The Evolving Newsroom

Thought for the day (from Amy Gahran on MediaShift IdeaLab:

Today's journalists can -- and probably should -- consciously shift away from jobs that revolve around content creation (producing packaged "stories") and toward providing layers of journalistic insight and context on top of content created by others (including public information). Finding ways to help people sort through info overload is far more valuable than providing more information. Journos also should learn to cultivate and openly participate in public discourse -- something that provokes an inordinate and irrational amount of fear in the hearts of many traditional journalists. God forbid they acknowledge that they are, in fact, human beings with perspectives, opinions, and blind spots!

News agencies take note. A group of newspapers in Ohio have banded together to share content - three months after the group voiced opposition to US news agency AP's latest rates shake-up, says Editor & Publisher.

The content sharing arrangement comes several months after editors and publishers from six Ohio newspapers penned a December 21 letter to AP that claimed both new rates and news practices were unacceptable to them, declaring, "We pay nearly
$4 million annually to the AP. That's a hefty sum even during the best of times - and we all would certainly agree that these are not the best of times."

"It is about sharing our content with the other large Ohio newspapers and getting their content in return," the memo adds. "The goal is to have stories that benefit the readers of all of our newspapers. A secondary benefit is that readers will know how much is produced by our newsrooms."

The sharing has apparently already begun, according to managing editor Alan D Miller of The Columbus Dispatch. He said his paper ran a story on B-3 today from The Plain Dealer of Cleveland about a Thursday speech by State Higher Education Chancellor Eric Fingerhut in Akron. The Dispatch website also linked to the Plain Dealer story.

The 'Are newspapers cutting their own throats by not charging for their product online?' debate grinds on. Inside most media companies the battle lines are drawn: on one side are those in favour of charging for premium services - 'we're mad to give away this great content we've made' - and on the other are those against - 'if we charge, our audience will go somewhere else'.

The Wall Street Journal, recently taken over by Rupert Murdoch, is the highest profile example of a newspaper that used to charge, and had enviable subscriber numbers, but decided to abandon it in favour of ramping up readership and selling more ads on the back of that.

Times blogger Justin Fox posts this week about the pointlessness of arguing about it. "News was already pretty close to free long before the Internet came along," he says, in response to a 'we're mad to give it away' post from LA Times business columnist David Lazarus.

"It was free on TV, free on the radio, and effectively free in newspapers when you consider all the valuable stuff that came packaged with it for 25 or 50 cents, from comics to crosswords to classifieds to supermarket ads. And unlike, say, a song - which was free on the radio but worth spending money on to be able to play again and again whenever you wanted to hear it - a day-old newspaper was usually less than worthless."

While some point to younger generations not being willing to pay for online content, Justin shows that's not the case. They buy music online happily enough, and pay for games. They just don't want to pay for news.

And neither do I. Why would I? There's no shortage of news online. If I can't read the story on one site I can read it on countless others. If I reach a paywall, I give up and go somewhere else. And don't get me started on those US sites which require you to register, albeit for free, but then don't accept your postcode because it's not local. So much for globalisation.

The point is, unless you organise a giant, worldwide news cartel to set a global price (not going to happen), you can't charge for news online. Archives, maybe, but not daily news.

Trouble is, increasingly people don't want to pay for a newspaper either. Not even the people who wail about how important quality journalism is to the health of a country. Seriously, next time someone bemoans how outsourcing/globalisation/greedy management are eroding journalistic values, ask them how often they buy the paper. Nine times out of ten, in my experience, they'll say they don't buy it at all, or they buy it once a twice a week. Not quite enough, then, to keep 'quality journalism' afloat.

So, if they're not buying the paper, and people under 35 aren't buying the paper, who is?

Reuters has done a deal to supply business news to the International Herald Tribune and share ad revenue from the business pages - print and online - rather than charge a subscription fee. The pages will be co-branded.

It's an example of how agencies are experimenting with new business models now that news is freely available on the web. AP has restructured its pricing around a core service with options to add on services and buy individual stories - a move away from the blunt buy-the-lot subscription packages.

It seems a good fit for the IHT, which is a composite publication anyway, and the revenue-share model is likely to hold broader appeal.

Jeff Jarvis likes the deal and sees it as a model for regional newspapers to free up resources from their business pages, which he says are 'universally bad' anyway, and get on with what they do best - local stories. And why stop at business, he asks. "Why couldn’t ESPN provide them with national sports? People magazine with celebrity news? Prevention with health news. And so on and so on with brands and content from Consumer Reports to TMZ.

"It also makes sense for chains to centralize the editing and production of commodity news. This is more than syndication: buying a piece of content. This is a form of outsourcing — you take care of that so I don’t have do (and so I can concentrate on my real value — hint: local)."

Hmm. Might have to chew on that for a while.

Sure, much of business reporting is straightforward and commodity reports do lend themselves to outsourcing. It's not an unnatural progression from what newspapers already do, namely buy in data and graft local reports onto wire-based stories. And the advantages of centralising production are obvious - APN has already taken the plunge in NZ by outsourcing its subbing operations to Pagemasters.

So, on the upside you save on costs and free up a couple of reporters to do more and better local work (your only unique selling point in this era of free-global-news-on-the-web). If the delivery mechanism's good you might even free up a web editor, a sub-editor and a page-twiddler from edition control.

On the downside, there'd be a temptation for managers to lay off, rather than free up reporters as the pressure to cut costs grinds on. Then there's the risk of unspeakable blandness permeating news pages (isn't it already, I ask you say) and a diminishing pool of reporters who have the specialist knowledge and skills required to cover a particular area.