in search of new models

Thoughtful essay on the rise and fall of newspapers by Net guru Clay Shirky, and the need to focus on the future of journalism apart from the future of the newspaper model. Thought I had posted this before, but apparently not. Be sure to surf the comments.

From his essay:

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

We don’t know who the Aldus Manutius of the current age is. It could be Craig Newmark, or Caterina Fake. It could be Martin Nisenholtz, or Emily Bell. It could be some 19 year old kid few of us have heard of, working on something we won’t recognize as vital until a decade hence. Any experiment, though, designed to provide new models for journalism is going to be an improvement over hiding from the real, especially in a year when, for many papers, the unthinkable future is already in the past.

For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the journalism we need.

More to the point, i got up close and personal with many of these new models last week when I was frantically searching for up-to-date info on the Jesusita fire in Santa Barbara. What i found, to my chagrin, was that the majority of the news on the web was recycled from a few traditional print or broadcast sources, and usually several hours old. Probably the best source turned out to be the website for the Santa Barbara Independent, the local alt-weekly, which was updated continuously. One night, desperate for news as the sundowners were sending the fire racing down the canyons toward the city limits, I dound that the most current piece of info I could get via Google News came from Reuters India.

I also checked a bulletin board for twitter posts -- and tuned out once the board turned into a tweeting match over whether the conversation should or should not include news of an earthquake in nearby Ojai.

Meanwhile, my computer crashed continuously. bk

Reuse, recyle, repurpose

Here's a lesson in how to repurpose good reporting. Santa Barbara Independent writer and editor Matt Kettman forwards these links to two distinct pieces for distinctly different publications, based on the same reporting on the tension surrounding the future of the Carrizo Plain National Monument just north of Santa Barbara County.

The first is a longform ode to the land from the Santa Barbara Independent that gives us a full-on sense of place: we roam the land and get to know it -- and the endangered species who call it home -- before we are hit with the current conflict that may compromise its pristine beauty.

The second is a straight-up news story for Time.com that focuses on the current battle over the land between the environmentalists who want to preserve it -- and the companies fighting to make use of the land as a massive solar power farm.

Note the difference in style, voice and focus. In the first piece, the current conflict is the newshook. In the second, it's the story. Note also the way Matt brought out the competing interests, and the difficulties in sorting out priorities, when it comes to land management -- and going green. bk

paper-screen-post

When paper trumps screen: It's about the serendipity.

Here's a quick example. This morning in the SF Chron, I found an opinion piece (left on the breakfast table atop the pile of papers by someone who had found it first) written by Matt Kettmann, one of my daughter's friends, who is an editor at the Santa Barbara Independent and strings for Time Magazine.

The likelihood that either of us would have found in online is slim or none -- unless we had gone looking for it. And why would we have done that?

The piece, entitled "Slumdog Reality", is about volunteer docs working to eradicate sickness and blindness in India's slums, one vitamin at a time. Something the movie didn't touch. bk

Photo Credit: Fox Searchlight via AP

does the exception prove the rule?

Or does it refute it?

The conventional wisdom when it comes to journalism is that corporate-owned media is the great Satan. Certainly, you can find some truth there.

But the dirty little secret is that independent, or family-owned, media is not always the antidote.

One case in point: Wendy McCaw, uber-rich owner and publisher of the Santa Barbara News Press, who has proven yet again that a news organization that is owned by someone who answers to no one can be its own version of journalism hell.

Back in 2006, McCaw drew the wrath of journalists all over the world when she breached the church-state wall by, among other things, interfering in editorial decisions and showing the door to folks who disagreed with her. Many others simply walked.

Read all about in American Journalism Review.

And now, three weeks before Christmas, she has summarily shut down the Goleta Valley Voice, a sattelite paper that covered the nearby town of Goleta, as well as Valley Living, which covered the Santa Ynez Valley, another nearby community. It was a cost-cutting move. In a piece for the Santa Barbara Independent, Matt Kettman writes: "By closing the two papers, the News-Press was able to lay off 17 employees. The two papers will be 'incorporated and expanded' into the daily newspaper under this 'new operational structure.'”

Those 17 employees, however, will not be part of it. bk