Click to Enlarge

I’m starting to wonder whether publishers might end up in competition with their own advertisers.

Looking at the 22 reasons people go online, it’s not hard to see why publishers can’t sell their ad space the way they used to. People go online primarily to learn, have fun, and socialize, and the web gives them on-demand access to those activities, so they ignore content that doesn’t lend itself to those activities — content that they’re not looking for, such as advertising.

So what marketers end up having to do is create marketing experiences that do lend themselves to those activities — interactive marketing experiences. As Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research reports for AdAge:

[...] marketers have learned that interactive marketing is more effective, and advertising less effective, per dollar spent. While budgets for online have decreased, they decreased less than other budgets. Six out of ten marketers we surveyed agreed with the statement “we will increase budget for interactive by shifting money away from traditional marketing.” Only 7% said “we have no plans to increase our marketing budget.”

As if publishers didn’t have enough competition from an over-saturated content-marketplace, but now marketers too are vying for a slice of the entertainment pie. Of course, it makes sense for marketers to cut-out the middle-man as much as possible, but if they’ll never cut them out completel because independent publishers help legitimate the value of content consumption in the first place.

So what does this mean for publishers? Well, it means that they’re going to have to find new ways of working with advertisers without completely compromising their independence and authority.

While consumer publications can fall back mostly on a symbiotic editorial model (such as Vice Magazine has done), the model has limited potential for journalism outlets. After all, an independent editorial is part of journalism’s core product offering.

Of course, just as news journalism can’t accommodate symbiotic editorial as much as its more consumerist counterpart, marketers seem less likely to compete directly with journalism outlets. So perhaps the answer for journalism outlets is in becoming social news organizations that offer marketers better targeted campaigns through cloudvertising.

In any case, now that marketers are able to cut out some of the middle-man, advertising is never going to be the same again — but you didn’t need me to tell you that. And something else you don’t need me to tell you is that the publishing industry is undergoing a violent evolution.

The funny thing about evolution, though, is that sometimes it produces bastardized hybrids that end up changing the ecosystem they adapted to in the first place, and out-competing themselves into extinction. So it’ll be interesting to see whether marketing evolves into some kind monolithic monstronsity that cannibalizes its own young.

It probably won’t, but it sure is fun to entertain the idea.

Selah…

Credit: CUNY Graduate School of Journalism

If news outlets are having trouble adapting to the new digital landscape, Journalism schools aren’t. A new generation of J-school students are being primed to work within social news organizations rather than conventions news outlets. They’re being equipped with a mix of journalism and technical skills. As Time reports:

A cadre of newly minted media whiz kids, who mix high-tech savvy with hard-nosed reporting skills, are taking a closer look at ways in which 21st century code-crunching and old-fashioned reporting can not only coexist but also thrive. And the first batch of them has just emerged from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

They’ve just completed a new master’s program at Medill — with scholarships from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation — aimed at training programmers in basic journalism so they can better understand how technology is impacting the industry and trying to engineer change down the road. Medill isn’t the only higher-education institution blending computer programming and journalism; at other schools such as the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley, traditional J-school programs are incorporating a dose of tech-thumping [...] the brains behind these new programs are trying to capitalize on ways in which sophisticated programming can make the delivery of news more accessible.

The article goes on to illustrate that a variety of campuses are training these new breed of journalists in one of two ways: (1) equipping J-school students tech skills, and (2) giving tech students journalism training so that they’re better equipped to design and build apps that can meet a journalism mandate.

Now, it’s a lot easier for a faculty to launch a new curriculum than it is for a news organization to restructure their business model. But society as a whole is reaching a point where just about every skilled position will require some degree of tech-savvy. So it’s encouraging to know that while news organizations struggle to reinvent themselves, efforts are being made elsewhere to equip the next generation of journalists with cloud-computing skills.

But while there’s little doubt in my mind that news organizations will continue to exists, news media is going through a stage in its evolution that’s going to thin the herd. And chances are that the herd will eventually bounce back in size (whether in terms a few, larger being larger in size (staff) or there being a plethora of smaller outlets and freelancers), but it’s going to take some time.

So I’m hoping that enough of these next-gen-journalists can find their place in the world of news media before they’re forced to switch career tracks, because losing these skills to the evolutionary process would make that process all that much more drawn-out and painful.

With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.
– Hunter S. Thompson

Credit:Lisa Randolph

A lot of us are worried about the decline of the independent press. Amidst declining ad revenues, it seems like market democracies across the board are losing an asset that new media types (bloggers, podcasters, etc.) just can’t fill. After all, the new media types don’t have the time, training, or resources to dig deep into the belly of a story or attain the same standards of objectivity. The best they can do is process journalism.

I think that all of this, however, underscores how the free press is, first and foremost, a business and industry that (1) provides authoritative information so that they can (2) sell subscriptions and ads. It’s nice that that business model affords journalists the resources to “dig deep” into their stories, but their beats and stories are assigned by an editor, and even before the editor decides which stories to run and how to edit them, the journalist themselves decides what questions to ask what sources, and then file a story based on whoever is actually able (or bothers) to call back with a quote before their deadline.

I mean, there’s something to be said for “fact checking” and authoritative content. After all, it’s what pulls in the reader/consumer and gets them to trust the content. But any content that’s susceptible to the “news cycle” is largely process journalism.

Really, the only stuff that really makes a reasonable attempt to avoid “process journalism” are books and documentaries. But even those are nowhere near objective. In fact, the mark of a good book or doc just might be how humanly subjective it is.

And if you think about it, the influence these media have despite their subjectivity speaks to how a reader/consumer gauges their authority: it’s the effort and conviction that goes into it, not the facts. After all, while the facts are letter of the law, the truth is the spirit of it, and it’s precisely for that reason that we prefer to be judged by a jury of our peers rather than the cold, hard, calculative facts that leave everything to numbers and nothing to humantiy.

And this might be precisly why Clay Shirky said that “Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.” The future has plenty of room for journalists. It’s just the editorial that’s going extinct.

Credit: ljesmith

So they’re not all exclusively about journalism, but nonetheless, they all feature ideas, perspectives, and opinions that (I think) are all worth considering if you’re at all seriously interested in journalism or public relations. They’re in no particular order, and one of them I even found only today (I’m quick to commit in that way), but all of them are thought provoking in a way that your run-of-the-mill new/social media blog falls short of.

Clay Shirky’s Blog: it doesn’t update all that often, but it doesn’t need to because this guy says more of substance in one post than most people say in a year of blogging. He’s not a blogger; he’s a veritable intellectual. If you’re not sure, just check out the list of published articles on his homepage.

Nieman Journalism Lab: a project of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, this blog “is a collaborative attempt to figure out how quality journalism can survive and thrive in the Internet age.” The rosters of contributors is nothing short of impressive, and anyone who’s interested in journalism, what it’s going through, and how it might evolve (and that includes any semi-serious PR hacks), just can’t afford to ignore it.

Rough Type: this is the blog of Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch and Does it Matter? What I like about Nick’s writing is that it offers a perspective that stands out from your usual Web 2.0 “evangelism.” He explores how the web is changing us as both individuals and a society, and isn’t scared to get estoric by touching on stuff like the situationists from time to time.

Silicon Vallye Watcher: this a tech news blog by Tom Foremski (himself a former Financial Times journalist), and sprinkled among the countless posts about Silicon Valley business and culture are other posts about how journalism outlets are coping, should be coping, or can cope with how emerging technologies are eating away at their traditional business model.

Mathew Ingram’s Blog: a working journalist with the Globe and Mail, Mathew also contributes to the Nieman Journalism Lab; although many of his posts are the first few paragraphs of what he publishes on Nieman Lab, he also writes shorter posts-for-thought that are worth a read for anyone who’s into Web 2.0 stuff.

Journalistics: focused on covering journalism, public relations and social media, this is a newer find of mine that features some more “hands on” posts about, well, journalism, public relations and social media — from dealing with PR clients to understanding where newspapers fit into today’s information culture.

It’s been a busy week in the world of newspapers. While publishers continue to watch their revenue streams dry up, entrepreneur Steve Brill, former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz and cable guy-turned-investor Leo Hindery, Jr. think they have the answer: an online paid-content model.

In any case, both these events have generated a considerable amount of opinionated dribble, and wading through it all, I’ve come across a few perspectives worth considering.

• Newspapers must grow their online news market share. Can they?: Writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, Martin Langeveld explores how news consumption patterns have shifted online, but newspapers are in no position to charge for online content, so they’re just going to have to become “digital enterprises.”
• Don’t blame Google for newspaper woes: A former newspaper man himself, Alan D. Mutter puts the newspapers who repine about Google in their place by reminding us that “newspapers actually had a head start over Google. But Google “got” the web. And newspapers didn’t. That’s not Google’s fault.”
• Steve Brill wants to try charging for content online… again: Also writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab, Matthew Ingram of the Globe and Mail casts serious doubt on Steven Brill’s proposed paid-content model by asking “whether readers want to pay for any of the content that Brill and his partners want to lock up, regardless of how easy they make it.”
• Why Newspapers Shouldn’t Buy What Steven Brill Is Selling: Ryan Tate of Gawker points out that Steven Brill’s paid-content model isn’t so much about publishing as it is about micro payments, and companies like PayPal are already doing a very good job of handling that (suggesting that if micropayments could save newspapers, PayPal would be even richer than it already is).
• Should Newspapers Charge for Online Content? To Answer This Question, You Have to Consult a Lawyer: Peter Scheer looks at the Steven Brill’s paid content model from an even more practical standpoint, noting that “Copyright does not protect ideas or facts, just the way they are presented” — suggesting that it wouldn’t be worth it because newspapers would have to entangle themselves in litigative mire to fully protect their paid content.
• Newspapers: No Bottom in Sight: Ashkan has a great little clip from CNN about newspaper ad revenues, putting all the debate above back into context.
• This Sounds Familiar: The Death Of Newspapers… 91 Years Ago: A poignant reminder how this isn’t the first time newspapers have been in trouble, and it probably won’t be the last — suggesting that the sky might not be falling on the presses after all.

A little while ago, an old college classmate of mine told me that the local newspaper was looking for an online video guy, and they had a very clear vision of what kind of video they wanted to feature content. I think that this is very much inline with what they were looking for.

Now, I don’t know anything about the Rocky Mountain News, but I think that this is video journalism par excellence. Why? Because it is not objective. It is completely subjective, told from the perspective of these city journalists who are now out of a job. But this kind of journalism is important because it puts things into a human perspective. In other words. It gives it context. As Hunter S. Thompson put it, “With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”

The sad irony, though, is that this is the video obit for the Rocky Mountain News, whose last day in operation is today. It’s so sad because, as one of their columnists put it, the “paper won four Pulitzers since 2000, but couldn’t weather economic storm.” The watchdog of journalism is going the way of the dodo.

Of course, bloggers are just as equipped to be subjective as any other blathering demagogue is, but there’s something to be said of the value of a media outlet who (at least endeavors to) serve its own pompous glory, but the good of a community, its people, and their democracy.