A Glimpse at the Future of Journalism
- Posted by: Cliff Kuang , Atley Kasky
- on December 20, 2008 at 9:00 am
What will the news look like after the newspapers disappear?
Journalists and analysts are once again thrashing around, tearing out their hair, spilling ink, and burning pixels over the fate of newspaper publishing. The latest catalyst: the bankruptcy of the Tribune Corporation.
It’s no secret that the industry’s future is bleak, and death is always a worthy story. But you seldom read about ideas for completely overhauling the industry. I don’t know why—music and cars get that treatment all the time. Perhaps it’s too much to ask journalists to prescribe their own cure—like asking a surgeon to perform a heart transplant on herself. Yet the ideas do exist. A brilliant one is Spot.us.
The site was seeded with a grant from the Knight News Challenge, a competition that rewards start ups creating new platforms for journalism. Spot.us is a clearinghouse for publicly funded journalism. Anyone can post news tips, and journalists can also pitch stories to users, who can then donate towards the reporting and writing of a story. Whether it lives or dies, the genius of Spot.us is that, unlike basically every publication started in the last 100 years, it isn’t based on ad revenues. If a story’s worth reading, the theory goes, the readers should be willing to pay for it directly.
To understand why that’s unusual, it’s important to realize that most newspaper profits don’t come from subscription or newsstand sales, but rather from the advertisers. Industry observers still believe that this basic structure will hold online, though it likely won’t be able to support massive organizations like Tribune Co. But the premise of basing some smaller version of old media on advertising is probably flawed, because advertising itself might rest on a rotting business model.
Why? First, you could argue that we live in a world drowning in advertising and it has taught us to more effectively tune ads out. If we haven’t quite learned that lesson, it’s being accelerated online—revenues, per reader, are far lower online than they are for print. That pattern is interpretable in two related ways: First, ad impressions aren’t as valuable online—for every ad dollar that a print reader brings in, an online reader brings in just 10 to 15 cents. That’s due to the nature of the web, which has users actively seeking relevant information, so they can more easily ignore ads—rather than passively consuming them in a newspaper or an hour of television. Meanwhile, the web offers advertisers incredibly rich ways of tracking how well their ads are performing, which means it also provides a truer pricing mechanism for ads. Ads have thus come up wanting; they never were as worthwhile as the ad agencies and management consultants had hoped—and companies know that now.
If the ad model is breaking down—which seems to be the case—journalism’s production model needs a revision. That’s the greatest promise of a site like Spot.us: It’s a glimpse into the DNA of a new-media baby that’s not even born yet. Once you’ve mulled its basic structure, it’s easy to imagine dozens of alternative versions. For example, geopolitical consultancies are printing money by writing reports for firms operating in dicey regions. Journalists could do that same work, if they simply had a site connecting them with the proper clients. (As on Spot.us, publishing rights could be structured into the deal.)
The crossroads that media now faces recalls a similar situation from the interstice between the Renaissance and the Industrial age. At that time, the model that supported writers and the written word changed completely. Writers, who once depended on the largesse of a patron, suddenly had to earn their money from a publisher. (The changeover eventually led to the rise of advertising.) Early on, self-published pamphlets and myriad (scurrilous) “news” sources littered European streets.
Sound familiar? We now live in the rubble of an obliterated system. We can hear a million new voices, on blogs and Twitter. The media is becoming more specialized—think of how narrowly focused the best blogs are—but also more trivial and shrill.
My guess about the shape of publishing’s future is that there won’t be a “bridge” between this phase and the next. Rather, in a situation analogous to 200 years ago, we’ll see the wholesale collapse of our present big-media system, and its replacement with another that severs the cord with advertising revenue. In the meantime, we’ll get teases of the future, through sites like Spot.us, as investors and charities like the Knight Foundation do the hard work of panning for new ideas.
(Image: Derived from a photo by Flickr user eschipul.)
DISCUSSION: 188 Comments
I thought this might be interesting to anyone who hasn’t heard of this innovative initiative for the future of journalism.http://www.csmonitor.com/centennial/events/future-of-journalism/webcast/
Innovation is the new black.
Spot.us founder David Cohen at the Changing Media Landscape forum at Columbia’s J-school.http://blip.tv/file/1499104/
I’ve found that the most innovation comes from student publications. Here are some really interesting ones: http://www.thebullmagazine.net http://www.reportermag.com http://www.titanmag.com There are a lot more out there.
“Journalism” needs to win back its credibility, objectivity… its inherent worth, to have people hang on it, like they did to the network news in Cronkite, et al’s, day. They need to delineate the objectivity and separate it from the ’spin’ and ‘opinion’. CNN can’t even have 24hr news anymore, they have to shove ‘Nancy Grace’ noise in the evening. “News” now is inundated with commentary, snide remarks, and those ’shrill voices’… for profit. Hopefully a lack of attention to those shrill voices, and to those advertisements, will return us to useful, reasonable, real news… and not pandering to the latest sensation. Newspapers ought to hire good, expert, objective, educational -journalists- to go online and tell us the -truth-, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth… without the spin, commentary, sensation, etc. Save that for a separate channel, CNN. And ‘advertising’… needs to couple itself with giving value (like it did for providing radio, and broadcast tv) …it needs to promote products through -samples-, or some useful tangible offerings, in order to gain our interest, rather than just shouting at us with gimmicks, talking down with supposedly attention-getting ‘noise’, etc., to the ‘lowest common denominator’ or fad group.
Why can’t newspaper people understand that the best thing they can do is just die off?
Too many doomsayers. Print journalism will reinvent itself and survive, at least in `emerging markets’ of the world. Murty, S, Bangalore, India
If reporters would simply be truthful instead of promoting their own biased views; people would be more interested in buying a paper. We used to buy a daily paper and a Sunday paper…we don’t do that anymore. Sometimes my husband will buy a propoganda piece (the Sundya paper)just for the ads. When I buy one, I try and buy ones I know that are more “fair and balanced”.
Newspapers are so biased, that they’re not worth reading anymore
We saw in the election. They don’t report news. They make it and it ain’t worth reading. It’s crap.
Until journalist practice the freedom of speech and they fail to perform damage control on behalf of the government, journalism will remain frivolous and driven by DRAMA, not truth.
I’m a journalist for a small newspaper, and I agree with the comment that journalism needs to win back its credibility. I’d like to think I only report the facts; and I’m certain by readers feedback on my stories. Whoever said “Why can’t newspaper people understand that the best thing they can do is just die off?” needs to realize that we’re human beings trying to do something we love while being able to survive this economy. I do this because I love to write and discover things. I think thats how most journalists start but then things get in the way. It’s not the journalists who perhaps doomsayers, it’s the people and what they like to read. Are you honestly going to sit there and read about a lost puppy being found or some other news you deem “boring”? No, you’d flip to the one about the terrible fire instead. Since some readers have so graciously decided to supplant the all-entertaining television for newspapers, we’re losing sales. Newspapers have to take out even more space for stories and put in ads, the few that have money to do so in our economy, to pay writers; so with the small space left, newspapers would rather put in a story that will capture your ever-fleeting attention. People even stay away from things because of an article’s size! Many people are completely skipping over this because they are automaticaly consider it too long. I realize that not everyone hates reading newspapers as much as I realize that some journalists have never will be or have yet to be molded by the aforementioned factors. After this, writers will be forced to write for magazines, and then our world will be made up of superficial news and the latest color thats “in”. Go read a small publication if you can’t stand the big ones. At least do something to support and appreciate our dying art.
Ther real tragedy is that for the most part the newspapers are the only ones creating real news. In other words, the internet news sites such as Drudge only recycle from other sources. The Watergates will never be discovered in the future because no one has the time to invest or the skill to pursue the story on their own. The conservative readership that has given up on the newspaper business because “it’s too liberal” have confused what happens on the editorial page with the rest of the paper. The newspapers should eliminate the editorial pages to: 1. save money and 2. eliminate any appearance of bias. Sure the ad revenue is drying up for the newspapers. Just wait till the car manufacturers go belly up, then the papers will certainly struggle. But wait…how do all the different web sites pay themselves? Advertising. The only reason the web sites are still okay is that their costs are so much lower especially when they are getting the writing from the newspapers. The only saving chance for the newspapers is for them to file lawsuits everytime anyone uses their stories. After all Drudge is just stealing, so all the newspapers need to be aggressive. In addition, when the local radio station is reading the newspaper on the air to create their newscasts, it needs to be pursued in the courts.
Journalism…just get out of polotics would be a start. Do not sponsor or promote anyone. Just facts. We will make up our own mind.
Journalism is dead. It is no longer a profession. The people now seek other sources for news. Newspapers are failing first; then the major TV networks = Can’t Believe Stuff, Never Been Creditable, and Anything But Creditable.
American media’s focus is too narrow and sensationalized, “bread and circuses.” As a teacher, I look to services like Reuters and BBC for a more global perspective. How about a penny and article X millions of readers?
A growing group of people in the media have been coming together for 10 years to discuss the future of the media and how they can bring benefit to the world in view of the drastic changes that are taking place. It is a non profit organization that you should look at. http://www.ivohope.org. I believe that positive change will come about when people realize that their work truly impacts the world.Meredith Portemporte@wlrn.org
I feel that reporting should be fact based, if securing all the true facts is remotely possible. There are alot of variables that come into play when a story is sought, investigated and delivered. That is why we must hold all parties accountable for their actions. It is also essential that both the story and the reporter add up. Opinions are what make our country tick and sway public actions to create a positive result. As with the gas crisis that escalated in July. The people of our nation cut back on gasoline consumption during the past five months and in turn that has driven the price of gasoline downward. We the people make positive change and controversy creates dialogue and only with dialogue, discussion, fact and opinion can we reestablish a profitable as well as humanistic society.
Everyone that as worked with jounalists know that 1) They report stories out of context to fit their own agenda 2) Will print a retraction buried deep in the paper that no one could find or read 3) Are filled with english majors who know absolutely nothing about the topics that the write about. These people are shocked that no one under 60 takes the time to read the newspaper. There will be a party at my house when the New York Times goes under. It shouldn’t be too long.
Newspapers will fail as long as they continue with the softball easy stuff like Britney, to the detriment of the challenging stories like the corruption of the SEC and the fact that the US Govt causes, rather than fights, inflation and the drop of purchasing power of our currency. The latter actually might require some EFFORT on reporters’ part.
Its time for journalism as it exisits today to die. How about reporting a story without injecting political bias? That would be a good start.
ABC – NBC – CBSBias is our middle name.
Anonymous who claims to be a journalist for a small newspaper: If you truly are, you write quite poorly for a ‘professional’. Poor skills, grammar, and typos are all contributing factors to some people giving up on ‘newspapers’. The lack of integrity/credibility is probably the biggest factor in the slow death of the industry. This death has been a long, slow suicide.
When I was in college, we used to fight over the newspaper we’d share around our block of rooms. I work at a small county-wide newspaper, and, whether folks want to believe it or not, people still read the newspaper. A newspaper is “tactile” news, the feel, the smell, the residual soy ink left on your hands. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Is the sky really falling?
The key word for newspapers is NEWS!!! Many newspapers pass on syndicated stories from the major services, few do credible reporting of local stories that include relevant details. There is NO PLACE in news for political interferance or political correctness. Failure to print is as offensive to the credibility of the news as what is actually printed in error. THE PUBLIC WANTS TO KNOW THE STORY AS IT IS, WARTS AND ALL!!!