Phil. And he goes, “Oh hey, nice to meet you. A little heavy on the adjectives.” That was the first thing he said to me. And I remember thinking like, I like this guy, you know, I like this guy. I was like, “Yeah, all right, thanks. Good to see you too there, Pop.”
Anthony Verna: (19:59) To think about the criticism, on the last example that I gave, what was interesting was that I said, after I read the criticism, I said, I don’t actually disagree, but that doesn’t mean that the move that was made in a specific piece of litigation for a specific piece of time was the wrong move, right? Like sometimes because law can be sloppy, and just litigation can be sloppy. And so sometimes you just kind of have to make a move while you say, “Damn the consequences.” Or sometimes you have to tell the client, “Look, if we do this, here’s what’s going to happen.” As long as you understand that what’s going to happen. So, sometimes in a way, we’re paid to take the criticism away from the claim. Yes.

John Knebels:
Yeah. But I love by love that openness and I think that’s where the integrity comes from. If they say, you know, Anthony Verna is okay with being critiqued and doesn’t take it personally. I love the whole run. I mean not to get into politics. I love the whole Ronald Reagan thing. I’ve read that they used to back and forth nasty stuff with Democrats. But six o’clock to nine man, they’d be pouring back some food, some drinks and having a good time because it’s like they don’t agree with certain things, but they respected each other.

Anthony Verna:
Right. You know, one of my older colleagues who’s been on this podcast and I would talk about that for him almost nothing that opposing counsel ever did was personal or was taken personally. He was working and they were working, and they were both working in favor of their clients and they were there to put out an argument. And I always say, you know, it doesn’t quite feel like that anymore. It feels a lot nastier than it used to.

John Knebels:
Yeah. I think you’re right. I mean I think in general now you would obviously know that more about the the legal thing. And I also wonder if is there a lot of competition among lawyers, you try to get the same clients or no?

Anthony Verna:
I would say that I would say that there certainly is some competition on that. Like let me give another example. I sat down with a potential client step through step through the business’ case cause it was a trademark infringement case and I said sat down with the business owner. We did lunch and I just stepped through everything because this case was just too important to just talk about on the phone. And we sat in a private restaurant, private area. We didn’t get hired and they hired another firm and eventually the business owner picks up the phone and calls me again. And this time I sat down on the phone and I said, you know, look, after reviewing everything, my opinion from last year hasn’t changed. I will tell you that it has been four months since that phone call and that business has already gone through two other law firms.


I don’t know particularly what promises were made. I don’t know particularly what was said obviously between this business and other law firms. But I can tell you that when I plan a strategy, I try to stick to that particular plan as best as possible. You still always have to be flexible, but I try to stick to that. But yeah, for firms, when you hit certain tiers, you generally are competing for clients of those tiers as well. Like generally a corporation that’s going to hire a big law firm isn’t going to hire a small three person firm unless there’s something really, really niche, and we do have some clients that are big multinational companies, but they’re not coming to us for the trademark or patent work. They come to us for like the advertising work because it’s really niche.

John Knebels:
And you talk from a journalism standpoint, there won’t be people if they’re doing accounts of a lawsuit that’s been filed in there and they’re doing a new story on that, that’s another interesting thing for you. I would think to be interviewed by them and then the whole concept of what can you say, what can’t you say and you don’t want it. I’m sure there’s something you love to say. And you don’t say of course, but my point is maybe the same thing would apply to you. Like what would you say to a budding journalist who wants to do a news story for instance, on a big case and, and they want to contact you? What are some of the advisory things you would tell them?

Anthony Verna:
Okay, fascinating question because I’ve been quoted a few times and I always pull my hair out afterwards because …

John Knebels:
So, you’ve had a lot of this, says the bald guy sitting across from you.

Anthony Verna:
What I’ve tried to do is always step the journalist through because my areas of law are not typical for the average person. I should say it like that. If I did personal injury or car accidents or medical malpractice, I think a lot of people just inherently understand that better then copyright infringement. Why did led Led Zeppelin win the case the other day? I’ve got to go back and read the decision from the court because the short answer is I actually don’t know right now off the top of my head because it’s a very complex, highly technical issue and I have to sit down and go through and and go through the case and read it once.

But there are those particular problems and sometimes I will say, okay, okay, let’s start. Let me first define what a copyright is. Here’s what a trademark is. Here’s what a patent is, so that this way I can get the journalists nod because that’s half the problem with most of the time. Most of the stories I’m quoted in is that there’s something there that’s incorrect. I have seen stories about a copyright of a color and it’s like, no, no, no. That’s not how it works. That’s not, yeah, no, no, no. I stepped through it with you and that’s not how it works. I was recently interviewed for an article on the on the Harry and Megan Sussex Royal trademark and the fact that the queen is not going to give her permission. And basically my answer for every question was, we’re not British. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care what, let the British worry about that. Right. Like if they wanted to come to the US and filed the trademark application in the US they’re free to.

John Knebels:
Yeah, sure. But you said something that’s really interesting because you said that you wanted to make sure that the people who are quoting know what they’re talking about. But one thing I would say to journalists, and this was when I was growing up. As young journalists, it was always said, you don’t have to check, write your thing. Don’t worry about, people can’t dictate to you what to write short stuff with. However, I would say to any journalists, do not be afraid. In fact, I would advocate every once in a blue moon if any confusion. go back to your source and say, listen, can I send you something? Cause I’m going to say it this way. Tell me if this is accurate. There’s nothing wrong with that.


And some people think it’s a journalistic thing where, well, you shouldn’t have to do that. Well the bottom line is you want to get this thing right. It’s not about anything else. I’m not getting every right and so it’s about getting it right. So if a person, and I think that establishes to you be like to some colleague, “Have you ever heard of Joe Schmidt?”, like, “Yeah, it actually is a good guy. I would trust him because he really wants to make it right.” There’s nothing worse, I’m sure for your profession and someone misquote you or says something that you know or imply something it takes, takes the context down.

Anthony Verna:
So on that note, sir, we are going to roll along with the Paul Simon in the background.

Katrina, our editor, I love you. Thank you for putting up with the sound quality and thanks for listening to the Law and Business Podcast. Make sure you leave a review if you’re listening on your Apple device. See you next time.