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| Texas Trib's Publisher/COO Tim Griggs |
As the newspaper business continues to struggle, we
fear that "serious" journalism may be a goner. But our fears may be
misplaced. What we might be witnessing is a positive transformation.
The Fourth
Estate enjoys a special place in society, and so to try to have it conform to
the norms of a market-based business is mistaken. It has an intrinsic value
that lies outside of market valuation. That we come to understand the real
value of news could bring a great renaissance for public interest reporting and
the open society it fosters.
The realities for those in the business is slightly
less resplendent. Like they say, when one door closes, another opens - but it
is hell in the hallway. The downturn in the newspaper business and the reason
for the Digital News Revenue Summit earlier this month is because journalism
won't pay for itself. Appropriately,
the news of the day during the Summit was how the Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest paper, just
gave the axe to a quarter of the newsroom - 40 more reporters out on the street!
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| Sweet Tweet - hundreds of new news jobs! |
No doubt
there have been a lot of jobs created in the hundreds of digital news
organizations that seem to be popping up all over. Some are "quality"
jobs like those at the Texas Tribune - real salaries, benefits and even a vague
sense of job security. I would guess these are the exception. Far, far more are
traditional news folk put out on the street by the "digital
disruption" scrambling to put something together. I'd call those gigs more
of an "opportunity" than a real-deal job.
Now, let me come back to the less-than-appetizing point I came to earlier - that news has to be carried financially, compromised or some combination of the two. With that, we have a start of a framework to understand various digital news business models - and the myriad ethics issues that go along with them.
That the Digital News Revenue Summit focused on not-for-profit conepts acknowledges this. The cost of news needs to be carried, and that puts it alongside other socially beneficial, charitable ventures. What caught my attention is how this emerging not-for-profit business model is being developed mostly by people from for-profit backgrounds. That could make for something of a culture clash. Is wedding news to a not-for-profit model simply a marriage of convenience for these would-be media magnates? That isn't my sense of it. News people and not-for-profit types share a mission-driven nature. Maybe the real culture clash for them was before, being in for-profit news. If so, the emerging not-for-profit model could prove to be true love.
Now, let me come back to the less-than-appetizing point I came to earlier - that news has to be carried financially, compromised or some combination of the two. With that, we have a start of a framework to understand various digital news business models - and the myriad ethics issues that go along with them.
That the Digital News Revenue Summit focused on not-for-profit conepts acknowledges this. The cost of news needs to be carried, and that puts it alongside other socially beneficial, charitable ventures. What caught my attention is how this emerging not-for-profit business model is being developed mostly by people from for-profit backgrounds. That could make for something of a culture clash. Is wedding news to a not-for-profit model simply a marriage of convenience for these would-be media magnates? That isn't my sense of it. News people and not-for-profit types share a mission-driven nature. Maybe the real culture clash for them was before, being in for-profit news. If so, the emerging not-for-profit model could prove to be true love.
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| NEWS DEEPLY's Lara Setrakian & Kristin Nolan |
That's good.
What's better is going beyond the bottom-line vs. mission-driven contrast. The
claim I heard time-and-again is that tomorrow's journalist must be
entrepreneurial. Well, that's nothing new to freelancers used to selling
stories. What's really needed is something more, leadership that takes this enterprising attitude to another
level. These are the
social entrepreneurs. They have the sizzle of entrepreneurial innovation
but are driven by something that transcends the profit motive. Their ambitious
nature seeks fulfillment in a success measured by different metrics than their
for-profit peers. These folks most certainly don't live by bread alone.
Some of the
presenters at the Summit fit this category. In particular, the people behind
News Deeply are taking this attitude towards fostering narrowly-focused
specialty news sites. It will be interesting to see where they can take
this.
Rethinking how not-for-profit news can operate by bringing for-profit business sensibilities to bear is very promising. I've seen how
this has worked well elsewhere. Public broadcasters have had their operations
take off with innovation brought by those from commercial broadcast. But there
are possible compromises. What happens when "underwriting" announcements
on PBS or NPR come close to being a plain old commercials? Hybrid concepts can cut both ways.
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Tips? Suggestions? Ideas? Drop a line to carl (at) inanityofsanity (dot) com
NPR and PBS commercial sponsorships have long been advertisements, even worse than ads, because the large donations affect management decisions directly by means of strategic sponsorships to influence specific industries and issues. This is blatant, obvious, and proven true every year, every day and night. To pass 'conservative' congressional muster, the 'right' (pun intended) management personnel have to be hired or budgets get chopped and heads roll. One either sees it or has to try hard not to see it.
ReplyDelete- L.P.