Optional further thoughts on Journalism and the Web

Nicco: This post is a purely optional companion to my below thoughts, which constitutes my *actual* blog post for this assignment. I had a few more thoughts I wanted to work through, so I’m posting them here; but you don’t need to read them if you don’t want to!

Regarding journalism on the Web…

Before doing the readings on journalism for DPI 659, I used to have a basic philosophy about news on the web, that I was just waiting for someone to disprove. It went something like this:

1) Paper as a newsmedium is dead*

2) All news will eventually move to the Web (or to tablets, phones, e-readers, etc); the question is just how long it will take

3) BUT, this need not signal the end of the “newspaper”, as everyone heralds; it’s just the end of news organizations defining themselves BY their media. No longer will we have television, radio, and newspaper; we’ll have “media organizations” or “news organizations” that will deliver content visually, auditorially, and in print, via a variety of channels (future versions of the computer/ TV hybrid and tablet/ phone hybrid)

* I actually think that glossy magazines will outlast paper. There is still something very easy to read, carry around, and flip through in a magazine. When I say “paper”, I mean newsprint.

As a consequence, I didn’t think that people should be getting as worried as they were about the decline of newspaper, because the paper isn’t important. It’s the news institution that matters–and some WILL adapt better than others.

However, Nick Carr’s article on “unbundling”, did make me understand just a bit the concern over the decline of paper. Other readings revealed other aspects of the paper-to-digital transition that is changing the actual content of news. So for my own thinking, I’d like to start a list of ways that the paper to digital transition is changing news:

1) Paper news is bundled— you get the foreign news when you pay for sports section. Advertising in one section subsidizes others. Digital news is unbundled–every piece must stand on its own

2) Paper news is costly to copy and distribute. You have to buy the paper because there isn’t any other reliable way of getting that same article (Other than sharing it with someone or stealing it from your neighbor!). Digital news is incredibly easy to share; therefore, it’s hard to make people pay for it.

3) Paper news is slower. It comes out at most 3 times a day, usually only once. This gives reporters time to react, plan, and gain recognition by scooping each other. Digital news happens 24/7, and competition pushes news outlets to an ever rotating carousel of news. This means that there needs to be more of it, more quickly–and often at a lower quality.

4) Paper news is static.  That means that what the reporter has said, stands; it isn’t subject to a parade of comments, re-tweets, feedback loops, and revisions. There is a record of what was written. Digital news is fluid; stories are updated, commented on, and sent around the world.

If I come upon any more important distinctions, I’ll add them to the list.

I’m not sure if this list is shocking news to anyone else; it was a new way for me to think about (particularly #1, which was new), because it helps me understand why people are freaking out SO much about the disapearance of paper.

I also think that breaking down the differences between paper and digital in this way can help point us to solutions. For example, the opposite of bundling is unbundling–meaning that every piece must stand on its own. This leads to the unfortunate possible outcome where only the popular, maybe shallow pieces can pay for themselves. If we DON’T want to be like Nick Denton, and we believe that journalism must continue to pursue hard issues, we can think about how to a) make each piece stand on its own, or b) investigate ways to re-bundle on the Web.

I’m sure there’s a lot more that can be said on this…I will revisit this topic later…

Journalism, the media, and the Internet

I would say that the collection of readings on journalism and the internet can be grouped into several broad categories:

1) The future of journalism on the web: the tug between the old model of top-down and the new model of distributed sourcing and reporting (i.e. Winer,  Alterman, Jarvis, Shirky, Berlin Johnson, Conover, Michel)

2) Financing the media– thoughts on business models (Kelly, Searls, Breslin)

3) Characters shaping the media and pushing the limits of what is acceptable (Articles about Denton, Assange, Mark Cuban)

4) The interplay between the media, politicians, and the public (Lanier, Daou)

(Ok, I admit, this taxonomy larges traces what we we looked at in class, so maybe this seems obvious; but I moved a few things around)

Among all of these pieces, a few themes arise:

1) No one knows what the future of journalism on the web will look like; but the “old media” seem to be stuck trying to save an old model, rather than figuring out how to embrace a new one

2) Lots of people are willing to do “journalism” (various version of it) for free, or for personal satisfaction; few people know how to reliably monetize it.

3) The old ways of monetizing content (mainly advertising, also subscriptions and newsstand sales) relied on the mechanics of paper-based news content (or TV, or radio), and those mechanics have broken down on the Web.

4) There are many people out there pushing the limits of what is acceptable to reveal, profit from, focus on, and package as news

5) As a society, we’re still trying to figure out who to trust, and who to lead us, on the web–is it bloggers, the MSM, or the politicians? Is it “the collective”, like Wikipedia? Is is the mico-blogs, the aggregators, or the aggregators of aggregators?

Throughout the readings, I found a lot of arguments I agreed with:   for example, Winer, Shirky, and Jarvis lamenting the fact that the MSM editors seem stuck trying to save an old model, rather than figuring out ways to breathe new life into internet-journalism; Berlin Johnson’s optimism that once news media becomes “old growth”, it will be richer, more connected, and more useful than it was before the Web; and Breslin’s excitement and optimism about the inherent value of long form journalism written for the love of truth and discovery.

But, I felt like too many of the authors exalting the new ecosystem of web-based journalism simply ignored or brushed aside the question of monetizing content. I know that few people actually have good ideas for how to do this.  But a lack of good ideas is not a reason to pretend that the need isn’t there; to pretend that we can meet the information needs of 300 million Americans (nay, 7 billion humans) simply based on the “in-my-free-time” “because-I-love-it” ethos of bloggers. Take Susannah Breslin’s article on her long form piece. The main point of the article seems to be : “Look, I got lots of people to read a really long article on the Web! And they wanted me to monetize it, but I prefer to do it for the love of writing and truth”. I commend her for spending time on her article and sharing it with the world–no problem with that. But let’s not pretend that her experiment proves anything other than the fact that people will read good writing, provided they can find it (And especially if it’s about porn). But this method of unpaid work cannot ever support the information needs of society and democracy, so why are we talking about the act in itself?

I felt similarly about Amanda Michel’s piece about the Off the Bus. Though she lauds her project, and I am sure it brought great value to political reporting, she admits that it must be an add-on to the traditional media. She also goes into great detail about how much time and energy was spent editing and managing the voluminous, “impressionistic” content of her contributors. Why? Because learning to be a good writer takes time and skill. We may ultimately find many very useful ways to use “on the ground” folks as the “Eyes and Ears” of information, but we still need people who know how to write, and we need to pay them.

For this, I found “1,000 True Fans”, Doc Searle’s piece on micropayments, and Jaron Lanier’s piece cautioning against the wisdom of the crowd to be the most illuminating. “1,000 true fans” describes a workable solution to monetizing content; it posits a workable (albeit slim) space between mega-hits and the long tail. Doc Searles does not ignore the notion of monetization, but rather asks how small and convenient we can go to get it. And Jaron Lanier basically said what I’ve been thinking all along: that open-source, crowd-sourced platforms like Wikipedia seem to work well when the end product is something with a “definite” answer; but not when the end product is something that requires judgement or taste. (I know there is never a “definitive” encyclopedia entry for anything; but in general the process points towards a knowable truth far more than an opinion essay, piece of fiction, or even a complex piece of journalism) And the people who create great work must be paid.
Note to Nicco: This blog post is already quite long, so I’ll leave the official version here. If you want to read more, I will post a second, informal blog post with some more thoughts. You are not required to read it : )