There is no newsroom. Jay Rosen and I don’t even live in the same state. Oh, we do collaborate like mad.
We just don’t need to be face-to-face to do it. The NYU students who work on the project don’t need to be at NYU or even in the New York area to get work done. We can work from anywhere.
We use Google Docs, wikis and an internal blog. We have a modern e-mail Web app like GMAIL to send e-mails and IMs. We use Skype and Twitter.
We use Mevio for our audio files and WordPress for our site. We have Dropbox for backing up our files and could use it to share large files if we needed.
These Web tools have made us incredibly efficient and allow us to run extremely lean. We’re not wasting money on PC-based software or a physical location. Why should we?
In fact, I’d say working collaboratively and remotely makes us more efficient. I don’t have people stopping by my home-office (or a coffee house) bugging me, telling me random jokes or asking me if I want to go to lunch. And I can get work done wherever, whenever.
Sometimes inspiration strikes at 2:00 a.m. Because I’m set up to get work done remotely, I can capitalize on that inspiration.
This all brings me to my real point: What’s the point of a newsroom in today’s era of limited resources? What would you rather fire: content producers (and by extension money makers) or a physical building? For knowledge workers, I’d argue that physical buildings often make us less efficient and always cost a lot of money.
We had an office for the first station, but realized after a year, no one went there. There was no need for it.
All of our video journalists work from the field, cut on their own laptops, and set their own schedules. Coming into an office every day would only eat into their reporting time and serve no purpose. Not to mention the vast cost of a physical office – the building, the desks, the carpet, the lights. All unnecessary.
So when we set out to design our second station, we eliminated the building and the office entirely.
If I’m an editor, I don’t want to see my reporters. If I am seeing them, they are not out being a part of the community. And I really don’t care where editors are located.
They certainly don’t need to be in the same building together. Heck, they don’t even need to all be in the same state or country. Same with Web developers, database journalists, etc. I just want people who are good at what they do and can work with collaborative Web tools.
Instead of laying off employees, news orgs should consider laying off their office buildings. Or at least downsizing them with the idea that workers would show up to this smaller, collaborative-focused newsroom less often.
In my experience, companies that require workers to come in every day to get work done aren’t utilizing collaborative tools that make them more efficient. If they were using Web apps like Google Apps/Docs, wikis, BaseCamp and Web-based e-mail, they wouldn’t need you to come in. With those tools, almost all meetings are obsolete.
Telecommuting is all about mindset. That’s all it is. Many mangers have only known showing up Monday-Friday, 8-5 in the office each week. They think that’s the only way to get work done.
They can’t envision a different way of working. They assume you’ll just slack off if they can’t walk over to your desk whenever they want. They think you won’t be in the loop and be able to collaborate.
You don’t want to work for these kinds of managers. They let fear override logic. They are stuck in the past, when the present and future offer a better way of doing things.
I’m here to tell you that those kinds of managers are wrong. In my previous jobs, I worked in an office. Now I telecommute full-time.
I no longer waste two hours of my day commuting into work. Instead, I can spend that time actually working. Now, if I want to get work done at 2:00 a.m., I can. Also, I can update our Google Site (a powerful wiki-like tool) whenever a good idea strikes me.
Nothing sapped my creative energy like being told that I had to think about work a certain part of the day and personal stuff another part of the day. Now, I can think about work whenever it makes sense to. I don’t work straight through my day and then go home.
No, I work in chunks and then do non-work stuff for other chunks. I’m much more flexible now, and I have to be because I follow journalists all over the world. You can find me doing work early in the morning and late in the evening.
And why not? It’s just more efficient to work when you have work to do, not just to show up for work when you are scheduled at the office.
I’m more efficient now, and I work more. I have more time to work, and I have less distractions. No longer do I feel drained from a long commute, and I don’t waste time traveling to work.
Rethink the office
There are times when it may make sense to meet in person, but we don’t need to meet everyday. In fact, I’d argue that meeting daily makes us less efficient, and a bonus of not having an office is that it cuts down on meetings. Of course, there are companies that will never really need to meet.
Want to collaborate? Use collaborative tools! Meetings are a time sink.
Get rid of the building, and the you’ll get rid of the endless, unproductive meetings.
Here are two options that should save money and make for a better product, while still keeping a physical office space when needed:
Have a smaller space that workers can bring their laptops in for collaboration.
Rent out a space just when you need it for in-person collaboration.
Option one is less radical, but it still saves money. If your workers work from home several days a week and don’t have set desks and offices, you don’t need anywhere near the same amount of space.
For instance, different teams could have different days of the week where they come in for collaboration. During these days, they would have access to the work space, which would be built around people bringing in laptops. There would be lots of white boards and spaces designed around serious collaboration (not around stupid, daily status meetings).
But it would be much smaller, and smaller means less money. Imagine if only 25 percent (or less) of your work force was scheduled to be in the office each day. Plus, you don’t have offices wasting space.
Option two is more radical, but it makes sense. Why not just rent out space once a week for collaboration or monthly or whenever you need it? Why buy or lease a building if you don’t need to?
Simply rent out space when you actually need to meet in person. If more businesses did this, there could be a sizable market for rent-an-offices. But these wouldn’t look like today’s cubicle-filled offices.
Again, they would be built around collaboration. They would be open and filled with white boards. They would have tons of wireless bandwidth, and they would have personality.
After all, if you’re going to have a physical office space, why not have it be something that people actually want to come into? Why not have something that is actually inspirational?
You can’t put a price on happiness
This is an often over-looked benefit of telecommuting. Employees will he happier. Many of us have to deal with huge commutes (especially those in markets like New York, Chicago, D.C., San Francisco, etc).
Trust me, no one likes spending his life in traffic, and American workers spend unconscionable amounts of time in traffic. So, why not get rid of one of the most stressful and least productive parts of your employees’ day? They’ll be happier if you allow them to skip that commute.
Employees will call out sick less. Heck, they’ll get sick less because A) they won’t be in the office with other sick workers and B) they’ll have less stress in their lives.
Which reminds me, I’ve never been sick since I started telecommuting. I used to get sick a few times a year when I had to make a commute each day (on the metro), be exposed to germs and sick people and then show up in the office and be exposed to people who refuse to take sick days. My health has improved, and I am just plain happier.
Child care suddenly becomes a lot easier and no longer a hassle for employees. Parents can work and spend time with their young children. If their school-age children get sick, it’s not an issue to find child care that day.
If the only reason you require workers to show up daily to an office is because, “that’s the way we’ve always done it,” you don’t get it. You don’t get how modern, Web-based collaborative tools can make your workers more productive and can save you money. And if you’re a manager, and you aren’t interested in making workers more productive and saving money, you’re doing it wrong.
And let’s be honest, doing things the way they have always been done has gotten news organizations into a lot of trouble. How about we make a new pact right here, right now: We’ll do things because they make sense, and that means being willing to rethink everything we do.
It’s the kind of thoughtful research and ideas about the future of newspapers and journalism that you won’t find in Time Magazine or The New York Times. It’s the kind of straight realism — and not the radicalism that many would have you believe — that this industry needs. I know it, you know it — we all know it: Journalism is rapidly changing in ways we can’t predict, and the old models are becoming obsolete faster than new models can develop:
When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.
I refuse to lie to people about the state of journalism or our future. I hope more journalists stop this game. Everything is changing.
I have been saying for awhile that there will be a dead period between when newspapers finally fall from being the dominant form of American journalism until new, viable journalism enterprises take their place. I can’t tell you how long it will be until the Internet/mobile can effectively replace newspapers. It could take the majority of my life until we see that reality.
But I can tell you this, a revolution is occurring. Make no mistake about it. Everything that we have ever known about journalism is coming to an end. It is both incredibly exciting and scary. Newspapers will be replaced.
When and by what? None of us can say.
Printing a newspaper took considerable resources. Starting a blog is free. That’s the fundamental problem with newspapers.
You can’t monopolize a free distribution medium. And newspapers were monopolies. They were uncompetitive.
We probably suffered because of the uncompetitive nature of newspapers. Imagine instead of having one outlet with one voice covering an area or topic, a virtually limitless amount of voices covering an area or topic? The Internet has the power to free us from all the bad parts of newspapers — shallow coverage, lack of transparency and misplaced trust in an ethos of objectivity, instead of honesty and fairness.
Make no mistake about it, there is a lot not to like about newspapers. And I would be shocked if journalism wasn’t exponentially superior 50 years from now than what we have today.
Trust me, business models will follow, especially when newspapers fall. When billions of dollars of advertising are freed from newspapers, it will naturally flow somewhere else. Advertisers will eventually realize that the Internet is by far the superior advertising vehicle.
The Internet will finally allow for targeted advertising, and it also gives far greater metrics over who is viewing ads. Plus, the Internet is opening up the ability for many more people to advertise too. Many people couldn’t afford to advertise in newspapers, even though they wanted to.
Advertisers have also been slow to grasp the power of the Internet. But they will. And people will make money off of journalism on the Web.
It’s not a matter of if, but when.
And that’s just the thing. None of us can say when that switchover will occur. It’s going to be a bumpy ride, but when we make it through this revolution, we will be producing better journalism.
He got a cover story into Time Magazine on the incredibly half-baked idea of micropayments — charging for content by literally nickel and dimeing people. Let me remind all of you that this idea is not remotely new. Mark Potts points out that this idea dates back to well into the 1990s.
The difference is that Isaacson is a journalism bigwig. He is revered in many circles. He can write whatever he wants, and we’ll print it.
And we did.
If I wrote the same exact piece and published it to my blog, I would have been laughed at. and Time Magazine would never have seriously considered publishing it. But shouldn’t Isaacson be held to a higher standard than me, not a lower one? After all, my half-baked ideas aren’t thrown on magazine covers and TV shows for all to see.
Or is journalism really about comforting the well connected and privileged? I hope not.
If a politician proposed a really bad idea, journalists would jump all over it and start dissecting it. But when a bigwig journalist proposes an idea, regardless of merit, it’s accepted as gospel within mainstream circles.
Thankfully the journalism blogosphere and Twitter have thoroughly dissected Isaacson’s ideas (the kind of work Time’s editors should have done). Unfortunately, I don’t believe that the people in charge of a magazine like Time — or other large, influential news organizations — spend much time reading blogs or Twitter. Pity, they might learn something.
It’s clear from reading Isaacson’s ideas that he did not do any substantive homework. If he did, he would have known micropayments for journalism have been discussed for more than a decade and that there are strong concerns about being able to overcome transaction fees and make a profit. Plus, Apple developed the iTunes store to help sell high-profit margin iPods.
Isaacson and others have forwarded the iTunes Store as a successful micropayment model. The problem is that Apple sells plenty of higher-margin macropayments on the store (the iTunes store is for a lot more than just music, and I hope — but doubt — that Isaacson knew that) and Apple has been actively trying to find ways to make money off of those 99 cent micropayments by getting people to purchase a lot more than just 99 cents at a time (cards loaded with $20 are a great way to do this).
Jay Rosen on Twitter nailed why Isaacson is allowed to have such a big mouthpiece for such poorly researched ideas:
One answer to CJR’s question: http://is.gd/jizZ Journalism babies its bigfoots. They get to skip the homework and jump right to solutions.
Journalism bigwigs play by different rules than most of us. They are babied and rarely challenged. And that’s a loss for all of us.
That’s a question every news organization should ask itself, whether it be for its main CMS or other Web software.
And when I say proprietary, I don’t mean just software built in house but also software provided by vendors. If the answer is no, our proprietary solutions are inferior, than you have some serious soul searching to do. Why would you pay for an inferior product?
Now it is possible that A) your CMS and other Web software predate some of the quality, free open-source alternatives available (many would argue that Drupal, while quite a robust option now, wasn’t that good a few years ago). If this is the case, your organization should look into modernizing its Web software ASAP. I still hear journalists complaining about being hampered by creaky CMSes.
Don’t let outdated software stand in the way of your ambitions, especially when there are so many strong open-source options available. A good CMS won’t give you a good Web product, but it also won’t stand in the way of one either.
But if the answer is B) because we didn’t know any better, than that’s a serious, serious problem. There are news organizations that don’t have the right people making these decisions. Some will be easily swayed by vendor marketing tactics, while others will go with whatever CMS integrates easily with their print content management system. Listen, your Web CMS is more important than your print content management system.
Ideally, both will be strong systems that integrate well with each other. But with a Web-first strategy, tight integration isn’t that important anymore. Back when print content was pushed onto the Web it was, but times have changed. Web and print content are often different, with the Web often getting many exclusives. Increasingly, Web and print content will be distinct, negating the need for tight integration (or the need for purchasing a CMS and print content management system from the same vendor).
Utlimately, the point is that you can’t let poor software decisions hamper the potential of your news organization. The good news is that a good CMS doesn’t cost much money. The bad news is that the people in charge at your news organization may not know that.
“If you’re just going to repeat press releases, why have the press?” – Dan Lyons.
That’s fantastic insight from Lyons in these times of churnalism. Lyons was supposedly banned from CNBC for telling one of its reporters to apologize to viewers for being serially wrong about Steve Jobs’ health.
Instead of Lyons being banned from the network for calling out a reporter who refused to admit he was responsible for regurgitating spin, CNBC should look into doing some real journalism and tightening its editorial standards. Plenty of journalists do real journalism and know how to separate spin from fact. You can’t be a good journalist if you believe whatever people tell you.
In fact, the best advice I can ever give a young journalist is to not believe anything anyone tells you without corroborating evidence. People are always trying to use journalists. Watch this clip and see how several CNBC reporters/anchors/non-journalists defend their inability to act as a filter.
We can all agree that the Web is a vastly different medium than print.
Which is why I can’t understand why almost every news site tries to emulate the user interface of a newspaper. The mediums are nothing alike, and they each have much different strengths and weaknesses. Why are we still making dynamic Web sites that try to mimic static news print?
A user interface can be often be the single most important decision in the life of a Web site. News organizations need to take this decision more seriously and need to rethink everything.
I have plenty of “radical” UI concepts in my head. These concepts are only radical to people working at news organizations who seem hell bent on trying to emulate newspapers. Today, I’m going to talk about two of my UI concepts that are considerably different than what news organizations are doing today.
The social news feed
This concept is inspired by Facebook. The Facebook news feed helps users stay up-to-date on their friends, and is the first place most users check when they log in. Every day I find interesting links left by my friends on Facebook, and without the news feed, I would use Facebook far less.
Which directly leads me to why this concept needs to be explored by news organizations. Every news site should be social and allow users to connect with each other. Every day I find content via my friends on Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed and other social networks. Imagine, for instance, if WashingtonPost.com was built around a social networking model.
Instead of being greeted by a front page with stories selected by a bunch of people who I don’t know and who don’t know me, I would be greeted by the content that my select group of friends liked. And my friends could include people who worked at the Post. Every Post employee would be required to be a member of the site (and thus their professional produced content could show up in people’s feeds).
I could follow a photographer’s photos, a writer’s stories and a columnist’s columns. I could also follow my friends blogs, photos, videos and other user generated content. Heck, I could also choose to put the Post’s headlines in my news feed as they come online (or individual sections).
As long as the Post updates its site constantly throughout the day, instead of dumping content all at once, my news feed would be a nice mix of content from the Post and from my friends in the Washington area. The problem, however, with the Post’s Web site is that I’m greeted by the same exact homepage as everyone else.
But we’re not the same. None of us is exactly the same. Our Facebook home pages, however, are entirely unique.
When you think about it, what is at the core of most news organizations? Geography. I read The Washington Post because I live in the Washington region.
I would never sign up for the LA Times Web site. I would only consume content on that site because someone linked me to it, not because it’s a part of my daily routine.
The best way to make a given geographic location come alive on the Web — a niche — is to form a social network that allows people of that geographic area to connect with each other. So, let’s really hammer home what WashingtonPost.com should be like when we log in.
There should be a feed with the latest content, links, etc from my friends and Post headlines (if I choose this last option. I could also say I only want headlines from local news and sports, for instance. Maybe I just want political stories in my feed). This will be a mixture of original content produced by my friends (who might be employees of the Post), links to content that my friends like on the Post Web site and links to content that my friends like from around the Web.
The homepage should also tell me if I have messages from my friends, requests or any other interactions I should check out. It would also display the comics, cross word puzzles and games I want to consume and play on the site. Beyond that, I should get an update on what’s happening in my groups. Let’s call these Post Groups for posterity sake.
These are user generated groups. I live in Silver Spring. There could be a group formed for citizens of Silver Spring to discuss what’s happening in our area, post photos, blog items and add to the overall coverage and understanding of this area. Heck, there could be a group for my apartment building and the street I live on.
There could be groups for local sports teams, PTAs, city councils, etc — whatever really. If the Post wants to be a guide to the Washington area, it has to let the people guide it. These Post Groups would help greatly increase engagement on the Post site.
At its core, Facebook is a tool. At its core, WashingtonPost.com is a news site. There is a reason I check out Facebook way more than WashingtonPost.com. It’s because a tool becomes part of my life and routine, whereas a news site is only something I check when I actively want to consume news from that site.
The desire to consume news from a single source fades in and out of consciousness. Much of the content on a given news site can be consumed elsewhere. There is no direct reason to tie me into a single news site.
There really is only one Facebook (MySpace and Facebook are distinct). There is really only one Twitter (name any other micro blogging site that has taken off like it has). Those sites have got me locked in, but no news site has (some news aggregators have, however).
I would consume far more news content on WashingtonPost.com if the site itself was a tool. I read more news stories from Twitter than I do from WashingtonPost.com. The people I have chosen to follow on Twitter often link to some great content.
It’s content that speaks to me, and the links that show up in my Twitter feed are very useful. After all, I’ve chosen to follow these people for a reason. But Twitter is also a tool that I use and enjoy.
I go Twitter first and foremost because it’s a tool for interacting with people, and I use it for my job. But along the way, links pop up in my Twitter feed. WashingtonPost.com would get far more traffic if it became an indispensable tool that people felt compelled to check multiple times a day.
Along the way, I would surely consume more content for the Post. My Post feed would have content that interests me, group members would be linking to quality Post content and I would be checking around Post.com a lot more because I was already there for other purposes.
Now, this doesn’t mean this is the only way news would be presented on WashingtonPost.com. There would still be a standard looking news site UI for non-members (these people obviously don’t have friends on the site), and many people wouldn’t be into the news feed UI concept (mostly older people that aren’t into social media).
Still, WashingtonPost.com and most news sites could do a better job at the very UI they are trying to master. ESPN.com’s recent redesign was mostly an effort to understand that less is more. It does a better job of displaying content, while confusing people a lot less.
Guess who would love the news feed UI? Precisely the people that news organizations have trouble connecting with — younger generations. Facebook is a part of my daily life. So is Twitter. So is Google Reader (love the recommended items from my friends on Google Reader).
There is no traditional news site that is a part of my daily life. All the sites that are a part of my daily life are tools. They all allow me to connect with people.
News sites are very poor at allowing people to connect with each other and to form social bonds and groups. This must change ASAP.
The other great part of the news feed UI concept is that it doesn’t take daily effort on the part of news organization. It’s dynamically created for each user by the Web site itself.
The world view
GlobalPost just launched today, and I knew before I went there that it had a standard UI. There is nothing that the founders said about the site that lead me to believe that they would be trying something radical or unique when it came to the Web site itself. You can read and hear all about the vision for GlobalPost.com here.
I’m deeply disappointed in this UI. Not because it’s worse than a normal news site UI, but because I really feel like they missed an incredible opportunity to create a very unique UI that it seems to me would jump out to any one who thinks critically about what GlobalPost aspires to be.
The main UI for this site should be a dynamic map or globe of the world (I say main, because there is no reason we can’t have multiple UIs. As RSS becomes more popular, an RSS feed should be thought of as a malleable UI option). As new content is produced from various correspondents, it should pop up on the map with a pin point. People could mouse over this pin point, read a brief about the content (what it’s about, what kind of content, etc). and then decide whether or not to click to consume more.
GlobalPost tries some of these concepts, but it insists on leading with old, outdated UI concepts. There are some map concepts on the site, like here, but they seem more tacked on as a visual gimmick than a re-conceptualizing of the UI. And there is nothing dynamic about their map content
This map/globe concept obviously must be taken further. Let’s say I wanted to learn more about Iraq. I could go to the Middle East and then click on Iraq and have its provinces and cities show up. I could then view content by smaller geographic locations and see where the latest content came from.
Instead of being a UI gimmick, the map can also have layers of data. One would be the base layer with provinces and cities. Another layer would show population breakdowns around the county. Another would show ethic and religious breakdowns of the population around the country. Another would show what kind of industries each area had and so on.
You would think a site like GlobalPost would focus heavily on cartography. How can you really show the true story of a country without good maps with good data? The answer is you can’t.
GlobalPost seems to have a blog UI concept that has many newspaper-qualities to it. This UI fails for anything but written content. GlobalPost has a timeline of key events for some countries, but the UI of the site makes the timelines hard to use.
GlobalPost seems to want to include some encyclopedia content, which is great. I think they should try to include a lot of this kind of content. It should be be a site where people can learn in depth the back story and current story about a nation.
Right now, GlobalPost has rudimentary back story content (far less than, say, Wikipedia). That must change. And using a UI that has a great map/globe will greatly help tell that back story.
Besides the map/globe concept, GlobalPost could have lists of the latest content from each region. Are these simple lists really that much worse than the current GlobalPost design? Also, GlobalPost needs much stronger — and unique — individual pages for each country.
Here is my advice to the new GlobalPost.com:
More back story — It’s nice hat you included information about countries, like population, GDP and the other basics, but you need more. GlobalPost should have more information than the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia combined about a given country. Tell the real back story of a country. Make this site a great resource for students and others in need of quality research. When people want to know more about a foreign country, the first place they should think to turn to is GlobalPost.com.
Rethink the UI — A quick glance at this site leads me to believe it was made with either WordPress or Drupal. Why? Because it looks like virtually every other news/blog hybrid. The thing is GlobalPost is a pretty unique vision. How many other news organizations — let alone blogs — want to do what you do? It’s a unique site with a unique vision. It deserves a unique UI.
Drop the gimmicks — The rudimentary map concepts feel gimmicky. Either use a map/globe metaphor to provide a better user experience or drop the concept all together. Sometimes compromise really means just compromising your whole operation.
Breathing room — The timeline of key events is a good idea. I’m not sure, however, why it has to be crammed into such a small place. This poor UI decision is hampering an otherwise good idea. Don’t be afraid to have more than one page template to display content.
The final world
These two UI concepts are radically different? Why? Because they are vastly different news operations. A UI should be tailored to a site’s needs and vision.
The Washington Post wants to think of itself as a guide to everything Washington. That’s why WashingtonPost.com needs to get social and have a news feed ala Facebook.
GlobalPost wants to be a resource for information both past and present about select countries in the world (maybe one day expand to virtually all countries). Well, it needs a UI that is tailored to presenting information about geographic areas. GlobalPost.com screams for a more visual UI than the site has — a UI that could help paint a better picture for users.
Now, each site could have more than one UI. Both could have a standard UI (and the Post would need one for non-members). But both sites really need a much more dynamic, lead UI.
GlobalPost is a 2009 news startup. Why is it so heavily focused on text? That boggles my mind.
It worried me when almost everyone brought on board at GlobalPost was an older, ex-newspaper person. I thought they would need some Web people to shake things up a bit and provide some strong Web guidance. My worries seem justified in the lack of innovation the site currently displays.
Maybe they are just in a beta stage right now, but they need to really re-think things fast. I’m a foreign news junkie, and I’m not sold on GlobalPost.com. That’s a problem.
I haven’t seen or heard much in the news industry that leads me to believe we’ll see radical, innovative UIs anytime soon. Most of the people making the decisions are the old guard. They aren’t Web first people, and they just want to emulate their favorite medium — print — on the Web.
Most consultants are former newspaper people too. We can’t honestly expect these people to come up with UIs that will appeal to younger generations or to come up with UIs that will greatly increase engagement, traffic and time spent on Web sites.
Age is not the core issue, but most news operations are lead by older — mostly male — people, and they develop products to fit their own sensibilities. Some of these people — those who pine for the past — need to retire or get out of the way. They simply don’t have the ideas or the leadership to revolutionize news organizations.
And nothing short of a revolution is going to save most news organizations.
So, I have to ask: When this financial crisis is over, who will be left to rebuild journalism? Will there be enough talented journalists left to rebuild? Will the journalists left have the Web skills that journalism sorely needs?
Usually, we’d look to the next generation. We’d say that the future will bring in new, exciting ideas and fresh talent. First, most j-schools follow the industry, not lead it. They are filled with more curmudgeons and technophobes than most newspapers.
The other major problem I see is that many of our most talented would-be journalists are switching majors and planning on entering other careers. And many of the young talent that did work in news organizations left before they ever had a chance to get into a position of power to make significant change.
The future is beyond bleak for U.S. newspapers. The future of journalism is still up for grabs. There will be , however, many innovative journalism startups in the next five years.
But will there be enough startups and enough talented, modern journalists to replace all that we are losing today?
Journalism is at the beginning of a tectonic shift and massive upheaval, and yet, I consider this to be an incredibly exciting time to be in journalism.
We stand on the doorstep of history. We’re watching the reinvention of a critical industry. This is not an evolution — we are a part of a revolution.
And that’s why I’m afraid. I know that journalism will be stronger than ever in 20 years, but what will tomorrow hold? The journey through revolution will claim many careers.
Will my friends have a job? Will I have a job? Will I recognize the new journalism industry that emerges?
On one hand it’s exciting to be a part of something bigger than all of us, and yet, I wonder if I’ll be able to pay my bills. No job lasts forever.
I mean no hyperbole when I call 2009 the year of the newspaper massacre. 2008’s losses will seem quaint by midway through next year. Everything we’ve ever known about newspapers will begin to fade.
If newspapers hope to survive these lean times, they must shed all remaining luddites and curmudgeons. Every employee will have to be a technologist. Newspapers can no longer afford to employ people who stand in the way of the future — in the way of progress.
If newspapers are to survive, their future will be radically different. That’s going to require radically different staffing. It’s going to require radically different thinking.
It’s a terribly depressing time to seek employment in this embattled industry. But it’s an incredibly exciting time to be developing new forms of journalism. If my thoughts sometimes seem contradictory, it’s because I’m conflicted.
No one ever said revolution would be easy. But it’s our duty. Our mission. Our calling.
If you consider journalism a calling, it’s time to take up arms and begin an assault on the old ways of thinking. Doing things the old way has suddenly become the wrong way.
We’re free falling off a precipice. The only way to land on our feet is to do some serious thinking and reinventing during our fall.
It’s not what journalism really needs. What journalism needs is a challenge to create local news startups with new business models — to make products that people care about again and that are sustainable without subsidies.
Now, that’s a challenge. And instead of this being grant funded, it should be venture capital backed. And the VCs would only fund ideas and people (this is what VCs really fund) that they think have a chance of making money.
The Knight News Challenge is a great idea, and I love it. Heck, I even applied this year. But it’s focus is more on altruism and developing news tools to help journalism and society. That’s a laudable goal, and it will help make this world a better place.
But the Knight News Challenge doesn’t address a mission critical part of journalism — making money. Journalism has always been a business. It always will be.
The Knight News Challenge doesn’t care if the projects it funds make money or are even successful. That’s not the goal of the challenge. That’s why we need a challenge based on making new, sustainable businesses that people care about.
Together, the Knight News Challenge and this new VC-backed challenge could really change the face of journalism for years to come.
That’s what our readers and users care about. It’s the news. If people cared about the paper more than the news, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and other beacons of American journalism would have never risen to the world-wide prominence they enjoy today.
But they did. Why? Because they covered news better than everyone else. Never forget that.
Check out Michael Rosenblum’s rant. Send it around to every journalism you know. They need to understand this.
If we lose print — specifically daily newspapers — it won’t be the end of the world. What would be shocking to lose would be the journalism itself. That’s what matters.