Newsroom
Is journalism an industry?
Posted on 18. Sep, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis.
Journalism is a business – that is how it is going to sustain itself; that is a key precept of the New Business Models for News Project, funded by the Knight Foundation. But is it still an industry dominated by companies and employment?
In the first part of his analysis of the news business, BusinessWeek chief economist Michael Mandel equates bad news about news with the number of journalists employed. He charts newspaper jobs falling from more than 450,000 in 1990 to fewer than 300,000 today and calls that depressing – which it is, if one of those lost jobs is yours. But it could also signal new efficiency and productivity, no? Looking at these numbers with the cold eye of an economist whose magazine and job aren’t on the block, perhaps it is nothing more than the path of an industry in restructuring. Perhaps it’s actually a signal of opportunity. Indeed, Mandel then laid that chart atop one for the loss of jobs in manufacturing and found them sinking in parallel, with newspapers just a bit ahead on the downward slope today. “Not good news, by any means,” he decreed.
But there is the nub of a much bigger trend: the fall news as an industry paralleling the end of the industrial economy. That’s not just about shedding the means of production and distribution now that they are cost burdens rather than barriers to entry. It’s about the decentralization of journalism as an industrial complex, about news no longer being based solely on employment.
A few months ago, I quibbled with Mandel’s BW cover story arguing that America has experienced an “innovation shortfall.” There, as here, I think he’s measuring the wrong economy: the old, centralized, big economy. In both cases, he misses new value elsewhere in the small economy of entrepreneurs and the noneconomy of volunteers.
I return again to the NewBizNews Project, where we modeled a sustainable economy of news at between 10-15% of a metro paper’s revenue – about as much as any of them bring online – with an equivalent amount of editorial staffing but those people are no longer all sitting under one roof; they work in – and oftentimes own – more than 100 separate enterprises. I return, too, to the Wikimedia Foundation calculating the value of time spent on edits alone with it adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars.
In both cases, tremendous value is created at tremendous efficiency outside of the company and in great measure outside of employment.
So is employment the measure of news? No. Is it the proper measure for every industry? Not necessarily. Is it the measure of the economy? Not as much as it used to be. Media is becoming the first major post-industry. Others will follow. You just have to know where to look.
It’s one matter when new value is created outside old companies in industries such as retail – in WWGD?, I cited $59.4 billion in sales from 547,000 merchants on eBay in 2007 vs. $26.3 billion in 853 Macy’s stores – but another matter when the employment is replaced in industries built around priesthoods: journalism, education, even government and medicine. Then not just economics but behaviors change.
Thus we see fretting about a “post-journalistic age” when new people perform some of the tasks journalism employees used to perform, whether that is advocates digging dirt or universities reporting their own scientific advances or sports teams funding their own reporting or volunteers organizing to report collaboratively. These are just a few of the latest examples from my pre-surgery tabs about voids being filled in new ways by new parties with new efficiencies. This is another reason it’s dangerous to calculate journalism’s size according to journalism’s jobs.
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Coeds Create CoPress – Innovation from the Ground Up
Posted on 22. Jan, 2009 by David Cohn.
If you are ever worried about the fate of our the journalism industry take a moment to check out and appreciate CoPress – building a better ecosystem for college publications.
This is a fantastic case of young journalists scratching their own itch. The group recently formed their own nonprofit and are discussing what they need to do to get to the next step.
Next step? They are already getting college publications off College Publisher and onto Wordpress. They are being the change they want to see in the world. They are already making waves, their next step is simply iteration and scaling.
Meet Greg Linch one of the forces behind CoPress who gives more details.
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Leonard Witt Interviews John Yemma from Christian Science Monitor
Posted on 17. Nov, 2008 by David Cohn.
Both of these gentlemen attended the New Business Models for News Summit. Leonard Witt was in the “Public Support for Journalism” working group with myself while John Yemma was a roaming journalist.
Before the conference Yemma had alluded to CMS making some sweeping changes but at the time I didn’t give it a second thought. Sure enough the next week they gutted the paper program. Their print edition is now limited to once a week while the rest of their work will live online.
Newsroom cuts are still on the table but Yemma sounds as though this leaner newsroom can still get the job done. In hindsight I wish we had put Yemma in the Newsroom Efficiencies working group.
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Charges to the groups
Posted on 13. Oct, 2008 by Jeff Jarvis.
After presentations on network models and new structures for news companies plus a lightening round of presentation by entrepreneurs and executives who are executing new models, we will form into Aspen-Institute-like groups (without the sylvan scenery) to tackle five assignments in the afternoon. Their rappateurs and leaders will report back to the entire group with discussion (before our reception). These assignments may overlap – e.g., a network could be intertwined with a new newsroom structure and a new corporate structure with new ad models. Here are the assignments; please leave comments to amend, correct, amplify, redirect….
* Networks – Define network models that would work today: Who is in them, what kind of relationships the members have, what value and benefit each party recognizes, how they are supported….
What kinds of networks: ad, content, promotional, national, hyperlocal, niche?
How can networks protect journalism? More important, how can they expand the reach of journalism even as journalistic organizations shrink?
Networks alone are not the salvation of journalism – there is, of course, no single salvation. But we contend that the network model has not been explored and experimented with enough. Glam (whose CEO, Samir Arora will present in the morning) gives us one example. Forbes, also in attendance, has started blog ad networks. What are more aggressive network models? Perhaps the group would like to take one or two examples and build them out. For example, how could a collaborative and curated network of contributers form a local news and advertising network? How could a niche network about, say, the environment be organized to maximize quality and revenue?
* Newsrooms - Create a model for a new (and smaller and more efficient) newsroom: size, functions, job descriptions, relationships with the community, financial relationships, cost.
This task can start with finding new efficiencies (are there any TV critics left?).
But it should go beyond that to re-envision the newsroom and its role. What is the value of the newsroom in the future? What are the core functions of a newsroom? What new roles are there – curation, education, organization? How does it operate? Is there still a room (and why?)? What is produced by staff vs. freelancers vs. members of a network vs. outsiders (e.g., bloggers)?
There are a few ways to tackle and present this. Perhaps the group might want to produce a spreadsheet laying out a hypothetical newsroom staff today and tomorrow, with job descriptions and numbers. Perhaps the group might also want to map coverage and look at who would be doing what in a new newsroom structure.
Our belief is that too often, newsroom managers are stuck with quick decisions to make cuts as budgets worsen without the opportunity to plan the future of the newsroom, training staff for new tasks and skills, finding and creating relationships with outsiders to collaborate, redefining the product and the newsroom with it. The group should act as if it has that opportunity to think strategically.
* News organizations - Present one or more new models for a news company. Where is its value? What are its key functions? What are its relationships with other functions (e.g., distribution, ad sales, marketing)? Is it even a company or is it a network or a consortium or a cooperative?
Edward Roussel and Dave Morgan will present their proposals in the morning. Perhaps the group would like to jump off those and put flesh on their skeletons, or perhaps it will want to create entirely new models. It would be wonderful for the group to return with some prospective structures for news organizations – both reworked versions of incumbents and entirely new, from-scratch news organizations.
Note that we do not intend this to be a replay of the discussion we often have about funding and ownership and their impact – that is, the impact of the public market, the hopes put in the idea of private ownership (well, until recently) or charitable support. Let’s put that to the side and instead act as if we own or are starting a news organization and can structure it however we like to maximize sustainability.
* Revenue - Define best prospects for revenue to pursue as companies, networks, or the industry as a whole and what is needed to do that.
This, of course, is the most important task, the one upon which all others hang. Unfortunately, we bring the least suggestions to the task. If any of us had the key to unlock this secret, we’d be on the other side of that door already, eh?
The group may want to define where the value is in news today. It may want to define and explore new opportunities for revenue. It may want to seek ways to maximize value and look at what is needed to accomplish that – e.g., new measurements, new models.
What are new models for advertising? How can networks bring greater value? Is there any scarcity anymore? Are there side-door revenue opportunities other than advertising (e.g., sales of data on knowledge of constituents)?
* Public support – Define the best opportunities for public support (from readers and foundations). Be realistic.
As our funder for this conference will be quick to remind participants, foundations are not the salvation of journalism. There isn’t enough money. It’s not sustainable. Frankly, we debated having a session on this topic at the summit just because too many hopes are hung on wishes for white knights who’ll never come. But we decided that there are opportunities for the public to support certain functions of journalism and there are new models to do that – e.g., Spot.us and NewAssignment.net – and so we are convening a group on the topic. But we will urge that group to be harshly pragmatic.
The group may want to start asking what elements of journalism would be the most likely for public support – investigative, beat, collaborative projects.
We suggest the group look at the cost of creating such journalism today. And how much should it cost?
What sources of funding might there be? So far, most foundation support is national. How could local journalism be aided?
What should the relationship of public v. private journalism be – that is, how should a for-profit newspaper in a town relate to not-for-profit efforts?
Perhaps the group may want to suggest pilot projects in this area.
