Who dunnit?

I've been blogging a lot recently about the Rocky Mountain News, partially out of morbid fascination and partially because I believe that there are some scary parallels between it and the future of some of our own markets.

Denver has a population of just over 500,000 and Colorado a population of just over 5 million, yet the market couldn't support two quality newspapers.

So, who killed The Rocky Mountain News? Was it the internet? In short, yes and no. Or was it massive mismanagement by incompetent ownership, in conjunction with the Internet?

For the long answer, check out John Temple's follow up to his talk in Berkley, which he gave at the 2009 Webcam conference. There's some overlap in content, but it's well worth watching.

Did the Internet kill the Rocky Mountain News? And, if it did, what can we learn from its death? from John Temple on Vimeo.

The Huffington Post

The leading advocate of a new citizen journalism model is Arianna Huffington who founded what is regarded by many as one of the most influential media organisations, online or offline, in America today.

The Huffington Post was founded in 2005 and is already one of the biggest individual news organisations in the US. It has 2,000 contributors, paid and unpaid and while avowedly liberal she says that "we are never going to cover up for anyone however much we love them."

As the Post moves into local reporting, Arianna Huffington looks set to be to Journalism in the early part of the 21st century what Rupert Murdoch was to the latter part of the 20th century.

Except a hell of a lot more liberal.

You can read a review here of a talk the Arianna gave at The Guardian's "Future of Journalism" conference last year, or you can listen to a six minute excerpt here.

Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism is cited as being the biggest threat to legacy media by people who are, apparently, in the know. The main example cited used is the video of Neda Saltani, who was shot dead by police during the protests in Iran last year.

The question I ask is, are video's like this examples of citizen journalism?

If a news organisation comes across someone who has access to files relating to government corruption, or pictures or videos of police brutality, are they citizen journalists? Or, are they what is traditionally known as sources?

As David Simon notes, "you do not – in my city -- run into bloggers or so-called citizen journalists at City Hall, or in the courthouse hallways or at the bars and union halls where police officers gather. You do not see them consistently nurturing and then pressing sources."

Real citizen journalism is rare and often of questionable quality. There are some exceptions; The Huffington Post is the largest, and most influential, but some smaller organisations are doing a good job.

The Uptake did a great job of covering the Republican Party's National Convention in Minnesota in 2008, as well as the marathon recount after recount in the Senate race in 2009 (eventually won by (former?) comedian Al Franken.

Unlike most citizen journalism organisations however, The Uptake uses trained, professional journalists in conjunction with trained amateur journalists.

It's not just a group of bloggers sitting around talking about whatever they feel like and stealing content from news sites without attribution.

But while The Uptake do a good job, what happens when the GOP's convention is in a different state the next time? Will there be an Uptake in every town and city around the world, dedicated to reporting the truth and holding those in power to account?

Can citizen journalism really fill the hole left by the death of 'legacy journalism', should that transpire? I'm not convinced. Yet.

Lessons from the death of a great paper

John Temple was the editor, president and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News which closed down a little over a year ago after almost 150 years in business. You may recognise him from Matt Robert's excellent 'Final Edition' video which I blogged on last week.

Under his leadership, the paper won four Pulitzer Prizes for journalistic excellence; despite this, and despite the prospect of the paper being profit-making in the future, the publicly-quoted owners, EW Scripps (worth about $6 billion) shut the paper down.

John gave a talk at the UC Berkley (Go Bears!) Media Technology Summit at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California on September 30th, 2009. You can read the text of the talk here, or you can watch the slideshow and listen to the talk in the video below.

I don't agree with all of John's observations, but he is extremely honest about the mistakes that he made as well as those made by the owners of the paper.

Managing Directors and Managing Editors of newspapers on this side of the Atlantic would be wise to listen to what he has to say. Before too long, they may find themselves in the same position that 'my Rocky' was in 2009.

The 'C' word

Convergence has been the buzz word in journalism for the last decade and for most journalists it means more work, less pay and less time to work on in depth stories.

Lest there be any confusion the 'convergence' I'm talking about here is the convergance of skills across a number of mediums that modern journalists are expected to work on; print; online; video; audio. The backpack journalist.

Is this convergence about serving the consumer or pandering to them? And are consumers (once known as readers) really served by this, or is it simply a case of less journalists to act as watchdogs?

The problem with newspapers being run like fast-food outlets (the minimal standard the consumer will accept with the least amount of staff possible) is that societey eventually suffers.

Less journalists = Fewer Watchdogs = More Corruption. A fair enough assumption I think.

That's not to say that there aren't positives to multi-media, or that audio, video and online don't enhance the media offering (if and when necessary.) And no doubt as younger journalists come into the industry, working across mediums will be easier for them.

But as Markham Nolan asks on his blog today, does multi-media = multi-mediocre? If today's online editions of Irish papers are anything to go by... Sadly, yep.

How to run a newspaper

Most news organisations are now owned by publicly quoted companies, whose sole aim is to generate profit and shareholder value for it's owners.

The result over the past number of years has been newspaper closures, job losses and less journalists reporting on a far smaller pool of stories.

Were there ever 'Good Old Days' in the news industry, or have things always been going to the dogs?

Whatever the case, it's highly unlikely that news owners are going to continue ploughing money into papers which continue to generate minimal profit from what is undoubtedly the news delivery system of the future (i.e. the internet.)

Is there a Citizen Kane in every market, or are we going to have to look at new ways of funding our news oganisations?

What is evident is that the shareholder model does not work for news organisations and benevolent billionaires notwithstanding, the non-profit model is the only way to guarantee a free and fair press.

'The advertising will set you free'

Despite initial reports that Chase Bank paid the New York Times $1 million to sponsor the New York Times iPad App for 60 days, it turns out that the bank paid less than half that.

As the iPad has a pretty small user base, that's still a fair whack, but the bigger picture is that it's a mere 0.02% of the companies revenue. No doubt the market will grow (the NYT had 78 million views on it's iPhone App in March) but will it ever replace the amount lost from print advertising?

Earnings at the NYT rose in Q4 2009, but that's only on the back or redundancies and a sale of assets. The online effect at quality papers like the Times is less journalists, working harder, worse stories and more unedited, unchecked PR.

Will the value of online advertising set new media free? No time soon anyway...

'Mild Sexual Content or Nudity'

'Mild Profanity', 'Suggestive Themes' and 'Crude Humour' aren't the phrases I would usually associate with the Irish Times. It's a well written, high-brow paper, which is enduring some tough times at present, as all news publications are.

The Irish Times has a new addition to it's online offering, an App (or 'application) for the iPhone, which I think is a very good thing. I'm reserving my judgement on the App itself just yet; but getting to read Irish Times content while commuting is great and the cost is very reasonable (€1.59)

The paper isn't the only one to offer an App: The Guardian are the market leader (at least as far as I'm concerned) and do a great job, with customised content and a lot of variety. You can check out the FAQ for their App here and a video on it here.

Getting back to the Irish Times, the good people at Apple have decided to rate the Irish Times 12+ for amongst other things, 'Mild Horror', 'Fear Themes' and 'Mild Sexual Content or Nudity'.

Is there something we should know? Has the paper fallen on such tough times that they're going 'adult' to make ends meet? Answers on a digital postcard to the usual address.

(Click on the picture below for a screen cap of the page in question.)

iHope

Damien Mulley has a very interesting post today on the future of news and media and the furory around the iPad.

As Mulley points out, the technology itself will not save news organisations that produce crap content, nor will simply attempting to charge people for online content save the news industry.

It goes back to David Simons excellent summation of the state of the US newspaper industry:

"When you hear a newspaper executive claiming that his industry is an essential bulwark of society and that it stands threatened by a new technology that is, as of yet, unready to shoulder the same responsibility, you may be inclined to empathize. And indeed, that much is true enough as it goes.

But when that same newspaper executive then goes on to claim that this predicament has occurred through no fault on the industry's part, that they have merely been undone by new technologies, feel free to kick out his teeth. At that point, he's as fraudulent as the most self-aggrandized blogger."

Newspaper managers and shareholders have a lot to answer for the decimation of the industry and in the same way that the demise of quality news is not solely the fault of the web, nor is any single product or technology going to save the industry.

Charging for bad content, whether it is online or offline, from under-trained, ridiculously over-worked journalists who don't have enough time, energy or resources (and who occasionally are just bad journalists) to produce good content is not a realistic option.

The problems that face the news industry now are many and complicated. At their core though, they go back to poor management. And not even an iPad can save an industry who's managers don't understand their product.

Everything you ever needed to know...

I don't know why I didn't post this earlier: It covers pretty much everything you ever needed to know about online journalism in 93 seconds, but were too afraid to ask.

Do I really need to blog anything else?

"Repetition, Commentary and Froth"

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last 8 years you already know that The Wire is probably the best show that TV has produced in the last 100 years.

Brilliant and bad-ass all at once, it's the sort of searing social commentary that could only be written by a dyed in the wool newsman with a chip on his shoulder.

David Simon is an American writer/author and TV producer who worked the city desk on the Baltimore Sun for 12 years. He wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets based on his experience as a police reporter.

His latest work Treme focuses on life in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and debuted in the US last Sunday. Dave is good police. Natural police.

Simon testified at a US Senate sub-committee hearing on the future of journalism on May 6th 2009 and his insight was both chilling and thought provoking. One short extract, then I'll shut up (mostly.)

"High-end journalism is dying in America and unless a new economic model is achieved, it will not be re-born on the web or anywhere else.

The internet is a marvelous tool and clearly it is the informational delivery system of our future, but thus far it does not deliver much first generation reporting.

Instead it leeches that reporting from mainstream news publications, whereupon aggregating websites and bloggers contribute little more than repetition, commentary and froth.

Meanwhile, readers acquire news from the aggregators and abandon it's point of origin - namely the papers themselves. In short, the parasite is slowly killing the host."

Simon makes his point far more far more eloquently than I can, but the point is essentially one that I've been making offline for as long as papers have been giving their product away for free.

The internet is "a marvelous tool and clearly it is the informational delivery tool of our future." This much is true.

But as long as news organisations suffer while the likes of Google and others give their product away for free, the relationship is that of "parasite" and "host."

And, what far too many online advocates fail to realise is that the parasite needs the host in order to survive. It's simple biology. Once online journalism kicks the bucket, all we will be left with is commentary, froth and a lot of online porn.

You can read the full, unedited text of Simon's testimony here.

Final Edition

I've posted an interesting video below, a short piece documenting the final days of the Rocky Mountain News, a fine newspaper that existed for 149 years, 311 days before closing it's doors on February 27th 2009.

To give a local perspective, the paper was founded just 24 days after our own Irish Times was and was one of the top 'quality papers' in the States, winning 4 Pulitzer prizes under the leadership of it's final editor alone.

Despite this, despite good circulation numbers and despite being one of the best loved papers in the US, it no longer exists.

Did the web kill the Rocky Mountain News? Probably not. But woeful mismanagement of the paper and it's web presence, a newspaper war with The Denver Post and lack of any clear leadership all contributed to the death of an institution.

But more on that later. For now, check out the video below. If you have any interest in news and newspapers you'll find it heartbraking.

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Finally...

Despite reporters ability to spot social, business and political trends, newspaper managers and owners historically make terrible decisions.

From the Daily Mail's support of the Nazi party before the second World War to far more mundane decisions (like paying €50 million euro for a crappy property website) newspaper owners and managers are typically bufoons who know their product about as well as the Pope knows how to diffuse a child sex abuse scandal.

Over the past decade publishers and managing editors of newspapers have fallen over themselves to give away what for centuries they worked hard to prove was worthwhile.

Despite the lessons that should have been learned from dotcom bubble in 2000, there are many in the news industry that still believe that there is a business model in giving things away for free.

"Not quite sure how we'll make money from it, but the internet is the future, going forward, synergy, paradigm shift blah, blah,blah..."

Nice one, let me know how that works out for you. By the way, I've got an amazing blog that I think you should spend a few million on if you're interested, cheap at twice the price...

So it's refreshing to see that someone, somewhere has finally called time on the bullshit that is free newspapers online.

It's a pity it was a cut-throat bastard like Murdoch, but he's done everyone in news a favour, whether you're a Guardian snob or a Daily Mail slob.

Free papers simply don't work because no-one, whether it's advertisers or readers, place value on something you give them for free.

There's an analogy there somewhere about sex, but I'm far too highbrow to make it (Guardian snob.)

Don't believe me? Name me one newspaper who has made a profit out of their online section and who hasn't cannibalized their own business.

Aside from free online content, the collapse of the free-sheet market in Dublin (with both Metro and Herald AM making losses of approximately €11 million in losses a year) shows that there is no advertising model to support free content.

Advertisers will pay less for an ad in a free paper, no matter how popular. Advertisers will pay a hell of a lot less for online ads than they will for print.

Not to mention the small point that if papers continue to give content away for free, who will pay journalists? Who will be left to bring those in power to account?

Murdoch may be a bastard (just ask anyone who's ever worked for him) but just for once I think everyone in the media owes him a big thank you. Murdoch the saviour? We live in interesting times...

Prologue

Depending on who you listen to, now is either the best or the worst time to be a young journalist. In the early 20th century becoming a journalist meant getting a much sought after apprenticeship; spending a time working on local newspapers; years of training.

More recently it meant getting a degree in Journalism as the papers cut down on the amount of inhouse training that they invested in and as more journalists were expected to do less.

However, with the expansion of the internet, the creation of message-boards, the emergence of blogging and micro-blogging, the fixation with 'online journalism' (possibly the most bastardised phrase in any language) none of this was necessary any longer.

No editors; no sub-editors; no publishers; no deadlines. Just write what you want to write then hit the 'publish' button. So simple, so democratic.

Sadly, there was a minor fly in the ointment for this 21st century love story. Three more items need to be added to the list:

• No standards
  
• No audience
• No paycheck

You can get published wherever and when ever you want; you can say what you want without censorship; it's just that no-one may ever read it and you'll probably never see a red cent for it.

For some that may not matter, but to me it's a bit of an issue.

Call me old fashioned or call me a bit of a curmudgeon, but I prefer being paid over not being paid. I prefer eating over starving and I prefer being able to pay my mortgage over not being able to pay my mortgage.

No doubt the online journalistas think that I just don't get it; the web has changed everything beyond recognition, the old rules don't apply any more and the death of the newspaper is inevitable.

I'll handle some of those points at a later date, but for now I'll leave you with three short words to illustrate what I think about the internet has changed everything argument:

Dot. Com. Crash.