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Scott, I tune into you occasionally, and worry that you (like many others) conflate two separate resolutions. One is the digital media revolution, which has been ongoing for the last decade, and which is unquestioned. Two is the write-first/correct-later convention associated with blogging. The jury is *still* out on that. A paper can convert to all digital (as the Cincinatti Post has this week) *without* chucking the editorial model.
Many of the press pundits writing blogs are journosaurs happy to be released from the yoke of editors. I don't blame them, but one has to understand that as a particular bias.
It's funny, the best, most balanced reporting on the press still comes from the edited AJR and CJR. They have obviously embraced the digital revolution, but still use the editorial model. If they're not being read, it's possible that the "new gatekeepers" have a bias against editorial journalism. The misfires from CJR over the last few years have come for the traditional reasons-- sloppy reporting, unrestrained bias.
It's anything but ho-hum. And the fact that it is "nothing new" is precisely the point. If journalism had sufficiently embraced change over the past ten years, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
What is new is that the digital media trend that's been going on for a decade is going to be felt wider and more deeply than every before.
But this post isn't about prescribing how to change, i.e. I said nothing about "write-first/correct-later convention associated with blogging".
It's about DO SOMETHING. TRY SOMETHING. ANYTHING. EXPERIMENT.
The unwillingness to try anything new is the biggest impediment to long-term survival.
And it's not about throwing out the old just because it's old. It's about taking the best elements of the old, the ones that can and must survive, and combine them with the new.
It's a canard to make it an either/or choice.
Also, I find that connecting the dots between many different smart voices gives me aha moments. I was just trying to pass that on. Sorry that you didn't find value in it.
There were a pair of articles in CJR (by Julia Klein) and AJR (by Carl Sessions Stepp) which discuss the changs at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Rather than being a vague exhortation to "change," these were both practical explanations of what change was going on. Posts like this one give the sense that there's absolutely no change going on anywhere.
I'm not in the media business, but I try to study it as an prototype of information architecture. I've appreciated some of your posts in the past-- particularly your calculations on print vs. web ad revenues. But when I read "more of the same" type posts, pointing to other bloggers "more of the same" posts, it bores me, that's all.
Jon, taking a magazine article or a news article and slapping it online is not embracing digital.
In the absence of any other strategy, in fact, it's the exact opposite.
Just because the words are displayed in pixels doesn't mean they're digital, not in the sense we're talking about. It takes more than that, but the real journosaurs don't get that. To them, the web is just another publishing platform, and that's clearly not the case.
The ol' "shovelware" argument. Funny, when the shoveled NYT Op-Eds were "taken offline" (by virtue of the paywall), many cried to have them restored. Clearly digitial distribution has tremendous value.
Also, to your point: the converted are supposed to be embracing conversations now. Well, tell that to Kara Swisher. A few folks (before me) responded to her blog post with intelligent, polite, and challenging comments, but she couldn't be troubled to respond.
On your criticism of Kara's lack of response to commenters. I'm guessing you're referring to those who've commented from Jan. 2 on?
Perhaps she has a more balanced life than those of us spending Sunday afternoon online. More power to her.
Or maybe she's over managing her 614 or so friends on Facebook.
I don't think a lack of response to commenters less than a week old is a sign of a lack of commitment to community.
Rather than debunk my point, Jon actually makes it for me by raising this issue.
Thank you for illustrating one reason why so many journalists are resistant to the open web, despite all that it enables them to do.
"Write self-indulgent posts about joining the revolution"
"Ho-hum, more of the same: argument-by-quoting-blog-posts. None of this says anything *new*."
With all due respect, I can see many journalist looking at comments like these and longing for the days when it was relegated to letters to the editor, most of which never got published.
The digital medium's cup runneth over -- it has massive upside and massive downside.
Everyone wants to paint it in black and white as all good or all bad.
I AM in fact spending time responding to your comment instead of writing a new post -- and it's a double-edged sword.
The point of this post really is that journalists can no longer hide from the downside, so they better start figuring out the upside.
TV stations are using slideshows on their news sites.
Newspaper sites stream original video, shot by their own staffers.
Radio sites do both.
The piece that will separate the outlets will be their commitment to staffing and the territory (geo or socio) they claim. Traditional lines are blurring already.
In that context, the "change or die" dichotomy doesn't reflect reality. Print, TV, and radio will all be drifting toward a new sweet spot as their online components become priority one. Maybe even multiple sweet spots, as the business models start to weed out exactly how much manpower and infrastructure is needed to supply the targeted demand.
Howard: I'm glad we have reached common ground. My point was that it is so easy to celebrate Kara Swisher as a true convert, because she makes one blog post about how blogging is wonderful. But nowhere does somebody evaluate her for how well she responds to comments.
Andria: Swisher posted that blog post on Wednesday, and then followed up with 6 blog posts through Friday. It's a fairly easy calculation for a prominent blogger to realize that more blog posts => more hits, whereas more comments with the readers doesn't bring much quantifiable value. This happens all the time.
Larger point here:
Suppose for now that there are fivebasic activities a journalist can do: researching, reporting, responding, ruminating, reconciling. I absolutely agree that technology has enabled "responding" to be a bigger part of the job, and it in fact enables "the conversation." And I've further argued that "reconciling" (following up after new facts turn up) ought to be part of the jobs as well. But the blog format has long been built on "ruminating" and that's unfortunate for the medium.
That response is here
Check the comments for more thoughts too. Point is: All is well and good if we do more than blog about it. Maybe it's my youthful stupidity, but I'm tired of it. I'd much rather see individual journalists just go out and do stuff.
The product is being given away for free, advertisers are looking for more targetted audiences and the powers-that-be do not want to spend to invest.
And while I know there is a growing call for the be-all journalist that does the normal routines of reporting but is also expected to be web-savvy, take pictures, use SMS, twitter, blog and take/edit video the question has to be asked about should someone be a jack of all trade or a master of a few? After all, 20 years ago at the start of the latest technology revolution to newsrooms no-one asked a reporter to also be a photographer and sub-editor did they?
I also feel that there is a danger in that if a person is doing all of that, then are we asking for people to work 12-14 hours a day? Many a geek - who were online and doing online first - may be used to that, but should be looking to make that the norm? Also, many hacks already work very long hours to do their job as is, so how much longer would they be working?
Before this revolution really kicks off, we should be looking at defining what we expect of journalists and others in this move to a fully digital era.
You're making a BIG assumption -- that the work most journalists currently do is actually the best use of their time, so that any of this "digital stuff" has to be additive.
You also point to the elephant in the room, which is the economics. But just as the business model that supports journalism needs a clean sheet of paper, so to does the practice of journalism.
Will it require hard work for journalists to learn new skills? Of course. But it's not tenable, when the business model that supports your job is collapsing, to sit back and say that you don't want to work harder.
Digital technology is disrupting many industries, not just the news business. Just ask musicians and record execs.
Besides, the idea that all of these digital tools are "extra work" is a canard. It was a lot of extra work to switch from using a typewriter to using a word processor, but the productivity gains made it well worth it.
It may take extra world to learn how to practice journalism in the digital age, but the survival of journalism will be well worth it.
Thanks for the pointer, great post, I added it to the list of links above.
My experience is that while saying all the right things (converged news rooms, blogs, mojos, video journalists, blogs again etc) many newspaper companies are not following it up with cash and passion. The strategy most newspaper companies are following is to continue to milk their print assets and minimise their investment in innovation (and sweat the journalists a bit more).
"it is so easy to celebrate Kara Swisher as a true convert, because she makes one blog post about how blogging is wonderful. But nowhere does somebody evaluate her for how well she responds to comments."
"Swisher posted that blog post on Wednesday, and then followed up with 6 blog posts through Friday. It’s a fairly easy calculation for a prominent blogger to realize that more blog posts => more hits, whereas more comments with the readers doesn’t bring much quantifiable value. This happens all the time."
This leads me to think about how these two interact with the audience. There is so much chatter on involvement with the community - than sheer number of posts.
Another great thread!