Will New Media Re-Imagine Journalism?

The way we consume news has changed. With the proliferation of social media and networks, we find that we rely more and more on each other for a local angle on global issues -- not only the words and opinions, also facts, figures, and pictorial testimonials of what's going on. The news has an expiration date and time -- and our attention spans have given the cycle an even shorter leash.

It is not a secret that TV broadcasting has become more entertainment than news these days. In her passionate conversation with us last month, Christiane Amanpour was decrying the loss of robust budgets for in depth reporting. What to say about the state of radio broadcasting news? What is left of print journalism may seem to pale in comparison with a social media that is multi -- micro-blogging, video casts, podcasts and blogs -- at the service of hyper local and subjective information and conversation.

Moving Online

New media networks have forced main stream media online gratis (at a or near loss in costs even as readership is higher) -- and that has precipitated a crisis on paid resources and budgets, one that many seasoned journalists have felt across the board. The Philadelphia Inquirer has gone through a number of staff reductions and rationalizations in the last few years alone, for example.

This premise might be cause for great concern. I have not made a secret of the fact that we need journalist and news editors more today than we ever did. It's sufficient to think about the Associated Press (AP), the behind the scenes influencers of what we read about and how it is delivered to us. Many journalists are dedicated professionals who are indeed devoted to truth and to their craft.

A few news organizations have been able to offer paid content online -- The Wall Street Journal was an example and so was The New York Times. Yet the tearing down of the paid wall, at least for the NYT was a no brainer, as the readership jumped by 7.5 million eyeballs worldwide.

New Media Needs a New Model

AP News editor Doug Fisher responds to the old argument of "pay to read" main stream media put forth by David Lazarus formerly of S.F. Chronicle and now with the L.A. Times. As you may have confirmed these past two weeks, we have indeed a new generation that is quite smart about economics and the proper value and definition of news that suits their worldview. Which is quite different from the "small patch of sky" -- as Fisher describes what is viewed as the known model -- the old way of creating and delivering news and information.

Yet new media needs a new model desperately. Gratis is not sustainable long term -- skilled and experienced resources come at a price, one we should want to pay in some form other than interruption advertising.

When it comes to revenue generating models (mainly advertising) small is the new big, says Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine. I agree with him (and with Seth Godin), the Internet is an entirely new economy, one where it makes sense to have a high volume in local and niche conversations. Hence the rise in interest of hyper-local news.

Re-Imagining the News Business

Profitability remains the million dollar question and quest. Perhaps one answer is to disaggregate the news business into separate, marketable skills. Dave Morgan or AOL puts forth this possibility in a thought-provoking post at OnlineSPIN. Jarvis responded with a very insightful post of his own -- cutting up a newspaper.

Could news organizations act as disaggregated networks? Would they be able to find a way to pool resources and come up with different results like social media? Could they form around social networks, for example? Would we gain even more fluff at the expense of truth and facts? How would we respond and react to greater co-creation of analysis?

Rather than seeing pessimism, I see a lot of possibility ahead of us. New media will re-imagine journalism, it already has. The business model is desperately seeking reinvention, too. Mobile journalism, smarter integration with citizen and social media need money to be sustainable. If news and media organizations learn to think like platforms, they also need a revenue stream that allows them to operate as such.

As we head into 2008, we may see more 200-pound vs. 800-pound gorillas. What is your take?

[hat tip to Bruno Giussani for many of the links. Photos of Italian journalists and authors Beppe Severgnini and Enzo Biagi from two different generations. In memoriam of Biagi who died recently.]

Comments

[Mario Vellandi]

I see a lot of opportunity for innovation within the news distribution system, although I'm unfamiliar with the financing and macro-economics of it all.
If mainstream media's gradual embrace of new media over the last year is any indication, we'll see greater movement this year.

The publicly funded news is great here, but isn't recognized because it doesn't have awareness reach potential like the BBC, CBC (Canada), ARD or ZDF (Germany), or similar scenarios in other countries...which of course also have private sector counterparts.

[Chris Baskind]

Well, free content isn't really free. By simply showing up, you're giving the publisher something: a metric, an ad click, or -- more importantly -- data.

There's money in data mining. A reader comes to a site. Let's call it OldMedia.com. OldMedia's servers push a cookie to the reader's browser and queries to see what other cookies are there. Reader selects an article or two, maybe looks at a sponsored feature, and goes away.

The visit's metrics are now transmitted to a centralized service -- we'll call it Tripleclick. From this session, Tripleclick now knows the following things about the so-far anonymous reader:

* IP address
* Geographical location
* What kind of computer they use
* The last website the reader viewed
* What content interested the reader
* What ads they might have seen
* Any data points they might have entered while visiting OldMedia.com (forms and so on)
* Where the reader went next

All very interesting, but anonymous. Now Tripleclick sifts through the other cookies OldMedia.com gathered during the session. It finds several from other Tripleclick-affiliated sites. All the session data is combined into a single profile. We get a much better look at how this anonymous reader behaves. This is much better than research data about how the reader *says* the will behave.

Gather enough sessions, and you get a detailed look into the interests and response patterns of this reader.

But here's the money shot: While collating the anonymous reader's session data, Tripleclick discovers that he or she made a credit card purchase at an affiliated site three weeks ago.

The data is no longer anonymous. And someone will happily pay for it.

There are ways to defeat cookies, but most people don't bother. You give valuable data to every site you visit.

It goes much deeper, of course. If the no-longer-anonymous reader belongs to a Tripleclick-affiliated social network, the reader's profile will also include friends, professional interests, political leanings, and all the stuff we put out there. The CIA couldn't do as good a job gathering intelligence. Unless they're Tripleclick customers, too.

This technology isn't inherently good or bad -- it depends how it's used. Tripleclick could recognize a reader upon arrival at a site, for instance. It knows the reader likes modern furniture. The site summons relevant content and dynamically rearranges its homepage accordingly. Or displays a highly relevant ad, rather than something which just annoys the reader.

But my point is that "free" content isn't free. There's always a transaction.

[Geoff Livingston]

It's inevitable that the pendulum will swing back the other way. I just can't imagine that the erosion will continue much longer...

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Mario -- what's interesting about publicly funded news is that I have often benefited from programs without recognizing the proper function and importance it plays in the media scape. I'm sure I'm not alone. This is an ongoing conversation and I hope there will be more evidence of movement towards a sustainable business model in 2008.

@Chris -- Nothing is really free, absolutely. Data has tremendous value and those companies who will excel at mining data for preferences and behaviors will indeed make more wealth. I'm still on the fence about either use, good or bad. Thank you for expanding the conversation.

@Geoff -- inevitability is created by saturation and commoditization -- both of which have been amply achieved at this point in time. I am also aware of how much easier it is to build from the ground up than to change a model that is ingrained in the culture, processes and thinking of an organization.

[Richard Becker]

Valeria,

I too see a lot of possibility ahead of us. I'm not sure new media has re-imagined journalism, but the landscape certainly has changed.

By the end of next year, I would not be surprised to see old media will be indistinguishable from new media, with The New York Times and Wall Street Journal leading the way.

Sharp stuff as always. Happy New Year! :)

Best,
Rich

[Valeria Maltoni]

Thank you for your kind words. I have seen some evidence. Loved the conversations with both John Byrne at Business Week and Robin Hamman at the BBC who are both doing smart things online. There will be more conversations in 2008, of course.

I see the NYT leading the way vs. the WSJ at this point. It will be a year of learning, I'm sure.