Perhaps The Real Problem With Newspapers Is All That Extra Overhead...

from the cut-the-fat dept

We keep hearing from newspaper execs about how important it is to keep newspapers alive to fund all that important "investigative reporting." The problem, of course, is that most newspapers don't really do all that much investigative reporting. Hell, they don't really do that much reporting at all. A few months back, we noted that a quick look at a variety of local newspapers all showed a very small number of locally produced stories (usually under 10) each day. All the rest were wire stories and other stuff -- not much actual local reporting at all. As a whole bunch of you are sending in, Clay Shirky recently did a similar experiment, taking apart his local hometown newspaper, slicing the paper up into "news" and "other" categories, and finding that news was a small fraction. And most of the news was wire service. Actual locally produced news involved only six reporter bylines. In investigating further, he discovered that the paper only had six reporters -- despite a staff of 59 people. And, yes, obviously many of those other roles are important -- the editors, the printers, etc. But, at some point you have to question the claim that the "reporting" is so expensive. It certainly looks like there's an awful lot of overhead and inefficiency built into the system. And that's why newer news startups are able to succeed -- because they don't have that extra legacy layer of fat to deal with.

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Journalist: Oh No! Student Journalists Will Destroy Journalism!

from the oh-please dept

So for the last few years, all we keep hearing about from professional journalists is how there is less and less reporting going on, and how we'll all miss "real" reporting once it's gone. They complain that without new business models journalism itself is doomed. Leave aside how ridiculous all of that is (and, yes, it's totally ridiculous), when a new project comes along that will enable more reporting in the San Francisco Bay Area, via a partnership between radio station KQED and journalism students at Berkeley, along come the professional reporters complaining about how this is the death of journalism and must be stopped. That's the view of the East Bay Express's Robert Gammon. Why? Well, because it involves students instead of pro journalists, and thus is unfair competition:

The venture also threatens traditional news media in the Bay Area, because it will rely on 120 journalism students at Cal who will work for free. The massive free-labor workforce will give the new venture a huge advantage over established Bay Area media organizations that depend on paid, veteran journalists to gather and put together news stories.

I read that and all I can think is, Mr. Gammon, did you really just mean to suggest that your years of experience and professional connections are so worthless that a group of students will automatically beat you in the marketplace? Because that's what he said. After we keep being told how pro journalists are so important, and all their experience, knowledge and reporting chops differentiates them from the unwashed masses, here is a guy who is flat-out admitting that he has no advantage over some pure amateurs.

Let's hope UC Berkeley and KQED seriously rethink this plan before it goes live early next year. The idea of a non-profit news organization has merit, but using what amounts to slave labor to make it happen is bad for journalism.

So, let me see if I get this straight. Things have been really bad because there were fewer reporters working on the news, and we'll all miss them when they're gone... but as soon as anyone new enters the market, it will be bad for journalism? And even if the journalism is done by students who have no experience, the amazing pros simply won't be able to compete? Yeah, that's believable.

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Big Media Companies Buying Local News Startups... Newspapers Bitch About Competition

from the what's-going-on-here dept

As the discussions over newspaper business models have continued, I keep hearing from newspaper people that they "do local news better" and that local news will be what saves them. Yet, at the same time, we keep hearing about new local news startups that appear to do a much better job of it... and the best of those startups keep getting bought by big media companies. The latest is that MSNBC has purchased EveryBlock, a cool local news player that did a really nice job bringing together a variety of sources. While it may not have gotten as big as expected, and it's unclear whether MSNBC will end up killing it (the history of startups going to big media companies usually doesn't have a happy ending), it makes you wonder why no newspapers thought of buying it. The things that EveryBlock has done -- like linking local stories to feeds from Flickr, blog posts, and other online sources -- seems like exactly the sort of useful community building that a newspaper should be doing. Yet, I can't recall any actually doing that themselves... and now they let one of the startups enabling it get bought by someone else. In fact, I'd bet that EveryBlock is potentially one of these evil "aggregators" the newspapers keep complaining about as being "unfair." You can keep complaining, or you can do something. MSNBC appears to have done something, while the newspapers keep complaining.

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Dear Newspapers: You Don't Have A Monopoly On Local News Coverage

from the neglect-it-at-your-own-risk dept

In talking about business models for the newspaper industry, one point is often discussed: that newspapers are uniquely positioned to provide really good and thorough "local" news coverage. And while they often do a superficial job, in many cases they really don't provide as useful or as thorough coverage as they could. And that's opened up the market to others -- both big and small. We've seen a bunch of stories about various "hyperlocal" startups growing up. But, it need not be startups. BullJustin (who, btw, was the fastest on the trigger and was the very first buyer of our CwF + RtB store) alerts us to a story about how sports giant ESPN is moving in a big way into local sports coverage, hoping to take attention away from newspapers who could use some competition on the beat. Funny then that, as we're being told that there's no business model to support beat writers, ESPN seems to be finding an increasing need for them.

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Investigative Journalism Done Better, Faster And Cheaper Without Newspapers

from the let's-get-real dept

There have been a series of ridiculous articles lately claiming that, with the collapse of some newspapers recently, somehow investigative reporting and local coverage won't work, meaning an era of corruption and the collapse of democracy. Fortunately, some are demonstrating the fallacies underlying these proclamations of doom.

Jay Rosen has been running an interesting experiment trying to find out just how many truly local stories an average newspaper includes in its paper, between all the national wire service stories. A look through a recent Seattle Times issue showed a grand total of seven locally produced stories. And a look at an issue of the Chicago Tribune found a total of eight locally produced stories. We're not talking about huge numbers here.

And, in fact, the finding of eight stories in the Trib comes from Geoff Dougherty, a guy who created quite a stir in newspaper circles when he claimed he could provide the equivalent (or better) local coverage of the Chicago Tribune for just $2 million a year, and provided the spreadsheet to back it up. And he's not just talking in theory. He's doing it. Today. For much less than the Tribune (which is bankrupt).

He's not the only one either. Talking Points Memo has been quite successful with its investigative reporting, which does a lot to leverage its community to help out in the process, while still employing full time journalists who are doing tremendous investigative reporting -- which should only improve as better tools are created to enable more to be done. The first link in this paragraph also discusses another example, the Voice of San Diego, which does local investigative reporting, and was funded by a bunch of local businesses that felt there wasn't enough investigative reporting locally.

Those who say that this can't be done apparently aren't looking around. Sure, some of these experiments may fail, but it's about time we got rid of two myths:

• Myth 1: Newspapers put tons of money and resources into investigative journalism. They don't. And never have.
• Myth 2: Only newspapers can do investigative journalism.

Not all of the new business models will work out, but some will, and we'll likely find the new models actually work much better than what we have today (which, let's face it, hasn't been that good in investigating things like corruption).

I was on a panel recently for journalists and PR people, and someone raised their hand to ask how people could "put the genie back in the bottle and charge for information again." The problem is that the question itself is wrong. There's no genie and there never was a bottle. People have never paid for the news. Newspapers never spent that much on investigative reporting, and they rarely did a particularly good job of it, other than an occasional big story in an attempt to win a Pulitzer. People can pine about that mythical genie and bottle, or they can start focusing on all the opportunity out there that will be coming out of some of these (or other) experiments.

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Will Local TV News Be The Next To Have Its Reckoning Day?

from the news-at-eleven dept

The change in the newspaper business is undeniable, with many newspapers' fortunes looking bleaker and bleaker as they continue to misunderstand, underestimate and ignore the internet. But with a downturn in ad spending hitting TV stations hard, will local TV news be the next to go through industry-wide upheaval. While newspapers have struggled, TV news has puttered along, but the cost pressures of the current market could change that as stations pursue resource-sharing agreements or other measures to cut their newsgathering costs. The fundamental question, as PaidContent asks, is is there too much local TV news? And as they conclude, it's hard not to answer no. With three or four (or more) affiliates in many markets -- and even smaller markets getting their own 24-hour stations -- there's a lot of airtime to fill, and a lot of overlap with other news sources, many of which do a better job of reporting or delivering news to readers. The basic thought seems to be that more local TV news is better, particularly as stations have added more and more slots to fill (such as the 5 o'clock and 4 o'clock broadcasts that have been added over the years). But with the slowdown in ad spending and the rise of parts of the population completely unfamiliar with the idea of local TV news, just like they're largely unfamiliar with getting news from newspapers, the future looks bleak. Will TV stations manage to negotiate the shift to the internet any better than most newspapers have done? That too, seems doubtful.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Whistleblower Reacts To FCC Clearing The FCC On Supressing Study For Politican Reasons

from the must've-been-some-investigation dept

About a year ago, Senator Barbara Boxer surprised FCC chair Kevin Martin by asking him why a study on the impact of local TV ownership on the news wasn't published. A whistleblower claimed that the FCC had actually ordered the report destroyed because it didn't agree with the political statements those in charge of the FCC were making. Of course, after being confronted about this, Martin agreed to have the FCC's Inspector General (someone who works directly for him) investigate the claim. A few weeks ago, the report came back from the FCC clearing itself of any wrongdoing. Shocking, right? You let the folks accused of being partisan hacks let their own direct reports investigate whether or not they're partisan hacks -- and they come back saying no, of course they're not partisan hacks. Matthew Lasar writes in to let us know that he interviewed Adam Candeub, the original whistleblower. Candeub had been an attorney at the FCC in their media bureau (which produced the report), but has since left the FCC and is a law professor. He refused to take part in the FCC's investigation, knowing that it wasn't going to fairly portray the situation. Despite staffers telling the Inspector General that they felt they had been told to lie if they wanted the report to see the light of day, the IG still didn't find the FCC at fault. Candeub doesn't sound too surprised, and notes that the whole thing was political -- and it's ridiculous to believe that the FCC didn't suppress the report for political reasons. He also notes that academic researchers are now retracing the steps that were done by the original FCC researchers, suggesting they were doing things correctly -- unlike what the FCC implies. I realize it's all politics at some level -- but shouldn't an organization like the FCC be most focused on what's best for communications policy, not on furthering a party line?

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