Most interesting approach I've seen was Mobile Industry Review: http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-mobile-indsutry-review-...
A free blog that turned into a private research firm for companies.
YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism
31–40 of 59 posts
Re: YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism
#32Aside from crawlers, aggregators, CMSs, etc., I don't see how a small team of programmers without any kind of editorial insight can really do anything innovative for journalism. The real problem lies in the content, not the distribution channels or monetization models. Technical solutions that ignore what readers want won't succeed. Look at Drudge Report for case in point: Drudge Report is one of the most successful…
You're right: journalists will determine the future of journalism. I think the more relevant question is whether journalism is where we will get the news in a few years.
At the moment, it seems to me like we're finding new, social (in the W2.0 sense) methods of distributing information that are "good enough" to destroy the business model for news. "Good enough" doesn't mean their information is equal or better compared to the information that journalism yielded. Of course, most of this social news is still based off "MSM" news, but I believe that, as their availability decreases, their necessity as a base will aswell.
I think that sometimes there is a tragic logical error in some of the 'future of journalism' discussion: "The News business model is done. User's won't pay for the news any more. Ads don't scale. The hurricanes themselves won't pay, either. Thus, we have to find a new business model."
This last statement is always there, especially in the RFS and the entrepreneur's discussions following it here. But it is not a necessity. I guess it is a part of a healthy capitalistic mindset to see every industries downfall as an opportunity, but I get the feeling that some of the internets peer production developments escape this pattern: Wikipedia will not produce business opportunities for encyclopedia business, OpenStreetMap will not help NAVTEQ.
Of course each of these examples produces a periphery of new businesses, consulting opportunities and the usual post-processing stuff, but in their core they have de-economized industries.
So I get wary when I hear people talk on how to monetize post-news news. You really won't. Go write a blog post about some of your local communities problems instead.
Re: YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism
#33"Journalism" isn't going to be saved by data mining or algorithms or nice design. It is not going to be saved by "hyperlocal" reporting. It is not going to be saved by per-user customizable topical filters. It is not going to be saved by search systems and RSS feeds for your neighborhood. It is not going to be saved by content federation. It is not going to be saved by mashups. It is not going to be saved by APIs. It…
I don't really follow the "quality will save us" argument. It combines two very weak ideas into an even weaker one: the elitist news thing and the Britcannica argument.
The elitist reasoning goes like this: MSM are only reporting MJ death stories etc. and this low-quality populism has cost them their readership. If they were to start doing serious reporting, all the clever people would come back and pay for their services. Of course, that's BS. The current reporting is directly created to reach the biggest audience, and it does. It works. The elites may go away ... but that's just a few eccentrics, who cares?
The Britannica argument is that distributed groups on the internet can never produce anything that is nearly as good as the stuff that is produced by experts. This is certainly true for art, but for Britannica it simply didn't work out: Wikipedia did produce quality articles and content.
Re: YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism
#34This is phrased almost as a guessing game, so forensic analysis of RFS 1 is in order. The phrase "you can't have aggregators without content" and suggestion that a writer is needed implies that this is content creation, not aggregation. One way to start from making money is to let users pay to get what they want. Here's one place it could lead: Let readers bid (or paying subscribers vote) on what they want investigat…
Each story is a startup. You have investors, you have revenue sources. And this would especially appeal to pg. :-)
But I'd suggest that you sell the content to existing news outlets. That is, you occupy the same role as Reuters, and plug into an existing network.
Re: YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism
#35One original purpose of newspapers seemed to to advocate political views, a factor which waned, then waxed as the industry consolidated. http://www.historicpages.com/nprhist.htm Another factor was timely reporting of battles. In the origins of the telegraph, the transmission of gold and stock prices was one driving factor.
Of course, newspapers make money from advertisements, not directly from content. The business purpose of content is to attract eyeballs... the same business model of many web-based startups.
For pure content creation in the news area, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters is the best model I've seen. Every news provider seems to buy their content.
Re: YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism
#36The Personal News Agency
Dealing with information follows the (almost universal) five-step pattern: sensing > filtering > reasoning > creating > enjoying. It is like noise > signal > information > action > flow, or, fear > accept > share > use > love. And many more.
No one has to consider the existence of information sources. They will grow up instantly from individuals, local groups, global communities and professionals specialised on production.
The most important is to find the right channels for you and open as many channels possible inside you to let information flow through your senses.
Don’t bother about acquiring exact knowledge. Let your brain automagically store whatever seems to be important, go and discuss frequently your ideas to distill thoughts and opinions about what you have read. Create knowledge based on feedback.
The tool you need must focus on helping you channeling, tagging, formatting information and producing, sharing results/knowledge. The return will come from surprisingly unseen and now unpredictable receivers. Once you shift from consuming to producing you’ll open channels in other systems willing to recognize your effort.
More at http://clair.ro/blog/2009/08/17/future-of-journalism-the-per...
Re: YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism
#37"Journalism" isn't going to be saved by data mining or algorithms or nice design. It is not going to be saved by "hyperlocal" reporting. It is not going to be saved by per-user customizable topical filters. It is not going to be saved by search systems and RSS feeds for your neighborhood. It is not going to be saved by content federation. It is not going to be saved by mashups. It is not going to be saved by APIs. It…
I don't really follow the "quality will save us" argument. It combines two very weak ideas into an even weaker one: the elitist news thing and the Britcannica argument. The elitist reasoning goes like this: MSM are only reporting MJ death stories etc. and this low-quality populism has cost them their readership. If they were to start doing serious reporting, all the clever people would come back and pay for their ser…
Quality is not a sufficient characteristic, only a necessary one. And saying that people who want to make money need to offer a quality product or service does not imply that only large and powerful companies can provide quality products and services.
Also, I can't help noting the contradiction in your comment: you claim that "mainstream" news organizations are simply doing whatever will bring them the widest audience, with the implication that this is how one turns a profit. Yet it seems quite clear that those same organizations are not quite so financially sound.
Re: YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism
#38Aside from crawlers, aggregators, CMSs, etc., I don't see how a small team of programmers without any kind of editorial insight can really do anything innovative for journalism. The real problem lies in the content, not the distribution channels or monetization models. Technical solutions that ignore what readers want won't succeed. Look at Drudge Report for case in point: Drudge Report is one of the most successful…
Here's the issue about this: Newspaper aren't meant to be editorial soapboxes. They, along with journalists, are meant to be just objective and factual. Having an editorial vision is a breach of journalistic integrity. So that said, a successful journalism venture of the future requires a balance of reporters, editors, and writers but anything too opinionated might make you (Fox News) or break you (when you reveal to…
There are decisions and priorities in all reporting.
First, often there's no canonical truth. Was the Honduras "coup" a coup or a functional democracy? It's pretty hard to report on it without deciding. The more detail you include, the more you'll come out in favour of the democratic argument, the less, the more you make it sound like a coup (there's no point of including all the details of the parliament deliberating if the essence is that the military took over in a coup).
Second, there's deciding what news to report. There was some criticism of the media focusing much more on set-backs of US forces in Iraq, and only casually reporting progress - the media loosing interest in Iraq. How do you decide what to report from Iraq without letting your own opinion of the war influence you? I can't see how.
I also can't see how you can reliably report on complex political issues without having a deep passion for these issues - and I believe that no one can be deeply impassioned about e.g. the Iraq war without forming an opinion that will be at odds with at least some.
The solution: Quit pretending. Have an opinion. Care about what you write about, and let it show. Stop competing on "most fair" and "least biased", but on "best arguments".
Re: YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really follow the "quality will save us" argument. It combines two very weak ideas into an even weaker one: the elitist news thing and the Britcannica argument. The elitist reasoning goes like this: MSM are only reporting MJ death stories etc. and this low-quality populism has cost them their readership. If they were to start doing serious reporting, all the clever people would come back and pay for their ser…
Quality is not a sufficient characteristic, only a necessary one. And saying that people who want to make money need to offer a quality product or service does not imply that only large and powerful companies can provide quality products and services. Also, I can't help noting the contradiction in your comment: you claim that "mainstream" news organizations are simply doing whatever will bring them the widest audienc…
There certainly are a lot of areas in which the model you propose has been and will continue to be extremely successful: providing a specific group of people - preferably domain experts of some sort - with the knowledge they need remains a business model. In a way, this is also what the 'hyperlocal' people are trying to do; everyone is an expert on their immediate neighborhood and thus information about that should have a great value to them.
But there's another side to news: it's also the glue for society and this part depends on not being targeted at any specific group but at the "mass" as a whole. That's the part mainstream news has been trying to serve. But now that eyeballs are only worth something if you know who they belong to, this model is collapsing. In my previous post, I wasn't trying to argue that what these organisations are doing is sustainable, but thus far it seems to be the only pattern we have to commercially serving the whole of society. This mechanism failing is the real problem, because it's a central part of our democracy and culture.
Also, the quality criteria in this area are only tangentially related to factors like "truth" and "depth of reporting". A lot of the emphasis, instead, is focussed on aspects of commonality and actuality. Yet, when people argue that "good reporting" is what we need, this is often not what they mean.
Re: YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism
#40"Journalism" isn't going to be saved by data mining or algorithms or nice design. It is not going to be saved by "hyperlocal" reporting. It is not going to be saved by per-user customizable topical filters. It is not going to be saved by search systems and RSS feeds for your neighborhood. It is not going to be saved by content federation. It is not going to be saved by mashups. It is not going to be saved by APIs. It…
If you're only going to give users what they want soon all news will be as shallow as Fox News.