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June 4, 2007
Twilight of the Curmudgeon ClassNeil Henry (ex-Washington Post, now at Berkeley J-School) wants reparations from Google for what it's done to news.I hope the San Francisco Chronicle keeps Neil Henry’s essay—Google Owes Big Journalism Big Time—free and clear of any pay walls. Link rot must not be allowed to set in, for this is a document. Henry teaches journalism at UC Berkeley, after a distinguished career at the Washington Post. He has a new book out, American Carnival (“Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media.”) According to this account, Henry almost became dean at the Berkeley J-School. Neil Henry has a grievance: I see a world where corporations such as Google and Yahoo continue to enrich themselves with little returning to journalistic enterprises, all this ultimately at the expense of legions of professional reporters across America, now out of work because their employers in “old” media could not afford to pay them. And for that grievance there is to be redress: It stands to reason that Google and corporations like it, who indirectly benefit so enormously from the expensive labor of journalists, should begin to take on greater civic responsibility for journalism’s plight. Fund our journalism schools. Our professional associations. Maybe our newspapers. We’re on life support because of you, and others like you. So… support! He suggested that the Society of Professional Journalists, keepers of this code, get Google money. (Same society gave a First Amendment award to Judy Miller.) Romenesko did his part, running superb replies from Douglas McLennan, editor of ArtsJournal.com and Matthew R. Baise, online editor of the Baltimore Sun. Baise said he was seeing it more and more: Journalists suggest a “shakedown” of Google “in which we teach that nasty little search engine a lesson and wrestle back some of those dollars that are rightfully ours.” These are calls for justice within the shifted kingdom of news— issued by journalists “at” others. (Another letter at Romenesko called for a class action suit against Google, led by the newspaper unions. See Steve Boriss on that idea.) The texts are written with a sense of grievance, which is truly felt. To the grievance there is grafted a description of the Internet or one its parts, and in this description (by the old timer) you can often hear things. Like when Neil Henry talks of… powerful news aggregators such as Google and Yahoo whose computerized search robots harvest riches of news and other content provided by others — and generate billions of dollars in annual profits for their owners. Robots harvesting the goods made by newsmen and peddling the product as their news to enrich the owners of the robots— a bunch of computer scientists! What a reveal. Google News and Yahoo News are both aggregators but they work in different ways. Google uses algorithms to identify top stories while Yahoo News has human editors for that. (See JD Lasica.) Neil Henry does not know this because if he knew this he would not have grouped Google and Yahoo together as equally robotic. I think he’s saying, “The details don’t interest me. I get what’s going on here.” No, you don’t. That’s Ryan Sholan at his blog, Invisible Inkling. If there’s anyone the news business needs right now, it’s people like Ryan, who is completing his masters at San Jose State. He’s also working at the Santa Cruz Sentinel, a new media guy, paying his dues and hoping for big journalism glory some day. I know how he thinks because I read his blog. His message to Neil Henry: Get over it, professor. Blaming search engines is like blaming the library. “Oh no, please don’t let readers actually find stories from my newspaper and then click through to my site to read them, anything but that!” Forget it. Do read Sholin’s 10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head. It’s a grad student lecturing a J-professor about doing his reporting. He properly seethes. “Newspaper classifieds suck and they have for years.” “Your major metro newspaper could probably use some staff cuts.” Jeff Jarvis tried to school Henry: “Google is far and away the most productive means of sending audience to news sites.” Bigger than Drudge. “It’s up to the news sites to then make the best of that audience.” Jeff sent me to this fascinating post from Heather Hopkins about online news flows in the UK. “Most visitors leave Google News to go to another news provider,” she writes. Last week, BBC News was the top recipient of traffic, getting 3.6% of Google News’ traffic, followed by 2.0% to Guardian Unlimited, 2.0% to Times Online, 1.4% to Daily Mail and 1.0% to Sky News. Fully 28% of visits from Google News UK went to Print Media websites, 7% to Sports, 6% to Television and 4% to Business Information. “I’d love to see some Google money come to my school,” said Jarvis of CUNY. “But I don’t think they owe us reparations.” Scott Karp is far more polite about Henry’s “fundamental misunderstanding of what is responsible for the collapse of the newspaper business.” Technology isn’t destroying journalism. “It’s simply destroying the business that subsidized journalism.” Finding another source of subsidy is what we should all be doing. But: Demonizing technology, as Professor Henry does when he references the “threat ‘computer science’ poses to journalism’s place in a democratic society” is, with all due respect, rather medieval. Karp thinks it’s an interesting question whether Google and other online companies should start subsidizing journalism. Maybe they should. “Google might run free training for young journalists to teach them how to thrive in a search-driven, online media world — particularly if these journalists want to try their hands at independent online journalism.” That would be blogging. Not what Neil Henry had in mind, I think… I can’t help but fear a future, increasingly barren of skilled journalists, in which Google “news” searches turn up not news, but the latest snarky rants from basement bloggers, fake news reports from government officials and PR cleverly peddled in the guise of journalism by advertisers wishing only to sell, sell, sell. He’s right: he can’t help, except in the fear department. I read Henry’s column as a kind of valedictory, a farewell speech in which he turns away from a fearful future and from students who are nervous but excited about it, admitting to the Ryan Sholin generation that it would get no help—and certainly no guidance—from Neil Henry. He’s bitter about the online world and its unjust economy of news, resents but resolutely will not grok it, and he wants the people there (“online…”) to know what they’re destroying. Adding to the downbeat feel is the title, which isn’t Google Owes Big Journalism Big Time (that’s mine) but… “The decline of news.” The essay contains no links. It isn’t aware that it’s published online. It’s not only about decline in the press but a live demo. Henry’s book was published the same day his op-ed appeared at the Chronicle, May 29th. But do you think there is a link to the announcement? My impression: we’re at the twilight of the curmudgeon class in newsrooms and J-schools. (Though they can still do a lot of damage.) You know they’re giving up when they no longer bother to inform themselves about what they themselves say is happening. And if their “who lost journalism?” call-for-justice op-ed disappears behind a pay wall so the search engines can’t find it, silencing that call online, the beautiful thing is they won’t know it happened, and they won’t understand why it matters because they never got how Google works in the first place. It’s clown time for the curmudgeons because they’ve lost the smart people who can save the business the curmudgeons had tried to save by jeering at the stupids and their attempted changes. After Matter: Notes, reactions & links… Steve Levy of Newsweek continues the thread… When Bloggers Say No to a Simple Chat. It’s about the fate of the interview when sources have more power, a subject I have explored in previous posts. Jeff Jarvis (who is quoted, as I am) replies to Levy: Alas, the interview. We’re one, but we’re not the same, we’ve got to carry each other, carry each other… Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0: “I just went to the New York Times homepage and saw that political reporter Katharine Seelye is “live-blogging” the democrat’s New Hampshire Debate. Newspapers and other mainstream media have had blogs for quite a while, but this strikes me as the moment when blogs officially went mainstream and when journalism crossed a tipping point of evolving into the digital age.” So it’s official. Funny, I identified an “official” moment like that two+ years ago, in the beginning passages of Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over. I like Scott’s milestone, too. Part of Seelye’s beat is to do “web only” stuff, so it makes sense. (I know because she told me when she interviewed me about OffThe Bus.Net) Bradley J. Fikes at The Festering Swamp: “A simple code added to a newspaper’s Web site will block Google News from searching its site.” Here’s a little unresolved episode that shows what they’re made of. See The Globe and Mail’s Jack Kapica: The new New Journalism beats up on the old. It’s his report on day one of the Mesh conference in Toronto. In the comments I challenged him on his statement about a running theme of the day: “that bloggers can, in fact, easily replace news organizations, ousting professional news reporters with freelance amateurs and opinion-mongers.” I doubted anyone said that, so I asked for some quotes or names. In good curmudgeonly fashion, Kapica’s post had ridiculed a belief so widespread it isn’t necessary to do the work and identify any believers. (Neil Henry did the same thing; they all do.) Mesh panelists Rachel Sklar (“appalled at Jack Kapica’s completely misrepresentative, agenda-driven, selective, and flat-out wrong rendering”) and Cynthis Brumfield (“was he even in the room?”) objected in the comments. I asked Canadian new media blogger Tony Hung, who live blogged the conference, whether he had heard anything resembling “bloggers can easily replace news organizations.” He emailed back. “No, not at all.” Kapica also got some names wrong. As I told Kapica, “while I can find dozens of statements like yours, from skeptical journalists ridiculing the ‘replacement’ thesis, it is very hard to find anyone who advances that thesis. So if someone at the Mesh conference did so, it would be news. And I would like to invite that person to expand on the idea at my blog… If there is someone. And I don’t think there is.” He’s apparently a one-way medium. Five days later, there’s no correction, no reply from Kapica, and the Globe and Mail staff, which moderates comments, has stopped posting mine. UPDATE, JUNE 5. “The days of media preaching unchallenged from a pedestal are far behind us.” After I emailed a subeditor there, I got this reply from the editor of the Globe and Mail website: Hi Jay: Thanks, Angus, and thanks for going on-the-record. Nothing yet at Cyberia. But Kapica is now on notice that he should respond. Game on, curmudgeon. UPDATE AGAIN (June 5): Kapica has replied: Mesh Conference redux. “The ‘old media’ side of me was hesitant to reply; I had my say, and I thought it wise to cede the floor to my critics.” “…I’m a little surprised about the anger I see in the letters complaining about my blog. A blog is a place for opinion, a point of view, and I’m sure people like those writing their comments to me would be among the first to defend that principle.” Read the rest. AND AGAIN (June 6) Okay, Kapica wants me to repeat what I said (“Now I could be wrong. I wasn’t there.”) in the comments at his blog: I wasn’t there, at Mesh, in Toronto. So I have to rely on what correspondents like him tell me. He thinks that since I wasn’t there I shouldn’t ask questions like, “Jack, did anyone really say that?” But at least we’re having a conversation with a live curmudgeon! My favorite part of Mesh Conference redux is its curmudgeonly way with links. “I’ve been away from the office for a few days, and could not answer the e-mails that demanded I reply to criticisms of my take on the Mesh Conference.” Instead of going here the link goes here, so you aren’t really at the take that took the criticism. Likewise, Kapica attempts to refute arguments and criticisms he doesn’t link to, as if unaware of good practices in blogging. Newsroom curmudgeons on both sides of the pond! Reacting to this post, Andy Dickinson, who teaches digital jounalism at the University of Central Lancashire, says “it’s a shame that we are just waiting for these guys to drop off the end of the conveyer belt. Journalistically they have a lot to offer.” Self-shrinkage among the curmudgeons.…Bryan Murley at Innovation in College Media: “There are plenty of good journalists out there who are downsizing themselves because they won’t (that’s right - won’t) learn new skills, adapt to change.” See also Paul Conley, Failing to learn, failing to teach. Brad DeLong: its a Neil Henry vs. Jay Rosen Future-of-Journalism Smackdown! I like Steve Yelvington’s description…Neil Henry’s recent “you kids get off my lawn” op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle If you’re one of those people who think, “Gosh, darn it, Google should give us some money.” Or, “Gosh darn it, if only we didn’t give our content away for free,” then I have a suggestion for you: educate yourself before you start lecturing others on how modern journalism should work. Entitlement and reparations. Jarvis replies, noting that at the recent D conference, “George Lucas lectured Chad Hurley and Steve Chen from YouTube, telling them that they should be funding a film school as reparations for pillaging the land of film with bad videos.” What a sense of entitlement the old guard has. They want these people to just give them money. It’s not the kids who are acting like spoiled brats who want to sit back and be given things. It’s the old guys who want want the kids to give them money. Of course, the proper response should instead be to say, how can we work with these kids and all the wonderful things they are doing? And there’s the dividing line. Those who do stay young. Those who don’t fade off, curmudeons at twilight.
Posted by Jay Rosen at June 4, 2007 1:23 AM
Comments
re: Technology isn’t destroying journalism. “It’s simply destroying the business that subsidized journalism.” Jay, I'm wondering what you think will happen. It doesn't seem to look promising at the moment... but do you think alternative successful ways to "produce" journalism will be found? *in time*? If not, what will happen? Will the government end up having to subsidize the gathering and dissemination of basic info we *really* need to get? Delia So are we agreed that quality news coverage can't survive without subsidy? Posted by: David Crisp at June 4, 2007 8:50 PM | Permalink Cue digitally sampled, hip-hop arrangement of Wagner's Gotterdamerung-- (Sorry, the original orchestral arrangement was the best I could do.) Posted by: Mark Anderson at June 4, 2007 9:07 PM | Permalink I get the impression that people like Kapica see stuff like that produced by Debbie Galant, or Marci Wheeler, or Susan G and think that because this isn't the product of "professional" journalists, somehow that means its "easy". He simply doesn't get that all of these people/organizations have "replaced" traditional journalists through an extraordinary amount of personal effort -- and the help of countless others. More crucially is that the main reason these people acted is that they saw a very real void in the information being provided by "traditional media" --- they had questions that the traditional media should have been answering and weren't---and they refused to take "we don't think its important enough to cover" as the answer. I have no idea what is going to happen to traditional media, but I do know that if it "dies" it will we because of its own abject failure to deploy its resources properly --- and its certainly not going to be because replacing it is "easy". Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 4, 2007 9:45 PM | Permalink So are we agreed that quality news coverage can't survive without subsidy? Well, there are some complications, David. It's really quality news coverage for the big broad public than cannot survive without subsidy. The rich merchant, the statesmen in the chancellories, the rulers of empires commercial and political will always find it worth their while to pay for quality news. They have the means. The desperate poor and working poor will rarely find the time or motivation to inform themselves. The information may be there. They do not have the means. The modern adventure with news for the general--that is, middle class--public begins with the mass circulation newspaper in the 1830s, and its method of subsidy. (See Brad DeLong.) I don't know what's going to happen, Delia. I almost never feel I have answers to questions framed that way. But government subsidy for newsgathering I do not see on the horizon. Jay, I read Steven Levy’s piece and these closing paragraph words particularly struck me: It's an article of our faith that when subjects speak to us, they are engaging in a grand participatory act where everyone benefits. But these lofty views don't impress bloggers like Rosen. "You have to prove [you represent the public]," he says. I knew I heard similar words before and then it struck me where ... “Bush to Press: "You're Assuming That You Represent the Public. I Don't Accept That" Posted by: Kristen at June 4, 2007 11:45 PM | Permalink Exactly, Kristen. Bush picked up on a weak spot in pro journalism, the lazy assumption, "we represent the public..." by devine First Amendment right. I said to Levy: you have to keep earning that. It can never be assumed. It doesn't automatically flow from your position. Representing the public, in my way of thinking, is not the same as representing "the people," although we can set our watches by the trolls who come in here and confuse the two. The press does not and cannot represent the people because it cannot stand for election and the people cannot replace journalists who fall down on the job. If they could Joe Klein would be teaching newswriting at Slippery Rock State by now. Representing the public is different: it needs to know what's going on, form an opinion, discover what the governors are doing with the consent the governed gave them, and orient itself in an actual world. A part left out: I told Levy that while he and his colleagues thought sources were cooperating with them because those sources agreed that journalists represented the public, the actual reason was that journalists as gatekeepers in an oligarchical media system had the power. One had to "go through" them to get to the national debate. Now that is not as true. Therefore practices like the interview were under pressure. Maybe we are arguing about words, but what DeLong describes doesn't sound like a subsidy to me. The penny press revolutionized newspapers by showing that news could pay its way by making ad space more valuable. To some extent, that principle still holds. The monopoly-owned daily here also owns a weekly shopper. Both cover more or less the same area, but the daily charges ad rates at least five times higher -- that premium pays for the news. It's that business model that seems to be breaking down, and I haven't seen anything yet to replace it. Henry is quite right to be worried. It worries the heck out of me, too. I sort of figure that journalism will somehow get it all figured out one of these days, but small publishers like me still have to eat today. Well, not necessarily today, but sometime this week. Posted by: David Crisp at June 5, 2007 12:34 AM | Permalink The modern adventure with news for the general--that is, middle class--public begins with the mass circulation newspaper in the 1830s, and its method of subsidy. (See Brad DeLong.) ah yes, the "penny press" --- does anyone know what a 1830 penny means in terms of current currency values? According to the 1850 Census, there were 2526 "newspapers". That was equal to one newspaper for every 9100 Americans. This suggests that the economics of print journalism have changed radically over the past 150 years --- and that journalism can and will survive in an "electronic" age once the proper economic model is found. Physical "dead tree" dailies will probably all but cease to exist -- resulting in enormous savings in the cost of raw materials, labor, and distribution, savings that can be transferred to the practice of "electronic print" journalism. But much like the demise of the horse and buggy meant the near demise of an entire sector of the economy, the rise of the automobile lead to the creation of an entirely new sector of the economy. It seems to be that the curmudgeons are the representatives of the horse-and-buggy economic sector --- they don't realize that many of the same skills involved in the old horse-and-buggy economy were transferrable to the new automotive one, and that the people who made wheels and seats for "buggies" could make wheels and seats for automobiles. All they see is the end of their industry as they know it. Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 5, 2007 8:18 AM | Permalink Should we coin a press equivalent for "horsepower" that allows us to compare pre- and post- dead tree journalism? "14 journalist hours and one editor hour went into the production of the preceding blog post." Posted by: Mark Anderson at June 5, 2007 10:00 AM | Permalink This is a debate that has been going on for some time--whether print will vanish. I have always believed that it will be with us for a good many years to come because it is still the most efficient, portable delivery mechanism for the end user. It doesn't need batteries or recharging, it doesn't require a download, if it breaks (falls in the water, burns), it inexpensively replaced, it's cheap enough to pass along and reuse (libraries), etc. As electronic as everything has become, I don't see paper being replaced, particularly for books. Newspapers are another matter, however. The broadsheets should be phased out immediately and converted to a tabloid size. Downloads of breaking news should be mandatory. Streaming video can help newspapers compete with television and even give newspapers an edge if they provide long-form stories and analysis in their print editions. It's foolish for newspapers to ignore technology--it holds the keys to salvation. In other words, saying journalism dies with dead tree newspapers is like saying travel stops with the demise of the horse and buggy. But should the automotive industry have subsidized the horse and buggy industry or not!? The analogy starts to break down when we try to imagine Henry Ford giving away free cars so he can sell the advertising. I guess the Model T is the closest I can come up with along that line, the automotive equivalent of penny journalism. Posted by: Mark Anderson at June 5, 2007 10:08 AM | Permalink Mark, My concern is that nobody seems to have come up with a "journalistic car" that works... yet, nonetheless, the "horse and buggy journalism" appears to be in the process of dismantling... So you get the expected reactions: those who strongly believe *something* will come around and solve the problem vs. those who aren't that optimistic... I like being optimistic but I think we NEED to have some sort of fall back scenario. Delia David, I like this insight: "The penny press revolutionized newspapers by showing that news could pay its way by making ad space more valuable." You are on to something there. Because the penny papers also discovered that the great mass of people wanted news, or that there was a kind of news they hungered for. Previously, Paul, news was produced for the trading classes, who could afford the six-penny papers and the dullness of stock and shipping news. The price cut was also a broadening of content and a loosening of "class restraints." The journalist as voyeur but also the public's eyes and ears were both born then. News populism is a two headed beast at least, like most populisms. It leads to sensationalism, and tabloid terror. It also breaks down class bias and broadens contact with the news-- enlarging the public space of news, making it a bigger arena, and of course a bigger business. This will be instructive to watch. The editor of the Globe and Mail online wrote me back about Jack Kapica and the Mesh conference. From After Matter... UPDATE, JUNE 5. “The days of media preaching unchallenged from a pedestal are far behind us.” I got this reply after from the editor of the Globe and Mail website, after I emailed a subeditor there: Hi Jay: Nothing yet at Cyberia. But Kapica is now on notice that he should respond, so we'll see. You know what I know. Game on, curmudgeon! As I told Angus Frame in an email: I think Jack Kapica got caught making something up. He took what he was thinking in his head and reported it as something he heard. That's not a big crime but it does call for some correction. I tried to help him out by asking, "Did anyone there actually argue 'that bloggers can, in fact, easily replace news organizations, ousting professional news reporters with freelance amateurs and opinion-mongers?' Or was that something you decided they must have believed based on what you did hear?" I believe it was probably the latter. I think "populism" is an important part of this comment conversation not to be overlooked. We're not looking for the "journalistic car" per se, but the 21st century version of the "journalistic Model T." Basically, a populist technology revolutionary like Ford for the daily (and weekly) print community. I agree with Mark and Paul's comments in this vein. But the other cultural killer of journalism has been the anti-citizen "professional" journalism. The "citizen of the world", "view from nowhere", "we don't vote on principle", "divisible from the public", "rainbow group think" monoculture. I thought that was the most overlooked aspect of the Blitzer/Lynne Cheney exchange from October 2006: BLITZER: The answer of course is we want the United States to win. We are Americans. There's no doubt about that. Do you think we want terrorists to win. It seems like people are missing the obvious. Google and the like will end up subsidizing journalism because they'll purchase newspapers and other media properties to support their emerging source of revenue--targeted online advertising. Posted by: Gary at June 5, 2007 1:19 PM | Permalink Unbelievable. This is a blogging first for me. I wrote that thing four years ago. I think the horse and buggy analogy breaks down. When automobiles came along, buggy manufacturers were no longer producing anything of value. Journalists are still producing something of value, as demonstrated by the popularity of newspaper websites, but the revenues are no longer going just to the journalists or the companies that employ them. They are going to Google, to linking bloggers, to activists who link to articles of interest to their readers. It's rare anymore that anybody even asks whether they can republish my work. I don't much mind, and it may even benefit me in some sort of vague, long-term way. But it doesn't put food on the table. Maybe the question isn't whether Google should subsidize journalists. It's whether journalists can continue to subsidize the rest of the online community. Posted by: David Crisp at June 5, 2007 1:38 PM | Permalink If "bloggers" are going to replace "journalists" you can bet they will be "bloggers" who have gone to journalism school and are part of news organizations.... The notion behind the term "blogger" is being slowly co-opted by newspapers that simply want to have an online presence they believe to be less formal than, say, if they called that same person an "online journalist." so as for Kathryn Seelye "live-blogging" in New Hampshire, I say "so what!" The NYTimes dresses up a younge person in geekery and gives her permission to "live-blog" and all of a sudden she's a "blogger"? oh, please! (BTW, Jemima Kiss has been "live-blogging" for the Guardian (in Organ Grinder) for awhile now....maybe she was the actual "tipping point." Jemima knows the medium and the culture, too.) But Seelye live-blogging just means it's going to be harder for me to get a press-pass now... IMO, there really needs to be a distinction between journalists who use blogs, and those of us who are independent, who are doing are own thing, and making something of it in whatever way we can. We're the ones doing something different, not the folks who go to j-schools then start "blogging" for their employers... and Kapica's words "freelance amateur"? kind of oxymoronic? Kind of like his entire sentence? Then again, if he's thinking that newspapers will hire journalism and english BAs, let them work online only, call *them* bloggers and pay *them* even lower wages then they might if they were working in the newsroom....and keep the newsroom jobs only for those with masters' degrees or higher...well, maybe then maybe, in some really odd way, is right?
Posted by: tish grier at June 5, 2007 4:24 PM | Permalink Jay, You may have written it 4 years ago, but it's still true. Posted by: William Ockham at June 5, 2007 4:25 PM | Permalink "but the revenues are no longer going just to the journalists or the companies that employ them. They are going to Google, to linking bloggers, to activists who link to articles of interest to their readers." The important point here is that Google, and bloggers, and activists are NOT depriving the news organizations of any revenue -- in fact, they are increasing traffic to these "mainstream journalism" sites. A newspaper with an on-line presence that does good, groundbreaking journalism will have MORE traffic (and more potential revenue) thanks to those who are linking to them. Back in the "old days", if a paper like the Boston Globe broke a story, other papers might write about it, and even cite the Globe as the source, but unless they published the Globe story itself as part of some syndicate the Globe didn't see an extra dime because of their reporting--people in Pokeepsie didn't drive to Massachusetts to pick up copies of the Globe. Today, if the Globe breaks an important story, people don't just write about it, they LINK to it...driving traffic to the Globe -- traffic that can generate revenue. If anything, mainstream news organizations should be subsidizing Google, bloggers, and activists for sending traffic to their sites... Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 5, 2007 6:06 PM | Permalink Kapica has replied: Mesh Conference redux. "The 'old media' side of me was hesitant to reply; I had my say, and I thought it wise to cede the floor to my critics." "...I’m a little surprised about the anger I see in the letters complaining about my blog. A blog is a place for opinion, a point of view, and I’m sure people like those writing their comments to me would be among the first to defend that principle." The matter is hereby closed, but I don't know: How does defending Jack's right to have an opinion at his blog, which I would do, bear on whether anyone who had the floor on Day One of the conference said that bloggers can easily replace news organizations? JR The key word being "potential" revenue. More people read our website than our hard copy, but the hard copy makes nearly all of the money. That's at least partly our fault, no doubt, but we are far from alone in having a hard time figuring out how to translate those eyeballs into dollar bills. Posted by: David Crisp at June 5, 2007 7:38 PM | Permalink That's at least partly our fault, no doubt, but we are far from alone in having a hard time figuring out how to translate those eyeballs into dollar bills. David, I looked at both your blog, and the Billings Outpost site -- I saw no ads at all -- merely a link to classifieds far down on the page. Now, what I did see was that the Outpost was a "free independent weekly" -- "free" meaning advertiser supported. Now, I don't know that much about web site design, but it does seem to me that once the template is revised, it would cost nearly nothing for you to put copies of the ads (or links to copies of the ads) that appear in your paper on your website "at no extra charge" .....initially. Maybe have a banner with "revolving" classified ads "at no extra charge"... initially. The thing is that if advertisers think your "dead tree" paper is worth what ever it costs to advertise in, they will probably be willing to pay a little extra for an ad on the papers website -- and as the audience for local news switches increasingly to the net, the need to reach that audience will keep your advertisers with your paper. In other words, try thinking about the website as an extension of the ENTIRE paper, not just the "content" that you provide in the "dead tree" edition -- because I think that is the only way that the "dead tree" press is going to successfully make the conversion. Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 5, 2007 8:16 PM | Permalink I'm wondering if advertising delivered what was believed to deliver in the print form: I mean, it seems that all advertisers had to go by was how many people read the paper...there were no clicks or anything of the kind to really *know* how many people were even cursorily interested in the ads. Could it be that the advertisers were paying a lot of money for those ads because they just *believed* they were getting them customers but that wasn't in fact the case? Could it be that this false belief was easily dispelled online were it was just a lot easier to see that eyeballs do NOT equal dollars? that you can have a lot of traffic and in the same time not many readers even glancing at your ads? Delia Could it be that the advertisers were paying a lot of money for those ads because they just *believed* they were getting them customers but that wasn't in fact the case? I'd have to say no, delia, given that after over 100 years of print advertising, most people would have figured out that it was a waste of money by now :) Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 5, 2007 10:01 PM | Permalink that doesn't convince me (in itself)-- people have been wrong about a lot of things for much longer than 100 years... but let's say it *did* work: did they figure out *how* it worked? (*what* made it work?)...that may give good clues as to how to make advertising work online D. If I use news articles, I link them - if I can - the writer/researcher journalist deserves credit and his employer does as well. I play fair, it is important for me to do so, I count on these people. What they do with being credited is supposed to be their job - well, somebody in the organization's job. I honestly don't know many people who've given up their paper subscritions in favor of screen, I wouldn't, but I live in a small place. It is true that I cannot afford to subscribe to WaPo, NYT, WSJ, but I keep my Baker City Herald. I am quite confident that some damage to subscriptions in the majors has to do with perceptions of journalistic value. Judith Miller was a huge blow to my confidnece in NYT, and it has continued downward, since. Posted by: chuckbutcher at June 6, 2007 12:42 AM | Permalink P.lukasiak, You are absolutely right. We are working on a complete redesign that attempts to do exactly what you suggest. Check back in a week or two. Posted by: David Crisp at June 6, 2007 5:57 AM | Permalink Excellent points in your article. You also wrote: I hope the San Francisco Chronicle keeps Neil Henry’s essay—Google Owes Big Journalism Big Time—free and clear of any pay walls. Link rot must not be allowed to set in, for this is a document. You should know that the SF Chronicle's Web site -- unlike any other news site I know of -- allows free searching, browsing, and reading of its articles back to 1995. No pay-wall, not even a free registration. I believe the links even stay constant. http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/ Posted by: Robert Teeter at June 6, 2007 9:29 AM | Permalink I can tell you that I stopped reading the news in the Chicago papers years ago because of the atrocious writing. I found it actually painful to read. I kept up with the more in-depth editorials until they stopped saying anything at all. I read the book review until it stopped saying anything. The papers just don't speak to me. I always read my community paper because it's well written and tells me what I want to know about village business, entertainment, and human interest, all in a convenient-to-use format. Is that so hard for the big dailies to comprehend? "...but the latest snarky rants from basement bloggers, fake news reports from government officials and PR cleverly peddled in the guise of journalism by advertisers wishing only to sell, sell, sell." This is different from today's major print newspapers how? Substitute "op ed columnists" for "basement bloggers" and you get my local daily. Which I still subscribe to, because it's easier to read than a computer screen. Posted by: Lisa Harris at June 6, 2007 11:31 AM | Permalink Comment at the HuffPost version: While I too despair at some of the J-school and newsroom traditionalists unwilling to look for the positives of the digital age, I'm also waiting to hear from Rosen and the other new media types about what will replace today's news. As a J professor Rosen knows the history of journalism, so he knows why the schools evolved and how destructive big city "journalism" was in the late 1800s to a civic society. Obviously today's MSM has many problems, but the digital "solutions' I've seen, for example j-school grads driving around doing online "news" reports about the opening of a shoe store, or self-important bloggers basing their writing on the work of paid journalists,don't seem like an improvement to me. So Rosen, what happens after you've chopped off the last head of the curmudgeons? What will replace today's news? Like I know? What will replace today's news? Like I know? Bunches of Bunches? Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 6, 2007 8:02 PM | Permalink Henry obviously needs to read your post on how no one owns journalism. I was under the impression that this is a good thing...true democracy. Hi Jay, Many posters correctly note the lack of understanding about Google by so many journalists. Google isn't in the news business, they're in the organization and advertising business. It seems that some have a wilful disregard of this fact. And yet it's so important for people to get that clear in their minds, because it's why Google has taken away newspapers' business model. Essentially, newspapers used to own the advertising channel to audiences -- and the vehicle was news and newsprint. That funded our journalism. Now, it's Web organization companies which own the advertising channel to audiences. Their vehicle is not news but indexing/organizing the Web. So funding for news is drying up, and funding for organizing the Web is exploding. We really can't blame them for the shift in how advertising is distributed. Moreover, it's silly to think that Google derives its popularity from its ability to organize news. That's a fraction... a tiny fraction... of the reasons that people go to Google. People go to Google because it puts order on the chaos of the Web, just like a card catalogue used to impose order on a library's stacks. Still, there are ways in which news organizations might be able to leverage their content, or more obviously, the advertising networks they control on their own sites, for some financial consideration from Google. I don't know what the value of that would be. But at least it is a business transaction that can be struck, not some kind of handout. Posted by: Anthony Moor at June 7, 2007 12:15 AM | Permalink Exactly, Anthony. I think you are dead on. One of the most significant facts for Henry's essay that is left out of Henry's essay... is that Google has declined to go into the content--that is, the editorial--business. Is that because they don't properly value it, or because they do? Helpful in this connection is Tom Curley's address to the Online News Association in 2004... Content will be more important than its container in this next phase. Some didn't get ready. It's striking how the curmudgeons are always unaware of people from their own tribe who are saying what the new media tribe is saying. They maintain that ignorance so as to be able to bring out some stock characters... Idolaters of Web-based news and information sites, "citizen"-produced journalism, and the blogosphere of individual self-publishers, often argue that old mainstays such as The Chronicle are, in fact, getting only what they deserve. Oh, come now, Jay. Yes, the Society of Professional Journalists gave an award to Judith Miller, but it gave one to Josh Wolf, too. (No, I'm not a member.) Not sure why Neil Henry is getting so much attention, given that he seems to be unusually ill-informed about the way search engines work. I don't believe he represents any sort of mainstream thinking -- at least I hope not. Posted by: Dan Kennedy at June 7, 2007 2:33 PM | Permalink Hi Dan: You're saying I shouldn't point out Miller unless I point out Wolf? I'm not sure I agree with that, but maybe... The idea that newspapers are getting their content "stolen" and ought to do something about it is, yes, a mainstream idea in newsrooms. I have no idea if its a majority view; but it is a common one. So is the curmudgeon's view of change, which is newsroom reactionary. Why is Henry's column getting so much attention? I think it may be because in the urgent search for the news business model people feel we cannot afford such cluelessness at the top of the status chain. Howard Owens to Henry: "You’re obviously smart... and modern journalism can use your brains, but you’re doing none of us any good with shallow conclusions and misinformed diatribes." Or maybe Henry's piece was just really good reactionary prose. Jay, If it's "stolen" it's only because they *allow* it... (it would be easy to NOT allow links to their stuff if they didn't want it); so I don't know what's going here... doesn't see to add up... If you see your stuff gets stolen, you don't continue to leave the door open... Delia P.S. did anybody at least try to see if they could give *permission* to link (since they are not legally or otherwise required to allow it) in EXCHANGE for a percentage of the money Google etc. makes as a *direct result* of using those links? that would seem fair to me... D. Jay: By pointing out the Society of Professional Journalists' award to Miller but not to Wolf, one could say that you were, uh, recruiting SPJ into your narrative, to coin a phrase. ;-) Besides, SPJ has been noteworthy in its defense of non-traditional journalists, like Vanessa Leggett. Just because Henry proposes sending money to SPJ doesn't mean the organization fits the stereotype. I've seen no evidence that SPJ has endorsed Henry's idea. I'm perplexed as to how anyone could agree with Henry's main complaint. Even a mathematically challenged dunce like me can figure out that news sites will make more money by having their content pop up on Google News than they otherwise would. Mind you, it's still not enough money to offset the decline of print, so maybe it all amounts to unthinking acting-out. Posted by: Dan Kennedy at June 7, 2007 8:58 PM | Permalink re: "news sites will make more money by having their content pop up on Google News than they otherwise would" you'd hope there would be some money to be made from that (the traffic driven back to the paper from Google news and such), but it appears that the profits are no that easy to realize... ... so, since that doesn't take care of the problem (from the journalism content producers' side) and since they are no required to allow links... you'd think that as long as they would stand their ground, they should be able to work out something with Google etc. after all, if the content production dries up, Google wouldn't have *what* to make money off... Delia Sorry, Dan, you lost me. SPJ doesn't fit the stereotype? Did I say it fit any stereotype? I don't think I did. I said they were the keepers of the ethics code and I mentioned that they gave a First Amendment award to Judy Miller while she went around the country lying about her case, pretending that it shows the need for a national shield law when in fact no national shield law would ever had kept her out of jail because no national shield law could ever pass without an exception for outing an intelligent agent, thus making her case an exception. Why does Henry mention SPJ? Because the only way he can imagine that Google could support journalism is to suppport established institutions within journalism. SPJ, and certain J-schools. Do you think if we asked Henry which J-schools Google ought to support to show that it's serious about supporting Big J Journalism he's going to name the hard working folks at Northeastern? He's the one with the stereotype. Society of Professional Journalists, but of course! Ethics! Standards! Everything those bloggers don't have. You think he knows that a huge portion of the membership is PR people? Nah, he doesn't know shit about SPJ because he's just using SPJ as a symbol of professionalism. No need to check into the actual institution. Just as he doesn't know squat about how Google News works. It's a symbol, like "basement bloggers" are a symbol. So to his symbology I counterpose my own-- Judy Miller. Delia: Bradley J. Fikes at The Festering Swamp said it: “A simple code added to a newspaper’s Web site will block Google News from searching its site.” Bingo: problem solved. Now Google can no longer enrich itself by borrowing your headlines and sending people to your site. Actually, if Henry would propose a well-funded Google School of Journalism at Northeastern, I would change my mind and pronounce him to be a genius. Posted by: Dan Kennedy at June 8, 2007 8:35 AM | Permalink Jay, I take it there haven't been attempts to really negotiate with Google etc. in this respect (or you are not aware of any)-- would you be against something like that? do you think it *might* work and if so in what circumstances? D. No, I would not be in favor of that. Google News is net win for the news organizations, and it is not a huge source of profit for Google. If journalists want to save the news business they aren't going to do it by demanding that someone else find the subsidy that will replace the old declining subsidy, and threatening the world with "you're gonna be getting your news from bloggers...is that what you want?...'cause that's what you are going to get...". you'd hope there would be some money to be made from that (the traffic driven back to the paper from Google news and such), but it appears that the profits are no that easy to realize... One of the things that I find amazing is that papers haven't figured out that they can sell geographically targeted advertising. I went to the Times cite, clicked on a story about Hartford Connecticut.... and I was delighted to see a a google ad for Hunt County Paving. Except when I checked it out, the company isn't located in Connecticut, but in Virginia! The ad wasn't targetted to me, because I live in Philadelphia. It wasn't targetted to people interested in news about Hartford either. How hard could it be to have those "full page ad you have to look at before you get to the article" things that would be about what is on sale this week at your local Superfresh, instead of trying to get me to buy a mercedes? The market for a mercedes on any given day is limited. But people WANT to know what's on sale every week at their local grocery stores, those chains are spending tons of money on print and television ads trying to tell us what is on sale --- and I'd actually find such ads USEFUL rather than annoying. That is where the money is going to come from in the brave new world of journalism --- the exact same kinds of ads that people actually USE on an every day basis. Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 8, 2007 9:21 AM | Permalink I've seen this problem before with publishers who don't want to do revenue shifting. They required, for example, classified advertisers on the web to also buy space in the print magazine. I think this can be a real problem. I see value in planning niche advertising by audience and advertiser class. There are certainly audiences for both print and web ads, and a particular type of product might do better in one or the other. I think papers should invest in some advertising market research to find the appropriate platform for the appropriate audience. They have to get away from the one-size-fits-all approach that's easier for them, but irrelevant to their audiences. Can someone explain to a simple fella what he is missing here? Google News compiles news stories, and presumably gets some ad revenue from that service (although I don't see any ads on the main page). A user sees an article, clicks the link, and goes to that news source's page, which ... has ads on it. The news source has its ad revenue, and ... they should also get a piece of Google's? I don't get it. You don't get it because it makes no sense. You have to understand that these are people writing definitive-sounding newspaper pieces about online services they do not use. Lame Man, It *does* make sense: Google would make no money whatsoever if it ONLY did what newspapers can't stop it from doing (just give a short "sampling" of the news they find relevant -- headlines or short passages -- with NO link to where to go find the stuff... *nobody* would be interested in tracking those things down on their own, well, close to nobody...) Now, if Google did this... just to be *nice* -- provided this to the community and made *no money* at it -- it would be one thing, but this is NOT what's going on... Google makes money! (Jay says not much but who's to judge? their profit margin may still be quite high...) So then what's the problem with sharing those profits with those who produce the journalism Google uses to *make $*? The fact that the journalism producers don't *have to* allow links give them a bargaining position (well... it *secures* the bargaining position they should rightly have since they are the *content producers* without which none of this could be happening in the first place... ) Delia P.S. sorry, Jay (looks like we disagree on this one) D. Jay, would it make a difference to you if the Paul Bass kind of enterprise (a journalistic non-profit, and not commercial journalism) was getting a share of Google's direct profits from using their work? D. Go take a look at Google News. Then read about robots.txt. If you're still interested in the topic, Google News Indexing: Copyright Infringement or Profit Source? One of the lead stories on the New York Times (NYT) yesterday is about the immigration bill. If you Google “immigration bill,” the first results is indeed Google News results, but the rest of the top results are from news sites, including Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, LA Times, New York Times, MSNBC, and CBSNews. Tim, I don't know who were you addressing in that post but it was good info! looks like it doesn't even come down to being or not being allowed to link, looks like just the *aggregation of quotes* is in violation of the law... imagine that! Good thing I didn't start Delia's Random News... (not that I was really considering it). So much for Dan Gillmor's idea that you have the (fair use)right to quote for whatever reason whatsoever --looks like Google would have to integrate those quotes in some sort of a critique or something... (to be within their rights)-- it would be interesting to see! (I wonder if they've considered it...) Delia P.S. it's hard to believe that a lot of people are just reading those quotes and not following the links (*very* counterintuitive... and pretty much wrecks my theory:)-- that's the part that sucks!) *lol* P.P.S. good night, all! D. Mark Cuban has some ideas for you, Delia: The Google Brilliance applied to Newspapers and Local Media. That's a good post by Cuban. Smart: "If great content, whether audio, video, text or pictures, is just a means of selling more advertising, does it really matter where the content appears, as long as you are selling the advertising around it or on the website that hosts it?" My preferred local shopping service has become Google Maps. It's easy for businesses to register and the results lead me to believe many have figured it out. This could be combined locally with an Angieslist service. Other examples of newspapers providing an SEM service might be with Google Products or ShopLocal. “The fear of missing out means today’s media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack,” Mr. Blair declared. “In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no one dares miss out.” Or is it "the media" ... ? Posted by: Richard B. Simon at June 12, 2007 11:45 AM | Permalink Jay - any comment? Posted by: Peter Ralph at June 12, 2007 4:27 PM | Permalink Huh? is my comment. How is that essentially the same thing? You will have to spell it out a little more. Any interference in The Market is equaivalent to any other interference in The Market... Something along those lines? You take issue with the suggestion that Google should subsidize newspaper journalism...or have I misunderstood your position? Is it perhaps just the notion that Google have some obligation in this regard, that you object to? Posted by: Peter Ralph at June 12, 2007 6:28 PM | Permalink My position is that Neil Henry doesn't understand how Google, Google News or news aggregation work. Prior to writing newspaper columns about such matters, a tenured professor at Berkeley and Interim Dean of the J-school should study up, and know what he's talking about. Also that Google has no obligation to pay reparations to a news industry it destroyed or to subsidize old school journalism because Google is not what destroyed that industry and old school journalism is not what will save it, even though there is much about Big J journalism and traditional practices that is honorable and valuable and ought to be saved. Then I was mistaken. I understood you to be recommending that journalism should be left prey to market forces. Posted by: Peter Ralph at June 12, 2007 11:02 PM | Permalink Jay, apparently Google was at fault (legally) and it looks like they agreed to "pay up"; they appear to want to keep it "localized" (by not disclosing what kind of financial agreement they made) but I doubt they will succeed -- after seeing that it *can* be done, pretty much anybody who can legally go after them, probably will...re: Tim's links D.
More on the curmudgeon class
Here's a little unresolved episode that shows what they're made of. See The Globe and Mail's Jack Kapica: The new New Journalism beats up on the old. It's his report on day one of the Mesh conference in Toronto. In the comments I challenged him on his statement about a running theme of the day: "that bloggers can, in fact, easily replace news organizations, ousting professional news reporters with freelance amateurs and opinion-mongers." I doubted anyone said that, so I asked for some quotes or names. In good curmudgeonly fashion, Kapica's post had ridiculed a belief so widespread it isn't necessary to do the work and identify any believers. (Neil Henry did the same thing; they all do.) Mesh panelists Rachel Sklar ("appalled at Jack Kapica's completely misrepresentative, agenda-driven, selective, and flat-out wrong rendering") and Cynthis Brumfield ("was he even in the room?") objected in the comments. I asked Canadian new media blogger Tony Hung, who live blogged the conference, whether he had heard anything resembling "bloggers can easily replace news organizations." He emailed back. "No, not at all." Kapica also got some names wrong. As I told Kapica, "while I can find dozens of statements like yours, from skeptical journalists ridiculing the 'replacement' thesis, it is very hard to find anyone who advances that thesis. So if someone at the Mesh conference did so, it would be news. And I would like to invite that person to expand on the idea at my blog... If there is someone. And I don't think there is." He's apparently a one-way medium. Five days later, there's no correction, no reply from Kapica, and the Globe and Mail staff, which moderates comments, has stopped posting mine. UPDATE, JUNE 5. "The days of media preaching unchallenged from a pedestal are far behind us." After I emailed a subeditor there, I got this reply from the editor of the Globe and Mail website: Hi Jay: Peter forwarded your email to me, I'm the editor of globeandmail.com. I have encouraged Jack to respond to the comments and criticism his assessment of Mesh has generated. I am also concerned that your comment was apparently dismissed. This is counter to our comments policy, which is designed to foster open debate and discussion between our readers and the journalists of The Globe and Mail. In 2005 we introduced a comment option on virtually every article we publish -- blogs and traditional news stories -- and currently we get around 100,000 user comments each month. I certainly do not want anyone to get the impression that globeandmail.com is anything but supportive of a true dialogue. The days of media preaching unchallenged from a pedestal are far behind us. Please email me the comment you wanted to submit and I will make sure it gets on the site. Thanks, Angus, and thanks for going on-the-record. Nothing yet at Cyberia. But Kapica is now on notice that he should respond. Game on, curmudgeon. UPDATE AGAIN (June 5): Kapica has replied: Mesh Conference redux. "The 'old media' side of me was hesitant to reply; I had my say, and I thought it wise to cede the floor to my critics." "...I’m a little surprised about the anger I see in the letters complaining about my blog. A blog is a place for opinion, a point of view, and I’m sure people like those writing their comments to me would be among the first to defend that principle." Read the rest. AND AGAIN (June 6) Okay, Kapica wants me to repeat what I said ("Now I could be wrong. I wasn't there.") in the comments at his blog: I wasn't there, at Mesh, in Toronto. So I have to rely on what correspondents like him tell me. He thinks that since I wasn't there I shouldn't ask questions like, "Jack, did anyone really say that?" But at least we're having a conversation with a live curmudgeon! My favorite part of Mesh Conference redux is its curmudgeonly way with links. "I’ve been away from the office for a few days, and could not answer the e-mails that demanded I reply to criticisms of my take on the Mesh Conference." Instead of going here the link goes here, so you aren't really at the take that took the criticism. Likewise, Kapica attempts to refute arguments and criticisms he doesn't link to, as if unaware of good practices in blogging. *lol* not quite :) looks like they are just not going to be able to keep ALL they money to themselves... D. Jay, check the link to Jarvis' Alas, the Interview in the After Matter. |
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