Why Going Digital Won't Save Journalism -- At Least Not Yet.

Robert McChesney in Sunday's Salon on the news media meltdown:  "...The Internet does not alleviate the tensions between commercial­ism and journalism; it magnifies them."

It doesn't do a whole lot for journalistic integrity either.  If the current crisis in the news media has to do with making enough money to pay the journalists to do the work, going digital not only exacerbates the problem, but tarnishes the product as well.  McChesney exposes several recent attempts to make money online -- and why they've failed, at least when it comes to the true purpose of journalism.  Here's a taste:

The latest hope is that the rapid emergence of mobile communication will open up new ways to monetize content. But the point of professional journalism in its idealized form was to insulate the news from commercialism, marketing, and political pressures and to produce the necessary information for citizens to understand and participate effectively in their societies. In theory, some people were not privileged over others as legitimate consumers of journalism. That is why it was democratic. It was a public service with an am­biguous relationship with commercialism; hence the professional firewall. Journalists made their judgment calls based on professional education and training, not commercial considerations. That is why people could trust it. The core problem with all these efforts to make journalism pay online is that they accelerate the commercialization of journalism, degrading its integrity and its function as a public service. The cure may be worse than the disease.

 What's at stake is not just media corporations' bottom lines -- or even reporter's paychecks.  It's democracy itself.  bk

Amen

From Today's Word on Journalism:

“For journalists charged with feeding the digital news flow, life is a barely sustainable cycle of reporting, blogging, tweeting, Facebooking and, in some cases, moderating the large volume of readers who comment online. I applaud these journalists for their commitment, but worry that the requirements of the digital age are translating into more errors and eventual burnout.”

—Arthur S. Brisbane, public editor, The New York Times, 1/10/2011
(Thanks to alert WORDster John McManus)

who defines what's news?

You do.

A recent dust-up between the New York Times and it's partnery, the baycitizen.org, and online news non-rofit in the San Francisco Bay area that supplies local news stories to the NYT twice a week. The issue at hand? A column written by the editor of the Bay Citizen appeared to straddle the line between news, gray lady style, and editorial. All of which points to the ways in which digital journalism is changing the definition of the news as we know it.

Here's the cheat sheet for you. First, a column about the brouhaha from the Bay Citizen from the guy who wrote the column in question. Second, the NYT column about said column, written by the public editor. And finally, the Times' own Readers Guide to help readers distinguish fact from, um, opinion.

All of which calls for a little more sophistication o the part of the reader, if not the reporter. So here's the question: as we move away from the old school definition of he said/she said journalistic objectivity, as we appreciate the validity of point of view journalism (even though these changes require more work on the part of the reader) what does this mean in terms of an informed citizenry? Thumbs up? Down? No clue?

It's complicated. But whatever you think, it's kind of exciting, our here on the sidelines, watching it all evolve. bk

coming to a screen near you

Go here to read about Sports Illustrated's prototype magazine for the web, accessible via Google, and, at least as far as the prototype is concerned, combining pretty much the best of both print and digital journalism. the plan is that both the web version of the magazine and the Google app store from which you can buy it will be ready in the fall. From the story on "All Things Digital":

Sports Illustrated hasn’t come to Apple’s iPad yet, but the magazine is already showing off a new version of its future: A digital version designed with Google in mind.

This one, which Editor Terry McDonell showed off at Google’s I/O developer conference today, looks a whole lot like the one the publisher says it is bringing to Apple’s gadget soon. The real difference here is the way readers/buyers get their hands on the thing: Rather than buying it from Apple’s App Store and downloading it to your iPad, you would access it via your Web browser, after purchasing it from an app store Google manages.

And here's the prototype, which is pretty similar to the prototype SI developed for the iPad:

quick hits: then again not.

In case you missed these:

Newsweek is on the sale rack. Makes me sad, then again not. Since it changed its format this year, the name of the magazine has been a misnomer. Read more here and here.

Reporting via social media can be efficient and economical, then again.... Go here for an ooops story on how HuffPo came up with the WRONG Facebook page for the Times Square bomber.

On the other hand, here's how wired.com found the guy who found the prototype for the iPhone. Yep, it started with Facebook.

Finally, journalism is reportedly dying, but then again not. Go here for a story on the growth of sports journalism classes in university journalism programs. From the story, by award-winning sportswriter Dave Kindred:

Of the many reasons a man would want to be 21 again, number four or five on my list would be today’s full palate of journalistic choices. When I was 21, a reporter/writer interested in sports could work for a newspaper or magazine – end of story. Today’s students have newspapers and magazines (for a while, anyway) along with hundreds of outlets from the big boys at ESPN.com, AOL’s Fanhouse, Yahoo! Sports, and CBSSports.com to newspaper websites, blogs, and niche blogs reporting on every aspect of SportsWorld. Today’s 20somethings see sports journalists on television, hear them on radio, read their blogs, follow them on Twitter, friend them on Facebook.

"Sports journalism isn’t dying, it’s transforming," said Tim Franklin, once the editor of The Baltimore Sun and now director of the NSJC. "When I meet with students, they’re excited about the future. They will have a different career path than we had. But when they look around, they don’t see the abyss. They see a changing, but dynamic, landscape. . .

e-pullitzers?

Roy J. Harris, Jr. opines in the Christian Science Monitor that maybe it's time for the Pullitzers to recognize digital journalism not only as a way to legitimize it, but also to give the whole industry a well-needed shot in the arm.

What I wonder is why there needs to be any distinction at all between print and digital when it comes to recognizing excellence. The awards are for the reporting, not the means of delivery, right? That should put sites like fivethirtyeight.com and Talking Points Memo clearly in the running.

From his op-ed:

Last December, the Pulitzer organization sought a desperately needed boost – in part, perhaps, to spare the awards from becoming an anachronism amid the growth of Twitter, the blogosphere, and other channels for news unknown just a few years ago. It decided to allow entries in all 14 journalism categories from web-only news organizations. (The ruling exempted the work of websites operated by print magazines and broadcasters, even though that work competes with newspaper sites for readers.)

Of the 1,028 total journalism submissions from around the country, there were 65 entries from online enterprises. Thirty-seven online-only news organizations entered. But only one was mentioned by name in the Pulitzer results: Politico (and it has a limited print version), whose editorial cartoonist was a finalist.

online-onlies: what's the rush?

The Guardian reports that a new study out of City University of London has found that when newspapers go online only, they may well lose more than they gain: The costs of print production would need to "significantly outstrip" the paper's income to make online-only a viable alternative.

And with most print products still making at least minimal profits, you have to wonder: why the rush?

The study focused on Europe's first online-only, the Finnish financial newspaper Taloussanomat, which went from print to digital in December 2007. The aftermath? Costs fell by 50 percent, but readership declined by 22 percent and revenues dropped by more than 75 percent.

Whether or not the findings will apply to other online-onlies, especially in the U.S. -- too early to tell. But according to Neil Thurman, one of the study's authors, there are a couple of issues that might be relevant:

"Just having the print product out there on news stands does promote the website. They also cut their newsroom staff, and so the quality of content did suffer.

"But probably the most important factor is that it's a different medium that is used in a different way. You might spend one and a half minutes a day with the brand online, instead of half an hour a day with a printed product."

You can read the whole study here. bk

spare-change journalism

Go here to read about a salon.com piece by Katharine Mieszkowski about non-profit journalism that highlights a couple of digital models: the Voice of San Diego and MinnPost.com

Doing good work, but on a shoestring. From the story:

Jay Weiner is one of MinnPost's star reporters. A former sportswriter, his relentless coverage of the Norm Coleman-Al Franken recount case at MinnPost won him the Frank Premack Public Affairs Journalism Award for excellence in breaking news. The 54-year-old Weiner, who has been a full-time daily journalist for 31 years, took a buyout from the Minneapolis Star Tribune in June of 2007. At the newspaper, he made $80,000 a year with a pension, health insurance, vacations and overtime. Weiner, who has two kids in college, now makes $700 a week, working as many as 60 hours a week with no vacations, no overtime, no healthcare and no pension, on contract for MinnPost.

"Now I have to work 52 weeks a year to make $35,000 and pay for my own Internet access, phone, notebooks and pens," he says. Yet even as he wonders how long he can continue to afford to do this gig, he revels in the excitement of working at a start-up news organization, not a shrinking newspaper.

"I am so happy to not be at the newspaper," he says. "We're growing, there is freedom, we're all involved in a product that we really want to make as good as possible. Everybody has a certain amount of optimism that this can be something great." For the moment, Weiner cobbles together other freelance projects on the side to supplement his income from MinnPost.

the death of the scoop

Jon Friedman of MarketWatch writes here about one of the (many) changes in journalism wrought by the internet age: the end of the scoop, or the short shelf life of the "great get".

He also has a prediction about the fourth value the digital bosses may soon use to measure the worth of individual news stories. Could be chilling: all celebs, all the time?

From his column:

In the old days -- way back in the late 20th century, before the Internet took hold -- a newspaper could celebrate a scoop for 24 hours. No more. Today, it lasts as long as it takes for an editor in another newsroom to press the "send" button, immediately matching the exclusive.

Then there is the business consideration. For many newsrooms, the process of getting a scoop may no longer be cost-effective. On the Web, a scoop may not be the most widely read piece on a site. That matters, as we move more toward a world of accountability. Often, media bosses determine an online story's success by how many clicks it attracted.

The Internet makes it possible for publishers and editors to measure a story's worth according to three criteria: most read, most emailed and most reader comments generated.

As if this new reality of digital publishing isn't unsettling enough for a reporter or a columnist to ponder, coming soon to a Web site near you: The powers-that-be will clamor to add a fourth variable. They'll be measuring precisely how much time readers/consumers are spending on each individual story.

so is THIS the new media?

If you weren't confused before about the future of journalism, you will be now:

Just when we thought the journalism biz was heading digital, with no turning back, Wired reports that a startup called The Printed Blog will launch a twice-daily print newspaper that aggregates a selection of ... blogs.

Another way of looking at it: Just when we thought the blogosphere was driving newspapers out of business, along comes a plan to make money off blogs by delivering them on paper. Weird. I mean, Wired. From the article:

“'Why hasn’t anyone tried to take the best content and bring it offline?' said [founder and former business productivity software entrepreneur Joshua] Karp, who thinks print media is far from dying.

“'[For] people around the world, who need to and want to consume information, whether it be in developing countries or emerging countries, newsprint is still going to be a main mechanism for information for years to come,' he said.

"The hope is that the hyperlocal content will attract local advertisers who can spend less to reach out to their target audience. Ads are relatively cheap in comparison ($15-$25) and the paper has already lined up a number of Chicago-based businesses for its debut. It will also host classified ads.

"The first issue is expected to launch on Jan. 27, handed out at three CTA stations around Lincoln Park and Wicker Park in Chicago and one location in San Francisco. A New York edition is due out shortly."

objectivity, redefined. again

Editor and Publisher columnist Joe Stupp poses an interesting question today about how, when new media is folded into old, we are forced to reevaluate what we mean by objectivity. He thinks that may be a good thing.

What we now consider journalism has morphed into a digital hybrid of straight reporting, blogging, commentary, and personality journalism -- complete with the dreaded first person -- often on the same webpage. And with one reporter often wearing several of those hats, lines blur.

It's not that the core values of journalism -- honesty, accuracy, fairness -- don't still hold, even when it comes to blogging and commentary, Stupp's piece suggests. But maybe now that one form is bleeding into the other, it's time to throw the old definition of objectivity as a 50/50 balance straight out the window.

And acknowledge that it never really existed anyway.

From the column:
Andrew Malcolm, who has covered politics since 1968 and blogs at the Los Angeles Times' "Top of the Ticket," says he still treats each item like a fact-based story, but with some buzz and style. "Most non-newspaper blogs are committed, one way or another — there is a slant," he says. "They are selling a particular view. Our niche is to be sort of unexpected. But it is possible to be a real professional. Cover something straight and develop a perspective to inform your discussion."

L.A. Times Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus points out the different views of what is objective. "I think it means presenting every side of an argument fairly in ways that the proponents would accept as valid," he says.

But more and more, both new media and old-fashioned news types are disagreeing with that approach. The growing trend is that the truth must surpass the 50/50 doctrine. "We have gotten it so wrong with the idea of giving equal play to both sides," says Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of Huffingtonpost.com and a longtime proponent of trading arbitrary "balance" for truth. "We are not always going to be balanced. Very often, it is one side or the other." She cited the ongoing arguments against global warming, which she contends mainstream journalists allowed for too long to go unchallenged: "We wasted a lot of journalistic capital on global warming trying to be balanced." She says the recent government rescue of financial institutions is another, noting too many mainstream outlets did not question if the bailout was needed: "Those of us who live online already dismissed certain elements of the bailout, such as the lack of oversight."

Adds [Keith] Woods, [dean of faculty at the Poynter Institute]: "Whether you quote both sides does not change what is the truth. We allow the 50/50 idea to substitute for truth. Where we often fail is when we may get somebody on one side with deep knowledge, understanding, perspective, and credibility to speak and on the other side someone with just an opinion, but they have no credibility."

[Boston Globe Editor Martin] Baron agrees: "We are involved in journalism, not stenography exercises. It is finding out what is actually happening. Balance means every story gets 50/50? I don't believe that."