Columbia Journalism Review contributing editor Michael Shapiro provides a lament on the lost way of journalism. He sizes up its meanderings into potholes, then manholes, and he leaves little question of skepticism of its recent steps to find the right route.
His essay outlines the challenges of re-erecting a paywall after years of largely free access. In short, he asks, what can you charge for? Perhaps something grounded in vast reportage (he notes the Texas Longhorns' fan site, Orangebloods, as an example of fervent audience meeting fervent reporting).
What he searches for in the article is what people might pay for. Is it local news? Is it niche information? Is there a way to develop a hybrid of free and paid content that attracts advertising to one and subscribers to another?
Perhaps, he notes, the Washington Post's idea of selling itself as the idea of Washington might make sense. Rather than geography, tap into community of interest. There are also places like CQ.com, the Congressional Quarterly's aggregation of content widely available elsewhere but curated smartly by them.
"Niche sites succeed, in large measure, by staking out a line of coverage that represents precisely the kinds of stories that newspapers decided to abandon years ago because so many readers found them so tedious: process stories."
He writes:
"So it is that journalism’s crisis offers an opportunity to transform the everyday work of journalism from a reactive and money-losing proposition into a more selective enterprise of reporting things that no one else knows. And choosing, quite deliberately, to ignore much of what can be found elsewhere.
"People will pay for news they deem essential, and depending on the depth and urgency of their need, they will pay a lot."
Clay Shirky, the communication theorist, is one of the most ambitious and thoughtful writers on the future of journalism. His latest essay, written for for the Cato Institute's Unbound online feature, identifies the chaos ahead for the craft --- more upheaval than upgrade, as he puts it. Media economist Robert Picard argues in his latest post ithe worst culprit in the economic decline of newspapers is not the loss of classified advertising to the Internet. News organizations everywhere are contending with the flood of comments and the challenge of what to do about them. Do you leave them alone? Do you let the community rank and reorganize them? Or do you curate them? Peter Osnos writes for the Columbia Journalism Review this edition on fair share, fair use and fair compensation in the digital age. He explores the debate involving how creators should be cited, distributed and provided for, but his most interesting words involve a critique of Google. The Magna organization predicted today a near-flattening of U.S. advertising spending in 2010. Slightly down is better than way down, which is how 2009 will be. Erik Qualman, the marketing director for a Swiss-based private educator, contributes a sound piece of advice in Search Engine Watch on pursuing a social media strategy. In recent weeks much has been discussed of the speed with which social media provide information relative to mainstream media. In the case of the plane landing on the Hudson River, the incessant stream of eyewitness accounts of turmoil in Iran, and the sudden death of Michael Jackson, it has been evident social media speedily dispatch data while mainstream outlets are still processing gathered information. Anil Dash, the veteran blogger and developer, weighs in with an essay suggesting Google has reached an inflection point of development he calls its "Microsoft moment." Findings from the recent Magid Associates study indicate an opportunity for television outlets to make gains online. Short-form video is emerging as the compelling entertainment form, and while news clips are significant in the mix, they aren't the format of choice. |
I am the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief at Self-Counsel Press, an Adjunct Professor and Executive-in-Residence at the Graduate School of Journalism at University of British Columbia, and the
Executive Director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen. In 2008 I launched themediamanager.com to chronicle media change, then media ethics, standards and freedom. I was recently the mayoralty candidate in Vancouver for the Non-Partisan Association. I am the former CBC Ombudsman of English Services and have held the senior editorial roles at CTV News, The Hamilton Spectator and Southam News. I was the founding Executive Editor of National Post, Managing Editor of The Vancouver Sun, Ottawa Bureau Chief and General News Editor at The Canadian Press, and host on CBC Newsworld, among other media roles. My social networking includes activity on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. I also write for a for-fun-only music site, rockzombies.us Archives
January 2015
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The Canadian analytics firm Sysomos has published new data on nearly 100 million posts it reviewed and it shows
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