We think a lot about the “future of news” at readMedia because our clients play an important, hidden role in the news business. Two posts by smart guys from different parts of the news ecosystem got me thinking about the value chain of the news business, and how bad assumptions about where “value” lives can lead to bad conclusions about what the new news organization looks like.
Howard Owens, founder and publisher (and most everything else) at The Batavian, just wrote about the difference between creators and consumers of news. In it, he argues that the vast majority of people are consumers of content (readers and watchers) rather than creators of content. This is in opposition to people like investor Fred Wilson and former TV Guide writer Jeff Jarvis, who both see content creation (and specifically news creation) becoming democratized to the point that citizen journalists produce the lion’s share of news content in the future. Experience and data are on Howard’s side, especially when you realize that Jarvis considers “content” to include telling people you’re going drinking at a bar.
The definition of content and an understanding of who makes it is critical to the future of the news business: somebody has to write and publish the news, right? Well, the writing and publishing (and delivery and monetization and all of that) is not just one activity. It’s a bunch of activities in a value chain, and new technologies–especially the internet–are pulling apart those activities, fast. (For a good primer on how the media business is being sliced into pieces, check out Andy Kessler’s classic Media 2.uh-oh post.)
I think “news creation” is the key here because I agree with Robert Niles that there are no new revenues for journalism, so the focus has to be on the cost side of the business. I was never a consultant, and I’m kind of lazy, so rather than paste in a graphic of the value chain of the business of news, I’ll just drill down on the editorial part–the creation of news. (I was never a journalist or editor, either):
For a long, long time, newpapers’ (and other local media) monopoly profits allowed for people-intensive, expensive processes at each point of the value chain. “News discovery” and “news reporting” came from an army of beat reporters and stringers. “News analysis”–where I’d put some of the big-think overviews of news and trends–was produced by senior writers who had grown up from the beats. “Aggregation” has always been a primary function of a news organization and I’ll talk more about that, but for here let’s just mention AP and other wire copy, comics, syndicate features, and the like. Copyediting was a huge and expensive layer in the newsroom, with some organizations largely directed and driven by the copy desk. And then finally this content must be organized in a way that’s compelling and useful to the audience AND to advertisers.
What I want to drill down on is “news discovery” and “news reporting”. That’s where important, everyday, bread-and-butter news is created. It’s the core of value in a news organization. (Aggregation is extremely important. It’s a “value add” in the chain when done well. But note that to have a “value-add” you need to have “value” first.) And Howard is absolutely right: 90% of an audience simply wants to read the news, not write or even contribute to it (via comments, for example). Now, when you’re talking about the entire United States, giving 1% of people the ability to create and publish news online as easily as major media companies do is radical–that’s more than 3 million people publishing stories. A lot of it is bound to be good; some of it may even be “news discovery” or “news reporting”. It’s easy to see that TV news criticism, for example, is not rocket science and need not be done by professionals. But when you scale down to a city or town, 1% of the population doesn’t add up to much, and the chance of that content replacing the news content created by someone paid to do it is slim. Very, very slim.
So it’s those assumptions about who will discover and report on news, and how many people there really are to do it, that lead to some naive conclusions about the future of local news. News will not be spontaneously created by a community, and then curated by an aggregator who adds value. There really is a risk about who or what replaces the traditional newsgathering function.
But there’s another bad assumption about the news content value chain that most people don’t even see, much less debate. And getting that fixed leads to a more hopeful view of how a new news organization can work.
Most people in and outside of news organizations believe that “news discovery” and “news reporting” have, and will be, created out of whole cloth by either professional journalists or the new citizen journalism. But the fact is that a huge proportion of news–especially local news–originates not from journalists discovering the news, but from the organizations in the community telling the media about it. Meaning: the reporter got a press release.
Consider that a recent Pew Research Center study showed that 72% of the news stories they studied “originated” from government or colleges–only 12% from citizens, and 15% from original reporting. readMedia’s own research confirms this: in an analysis we conducted earlier this year, we saw that 50% of local news stories in 5 daily newspapers originated directly from a press release sent by the organization that was the subject of the story.
I don’t think this is bad. I think that there’s a huge opportunity for news organizations to focus more of their efforts on news aggregation and curation and value-added interrogation of the content produced by local government, business and citizens by treating the press releases of local organizations as high quality user generated content.
This brings me to the estimable Ike Pigott, whose post yesterday on the Future of Journalism points the way to a world where black is white, up is down, there are dogs and cats living together and journalism stops treating PR like a late-night booty call:
The embeds of the future will work for the company, and be paid by the company to provide news about the company in a multitude of formats. Print, newsletter, video, blog, podcast, moving billboards, tattoos — whatever it takes. Because the bits and pieces of Corporate America that have a story to tell will still have their stories – just no ready outlets.
How is this different than what you have today? Surely there are corporate PR departments and external agencies already doing these things, right?
No.
What is required is an internal producer who writes in external voice — like the neutral point-of-view so often described by Wikipedia. People can smell marketing and propaganda coming around the corner, and they know when the pitches and puff pieces are missing that edge of neutrality. An accurate and fair piece is accurate and fair, no matter who writes it.
The current newsrooms of record will find their roles specializing even further. Where they have already ceded the “hunt-and-gather” function, they will soon cede some of the writing function. Why bother spending the man-hours to reconstruct a perfectly balanced wheel? It rolls just the same, and since it was likely written by an Embedded Journalist (who just happens to be employed by the company or trade organization,) it will carry the style, tone and quality that news consumers expect.
The remaining journalists will build their utility around curating, aggregating and delivery. They will be the line of defense that says “This story from ACME stinks to high heaven, and I will blast them for their inaccuracy.” They will be well within their rights to do so, and in some cases they may have no choice.
Like Ike said, is this a perfect world for journalism and news (or even PR)? No. The best news organizations will still have people like Howard Owens who know their territory, develop relationships with sources and their audience, and who have the news judgment and ability to both create and curate news content of value. But a news ecosystem that recognizes what non-news organizations themselves can contribute is a pragmatic one, and a practical one, and one that allows news organizations to continue to bring valuable information to their audiences from some of the few people who are really content creators.
Loving this topic, Colin.
I, too, read Ike Pigott’s post and nearly lost my mind thinking about a world in which our news producers would be corporate storytellers — or PR professionals. But both you and Ike have done a good job describing this new media reality. There’s simply no money for journalism to do the job it once did — and there’s little chance the old institutions will return to their glory days. And unpaid bloggers can’t fill the gap.
I teach public relations at the college level, and I operate inside a journalism school. So I’m kind of at the center of the storm. But I’ve also seen enough unscrupulous behavior among PR types to know I don’t want them vetting tomorrow’s front page. As advocates for their clients, and a good many of these PR operators are licking their chops right now — like the fox in the hen house.
Can a PR person be trusted to tell a balanced, objective story? I raised this question with students in class today. Imagine if the news reports from the recent West Virginia coal-mine disaster were all prepared by Massey Energy’s PR staff. They’d be covering their butts from the headline to the final paragraph, and I doubt the truth would ever emerge. Thanks to a free an independent media, however, we’re getting both sides of the story.
So these aggregators you and Ike refer to are gonna have to be really smart, really seasoned and entirely independent. And they’ll have to be above reproach, since they are the final arbiters of truth.
I’m afraid of a system like this, but it’s already unfolding, isn’t it? And maybe that is, in part, why the public no longer trusts the media. The media don’t report all that much anymore. They just announce what’s handed them.
Thanks to Amy Mengel for pointing me to your site. I’ll be back.
Posted by Bill Sledzik | April 7, 2010, 9:41 pmBill, I 100% agree with your reservations. I don’t trust anybody to tell a story that’s contrary to their interests At the same time, though, I believe that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” PR drives so much news coverage that we may as well be transparent about it. And a lot of local PR is simply nuts-and-bolts, who/what/where/when information.
And yes, the aggregators must be super-smart. It’s like when robots started replacing line workers in the auto plants. Remember the hue and cry about that? The end result is that the remaining auto workers needed to be smarter, better trained, and better paid. I think the same will be true of journalism. It’s no longer enough to report news–it must be analyzed, contextualized, and interrogated. Reporters must be ready to do that.
Posted by Colin Mathews | April 8, 2010, 12:00 am