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

three quick hits...

Again with the three dot bloggery...

But all good stuff, tho only connected by a slim thread. Anyhow...

Go here for a good laugh, re making a career out of the newspaper deathwatch, from Paul Dalling, who writes on Huff Po that he has decided to become a "Death of Newspapers" blogger:

I'll join the ranks of Jeff Jarvis, Paul Gillin, Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky in competing to see who can use the most jargon to describe something everyone knows is happening.

Apparently, it's very simple. The more you self-reference, pick feuds and talk about the failure of TimesSelect, the better you're doing. If you make it sound like you're the one who figured out newspapers are dying, you win.

I mean, the point's not to fix anything. It's to describe the problem more dramatically than the next guy. If Steve Outing says newspapers have a "death spiral" and Clay Shirky predicts "a bloodbath," the point goes to Shirky.

Thus prepped, go here for something more serious: A reading list from Jay Rosen on the future of news (or death of news, whichever), featuring links to thoughtful pieces by many of the names you may remember from Dalling's piece.

Finally, go here for an op-ed in today's Chron by David Sirota on "newspapers' self-inflicted blows". He makes many good points, which you will have to read for yourself, but what really caught me was his lead:

At Northwestern University in the mid-1990s, the journalism professor with the most devoted student following was an understated teacher who said that substantive writing and reporting isn't everything, it's the only thing. Alternately despondent and sanguine, he reminded me of Grady from the book "Wonder Boys" when he told us that he spent weekends drinking in his closet and that he corrected papers in green ink because "green is the color of hope."

I love it: ".... it isn't everything, it's the only thing." And that's why, all evidence to the contrary, I could never become a "death of newspapers" blogger.

Unless of course, there was money in it. bk