News Ecosystem
Revised Business Models
Posted on 16. Mar, 2010 by Peter Hauck.
Over the last few months we have presented our New Business Models For News at a number of workshops and meetings. And we’ve received a lot of valuable feedback that has helped us further refine our models.
Although these genericized models are supported by extensive, well-documented research, they are but one possible view of the future. They represent a stake in the ground. Clearly, our models cannot address the specifics of every individual local market. That’s why we invite you to download our spreadsheets and plug in your own assumptions. The latest spreadsheets and business plan summaries are available here.
(Note that our work in new business models is underwritten by the McCormick Foundation and the Knight Foundation.)
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The near future
Posted on 07. Dec, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis.
Xark raised fair and unfair criticism of our work at the New Business Models for News Project. I’ll respond:
Xarc’s Dan Conover says that the models we presented look a lot like present models, only different. Fair and true. Our goal was to look at what news in a metro market would look like if the large daily paper died today. — not in the la-la land of the future of news and media I often write about here (more on that in a minute) — but today.
So we based our assumptions on known realities: on local bloggers who are making a living and how they are doing it today, on new news organizations that are springing up today, on the proportion of digital revenue being earned today.
If you’ve heard any of my presentations of the models, you have heard me lament that we chose to work in the lingua franca of the present: CPM-based display advertising and criminally low engagement numbers that are sinfully standard in the newspaper business. Neither is good enough. But we wanted to use a language and precedents that people in this space would understand. We then pushed development of new models for revenue and of networks that must be used to increase value.
Conover says that without an “exit strategy” a hyperlocal blog is not a business but merely a job. With respect, he is judging the entrepreneurial future of news through old, institutional glasses. Much of the work of very local journalism will be done by these new, single-proprietor businesses (and volunteers). If we took his perspective, then there would be little potential in the restaurant, drycleaning, plumbing, or dental industries because many of their practitioners have no exit strategy, only sustainable jobs. Welcome to the new, small-is-the-new-big world. This is precisely why we propose that critical mass will be reached not with old companies owning the market but with new companies operating together in networks. See: Glam, the largest women’s brand online. New model.
Conover is fair to say that the future – not today but tomorrow – won’t look much like the present, including the present we postulate in our models. I do indeed agree that the future could look wildly different. I have speculated about systems for sharing information that will reduce the marginal cost of news to zero with journalists adding value only where appropriate and where that value can be recouped. I have blathered on and on about hyperpersonal news streams replacing the article as the atomic unit of news. I have predicted a world with networked journalism, news made by Wave, and similar outlandishness. If I had tried to present all that as a vision for the news of today – the day a paper dies – I would have blown brains and been laughed out of Aspen and with good reason. But that was not the goal of the New Business Models for News Project. It was to get people to see a new today.
Believe me, Dan, if you want to have a future-shock derby with far out ideas for what news will look in the future but sooner than we think, then I’m happy to compete. But that wasn’t our job here.
And don’t blame the funder of our work for that. Connover is unfair to slap the Knight Foundation, which paid for the first phase of this work, saying: “In the short term, foundation money is likely to continue producing studies based on business models that reflect conventional wisdom about media.” The Knight Foundation did not tell us how to envision our models; that is an allegation without evidence.
It’s particularly unfair since the Knight Foundation – more than any other foundation – has been aggressively pushing inventors to imagine and create new visions and realities for news. The Knight Foundation generally does not favor institutions over entrepreneurs; quite the contrary. You’re free to judge my defense of Knight in light of the fact that they did fund this phase of my work. But I think Knight’s work defends itself.
So, yes, Dan, I do agree that the models were based on present realities. That was precisely what we set out to do: to envision an immediate future that will be credible in present terms. But I also take the challenge to envision more futures for news and – if you watched my presentations – you’d see some I hope to work on. I want to examine the workings of the link economy I talk about so much and prescribe how to exploit it. I want to examine new content exchange models. I want to examine entirely new forms of news and the exchange of information.
This Wednesday in my entrepreneurial journalism class at CUNY, my students will present to a jury 15 businesses, some of which begin to imagine fairly radical new visions of news. They hope to win some of the $50,000 in seed money we have from another foundation, McCormick. And then they hope to go build those businesses and make them sustainable the day after tomorrow. Thursday, that is.
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NewBizNews Conference Videos: Understanding Business Models
Posted on 24. Nov, 2009 by Peter Hauck.
Jennifer McFadden, business analyst for the project, and Jeff Mignon and Nancy Wang of Mignon Media drill down into the spreadsheets of the hyperlocal and new news organization business models.
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NewBizNews Conference Videos: Business Models and Q & A
Posted on 23. Nov, 2009 by Peter Hauck.
At the New Business Models for (Local) News Conference on November 11, Jennifer McFadden (business analyst for the Knight Foundation-funded CUNY Project) and Jeff Mignon and Nancy Wang of Mignon Media present business models for hyperlocal sites and a new metro news organization.
CUNY Graduate School of Journalism Professor Jeff Jarvis, business analyst Jennifer McFadden, and Jeff Mignon and Nancy Wang of Mignon Media follow up their morning presentations at the New Business Models for (Local) News Conference with a Q & A session.
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NewBizNews Conference Videos: A New Ecosystem of News
Posted on 20. Nov, 2009 by Peter Hauck.
Videos from the New Business Models for (Local) News Conference and HyperCamp will be posted over the next week. Here, Jeff Jarvis presents an overview of a new ecosystem of news.
The presentation: (Hat tip to Prezi for their great new tools.)
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NewBizNews Conference Follow-up
Posted on 13. Nov, 2009 by Peter Hauck.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the New Business Models for (Local) News Conference and HyperCamp on Wednesday, November 11. A lot of ground was covered in the numerous panels and we’ll keep the discussion going here on newsinnovation.com with upcoming posts and video clips. Shout out to Ted Mann of inJersey/Gannett and Jim Schachter of The New York Times for their help.
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The balance shifts
Posted on 12. Nov, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis.
At yesterday’s New Business Models for (Local) News summit at CUNY, I ran what I called a reverse panel with big media folks – NY Times, Washington Post, Gannett, Star-Ledger, Impremedia, Politico – sitting up front but ordered to listen to the wishes and needs of the people in the room. I threatened to cover the big guys’ mouths with duct tape. (A few of them seemed to honestly fear I would do that. I do need to investigate this reputation I’ve garnered.)
The putative war between mainstream media and bloggers has been declared over again and again (myself, I reported a truce three and a half years ago… oh, well). So I won’t act as there aren’t still the lone snipers in the mountains. Bloggers from medium-sized cities had plenty of complaints about the disrespect they see from their local medium-sized media outlets.
But importantly, I did see a shift in the balance of power yesterday. The big media guys on this reverse panel made it crystal clear that they not only respect but need the work of the bloggers/citizens/little-media-guys/whatever you choose to call them. The big guys acknowledged openly that they are shrinking and can no longer even pretend that they can do it all themselves.
For their part, the bloggers also made it clear that they respect and thus want attention – promotion and credit – from the big guys.
Group hug.
We are at various fulcrum points. The big, old media outlets can no longer act as if they have no problems; it’s obvious, they do. The upstarts are beginning to catch a glimmer of critical mass; we see blogs starting up all over and there are lots of new news organizations – most of them not-for-profit – rising in San Diego, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Austin; now they are joined by the for-profit local Politico. Even if you disagree with me that the future of news is entrepreneurial, there’s now no denying there is a future there.
And so the room was filled with people who were, each in his or her own way, building that future and they all recognized that they have to work together to do so. The future of news is also an ecosystem. That’s what became apparent yesterday and that, for me, was the highlight of the event.
We’re doing our post-mortems on the event at CUNY to figure out what to do better next time – and it’s clear there is a need for more of these gatherings here in New York and, we hope, across the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, bringing together builders. We heard a lot from the room about what they want next: More best practices from the kind of real experience that fed our models…. More practical advice for making money…. More education…. I’ll come back with additional thoughts after my thorough-going exhaustion wears off.
My personal thanks to the team at CUNY – led by Peter Hauck, Jennifer McFadden, and Matt Sollars – for doing great work in the models and the event and to the funders who made it possible: The MacArthur Foundation funded the events (and the prior summit led directly to a request to do the work we presented at this one); the Knight Foundation funded the work on our models and presentation of them at the Aspen Institute; the McCormick Foundation is funding ongoing work on new business models; and the Carnegie Corporation is funding work on hyperlocal labs. We’re also grateful to Mignon Media – Nancy Wang and Jeff Mignon – for their incredible work on the models; David Cohn for his tireless efforts helping us organize the events; Borrell Associates for their data and advice; and all the companies and individuals who participated yesterday. And we want to thank Ted Mann of inJersey/Gannett and Jim Schachter of The New York Times and their colleagues for helping to organize the event. Thanks.
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The future of business is in ecosystems
Posted on 12. Nov, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis.
Last week, I said that the future of news is entrepreneurial (not institutional). Today, a sequel: The future of business is in ecosystems (not conglomerates or industries).
At the Foursquare conference last week, I was struck by the miss-by-a-mile worldviews held by the chiefs of big, old conglomerates and the entrepreneurs starting new, nimble companies. The conference is off the record, so I won’t quote anyone by name. And in truth, these are the same conversations I hear often elsewhere. Having these different tribes conveniently in the same room merely focused the contrast for me.
In one moment, a very successful mogully man was slack-jawed in amazement at how little money – “$50,000!” – one of three entrepreneurs had used to start another fast-growing enterprise. The big man thinks big – that’s what made him big. The small guys think small and get big by using existing platforms and depending on their users to like and market them. To the new guys, it’s so obvious.
Here was the key moment for me last week: In a discussion about the importance of distribution, some start-up guys – each the creators of new enterprises that took off like gun shots – were asked by a representative of the big, old club which company they would most want to do distribution deals with. The start-up guys cocked their heads like confused puppies. Why would we want to do that? they asked. What was unsaid: Doing a deal with one company would be so limiting. We get our distribution through customers and developers, through embedding and APIs and social connections. That’s how we grew so big so fast for so little. Don’t you see that?
No, they don’t.
This week, we see this contrast, too, in Rupert Murdoch’s threat – he thinks it’s a threat – to cut off Google. Nose. Face. Cut. Spite. Murdoch – whodoesn’t use the internet – does not see how distribution works today. He does not understand that being open to the link economy brings him free distribution, free marketing, great benefit. That’s because he, like his fellow old machers, won by taking control rather than giving it up. This new world is utterly inside-out from the world they built. It breaks all their rules and makes new ones (which is what I tried to analyze in What Would Google Do?). That’s what makes it so damned hard for them to understand it.
In our New Business Models for News at CUNY, we saw quickly that a big, old newspaper company was not going to be replaced by a big, new newspaper company but that instead, news would come more and more from ecosystems made up of scores of companies operating under different means, motives, and models, each dependent on the others to optimize their success. That is why we built in networks that enable separate sites to join, creating critical mass they can sell to advertisers. That is also why we factored in the benefit of platforms, cutting their infrastructure costs to near-zero.
And there, I believe, is the structure of the future of business in the new, post-industrial, decentralized, opened economy. Oh, sure, every economy has always been an ecosystem made up of interdependent relationships. But they were based on zero-sum arithmetic: take and control so others cannot. They work at arm’s length. They negotiate every relationship.
Sure, even in the huggy ecosystem, companies fight and compete. But in an ecosystem-based economy, companies benefit – they find efficiency and growth – by working collaboratively. As I see it, the new economy and its opportunities will be built in three layers:
1. Platforms. There’s tremendous benefit in building a platform and the more people use to succeed, the more the platform succeeds. Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, eBay – you know all the examples.
2. Entrepreneurial enterprises. Thanks to the platforms, it’s incredibly inexpensive to start new companies. It’s also a helluva lot cheaper to fail (and try again). This is why I believe that the future of news – and many other industries – is entrepreneurial: because it can be. It’s not just media and its bits. It’s manufacturing (because you can use others’ factories and distribution channels and your own customers as your platforms).
3. Networks. It is still necessary to gather the smalls together into bigs: audience brought together so advertisers can buy access to them more easily; purchasing brought together to get better prices. So there is business in creating and serving these networks.
For the sake a PowerPoint, a diagram of the three layers of an ecosystem-based economy:
In our New Business Models for News Project, this is how I (crudely) drew the ecosystem for news.
How do you draw the conglomerate-based industry? With boxes, each separate, with arrows pointing to each other at a distance. Simplistic? Sure, but the change in the worldview of the new economy looks that basic when you hear the two tribes trying to understand each other.
And if you haven’t had enough of my silly charts, here’s another on video.
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Livestream: NewBiz Conference
Posted on 11. Nov, 2009 by Matthew Sollars.
Our third annual summit on the future of news is getting started. Today it’s all about local. We’ll be tweeting all day, too. Hit us up with questions and comments, the hashtag is #newbiz. Conference details and schedule are here.
UPDATE: For those of you who are wondering, here is a link to the models that are being discussed this morning.
And, here’s the livestream for your viewing pleasure:
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NewBizNews Conference Schedule: 11/11/09
Posted on 10. Nov, 2009 by Peter Hauck.
Take a look at the latest lineup for tomorrow’s New Business Models for (Local) News Conference and HyperCamp.
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Tough love for news media
Posted on 06. Nov, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis.
Here’s video version of the talk I keynote talk I linked below for the Munich Media Days conference a week ago. I gave them tough love, saying I was concerned about the protectionist talk I’ve heard from Germany media, not unlike one what can here in the U.S. and elsewhere. I also talked about the New Business Models for News Project. The reactions from the audience of 500 German media executives surprised me. (Carta also put up a transcript.)
Jeff Jarvis: “Google is not an enemy, Google is a model” from Carta on Vimeo.
(The New Business Models for News is funded by the Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, McCormick Foundation, and Carnegie Corporation.)
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Updated Schedule for NewBiz News HyperCamp
Posted on 04. Nov, 2009 by Peter Hauck.
We’ve added some excellent speakers to the upcoming New Business Models for (Local) News Conference and HyperCamp, scheduled for November 11 at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Take a look at the updated lineup.
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The future of news is entrepreneurial
Posted on 02. Nov, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis.
The future of news is entrepreneurial.
There’s a lot in that statement. It says: The future of news is not institutional… The news of tomorrow has yet to be built…. The structure – the ecosystem – of news will not be dominated by a few corporations but likely will be made up of networks of many startups performing specialized functions based on the opportunities they see in the market…. Who does journalism, why and how will change…. The skills of journalists will change (to include business)…. We don’t yet know what the market will demand and support from journalism…. News will look disordered and messy…. There will be more failures than successes in the immediate future of news….
That statement also holds many implications for sectors of the economy and society: investment (put money into the new, not the old)… public policy (don’t protect and preserve the incumbents but nurture the startups by creating a fertile and level playing field)… education (how do we train journalists when everyone can do journalism? – how do we train everyone?)… marketing (advertising won’t be one-stop shopping anymore and that means it may support news less)… PR (influence will be no longer be concentrated)… technology (there are opportunities here)…
Finally, that statement does not say some things. It does not say that the incumbents’ institutions will necessarily die, only that they have proven not to be the source of innovation and growth in news.
One more point: The statement is essentially optimistic. It says there is a future to be built.
This is not the discussion we hear about the fate of news journalism. That discussion defaults too often to current models and old realities, to protection over creation, to fear over opportunity.
Columbia’s Reconstruction of Journalism report, in my view, gives up on the business prospects for news and resorts to what I believe are desperate measures – namely: the public option for news. The Washington Post has run two op-eds lately endorsing tax-supported journalism (pardon me for asking, but are things that bad there?). Alan Mutter reported on a Harvard confab last week that “gravitated to the predictable yadda-yadda: foundation funding, federal subsidies, subscription schemes and a smattering of random ruminations about revenue.” That’s hardly uncommon; it’s all we hear.
Bit by bit, I’ve separated myself from that worldview, first by teaching a course in entrepreneurial journalism at CUNY, then by directing the New Business models for News Project to research and propose sustainable futures for news. But I didn’t boil down my essential worldview to this – the future of news is entrepreneurial – until now.
If you buy this view – and, I know, many won’t want to – then it affects so much, as I’m learning myself. Last week at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism, I presented to my colleagues our New Business Models for (Local) News (the segment of the project funded by the Knight Foundation, which we’re also presenting at a Nov. 11 event here that will be streamed) and the discussion turned afterward to one aspect of what we do: what we offer students in career services. No longer is that just about getting job interviews at big publications – though, of course, it still will include that as long as it can! – but it now should expand to giving students who are starting businesses the services of an incubator (which we are doing for my entrepreneurial students who are now launching businesses) and perhaps to giving them the training they need to be proprietors of journalistic businesses: We’re teaching them in our January intersession how to build their own brands online. Should we give them a workshop to help them with billing and business? I’ve asked the heretical question about teaching hyperlocal blogging: How will they learn to sell ads? These are questions raised by the entrepreneurial worldview.
The public policy implications of this view for government are many. Last week, I gave a Skype talk [I'm still not traveling, post-surgery] to a session assembled in London by MP Sion Simon looking at government’s possible role in the future of news – what it should and should not do (see posts here, here, and here). Here in the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission is holding sessions starting in December (where I’ll appear on a panel with folks who don’t agree with me about all this) and the FCC appointed Steven Waldman to continue the work of the Knight Commission looking at the information needs of communities.
As my Guardian column this week makes clear, I get hives at the notion of government interference in news – in speech of any sort. I especially fear government taking a role as a nonmarket player competing with not only the weak incumbents but also with the tender sprouts of entrepreneurial ventures. I also fear talk of governments – in the U.S. and Germany – extending copyright just to protect incumbents. What should government do? Broadband for all. I’d start – and stop – there.
For investors, the entrepreneurial worldview says not only that it’s time to get their money out of old media companies – that, given their market caps and bankruptcies, has already happened – but also that it is time to invest in new and innovative ventures. That requires investors to believe, as I do, that there is a robust and growing market demand for news and that there are new opportunities to meet it efficiently and profitably. But until we start proving that, investors will be shy. This is why I wish that the capital that has gone into not-for-profit news ventures in cities across the country had gone instead into creating for-profit enterprises: so we can prove the market, so we can learn how to make news sustainable. That is god’s work.
For other industries that work with news – advertising – I would have scouts, laboratories, and pilot projects staying on the forefront of entrepreneurial developments in news and even encouraging it with marketing dollars. Ad agencies and sponsors have tremendous opportunities to build relationships with customers in new, more targeted, more effective, and more efficient ways but they must shift spending to online to learn what works and create it; their old habits of one-stop-shopping with big media only leave them behind.
As for technology, there is much development of news already occurring in startups (I’m a partner in one such effort, Daylife, and I advise others; we are seeing some sprout already alongside our New Business Models for News Project). But the technology giants can also play a role. I’ll write more about this another time, but I believe Google should be packaging what it already has to help create a framework for anyone – anyone – to build news enterprises (and it should stop wasting time trying to make friends with the dinosaurs who only want to find enemies to blame for their problems). I also want to see it help support labs to develop its tools – especially Wave and Marissa Mayer’s notion of the hyperpersonal stream – for news; this, I believe, will force us to rethink our fundamental assumptions about what news is and that, in turn, will lead to new opportunities.
Where does this leave the incumbent institutions when I say the future is not theirs? I’m no longer the only one holding them accountable for their lack of innovation in the last 15 years – even Ken Auletta is. But what’s done is done and looking back, I now see it was probably my mistake to think they could have reinvented themselves. I talked with someone recently at an old, large media company who said he believes it is impossible for them to remake themselves for this new, much smaller entrepreneurial world. There’s just too much shutdown cost and pain involved and the people inside these towers don’t think like people in garages. Still, I see opportunity for them. That’s why, on this blog and at the Aspen Institute this summer, I pushed the idea that when journalists leave those towers, their companies should invest in their futures as entrepreneurs: Set them up with blogs, sell their ads, promote them, and continue to reap the value of their experience and brands (without the cost). The Washington Post should fund the next Politico in town, not see its talent walk out the door to start it elsewhere.
And what of these journalists? Well, that’s why I’m writing this. That’s why I teach what I teach. I believe journalists must become entrepreneurs. They don’t all need to be sole proprietors of hypersomething blogs. But they need to make smart business decisions when they decide where to put their effort. They need to sense and serve the market. They need to work with innovators. They need to see a future for journalism that looks different – better, even – than its past.
The future of news is entrepreneurial.
Most people use their blogs as the laboratory to try out ideas. Lately, I’ve been using appearances and columns to test notions, leading up to this blog post. Here are a few instances lately when I’ve talked about news’ entrepreneurial future.
I gave a talk via Skype-video to Medientage München (my talk, in English, starts at 22 minutes in) in which I tried to be tough and tell the audience of 500 German media machers that the old models won’t work in the new world and that it is time to face this reality bluntly, leaving politeness behind. (The talk lasts about 25 minutes; I’d listen to the last 10 when I’m questioned by the editor of Spiegel.de and the audience surprised me with its reaction to tough love.)
I also talked about this last week in Coventry University’s session that asked whether journalism is in crisis:
And here is a link to my Media Guardian column today, in which I used this line and it was, I’m glad to see, promptly tweeted. In it, I said:
The future of news – and there is a future – is being built by entrepreneurs who in change see opportunity, not crisis. . . . Instead of declaring surrender to changing market forces, we should embrace them. Crisis? I see no crisis, only inexorable change.
Based on all this, you’d think I’d disagree with a post headlined Why I Don’t Think Journalists Need Business Skills. But I don’t. In it, Philip John argues the need for networks and services to perform business services for journalist entrepreneurs. I agree. That’s why we projected such a framework in our New Business Models for News Project. That’s what Mark Potts plans to build with his startup, Growthspur. And I think Philip proved my point by writing a post that’s very business-savvy.
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NewBizNews HyperCamp Schedule
Posted on 28. Oct, 2009 by Peter Hauck.
We’re looking forward to the New Business Models for (Local) News HyperCamp, scheduled for Wednesday, November 11th.
The conference schedule is now available here and as a google doc. The day-long event will be held at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism — 219 West 40th Street, 3rd Floor, NYC. Coffee and registration begin at 9:00 AM and the morning program gets under way at 10:00 AM. We’ll break for lunch at Noon and start the HyperCamp workshops at 1:00 PM. We hope you’ll stay for cocktails and networking following the last session.
We’ve already received over 120 RSVPs from a great mix of people — hyperlocal bloggers, journalists, website owners, entrepreneurs, investors, publishers, technologists, media executives and more. We look forward to sharing experiences and best practices as we explore new business models for journalism. Most of the day’s events will be livestreamed and we’ll use the hashtag #newbiz. (Space is somewhat limited so if you’ve RSVP’d “yes” and are unable to attend, please contact David Cohn — David@spot.us).
Please visit our website in the coming weeks for further HyperCamp updates. And take a look at the Project’s business models. We urge you to download and modify our spreadsheets by plugging in your own assumptions.
The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism is grateful to the Knight Foundation for funding our work on the New Business Models for News Project, which we presented in August at the Aspen Institute Forum on Communications and Society. We also thank the McCormick Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation for their support of this important work to sustain journalism.
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Giving up on the news business
Posted on 19. Oct, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis.
Before reaching their dangerous conclusion – recommending government supported journalism in a report called the Reconstruction of American Journalism – former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie and Columbia journalism prof Michael Schudson make some basic and, I believe, profoundly mistaken assumptions, namely: “That journalism is now at risk, along with the advertising-supported economic foundations of newspapers.”
Just because newspapers put themselves at risk, it does not follow that journalism is at risk. Newspapers no longer own journalism. As too often happens in this discussion, they focus only on the revenue side of the business ledger of news – advertising falling from monopolistic heights – and not on the cost side and the efficiency new technology – and thus collaboration – that technology allows.
As Downie and Schudson themselves point out in their Washington Post op-ed, there is now a flourishing of new outlets and means of gathering and sharing news.
Journalists leaving newspapers have started online local news sites in many cities and towns. Others have started nonprofit local investigative reporting projects and community news services at nearby universities, as well as national and statewide nonprofit investigative reporting organizations. Still others are working with local residents to produce neighborhood news blogs. Newspapers themselves are collaborating with other news media, including some of the startups and bloggers, to supplement their smaller reporting staffs. The ranks of news gatherers now include not only newsroom staffers but also freelancers, university faculty and students, bloggers and citizens armed with smart phones….
That is a basis for a new ecosystem of journalism, one we begin to outline in our Knight Foundation-funded New Business Models for News Project. We believe there is a sustainable and profitable future for news and they only way to confirm that is to try to build it but that will not happen if we declare surrender and defeat in the hope that the market can support the news a community needs.
Downie and Schudson give up on news as a business and, in their consequent desperation, make this drastic proposal:
American society must now take some collective responsibility for supporting news reporting — as society has, at much greater expense, for public education, health care, scientific advancement and cultural preservation, through varying combinations of philanthropy, subsidy and government policy.
Collective responsibility. Socialized journalism. This is the ultimate in broccoli journalism: You are not only forced to read what journalists say is good for you but you are now forced to pay for it through taxation.
They make other suggestions with which I have no complaint: Journalism students should report not just for their professors but for the ecosystem and we see that beginning. If philanthropists want to do more to support news, I’m not going to burn their checks – but they are no white knights riding in to save the day. Public broadcasting can do more local reporting and we see movement in that direction from especially NPR and also public TV – though I would be loath to think that we should have government mandate of that. And we want more transparency; I belong to that religion.
All this comes from that dire assumption that journalism is dying with newspapers. That is not and certainly need not be the case. I disagree with Downie and Schudson’s key assumption: There is no crisis. When you start there, you don’t just reconstruct the past of journalism but see the possibilities to build a new journalism.
: Even The New York Times’ David Carr is somewhat incredulous.
: Mulling over the full report on my train ride in this morning, I realized that my problem with it is this: Downie and Schudson are addressing the business problem of news without doing reporting on the business.
The report is a cogent, comprehensive, well-documented summary of broadly held conventional thinking on the history and current state of journalism in America, but it is all stated from the journalistic perspective – no surprise coming from two distinguished journalists.
If this were handed in to me as a term paper in my class, I’d give it back for more reporting and rethinking. I’d tell the students that they made huge assumptions about the business state of journalism – both on the revenue and cost sides of the P&L – without giving me reporting on that. I’d advise them to look at the true cost of the accountability journalism they cherish, at the inefficiency of the business today as it produces commodity news, at whether there is sufficient advertising revenue to cover the journalism that matters once news organizations rid themselves of their inefficiency, at verifying the public demand for the kind of journalism they think the public needs, and at the issues journalism has had with trust and quality. Then, if they still came to the same conclusions – which I doubt – I’d urge them to get more balanced reporting on the risks behind each of their recommendations, particularly involving government subsidies, direct funding, and mandates on journalism. I think they did half the story, the half we’ve already heard (and which they quite ably summarize again). They should have given us the business story since that is what they really wanted to address. I wish they had.
