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December 2, 2004
Notes and Comment on The Media Company I Want to Work For"But something else surfaced-- better in a way than the launch of another business. Substantial readiness to get going. Talent waiting for action. A mood of expectation." Plus: "I asked two entrepreneurs about their press think and this is what they told me."“Man, it’s an exciting time to be in journalism.” Companies without products. Markets without players. Resumes ready to be sent for in-boxes that do not exist. These and other signs of pre-maturity surfaced yesterday in the reactions to Mark Glaser’s plea: The Media Company I Want to Work For. It’s not here yet— the media company, I mean. But something else surfaced— better in a way than the launch of another business. Substantial readiness to get going. Talent waiting for action. A mood of expectation. Mitch Ratcliffe: “I know, having built ON24 to run on the smallest editorial budget imaginable for a 24/7 video news network, a lot of the ins and outs. There are clearly a ton of smart folks willing to participate. Who wants to put the money behind it?” Glaser didn’t try to provide the model for a media business of the Net age; just a list of demands. But he made an observation with which many people agree— including PressThink readers. “The movement by established media companies, or even by their online or digital divisions, is glacial.” (My italics.) And this is what sprang forward in the reactions to his post. We can move much faster; why don’t we? To which some people said: we are! Spring 2005 in Dallas. And the reply came back: “We are too: Early 2005 in DC.” (More on both of them in a moment.) While others (like Lex Alexander) simply said: I like the sound of Mark’s company. Where do I apply? Over at LiveJournal, it was twisted chick (who is one very smart blogger, make a great journalist): “Yes. I want to work there too, but I can’t seem to find the place. And, unfortunately, I’d like to be able to make a living at it.” Here is some more of what I learned yesterday. John Robinson, the blogging editor of the Greensboro News Record, wrote a reaction post to Glaser’s: I know this: it’s precisely the sort of media company the News & Record intends to become. Creating new content. Serving the public and allowing the public to serve journalism. Building a new way of doing smart, citizen journalism. More transparency. News as a conversation. We’ve been having serious, detailed, how-to discussions about all of those things here. This blog is one result. All of the recent discussion about aggregated content — what Greensboro 101 is doing — is where we’re going, too. (See Ed Cone on the Greensboro 101 project. He has the links.) Meanwhile, Adrian Holavaty wrote in with a reminder that some of Glaser’s future is now- in Kansas: We’re doing something like this already at Lawrence.com — our hyperlocal entertainment site for Lawrence, Kan., with deep databases of local events, musicians, venues, drink specials, restaurants, dynamically-created radio stations and a ton more. So among local news companies that reject “glacial,” there’s the News Record in Greensboro, NC, Lawrence.com in Kansas, the previously known examples of Northwest Voice in Bakersfield, CA and the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, which has gone blog wild. That reminds me of where public journalism was ten years ago, 1993-94. Then the towns I was naming were Wichita, Charlotte, Norfolk, Akron— places Big Journalism would never look for inspiration. Today Big Journalism is itself one of those places. After Glaser’s essay about a hypothetical company he’d want to work for; after my pointer to Pegasus News, Mark Potts—who is a PressThink reader and helped found WashingtonPost.com—e-mailed: “We’ve been in stealth mode as well for several months, but I guess it’s time to come out of the closet.” The venture is called Backfence.com. As with Peg, some elements of Glaser’s “dream” company were there: hyper local, content created by readers, use blogs, wikis, RSS. Besides the Post site, Potts was part of the team that started @Home Network, among other ventures. He told me he was a “recovering journalist.” I spoke to Potts and partner Susan DeFife about their plans. DeFife was founder and CEO of WomenConnect.com, a site for professional women, and has been involved in other Net ventures. They want to debut their service soon— initially in the target-rich advertising environment of Washington, DC. But it won’t be “Washington” or “metro” news in any known sense. Their site will be an aggregator of “tiny scale” sites where you can find news as small as the cast list for the school play, or “who knows a good plumber?” Content “written by the readers” means the drama teacher who knows the cast list for the school play will post it at Backfence because he also knows that’s what Backfence is for. It’s also for hyper-local advertisers who are not served by weeklies or the metro daily. Plus they’re counting on local search that blows away the alternatives available now. Virtually all content is generated by users, who have an incentive to share with others. Some oversight by editors who understand community ownership of the mini-sites is key. As far as I can tell there won’t be any reporters’ jobs at Backfence.com, just as there weren’t any pros doing that job when people exchanged news over an actual back fence or at the market in town. There is no question, then, that Backfence sees the de-professionalization of news as a key to its success. The pros gave away the “news of your neighbors” franchise— or never had it. “Local news is just not covered by the daily newspaper,” DeFife said. And it’s hard to argue with that. Of course, there wouldn’t be any point in contacting a blogger but for argument. I wanted to know from Potts and DeFife: what’s the press think at Backfence? And I asked it that way. I also asked about “the journalism part of it,” and where public service comes in. I think I used the words “social mission,” too, but I would have used any words to convey the spirit of my question. I was asking them if they were in any sense a journalism company, or even wanted to be. And if so, where does the journalism part live? Their answer on the phone was: this is a business, we claim only that. We want no part of journalism as a noble profession because we intend to be market-driven, user-based, advertiser-friendly, community-level and we know how that sits with “professionals” protecting their social mission, which after a while is just holding on to their turf. At the end of our interview, I suggested they draft a few paragraphs about it. “I’ll run them,” I said. So this is the first public statement by Backfence. I asked two entrepreneurs about their press think and this is what they told me: Backfence’s News Philosophy (So far) People care most about news and information about the places, people and things closest to them, but this desire for intensely local (neighborhood-level) information is all but unmet by traditional media. Backfence.com will fill that gap by using blogs, wikis, RSS and other technologies to allow citizens to share community news and information with each other, essentially unmediated by editors. Well, what do we think of this statement? Let me know in comments. Meanwhile, Pegasus News received a flurry of action because I used it to highlight the immediacy of Glaser’s post. Unlike Backfence.com, Pegasus has a blog— the Daily Peg. Because it has a blog, Pegasus the company has had to explain what it thinks. (And also change its mind.) Because it has a blog, Pegasus has been drawing interested parties to it, at least some of whom might help. Last month, at BloggerCon III in Palo Alto, this was time and again the reason I heard for why you blog— it’s a connection-builder, an extender of your network, it increases your collision rate with others of possibly like mind, or “it puts you out there” in conversational space. (Here’s my post on BloggerCon and “the people of Moore’s law.”) Peg’s founder and chief philosopher is anonymous because he has a day job. Yesterday he found himself explaining why he blogs and remains anonymous: Of the dozen or so people currently on our virtual team, half found us via this blog. Discussion and pushback from readers— even just the reading enforced by daily blogging — have greatly improved our plan since this game began. Through it we’ve gotten hooked up with some of our closest and best advisors. Just today, contacts we made through this blog look to have helped us shave more than $1.5 million out of the launch expense budget. Which is exactly what the people at BloggerCon meant by “puts you out there.” None of this means Pegasus has a winning idea in local news. (Likewise with Backfence.com.) It means the founder—who is still anonymous—was wise to start a blog. It’s already a dialogic company. You can have a conversation with it. In fact, it’s happening now. The Daily Peg gave a point by point comparison between what Glaser wants and what they’re planning to do. Companies without products aren’t so bad, really. They’re forced to have ideas. A few reflections: My interest in all this was initially: what would Mark have to say? I mean if you asked him: what’s does your dream company look like? I was curious. PressThink, I often tell people, is “my own personal magazine.” That’s how I run it. So as managing editor of my blog (inspiration by Robert Cox, who calls himself that) I’m thinking: ask Glaser. I mean, look at what the guy has done. He knows what’s out there. He’s talked to most everyone else who knows. He’s a journalist. Behold the mysteries of magazine editing. Find smart person who knows subject, ask him what he thinks. Twelve hundred words, due in a week. Now in this sense I am very much a traditionalist about journalism. I share with the newsroom mind a bias for the voice of the person who has “done the reporting,” itself a kind of magic phrase for generating internal authority in Big Journalism. “We have a right to say that,” someone might say in editing a big series, “we’ve done the reporting.” To me its common sense: Glaser’s voice has more voices in it. He’s done the reporting. Of course I want his opinion. And his information. And any tips he has. An objective account of a hot dispute? Mark, if you’ve got it, send it. I rely on Glaser, like I rely on hundreds of other journalists whose work I consume, including bloggers like Dave Pell, beat reporters like Liz Halloran and big shots like Howard Kurtz. They’re all “my” journalists. In all cases I want them to have done the reporting. In all cases, I want their opinion as well as their facts. I want ways to argue with them because I know there are always blind spots. I also want a way to say: could you check this out, please? When they come back from an assignment I want to de-brief them. I want them to alert me when something big is about to blow, or just did. I need their irony and humor, especially about big events and powerful figures in the news. They’re my journalists. They’re my people. They’re essential. I knew Mark Glaser would know something, he’s on the beat. Between the informed and the informable there is a human connection. It is interactive, something “alive.” This is where many future possibilities in journalism lie. If you wanted it stated as a law, this would be the law. Your ability to inform people today is limited by the quality of your connection to them. After Matter: Notes, reactions and links Howard Kurtz on Backfence.com in his Media Notes column, Dec. 13: There are already some community sites practicing what’s been dubbed “open-source journalism,” and the potential appeal to people who feel little connection to metropolitan dailies is obvious. Backfence is generating some online buzz because of its national ambitions, its founders’ track record and the notion of stealing some turf in the shadow of the nation’s capital. Kurtz doesn’t say the news first surfaced at PressThink because of the reaction to Mark Glasser’s piece. Should he? Big news for readers of this blog: Tech columnist, blogger and We the Media author Dan Gillmore is leaving the San Jose Mercury News for a citizen journalism start-up! This is from Silicon Beat, which has more the announcement (Dec. 10): Dan will be starting a grass-roots journalism venture, and says he has gotten seed funding. The plan is typical Gillmor. It reflects his appreciation of the need for news to bubble up from the masses. It also allows him to partake of the dream that he has written so much about: The entrepreneur starting something interesting. “I’m jumping off a cliff with the expectation of assembling a hang-glider before I get to the bottom,” he told us this evening, in a phone call from Boston, where he is attending a conference at Harvard. “I figured the worst risk is that I’d be out of work in six months.” Gillmore also announced it at his weblog. “I hope to pull together something useful that helps enable — and demonstrates — the emerging grassroots journalism that I wrote about in my recent book. Something powerful is happening, it’s in the early stages and I have a chance to help figure this out.” Steve Outing of Poynter thinks “the citizen journalism trend is inevitable,” and wonders if the lethargic Big Media can even play in that game. Entrepreneurs, as first movers in this space, will establish the dominant brands in open-source journalism before mainstream media companies figure out that there’s real opportunity available (or get past their trepidation about diving in). If in citizen journalism there’s an enterprise that grows to be a clear market leader, it may expand so fast that mainstream media companies — by the time they get over their fear of the idea of normal people contributing to their news products — will have difficulty catching up. Jeff Jarvis writes: Follow the money… if you can find it. “There’s a mesmerizing exchange going on among lots of smart people looking for where the money will be in this explosion of citizens’ media (which, in this case, I broadly define as media controlled by citizens). My quick answer: I don’t know. Wish I did. But I don’t.” Simon Waldman, head of the Guardian’s online operation: Citizens media: when’s the right time? where’s the right place? Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion says the competition is not old media— it’s e-bay, plus Craig’s List: “While Rosen points to a couple of stealth projects that will try hard to create a profitable business around hyper-local citizen journalism when they launch next year, I believe they will face massive competition from a successful company that’s already right under our noses - eBay.” Rubel sees “a new era where citizen journalism is directly funded by person-to-person commerce.” Read the rest to find out why he thinks that. Blogger and ex-CNN’er Rebecca MacKinnon responds with: the The Global News Department I’d like to build. She calls it “participatory world news”— in contrast to “foreign coverage.” Check it out. “Publishers think that they know best, but the truth is that the writers on the front line know best.” Blogging capitalist Jason Calacanis in the comments to Mark Glaser’s essay: If you look at a 100 writers and ask them what they would most like to spend their time writing about only 10 would say they were actually doing that for a living. Most writers are writing to make a living, and the topic they really love is something they do on the side. Plus: he says he’s hiring, if you have the passion. Read the rest. erik at niload appears to work for the Washington Post Company in some way. Noting the plans for Backfence.com, he says the Post “might want to start thinking about ways of tapping into this kind of mindset, without alienating the very people it would rely upon for content. Otherwise, they’re going to miss an opportunity — not just for boosting revenue, but also for boosting their presence.” (I am continually amazed at how many bloggers refuse to include a simple “about” link.) Blogger Dan Michalski: WHO ARE THESE CRAZY PEGASUS NEWS GUYS? Susan Mernit: “The funny thing about this moment in time is that many of the media barons, I venture, would agree with Mark—they just don’t know what to do to replace their ad base. Like dragons sitting on piles of treasure, publishers have built up client relationships and sub lists that fuel their businesses and keep margins high. Like the polar ice floes, that all seems to be melting away, and at a similarly alarming rate. Since I don’t believe new dragons are necessarily better than old dragons, I would invite everyone to change and rethink their business as well as start new one.” Hmmmm. LeMonde is offering blogs to readers. (Via JD Lasica.) John Robinson, editor of the New Record, continues the conversation. From his weblog: OK, we’ve seen the future, but some of it is still unclear Ed Cone: “blogs are the long tail” and the (Greensboro) News & Record “may be emerging as one of the players in the fat part of the curve.” Great Wired article on the long tail effect. Mark Hamilton: “Glaser touched off something that’s still spreading. In that way, his essay is as clear an example as you’ll find of journalism as conversation.” Phil Jones says in comments that even some “new” media companies don’t get it: The problem is, despite the rhetoric about localization and decentralization, a company which wants to put itself in this space, still sees itself as a centre or hub. It’s where the local soccer teams and drama teachers and zoning complainers will go (together) to have their conversations with each other. The Daily Peg replies to this post and the discussion in comments: “I realized that there are actually two distinct schools in this new media cabal: there’s us; and there’s everybody else (Backfence, Baristanet, Ventura, etc.).” Read the rest. Bubblegeneration (new to me) is a London-based blog about strategy, economics, innovation, and business models. Umair Haque writes: Backfence and the future of journalism. Newsroom refugee JennyD steps forward: Old Media is Dying. Before I became an education wonk and statistician, I was the editor of a magazine, and a newspaper reporter. The whole time I worked in newspapers, I had the sense of being in a world of flat-earthers, where dullness and straightforwardness and plain vanilla was served up day in and day out… Jenny links to this report on mainstream journalists at sea: “Served recently on a panel at the annual convention of the Association of Opinion Page Editors. (You see, there is a club for everyone.) Never have I spoken to so many sad-looking people. Maybe it was the tweeds, the frayed corduroys. Maybe it was what they ate. Or what they had to swallow at work.”
Posted by Jay Rosen at December 2, 2004 10:02 AM
Comments
A lot of this sounds as though it's Big Fun for journalists. Transparency to the readers is where the big breakthrough will come, IMO. The blogs in these new enterprises need to have comments fully enabled, and personnel who monitor and respond. The readership wants to be able to surface issues about which they have questions but not enough information to, e.g., add to a wiki. The information gap in stories is so enraging I pretty much don't read or listen to MSM. For instance, the recent story from England about Prince Charles refusing a promotion to an employee. Big flap about his refusal and snippy comments. Nowhere any information about her qualifications, the position in question, standards for advancement, other relevant experiences the Prince may have had with personnel difficulties (if you don't count a loose-cannon spouse as personnel...) Where is the reporting? When I've raised similar puzzled questions with reporters about their stories, they referred me to equally vague and self-serving press releases put out by their subjects. The reader grinds her teeth, and tunes out. Where are the editors who assign and review stories, presumably with the reader in mind? And, I hope the "Choctaw Distinction" takes off big time. Posted by: Dilys at December 2, 2004 11:46 AM | Permalink Dilys, sounds like the Choctaw thing is just the disctinction between what the Ancient Greeks called "doxa" and "episteme". The problem is philosophers have been tying themselves in knotts for the last 2500 years trying to untangle the two. How do you tell if it's *really* really true, rather than an illusion fed to you by a powerful demon (or say, Fox News)? Jay, I'm struck by the Backfence remark dismissing the "social mission" of journalists. That's the real tension in Glaser's story. He can see all the good stuff coming along. But where is the place for him? The problem is, despite the rhetoric about localization and decentralization, a company which wants to put itself in this space, still sees itself as a centre or hub. It's where the local soccer teams and drama teachers and zoning complainers will go (together) to have their conversations with each other. And it's by aggregating this local variety, the media company hopes to keep itself in the value chain, with something to sell to advertisers. But the evolution of the tools is against it. The whole point of this revolution is to put communication technology at the *edge* of the network, in the hands of the public. If they want aggregators they can put them on their own desktops. They'll find like-minded people in the blogrolls of their friends. They'll build social networks on Friendster, share photojournalism on Flicr, run their own wikis from SocialText or get their playlists from WebJay (when it's back up :-) In other words, the hubs will disperse by community *and* media type. I don't need the same community for my music as for my photo-art as for my gardening advice. Posted by: phil jones at December 2, 2004 12:46 PM | Permalink I don't know if this fits here, but it's been on my mind since the previous discussion of Mark Glaser's stuff. So here it is: Someone somewhere commented about the economics of small newspapers. I've been thinking about that, and blogs and the new media. Here's one thing. Every newspaper has a bunch of geographically deployed beat reporters who cover some entity in some way, like the municipality, the county, state governmnet, or something. But then there are a host of other reporters who cover "specialty" beats. Why does every paper need an environmental reporter, or an education reporter when it's pretty clear that whoever has that job has no particular specialized knowledge in that field? So I'm wondering if news outfits have to reorganize in a way that takes specialty reporting out of the local, geographically based business of news and media, and instead relies more on pooled resources to obtain specialty reporting. I've never seen a smaller paper use its reporting staff well. It always looks like a poor deployment of people and resources. In fact, a lot of medium-sized papers look that way too. Also, there are layers of editors who all look at stories, and that might change when the story can be edited and updated constantly. It would resolve that "dog and bush" style of editing so prevalent in some newsrooms (editors need to "pee" on a story to mark it as theirs). One of the most interesting parts of thinking about this is to consider that the entire structure of news reporting can be ripped up and rebuilt. That leads to interesting ideas. I confess that I can only speak for the newspapers I have personally worked at, or where I have friends. Here is an example of what I've seen and heard about: At a medium-sized newspaper, a person does a great job covering city government. Politics, council battles, taxes, etc. So they give him a promotion to the medical beat. He knows nothing about medicine, but starts by writing news about hospitals and are they being regulated and so on. Lobbyists call with tips, etc. Medical journals put out press releases. Then a job opens up at a bigger paper for a medical reporter, and this guy applies and gets the job. And so he takes his tiny knowledge of medicine to the paper, and now gets a bigger megaphone to tell the those stories about hospitals, regulations, lobbyists, journal press releases. Hanging around doctors is not the same as having their knowledge. Not that all medical reporters must be doctors, but clearly there is more to it than just getting promoted from the city hall beat. The same could be said for environment and science reporting, business and finance, education, law, etc. I do not know of a single sizeworthy news organization where they think about the development of the reporting staff's intellectual capital. It's not on the radar screen. Assignments? Yes. Learning? No. This tradition has no benefits, only costs. It's powerfully entrenched too. Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 2, 2004 7:50 PM | Permalink While I don't have The Answers, I have the answers to some of the above as it relates to us: "Jay, I'm struck by the Backfence remark dismissing the "social mission" of journalists. That's the real tension in Glaser's story. He can see all the good stuff coming along. But where is the place for him?" -- That's where our model and BF's differs substantially. While I believe that citizen journalists can be a HUGE part of the conversation, they are, by necessity, ancillary in the news gathering. You can't really cover news without someone whose daily bread depends on going out and getting the story. I'd call BF's take on this completely new-media. We're more of a hybrid. "So I'm wondering if news outfits have to reorganize in a way that takes specialty reporting out of the local, geographically based business of news and media, and instead relies more on pooled resources to obtain specialty reporting." -- We think you have to have both, to a point. We plan to deploy very junior geographic beat reporters for the hyperlocal content. When they hit on something bigger, they collaborate with the topical (and more senior) beat reporter-- Crime, City Hall, what have you. We also see the geobeats as a service provider. A reader sees helicopters flying around his neighborhood and emails the reporter, who finds out why and posts it. "Also, there are layers of editors who all look at stories, and that might change when the story can be edited and updated constantly. It would resolve that "dog and bush" style of editing so prevalent in some newsrooms (editors need to "pee" on a story to mark it as theirs). "One of the most interesting parts of thinking about this is to consider that the entire structure of news reporting can be ripped up and rebuilt. That leads to interesting ideas." -- See the edit workflow on our site. -- As to the more specialized beats, I don't see too many in our model. If there's a science story, unless the research was done in our town, we're just going to link it. All resources deployed on local content... I probably shouldn't be a party-pooper, but ... Ouch ouch ouch. As a programmer, I'm a big supporter of Open Source. I can give several arguments in favor of it. However ... there's a certain type of reaction, though nominally in favor of it, where, like a cartoon character, you can almost see someone's eyes turn funny and a big thought balloon appear above their head: "PEOPLE WORK FOR FREE!". There is a similar phenomena in journalism and related areas. "Wheee .. let's just provide a website, and EVERYONE ELSE WILL DO THE WORK!" Where do I sign up for a gig like that too? :-) There's a gold-rush about how to capture all the chat, the gossip, the what-do-*you*-think, that is so cheap to deal with, compared to anything involving facts and reporting. This is very seductive because there are a few notable successes. But what sometimes isn't obvious is that there can only *be* a few successes, due to network effects, and they are in fact still businesses. The work has not disappeared. It has simply moved from creation to maintenance and distribution. Telling people that there's a workable business model here, is real and perhaps worthwhile. But it is not nearly as sexy as telling them that the leprechauns will grant their wishes if they merely leave a glass of milk on the porch. Still, someone will win the lottery, and it's understandable why people try. Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at December 2, 2004 9:46 PM | Permalink One other thought, taken from a recent post on our site: One gentle warning to all of us who are engaging in conversation about what the new media is or might be: There's a lesson I'm constantly hit with as I talk to folks on the street about our plan. Don't forget that we media folk and bloggers are still a distinct market minority. Most people-- even affluent, employed homeowners-- still don't really know what a blog is all about. They've never heard of an RSS feed. They haven't downloaded Mozilla. They only vaguely understand Rathergate. They may care about their neighborhoods, but they don't know the term "hyper-local." These things are not part of their daily lives. And these are the people that we all seek to serve. They may be catching on to these concepts, but they're not there yet. We can help them get there, and we believe that a hybrid model is the best way to do so. Hi Jay: Thought you might want to take a look at Cole Campbell's innovative idea: the Town Hall Website. It fits well with this discussion. And you would make every media company a better, more interactive place to work with just a little innovation and no major resource investment. Posted by: Leonard Witt at December 3, 2004 1:05 AM | Permalink This is sorely needed in these "Maieutic Times". Pete: What I meant about "vaguely understanding Rathergate" was that most folks I talk to on the street are only aware that something happened, but don't know any of the particulars or that he retired. The forest surrounding that tree was the point that we media navel-gazers need to bear in mind that our customers don't care about convergence, the latest media gossip, or much of the discussion we're having here. They want relevant news and information (including advertising) and want it in a way that's easy for them to access. We need to keep that need at the forefront of our musings. Just to clarify: When I commented, "Where do I sign up?" I was speaking metaphorically, inasmuch as my boss, John Robinson, gets it and is moving our paper in this direction. I know *he* knows I'm not job-hunting, but after I got an e-mail raising practical objections to trying to go to work for this (hypothetical) news organization, I figured I'd better make sure everyone else understood that as well. Importing the comments of blogging capitalist Jason Calacanis from the Glaser's essay thread: Great post. Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 3, 2004 9:32 AM | Permalink Some of you will like this, and possibly a reader who was there can verify whether my story is true. I was on a panel of the Online News Association in Hollywood with guys from Yahoo News and Google News. It was about automation and whether robots could take the place of journalists. In the course of a rambling panel discussion I had occasion to ask this crowd of people--maybe 150 working mainly in Big Media's online news industry--whether they knew that their carefully-researched article on the big polluting oil company was never going to become part of Google search and would therefore be lost to users who overwhelmingly go to the Web for research. Why? I said. "Because your links expire or they hit a pay wall or you asked them to register." I said you're nowhere when it comes to Search from a user's perspective. No matter how good it is, your stuff does not show up. A speaker knows when substantial portions of the audience are comprehending something for the first time. I then popped a search term into Google and the results showed that PressThink was embedded in that space in a way they weren't even thinking about when they created their sites. Linking just hasn't been a part of their thinking! So when people use the words "clueless" we must understand: it's a social condition. Maybe it only applied to 65 percent of the people there,(and the rest were highly aware of Google and how it works.) It's still a big number. Jeff Jarvis reported the same thing in going to ONA last year-- a lack of understanding not easily explained since journalists are supposed to be curious. Ladies and Gentleman of the Thread, keep in mind: these attendees are the online "wing" of the mainstream media-- the advanced guard. They work on the sites. I believe people in journalism ought to wake up and realize that someone in their industry thinks its just fine to keep them ignorant-- of say, the power of linking. Maybe I'll write a post about it. Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 3, 2004 1:11 PM | Permalink Lexis? I'm talking about the 17 year kid doing a high school project who wants to read about the local company that was dumping sludge into his river basin. If the Daily Bugle did the big two-part series on that company, the truth of the Bugle will not be in Google. That's newspaper policy: the link will work for a week, but then bye-bye. Most daily journalists do not know that their bylined work is disappearing down the memory hole online, while bloggers get all the links. Do they? Do they know that their own companies are erecting barriers--registration is only one--that make it less likely their stuff will be found by Net users? Maybe we just have to do some enlightenment. A few days I wrote: Like much of the stubbornly, even defiantly clueless newspaper industry, AJR will include links to its own articles, but not to anyone else in its pages online. Thus PressThink is mentioned (cheers!) but not linked to (boos.) Mystifying. And it makes you wonder: what's the opposite of "link love?" Here, AJR: feel guilty yet? Today AJR Editor Rem Rieder e-mails: "Jay: Good point about the links. We'll start adding them to new stories we post and to stories in the archives." Thanks, Rem. Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 3, 2004 7:01 PM | Permalink Over at LiveJournal, it was twisted chick (who is one very smart blogger, make a great journalist): "Yes. I want to work there too, but I can't seem to find the place. And, unfortunately, I'd like to be able to make a living at it." Posted by: The One True b!X at December 3, 2004 9:54 PM | Permalink b!X: Alas, the beautiful theory slain by the ugly fact. I've noticed that there seem to be many more people who are apparently hypers of local journalism, than actual hyperlocal journalists. This may have something to do with the phenomena that it seems to be more productive to talk about doing it to people who want to promote the idea for PR purposes, as opposed to actually *doing* it. Sort of like multi-level marketing in a way (i.e. selling the multi-level is more profitable than the actual product). Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at December 4, 2004 12:39 AM | Permalink Thomas Ricks has an unusual article in the Washington Post today that compares an Army website on Fallouja to a private blog that displays the graphic photos of US and Iraqi deaths and casualties the rest of the world sees, but the US media routinely self-censors. Website addresses: Iraq in Pictures Posted by: Ben Franklin at December 5, 2004 2:10 PM | Permalink When Rosen says in the post, Well, what do we think of this statement? Let me know in comments... it means you are most warmly welcomed to let me know in comments. But I will ask again. Here's part of what BackFence said: Local zoning disputes, youth soccer leagues or how to find a great plumber are topics are of critical importance to members of the community that aren't being covered by traditional media. Does this make sense? What kind? The name Backfence... strong image? What do you make of it? News without journalists. Is that citizen journalism? Yes or No: Backfence, given its plan, should have a blog. Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 6, 2004 12:56 AM | Permalink As the word "blog" topped the Merriam-Webster's list of most searched entry in 2004 -- http://www.Merriam-Webster.com/info/04words.htm -- it's time to take a snapshot of the changing face of journalism. Citizen journalism is inevitable not because it is new but because it is becoming more accepted. Those of us who were new to 'blogging' years ago are being joined by more our colleagues. When legal structures prevent the formation of daily newspapers, radio or television stations, individuals are taking up their issues with a passion online. Traditional print journalism suffered in 2004 as more papers erected barriers to access, including registration. While for some it is not a problem, for others remembering a hundred passwords for a hundred different news sources is a hassle. Likewise, the incessant pop-up ads that appear for readers of USA Today and other papers seem to tell the reader, "Don't bother!" PLANETA.COM In 2004 Planeta.com -- http://www.planeta.com -- celebrated our first decade online. Back in 1994 we were the hip 'gopher' site that became a popular archive for those interested in environmental news and ecotourism. When we registered for a website in 1995, it was with a sense of anticipation of a kid jumping into a brand new sandbox. Flash forward ten years and the sand box is a bit more crowded (and keeping with the metaphor, not without its share of cat turds), but there is a similar sense of excitement. Last year Planeta teamed with a journalists and research organizations to create the Latin America Media Project (LAMP) -- http://www.planeta.com/lamp.html -- to highlight quality reporting from and about the region. Planeta (Spanish for "Planet") covers the globe and gives preferential treatment for the Americas as our view is that those in the United States don't have a good understanding of our neighbors and that most LatAm coverage is crisis-driven. SNAPSHOT Nevertheless, there is a discouraging trend. The paying market for international news, particularly with an 'eco' or an 'ecotourism' focus, has dramatically declined in the past decade. In terms of quantity of publications, environmental journalism reached its peak during the 1992 Earth Summit! When mainstream media is not covering disaster, news tends to spotlight sports news, celebrity sightings and holiday celebrations (Christmas, Day of the Day, Solstice, Easter, Ramadan, etc.) What's covered well? Earthquakes, coups, military action, sports. What's not covered? Things that work -- including conservation, clean beaches, education campaigns, etc. Conduct a photo search via Yahoo's News Directory and review at least three of the following galleries. Pictures do change on a regular basis, so you will be viewing the most recent newsworthy images. http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=Brazil&c=news_photos What do you see? How well do these pictures represent the reality of the country? What's missing? What is shown out of context? We have a long way to go toward improving how we see the world and create the media ventures we can take pride AND make a living. Posted by: Ron Mader at December 8, 2004 10:37 AM | Permalink |
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