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Friday, February 10, 2012
The future of news
by Geoff Samek, published on March 22, 2009 at 10:45 PM
Storyline: The Future of News
Newspapers are in peril. There is very little doubt about that, and if you are somehow doubting that, I point you to last week’s news that the revenues of the world’s most-read newspaper, USA Today, are likely down year over year 30%. Aside from industry-wide declining revenues, last week also saw the closure of the Rocky Mountain Post News and the end of the print edition of the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
From these events a heated discussion was born. What is the future of news, and if newspapers are heading the way of the Dodo, who will report the news? The goal of this storyline is to address those very serious questions, especially from a local news angle. Over the course of the next few weeks I intend on exploring, in great detail, the nature of the problem, how it affects our local news and eventually why the sky is not, in fact, falling.
In this process I want to present opinions from many perspectives, but I want to be very clear that I do not see a future for printed media delivered each day to millions of homes covering a wide variety of general interest stories. This is of course an editorial, and that is my perspective. With this loss I don’t see an end to the reporting and journalism that is vital to our society.
This optimism may cause some to inform me that I should put my money where my mouth is. In this regard I have already gladly obliged. I am the editor in chief of this publication, and the co-founder of Castle Press L.L.C., the company that publishes it. With that company and this publication I have done exactly what many critics have suggested someone with my viewpoint do – take action.
While publications and companies may fall, the news never dies. Quality analysis and reporting no more requires printing presses and the companies that run them, than transportation requires horses, buggies and the companies that bred and manufactured them.
To do this I plan on addressing the problem by discussing these points:
- What we stand to lose in terms of information, by precisely recording stats from one week of the Bee.
- What the current business model of newspapers is and how this can be covered online. A general overview will be given as well as a close look at the Bee specifically.
- What do we lose in terms of the medium itself, paper, and what are the options: paper, computer screen and ePaper/eInk.
- Our vision of the future incorporating all the points made in the previous articles and discussing the role of citizen journalism
This is a contentious issue and I would love to have the feedback of our readership to help me shape this storyline and how it is written. Please share your comments below and do your homework by reading some of the opinions that are currently out there, as linked to below.
Clay Shirky, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Morford, Die, Newspapers, Die?
Steve Johnson, Old Growth Media and the Future of News
Dave Winer, If you don’t like the news
Conversation Express your views,
debate, and be heard with those in your area closest
to the issue.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022703591_pf.html
I am also skeptical that "big media" meaning large companies are doomed. They have the best brands, the most resources, and often the best people and content.
And of course, the cost of legal services to defend against an accusation of libel would be prohibitive to most small media entities (traditional or new).
Unless the same amount of money flows through new media services as it did the old - which, if it ever does, will take years - these stories will fall by the wayside. Part of Simon's point is that in this interim, when government/corporate agencies become less covered, there is an almost certainty that that poor institutional practices will be entrenched.
If the question is how to fund journalism (and lawyers) then the answer is to use the most efficient means to tell stories and have conversations and build companies that can create value for the public and business interests. This is not a question of new versus old media, it is a questions about cost and revenue. I know that Geoff will start to break that down later in the series.
How much of a newspaper budget goes to editorial? That seems to be the part that must be saved immediately.
If the Sacramento Press wants to survive and make ANY money, they will take heed. Write about issues that matter to our community instead of mostly movie, music and entertainment reviews. People love controversy and dirt, it drives traffic, focus on writing about important issues that the main stream media ignores, your page views will increase and so will your ad revenue.
Start a new column on the side and put a list of your top 10 articles by traffic and the most commented on. Keep them on the front page. This drives more traffic and keeps hot articles fresh and not buried in the long list of meaningless & unimportant issues posted.
Always remember that controversy, drama & outrage drives more traffic than anything, if we wanted to read meaningless drivel we would buy the Bee or read the SN&R.
Teach all of your writers how to use the California Public Records Act; the best source of information available to citizens and the best way to find dirt!
Improve your ad placement.
As for telling us to write about this topic or that topic - you have all the power. We empower you and everyone to write about these most pressing issues. I spend most of my working day bringing in more voices like yours. This is a new era: if you are unhappy with our coverage please step in and help.
Finally, our goal will never be to drive up pageviews with controversy. If controversy comes we want to have a healthy debate with stakeholders and the public participating. The goal should be making our community better.
Oh, and one more thing - I would love to improve our ad placement, what do you suggest? You can always email me at:
feedback@sacramentopress.com
In the meantime, www.cfac.org is a good place to start reading.
Thank you for pointing this out.
This is the strength of our publication, the power of the community to improve the quality of the content on the site.
You can build something specific for you using RSS feeds and google reader.
You can also get some great general interest news using aggregators that are themselves self contained websites. Google News, Digg, and Newsvine come to mind.
And of course keep coming to The Sacramento Press as we will be able to cover more and more over time.
Unfortunately, in our society, not everyone's voice is viewed as equal, despite constitutional protections to the contrary. Money & campaign contributions makes some voices, especially from special interest groups, much louder than they should be.
This is why I appreciate Sacramento Press. Everyone gets to post and have their voice heard. Keep the articles coming everybody.
"Senator proposes nonprofit status for newspapers"
http://www.sacbee.com/838/story/1724840.html?
The catch is that they can't endorse political candidates. Since endorsements don't have must influence anyway, it seems like a good trade, but I'm doubtful that many papers will accept this until they are at death's door.
1. Right now we or anyone else could start a non-profit newspaper. There is no law against it.
2. I agree that some news sources should and will be non-profit.
3. Is tax classification really at the heart of the problems in the newspaper industry? I read the quotes from the Senator and I was disturbed. He acknowledged that the industry is "broken" and then introduced a bill that seemingly does not address the core problems with the industry.
I think what is crucial to an informed public is not a medium (newspapers in this case), but good journalism. There is a good argument to be made that inefficient but benevolent media monopolies can take profits from classified advertising and put them into a newsroom. These structures are clearly breaking down. That is why we all must have this discussion. But tax breaks do not get to the heart of these serious challenges.
As Ben stated, there is absolutely nothing keeping newspapers from being non-profit now.
What would end up happening if the taxpayers are forced at gunpoint (try not paying your taxes) is what has happened with PBS and NPR, all the papers would toe the Party line. The loss of independence in journalism would be the final nail in the coffin of our falling Democracy.
And don't even try to argue that PBS and NPR are anything but extremely biased sources of information.
In the US we have a richer tradition of dissent through the press. I do not fear that that dissent or attitude is going away whether the government decides to subsidize or not.
Finally, I would like to clarity that from what I understand the city has not subsidized the SNR, but has subsidized a development in Del Paso the SNR was to own and move into. Any company could have taken advantage of the city's funds for redevelopment of certain areas. Of course I would be wildly off base and if so please correct me with the facts.
The City has no economic incentive to move SN&R from midtown, where the employees have a number of places to spend their money at restaurants, or bars (in RV's & Cosmo's case.)
Back in the day, 80-90's we could trust the SN&R to be going after the City for shi*t like what is going on downtown on K street with David Taylor, and for directing tens of million of stimulus dollars to insiders in no-bid contracts. I have heard very little out of them in the last year or two. They claim it is because they don't have the staff to do it. Yet they have the staff to write drivel week in and week out.
No independent news source should take money from the government, the possibility for corruption is just too high. And to top it off, the taxpayers should not be forced to underwrite pornography and prostitution, which is apparently SN&R's main source of income....just look at all the advertising in the back.
However, there is a difference between subsidizing a failing business model directly and allowing any business to relocate to an area of town that the city believes is in need of redevelopment. Anyone could have taken advantage of this program be them a media outlet or three bars and a pizza restaurant.
In this case the outcome seems to be lose, lose.
What I really want to hear is SNR's reaction to all of this. From what I hear this transition is not going as planned, and I would also like to hear them defend their integrity as a news organization. Until then this is a bit one sided.
The new paradigm:
1. Decentralized - Nobody but MSM cares about the demise of Newspapers, readers care about good journalism which is just storytelling.
2. Personalized - If the journalism produced by Big Newspapers is so good, why the explosion of blogs.
3. Portable - The media landscape is changing and people get their news and entertainment in new ways; blogs, podcasts, rss, twitter, FB, Myspace, sms, kindle etc.
4. Aggregated - The answer to the newspaper dilemma is already here see Digg, Topix, Examiner, Outside.in, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, etc.
5. Diverse - There is now more info created and shared in a day than most people consumed in a lifetime 100 years ago.
6. Distributed - New Media will take many forms; traditional newsprint, membership based non-profit investigative journalism, subscription based niche content, pay per podcasts, fee based live media events, ad supported web magazines, and more that have yet to be invented.
7. Individualistic - Credibility, trust, and Brand recognition have shifted from Corporations to People. This trend will accelerate.
much like society in the US, the way we consume our news is changing