the future of news

SUMMER 2009

THE FUTURE OF NEWS

INTELLIGENT DIALOGUE:

Human Intelligence.Real Influence.

INTRODUCTION

THANKS TO THE INTERNET,everyone’s a journalist. Or are they?We all certainly have the tools to getour message out, whatever that maybe. But does such access make us anew type of journalist? What does thefuture hold for a profession if anyonecan take it up whenever they choose?

Your next-door neighbor may be abig fan of “Law & Order.” But wouldyou ask him to draw up legaldocuments for you? Or say yournephew is a whiz with a crayon andcan build one hell of a LEGOmansion. Would you hand overdrafting duties for your garageaddition? Or maybe you are worriedabout recurrent pain in your stomach.Would you be satisfied with adiagnosis from your hypochondriacoffice mate?

There’s no talk of “citizen lawyers”or “citizen architects” or “citizendoctors.” Yet plenty of lip service ispaid to “citizen journalists” thesedays. The implication is clear. There’sno need to spend time workingtoward a journalism degree, orclimbing the newsroom ladder tolearn the trade. Via the Internet,anybody can disseminate a story.Anyone can latch onto a piece ofgossip or a shocking photo, slap on asensational headline and send it far

and wide. Anyone can read a piece ofnews, dash off a diatribe about theissue and share it with the world. Butdoes that make them journalists?What of reporting standards, writingskills, source-vetting, libel laws,professional ethics, fact-checkingguidelines, copy editing styles—thetraditional building blocks ofjournalism? Will some of those tenetsbe set aside in the future? From areporting perspective, what’s thedifference between an experiencedphotojournalist on the streets ofTehran and a protester with a cameraphone and a Twitter account? Canthey exist in harmony?

It’s an idea whose time has come.Grassroots citizen reporting andeveryman commentary via socialmedia and blogs are a fact of life. Insome cases there’s an editorialprocess in place. For example thepioneering OhmyNews, based inSouth Korea, gathers reports frominternational “citizen” contributorsbut employs a trained editing staff tofulfill many of the traditionalfunctions of a news organization.OhmyNews has been a critical andpopular, if not financial, success,since its launch in 2002. Thebusiness model is strugglinghowever, and a second outpost, inJapan, has been shuttered.

Then there’s Twitter, where anybodycan post whatever news they wantstraight onto the update stream as longas it’s no longer than 140 characters.Yet despite its extreme popularity, it hasno revenue model in place.

How does all this affect traditionalnews organizations? Until recently,their core offerings were prettystandard and familiar; journalistsworking with established processesdelivering news to the public inprinted or broadcast form. So whatpurpose do those organizations servewhen on-the-spot citizen journalistsget the scoops and feed them intointeractive media instantly and forfree? What happens to news as weknew it when traditional newsorganizations’ advertising revenueand audiences are going online?

Over the past nine months nationsaround the world have watched inbewilderment as the automotiveindustry faces a massive contractionin demand that’s affecting hundredsof thousands of jobs andshareholders. Over a longer period, inthe background, the news industryhas been facing its own slow-motionpileup. In this edition of IntelligentDialogue we look at some of the keythemes of one overarching question:What is the future of news?

INTELLIGENT DIALOGUE: THE FUTURE OF NEWS 3HUMAN INTELLIGENCE. REAL INFLUENCE.

It’s disruptive to business models, which is always

terrifying to people in high-margin businesses. While the

ability of anyone to be a journalist——and attract an

audience——is noteworthy in itself, the serious threat is a

financial one. And not because of digital copying or other

such stuff. It’s the erosion of the advertising model that

has supported journalism for so long. —DAN GILLMOR, author, “We the

Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People”

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INTELLIGENT DIALOGUE: THE FUTURE OF NEWS4 HUMAN INTELLIGENCE. REAL INFLUENCE.

IT’S WHEN UNDENIABLE change hits,like now, that we get around to askingfundamental questions about the things wetake for granted.

Old patterns of news consumption haveirrevocably shifted: Print newspapers andmagazines are struggling and folding bythe dozen; audiences for traditional TVnewscasts are drifting away. And that pacewill only quicken as Digital Natives(who came of age reading newsand watching “TV” online)populate more and more of themedia market and become keydecision makers. A few nostalgicmembers of our old-media guardwill surely survive this downturn, but theywill no longer be the major players theyonce were. So, getting down to brass tacks,what is “news” now?

Ordinary news consumers may not givethe question too much thought. Theysimply want what they want when theywant it. News industry professionals,academics and news addicts are morelikely to have their own answers, rangingfrom idealistic (“information and anaccurate account of events”) to bottom-line

(“content that attracts consumers’ attentionand advertisers’ budgets”).

> HAS NEWS BECOMEA PRODUCT? It’s a sign of the times that readers or viewers of the news arecommonly thought of as “consumers.” Andwhile journalists may not readily accept this

growing perspective, they certainly havesome idea of whom they’re serving.News purveyors have always been

more or less aware of their typicalaudience profile. Some of the morepopulist titles have prospered byhaving a sharp sense of what theiraudience wants and delivering it;while loftier organizations haveemployed a “know-better” attitudeand given the audience “what’s

good for them.”

WHAT IS THE STATEOF NEWS TODAY?

BIG QUESTION 1


Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a

government without newspapers, or newspapers without

a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer

the latter. —THOMAS JEFFERSON

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However, as competition has grown andthe influence of marketing has spread,media organizations have increasinglycome around—willingly or otherwise—tothinking of their titles as larger brands andtheir audience as consumers. They haveengaged brand consultants, conductedmarket research and paid ever moreattention to what “plays” in an effort toincrease their appeal.

> HAS NEWS BEENCONSUMERIZED ANDDUMBED DOWN? Sometraditional outlets still cover news with a“long-form” approach, spending time(and money) producing piecesthat require time andattention from a reader orviewer; this is especiallytrue of heavyweightnewspapers that seethemselves as beingstandard bearers for theirindustry, such as theFinancial Times, LeMonde in France, El País inSpain, Frankfurter AllgemeineZeitung in Germany, LaRepubblica in Italy and the Volkskrantand NRC Handelsblad in the Netherlands.

They have shifted somewhat, with theaddition of lifestyle pieces, Web presences andeven iPhone apps (Le Monde, El País, deVolkskrant, La Repubblica). Evenpublications as highbrow as The Economistget playful with punny headlines andcaptions, not to mention that magazine’s semi-serious Big Mac Index and Burgernomics.

But they are still demanding reads. Andhow much detail are readers willing oreven able to absorb anymore, whether it’scurrent national politics or environmentalissues, let alone treaty negotiations or long-running border disputes? How interestedare they? Should they be interested?

Many providers have decidedcontent needs to be “sexed up”

with sensationalized angles(the Rupert Murdoch-

ization of news). Short,punchy news momentsare interspersed withlighter lifestyle spots tokeep viewersentertained

(descendands of USAToday, which has been

nicknamed the “McPaper”since birth). Even the venerable

BBC, Britain’s public servicebroadcaster, has come under fire for

dumbing down its content in pursuit ofratings, taking a more populist approach.

A quick glance at newsstands and TVschedules confirms that consumers have aninsatiable appetite for celebrities andhuman-interest stories. News coverage ofthe controversial Iranian elections andstreet protests had begun to die down untilthe murder of a pretty 20-somethingwoman, Neda, was caught on camera andvideo and broadcast worldwide, putting acaptivating and tragic face on the events.News and social networking traffic spiked. Then Michael Jackson died andthe world’s media suddenly switchedgears. The news of the King of Pop’sshocking end triggered massive surges inboth traditional media and new mediatraffic. Security and media analysts wereconcerned that the sudden loss of attentioncould give Iranian authorities the chanceto crack down more heavily on opposition.


While news pros have always knownthat a story plays better when given apersonal focus, has celebrity culture everbeen so dominant? Maybe the easy,immediate access to breaking newsamplifies our desire for it. But across theboard, in print, on TV and online,celebrities sell.

> IS DUMBING DOWNA GLOBAL ISSUE? Looking outside the English-speakingworld in which News Corporation’sinfluence and uber-commercial sensibilityis so strongly felt, the dumbing down ofnews is less pronounced. It’s striking thateven the most downmarket, mass-appealtitles in continental Europe feel far moresubdued than their counterparts in theU.S. or the U.K.

Are consumers in those countries reallyless interested in pictures of poutingcelebrities or stories of sexual shenanigansand greedy executives? What about schoolshootings, swine flu, serial killers andterrorists (all serious subjects yet ripe forscreaming tabloid headlines)?

Or is it that “serious” news is still takenmore seriously in countries that have a historyof authoritarian government (Germany, Italy,Spain, former Communist countries)?

Porter Novelli China President JohnOrme observes that in China, the media’srole is seen to be a social and political one(spreading information and knowledgerather than creating and selling stories forcommercial purposes). Might this be apositive avenue to pursue for countries inwhich commercially produced news isbecoming devalued and publishers andjournalists are losing public trust?

In the Arab andMuslim worlds,investments in newtechnologies areincreasing access totransnationaltelevision andInternet news andopinions thatsimply weren’tthere before,reports themagazine of the European JournalismCentre. At a conference held last year bythe Centre for Arab and Muslim MediaResearch (CAMMRO), researchersdiscussed how political news is currentlycovered only “superficially” by Arab

commercial satellite broadcasters—much ofmass media in the region is entertainment-focused and ad-revenue driven, similar tothe West. Yet entertainment programmingdoes promote audience participation (call-in shows or text-in votes), empoweringcitizens to make their voices heard. Thatdesire to engage and share opinions willlikely filter into other areas of interestbesides celebrity, and audiences will beginto demand it. Already tech-savvy Saudisand Egyptians are bypassing officialcontrols to express their opinions.

> SHOULDN’T NEWSULTIMATELY SERVETHE COMMON GOOD? Worldwide we see public ambivalenceabout journalists and reporters. In theU.S., there’s a long-standing complaintabout the media’s “liberal” bias. In theU.K., critics cry “checkbook journalism”and newspapers publish titillating stories

citing “publicinterest”; even theBBC is accused ofhaving aninstitutional liberalbias. Other countriesare also wary ofpress misreportingor misrepresentingthe facts. Yet thetraditional ethos ofthe journalism

profession is more about exposing lies thaninventing them. It’s about discovering andreporting stories that matter. It’s aboutfinding and telling the truth.

Some journalists get the chance to dothat and make big money; some decide

ethos is less important than the money.And most ply their trade as best they can.

Can we trust that market forces andconsumer demand will continue togenerate the cash that news organizationsneed to do their work? After 30 years of“free market triumphalism,” there’s amood of market skepticism; in many areasof life (finance, health care, environment),free markets alone don’t necessarily servethe common good. Actions that arebeneficial in the short term to anindividual or to a corporation mayultimately damage its fabric.

The most prestigious schools ofjournalism and news organizations inculcatethe principle that journalists and reportersserve a much higher purpose thanproviding info-tainment and filling the spacebetween advertisements. The ethos isembodied in the annual prize given by theFrench-based organization ReportersWithout Borders: “This award honors ajournalist who, by work, attitude orprincipled stands, has shown strong beliefin press freedom, a media outlet thatexemplifies the battle for the right to informthe public and to be informed, a defenderof press freedom and a cyber-dissidentspearheading freedom of expression online.”Whatever other purposes news serves, in aworld of complex issues and difficultdecisions, news has a vital role to play; howelse can citizens/voters/consumers makeinformed decisions about matters ofcommon interest?

This is certainly the view of TheInternational Center for Journalists, based inWashington, D.C. It describes itself as anonprofit professional organization thatpromotes quality journalism worldwide in the


belief that independent, vigorous media arecrucial in improving the human condition.

> WHAT’S THE JOB OFA JOURNALIST TODAY?For many journalists, it’s a bitter question;staff posts are being cut, experiencedjournalists are being laid off and theprospects for up-and-comers in establishednews organizations look grim. Experiencedprofessionals talking to journalism schoolstudents find it daunting to tell themhonestly just what faces them out there.

According to American Society of NewsEditors figures, U.S. daily newspapersshed 5,900 newsroom jobs in2008, reducing employmentof journalists by 11.3percent to the levels ofthe early 1980s. In theU.K., the picture issimilar; the NationalUnion of Journalistsreports 903 confirmededitorial layoffs in theregional press alone betweenJuly 2008 and March 2009.

In the past, journalists could focus ongathering the facts and assembling themcoherently for editors to process and publish.Journalists didn’t have to think aboutattracting an audience or understandingdistribution; that was the job of the companythat paid them. But as media titlesthemselves are struggling to retain existingaudiences and reach new ones, journalistscan no longer rely on them for exposureor pay. This issue was highlighted in a livediscussion on “The Digital Future” hostedby the Guardian in the U.K.—itself a pioneerin opening its API (application programminginterface) to Web developers.

According to multimedia tech journalistRobert Scoble: “Old journalists didn’t

have to worry about … how theirnews or their words or their TV

or their radio was going to getheard by people. If you’reonline, you really have to workat getting distribution, at gettingpeople to pay attention to you.

And that’s a different skill than alot of old-school journalists have.”

Veteran BBC journalist Rory Cellan-Jones noted a big change in skill sets of

younger journalists: “What impresses meis that there’s a whole new generation ofstudents coming out of universities who’vegot three times as many skills as I everhad. People are learning to adapt very fast.I’m meeting twentysomething journalistswho can blog, create a Web site, shootvideo, do audio and write.”

Whatever the “higher purpose” ofjournalists may be going forward, the jobof journalists is to create content in formsthat attract and connect with audiences.They may deliver their content throughestablished news outlets, or they maycreate their own news outlets. That maysound like a tall order, but most of today'sestablished media started small too.


> IS IT POSSIBLE FOR AMODERN DEMOCRACYAND MARKET ECONOMYTO OPERATE PROPERLYWITHOUT RELIABLESOURCES OF NEWS?There’s a good case for arguing that newsis a necessary utility, as much as water,power and garbage disposal. Democracy isbased on the principle of informed citizensvoting on issues that affect vital aspects oflife. Could citizens be properly informedwithout news?

In the United States, evenvenerable newspapers have beenscaling back operations in order toreduce costs, limiting their abilityto provide their own in-depthinvestigations. In othercountries, the pressures areless intense but the long-termtrends still apply. Can newsorganizations be run asbusiness conglomerates,applying principles as ifthey were factories?It’s a tough call.

WHAT’S THE NEW NEWS BUSINESS MODEL?

BIG QUESTION 2


On one hand, Australian-born RupertMurdoch’s globe-spanning NewsCorporation has been doing it for decades.It’s an organization run by news industryprofessionals and it makes money, althoughthe quality of some of its products is oftencriticized. It encompasses 20 newspapertitles in Australia, several major titles in theU.K. (the Sun, the Times) and the U.S. (theNew York Post, the Wall Street Journal), aswell as Fox Broadcasting Company in theU.S., Sky Italia in Italy and 39 percent ofSky TV in the U.K.

Another example is Italy’s Mediaset(privately owned, by the investmentcompany of Italian Prime Minister SilvioBerlusconi), which owns TV stations thatcommand 40 percent of the Italian viewingaudience and a major share in TVproduction company Endemol.

On the other hand, the Tribune Groupof property magnate Sam Zell has foundthe business a lot tougher. In June 2008,the debt-burdened owner of the LosAngeles Times, Chicago Tribune,Baltimore Sun and Orlando Sentinel toldits newspapers that pages should bereduced to bring the ratio of advertisingto editorial pages to 50:50. Six monthslater, the group filed for bankruptcyprotection.

David Simon, former Baltimore Sunjournalist and co-creator of HBO’s “TheWire,” testified to the U.S. SenateCommerce Committee: “When locallybased, family-owned newspapers like theSun were consolidated into publicly ownednewspaper chains, an essential dynamic, an essential trust between journalism andthe communities served by that journalismwas betrayed.

“Economically, the disconnect is nowobvious. What do newspaper executives inLos Angeles or Chicago care whether ornot readers in Baltimore have a betternewspaper, especially when you can makemore putting out a mediocre paper than aworthy one? The profit margin was all.And so, where family ownership mighthave been content with 10 or 15 percentprofit, the chains demanded double thatand more, and the cutting began—longbefore the threat of new technology wasever sensed.”

One of the big problems for newsorganizations is that the industry standardonline (for readers) is “free”—as in zerocost. This is not just the case with users of

aggregators such as Google News,or public news services such as theBBC or CBC (Canada), which arein effect utilities. With mostnewspapers and manynewsmagazines, consumers have achoice: Either pay the cover price forthe printed version, or access theonline or mobile version for free.Only a few mainstream news titlessuch as The Economist and the WallStreet Journal bar full online accesswithout a subscription.

News Corp chairman Murdochrecently said falling print circulationsand advertising revenues meannewspapers must begin charging foronline content in the near future; readerswill only get the main headlines andalerts for free.

> CAN NEWSORGANIZATIONSSWITCH TO PAID-ONLYCONTENT? There’s a clear business case for news content originatorsto charge for their product. The crunchquestion: How will they make it happen?As it stands, anyone can freely access majornews titles in most any language in whichthey are distributed. If one of those titlesdecided to go subscription-only, wouldconsumers pay up to access it, or would theyjust move on to the others? What wouldmake paying the subscription seemworthwhile? Should online access cost lessthan the print cover price, since there are noprinting costs and barely any for distribution?

Common sense suggests that competingnews titles can begin charging for content ifthey all start doing it at the same time and ata similar price point. They will need to limitaccess to aggregators (such as Google News)to ensure no leaks—although it’s a fine linebecause aggregators also serve to drive trafficback to the news sites. Then they will haveto hope that new media services such asWikinews and OhmyNews don’t experiencethe same sort of rapid maturation that sawAmazon and iTunes overtake brick-and-mortar outlets. And they will have to hopethat consumers won’t decide that acombination of publicly funded news sources (such as the BBC and NPR), free-distribution services (such as Metro),bloggers and social media don’t offer enoughbetween them to rival the quality of paid-fornews services. It looks like a long shot.


> WILL A DEVICE(à la the iPod or Kindle)TURN THE NEWS GAMEAROUND? Through the 1990sand into the 2000s, the music industry sawCD sales fall while online file-sharingsoared. For millions of music consumers,there was no contest; buy a whole CD atfull price, or grab a few selected tracksonline for free? The music industry reeledand couldn’t get its act together to providea worthwhile alternative to illegal filesharing. It took outsider Apple’s iPod inlate 2001 and the iTunes store in 2003 tobreak the logjam. It aggregated musiccatalogs from various corporations in oneplace, with a pricing model that workedfor the copyright owners and forconsumers.

The news industry faces similarproblems in dealing with the challenge ofonline. It’s not just that consumers aregetting content free (though legally free inmost cases). In their old-media form, themusic industry and the newspaperindustry presented a physical package of

items to the consumer—a CD or anewspaper. But online consumers canchoose only the pieces of the package theywant—a song or a story—and leave the rest.Once consumers have experienced thisflexibility, it’s unlikely they’ll take a stepbackward and buy the whole package.

Following the iTunes model, what arethe chances of a subscription-based aggregator for news?How might it work?Back in the 1990s,PointCast Networkshad a hot “push”model—a piece ofsoftware thatdownloaded newscontent from majorplayers. News Corpoffered $450 millionfor the service in 1997,but the deal fell through:Bandwidth limitations,intrusive advertising and otherproblems led to its decline anddisappearance. But the time may be rightfor a third-party player now.

Amazon’s Kindle has deals with bookpublishers and a range of newspapersavailable for subscription, although only inthe United States. The New York Timesjoined up early; it’s reportedly the best-read subscription-based periodical on thecurrent Kindle, charging $13.99 a month,ahead of the Wall Street Journal, which

has reportedly sold 5,000subscriptions at $14.99 a

month. However, whilethose prices may amount

to less than a few lattesa month for aconsumer, will theybe low enough totempt a generationthat is used togetting news for free?

In a piece for Wiredmagazine on the Kindle

and the newspaperindustry, former publisher

of HarperCollins’ businessbooks Marion Maneker wondered

whether the Kindle or a similar wirelessreading device could do for the news


Columnists such as Thomas Friedman (The New York Times)

and Jeremy Clarkson (The London Times) are powerful “sub-

brands” with their own pulling power; are they on the way to

becoming media master brands in their own right? Both have

best-selling books to their names. For a narrower but more

devoted audience, tech luminary Guy Kawasaki is a bigger and

more authoritative media brand than many mainstream titles. He

has nine books and more than 150,000 Twitter followers, writes

a regular column for Entrepreneur magazine and a biweekly

column in Forbes. Virtually any print title or TV channel would

make space for a Kawasaki piece if they could get one.

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business what DVDs have done forHollywood; he imagines a scenario wherepopular pieces in the newspapers aremade exclusively available in a longer,more detailed “e-book” format on awireless reading device.

In his new book, “Free: The Future ofa Radical Price,” Chris Anderson (Wirededitor in chief and author of “The LongTail”) says that the digital age is pushingdown prices of all digital goods; thatmeans written words, sound and imagesin particular. He says success willcome from using free content tocross-sell and upsell. On theother hand, fellow punditMalcolm Gladwell pointedout in the New Yorker (inhis review of Anderson’s“Free”) that the WallStreet Journal has foundone million people willing topay for an online subscription,and that broadcast TV (free) isstruggling while cable TV (paid) is doingwell. Gladwell wonders whether Apple

could soon make more money sellingiPhone app downloads than it does fromthe iPhone itself: “Who knows? Theonly iron law here is ... that the digitalage has so transformed the ways inwhich things are made and sold thatthere are no iron laws.”

> HOW DID WE GETFROM AP TO API? Like themusic industry, the news industry facesthe problem of how to protect its assets

and make money from content thatcan be copied and distributed

infinitely at virtually zero cost.What the news industry hasdone differently is to makeits content legally availableonline for free. Most newsoutlets positively encourage

consumers to copy, e-mail andlink to their content. There’s

precious little in it for them apartfrom keeping their name on the radar

and maybe attracting pageviews to keep

advertisers happy. It’s not a money-making proposition.

Some forward-thinking titles havedecided to open their API (applicationprogramming interface) to lure theentrepreneurial geek community to helpthem morph into the new newsenvironment. They recognize that peopleoutside the news business can provide newthinking and help them do some of theheavy lifting.

In March, the New York Timesannounced the long-awaited opening of its


We went round with mobile phones and left our

cameraman behind in the car. We got some extraordinary

pictures on our mobiles, just like the people of Iran have

been doing. —JOHN SIMPSON, BBC world affairs editor

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Newspapers as we’ve known them are doomed. The conditions

which supported their business model have disappeared. . . .

If experience is a guide, opportunities are more likely to

be seized and defined by start-ups than incumbents. . . . New

cost structures, new use of tools and infrastructure, new

ideas about what content bundles are meaningful will all

play a major role in what emerges. —MITCH KAPOR, founder of Lotus

Development Corporation

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API, allowing access to updated newscontent and articles going back to 1981. ATimes story summed up its hopes: “TheArticle Search API has been a long-heldgoal for a group of us at the Times. We’vetaken a winding road to get to this point,but it’s just the beginning and we’llcontinue to make improvements. Soconsider this a beta or 1.0 release, andhelp us enhance it—go build something.”

In the U.K., the Guardian launched itsOpen Platform in March, comprising twoproducts for geeks and developers:Content API and Data Store. Just asFacebook and Twitter have rapidlyexpanded their functionality and appeal byopening up to outside developers (as Applehas also done with its App Store), so the

Guardian aims to do by opening its API.The Guardian is positioning its OpenPlatform as a commercial venture,requiring partners to carry its advertisingas part of its terms and conditions.

It remains to be seen whether the openAPI route will do for these news titles whatit has done for Twitter and Facebook.Whatever happens, they’ll be learning.

> WHAT IF THE NEWNEWS BUSINESSMODEL HASN’T BEENINVENTED YET? The experienceof the last two decades shows that new-technology business models can be hard to predict.

The fixed-line telephone infrastructurewas installed for the purpose of carryingvoice traffic. The Internet started as asystem for researchers to communicatewith one another. Now the telephonesystem is carrying far more Internet datatraffic than voice traffic.

Mobile phone operators virtuallystumbled into the cash cow of textmessaging. The facility for sending 160characters of text wasn’t designed to beconsumer-facing; it was a back channel fortechnical messages.

And the founders of Google wereentirely focused on search as a means toorganize the world’s information. Theydidn’t set out to create a new advertisingmedium; it just evolved that way.


WHERE DO TARGETED,CUSTOMIZED 24/7NEWS FEEDS LEAD?

BIG QUESTION 3

IN A CRINGE-MAKING series ofinterviews with New York Times editors,Jason Jones of news-satire program “TheDaily Show” asked, “Why is aged newsbetter than real news?” While deliberatelyprovocative and crass, the point was apt. Newsdelivered on printed paper is at least a day oldin a world where the news cycle is 24/7, withseveral waves breaking each day. What’smore, the whole package of the printednewspaper includes content many readersdon’t have the time or inclination to read.

While print struggles, news feeds abound.With so much choice, consumers can pick

and choose the sources most in line withtheir political leanings, their preferred tone(highbrow, humorous), their interests(sports, technology, health, celebrity).

> IS NARROWCASTINGTHE FUTURE OFBROADCASTING?For anyone used to the big reach oftraditional broadcasting, the notion ofnarrowcasting might seem claustrophobic.As a general rule, reaching a broadaudience is better than reaching a narrow

one. But the essence of narrowcasting isn’tso much narrow as targeted. It’s aboutdelivering content to a section ofconsumers who have actively expressedinterest and are most likely to be receptive.There are plenty of ways to do it.

For example, with RSS (Really SimpleSyndication), consumers can subscribe to aspecific type of news. So they get only thecontent they want, and they can consumeit when they want without worries aboutspam, phishing and other security issues.RSS content can include text, audio andvideo, such as podcasts, and can be


delivered to a computer or a personalmobile device. News outlets all over theworld offer content via RSS feed. RSSadoption among U.S. consumers was up to11 percent in 2008 from just 2 percent in2005. “While more consumers have madea habit of consuming news daily via RSSreaders, it’s still a pretty geeky individualact,” says Stephanie Agresta, global directorof digital strategy and social media at PorterNovelli. “The real power of RSS lies inexponential growth via simple, popularsocial networking platforms like Facebook,Twitter and Friendfeed. You don’t have tobe a super-geek to become a curator ofnews using these services. In fact, averageusers have become citizen editors and thenewsstands rolled into one. The ease ofcommenting and hitting ‘thumbs up’ hascreated an ecosystem for content totravel at a much higher velocity tomany more people.”

The specific technologies thatdeliver opt-in targeted news arestill evolving, but the underlyingdriver is clearly a long-termtrend: consumer control. If readersand viewers have the opportunityand the resources to get what they wantand avoid what they don’t want, they’lltake it. It’s human nature, and we see it inthe success of everything from remotecontrols to personalized home pages, from

programmed DVRs to iPods. We even seethe urge for control in something assimple as people’s choice to drive ratherthan take public transportation.Narrowcasting and customized newsfeeds are just another example.

> WHAT’S NEXT FOR24/7 NEWS? For many people, CNN was their firstexperience of a dedicated news channelwith around-the-clock updates. Well intothe 1990s, at any hour of the day or night,the channel would recycle stories until newnews broke. News channels haveproliferated since then, but still it oftenseems that over the course of a day, there’sonly so much news happening. There’s

only so much potential to fill inthe gaps with analysis and

discussion and speculationregarding what has alreadyhappened.

In our hyperconnectedenvironment, chances are

someone is reporting what’shappening the moment it

happens. And in many cases, it’s nottraditional news organizations that get therefirst. Celebrity news site TMZ first declaredpop icon Michael Jackson’s death, citingunnamed, unofficial sources inside UCLA

hospital, hours beforemajor news networks confirmed

the story via the coroner. By then the Internetwas buzzing, with usage overloads reported atTMZ, Twitter, Google News and Wikipedia,among others.

Real breaking news is increasingly theprovince of citizen journalists too. Whengunmen launched terrorist attacks in Mumbaiin November 2008 it was Twitter and photosharing site Flickr that proved to deliver theeyewitness account. And just a couple ofmonths later in January 2009 it was a Twitteruser who scooped the first report and photosof the US Airways flight that made anemergency landing in the Hudson River.

No news organization has sufficient in-house resources to be everywhere all thetime; in fact many are more likely to becutting back on presences right now.However, with citizen journalists thick onthe ground, news organizations can be


permanently tuned in to where news maybreak. Before, they had to “watch thewires” (Reuters, AP, AFP) and watch oneanother closely; now they have to watchsocial media too. Before, they developed anetwork of stringers and paid them fortips. Now they have access to a virtuallyinfinite pool of potential stringers via socialnetworks, each with better news-reportingequipment than most official news agencieshad a couple of decades ago.

All of this adds up to the rapid emergenceof a new news “ecosystem,” with newniches and new species and evolutionarydevelopments. However it’s still not clearwhat will feed the new ecosystem. In theold one, rivers of advertising brought infloods of cash that enabled organizations togrow; now the rivers are drying up. Speciesthat thrive will be those that can adapt tosurviving on less, or those that find newways of generating sustenance (cash).

> WHAT DOES THE NEW NEWS

ECOSYSTEMMEAN FORPROFESSIONALINFLUENCERS? The size of an organization and its wallet no longer

guarantees influence.

A big, well-organized andwell-funded PR departmentonce set the agenda—it had a

good chance of managing theflow of news and opinions. Itorganized set-piece events,cultivated the right contacts,conducted news briefings andworked the phones. News was

fed in well-turned press releaseswith contact numbers to field any

questions. Distribution channels werelimited and pretty self-contained.

Now, distribution is fairly uncontrollable—anyone has access. And it’s not just spiesusing tiny cameras and dead drops tospread secret information; anybody with acamera phone can copy a document orfilm an event and send it to one person orthousands in a few seconds. It’sfrighteningly easy for confidential memosand e-mails to leak. They can be sent tonews organizations, raised in closed specialinterest forums, posted on individual blogsor exposed on mass social networks suchas YouTube.

The challenge for marketers is tounderstand the nature of the channels andthe way information and influence flowthrough them. The difference between theold news ecosystem and the new one islike the difference between a temperateforest and a tropical jungle: The forest hasrelatively few species and goes throughpredictable seasons; the jungle has untoldspecies interacting at a furious pacethroughout the year. Like field zoologists,professional influencers in the new tropicalnews ecosystem have to be constantly onthe lookout. For example, the recentDomino’s Pizza case: An offensive videowas posted to YouTube by an unhygienicprankster employee. Reaction and chatterspread fast and furious via Facebook andTwitter. The company was quick to act,but the video generated close to a millionviews before it was taken down. In thetropical news ecosystem, things propagatefast and far.


I do wonder why 24 news channels feel the need to ‘sex up’ and

dumb down their content. Obviously one explanation can be the

fact that they must fill the airtime they have allocated.

Personally I have little to no interest in watching them pick

apart an absurdly and questionably newsworthy topic in a vain

attempt to “fill,” I would much rather just watch an actual news

broadcast 30 minutes in length. Instead I find myself often

confused, bewildered and traumatized by the events on my TV

screen. —DUMBING DOWN THE NEWS blog

SIGHTINGSfrom the

ZEITGEIST


Back home in India, things aren’t that bad. Circulation and

readership numbers may not be galloping and keeping pace with

rising literacy, income and urbanization levels, but they haven’t

dipped dramatically either. . . .ÉIt is not television alone, but

the combined onslaught of television and online media that our

newspapers need to worry about. Online offers the immediacy of

television and the tradition of print, plus the unique

advantages of unlimited space, interactivity and commerce. What

changes the equations now is that the Internet is accessible on

the go on cell phones, and technology ensures that access levels

aren’t a pain. —PRADYUMAN MAHESHWARI, group chief editor at exchange4media

SIGHTINGSfrom the

ZEITGEIST


EVEN BEFORE THE explosion of theblogging phenomenon, it wasn’t alwayseasy to know whom to trust. Eventraditional news organizations can’tguarantee 100 percent accuracy. Despiteethics training and editorial process, aswell as real risks of legalaction and high-dollarpunitive damagepayouts, unscrupulousreporters do exist(Jayson Blair at theNew York Timesand The NewRepublic’s StephenGlass are famousexamples). Sometimes aneditor’s objectivity willfalter, or he or she will run astory in order to get attention, especiallywhere politics or celebrity are concerned.Libel damages were recently awarded to

soccer star David Beckhamfollowing a front-page reportin the U.K.’s Daily Star, andTV personality SharonOsbourne won damages fromThe Sun.

In the short term, people maybuy more papers, but in the long

term, can the publication reallyretain any more credibilitythan a citizen journalistwith a cell phone?

Add tothis, bias.

Readersand viewers

commonlyperceive most anygiven news source ashaving an ideologicalleaning, and therefore

being untrustworthy (if heor she falls at the otherend of the spectrum):Conservatives are quick to

spot bias in liberal newssources and vice versa. Bias is

normal, but ideally there areenough competing outlets to offer a

balance; consumers do have access toalternate views if they care to seek them

out. However, incountries where freespeech is not the

HOW DO NEWSCONSUMERS KNOWWHAT TO BELIEVE?

BIG QUESTION 4


norm, the news media generally toe thegovernment line or risk getting harassed orclosed down. Consumers in such countriesbecome adept at reading between the linesand looking for alternative sources to findout what’s really happening. Even in “free-speech” countries, traditional news mediamay fall under the sway of a particularinterest group.

In Italy, for example, tycoon turnedPrime Minister Silvio Berlusconi hassubstantial media interests and exerts a lotof influence on sources outside his directcontrol. According to Alexander Stille,writing in the Columbia JournalismReview, political news on Italian statetelevision (RAI) is required to present thegovernment’s point of view, followed by asound bite or two from the opposition andconcluded with a rebuttal from thegovernment. Social scientists have foundthat Berlusconi’s control of the media hasbeen a major factor in gaining votes.

Nevertheless, all news organizationshave processes in place to do the best theycan to ensure accuracy and integrity ofjournalists and the news items theyproduce. The processes may not alwayswork as intended and they may notguarantee balance, but they try. They havea reputation to maintain, from an ethical,legal and commercial (the brand beingacceptable to investors or advertisers)perspective.

Now the old guard has been joined bywaves of user-generated content—countlesspoints of view from right-wingers, left-wingers, paid news and anonymousbloggers who may or may not be guidedby their own set of editorial principles.How can a reader judge whom to trust?

In the events that followed the contestedelection in Iran, Facebook and Twitterbecame channels for on-the-spot reportsfrom protestors; the White House evenasked Twitter to delay planned downtimeto avoid cutting daytime service to Iran.Many Westerners followed apparentlyIranian Tweeters involved in the protests,but within a day there were warningsabout government agents using Twitter tospread false information. How were thosenot on the scene to tell the differencebetween information and disinformation?

Alongside trust in traditional newsorganizations’ journalistic process, arethere ways consumers can judge whetherwhat they read is true?

> DOES THE WIKIMEDIAAPPROACH MAKE FORMORE TRUSTWORTHYNEWS? Like Wikipedia, the Wikinews formatencourages contributors to cite referencesand sources, so readers can cross-check forthemselves, ensuring credibility. The


If the searing image of Vietnam was the AP photo of a girl

stripped naked by napalm, if the image of Tiananmen Square was

a young man facing down tanks, well, the iconic image of Iran

is a cell phone video of Neda Agha-Soltan dying on the streets

of Tehran. And this time the message was in the momentum. The

mournful video was passed from a cell phone in Tehran to an

e-mail address in Europe, then to Facebook and YouTube and

finally CNN. All in a matter of hours. —ELLEN GOODMAN, Truthdig.com

SIGHTINGSfrom the

ZEITGEIST


Twitter trending topics have replaced CNN as the town crier

for online citizens. Anyone can quickly scan the list for

breaking news stories. But absorption of detailed,

complete information usually requires a visit to another

site or sites. Journalists and media companies, who exist to

generate attention, can do a better job of using these new

tools to tap into new audiences and spread their message as

well or better than “blog celebrities.” Until they embrace

all the tools and maximize the medium, of course the

business model won’t find synergy. —STEPHANIE AGRESTA, Porter Novelli

global director of digital strategy and social media

SIGHTINGSfrom the

ZEITGEIST


guidelines for contributors are extensive,ethical and clear. Items either containoriginal reporting (first-handreporting or interviews) orsynthesis of various cited,already-reported sources.

Wikinews’verification procedure,like traditional newsreporting, inevitablyslows the process, ascompared with Twitter,Facebook or other socialmedia. Yet verificationensures objectivity and clarity.Although individual contributorsmay or may not be trained journalists,they are tasked to abide by establishedjournalistic standards.

The Wikimedia brand itself should bereassuring; it’s a nonprofit foundation withthe idealistic spirit of the open-sourcemovement. However, Wikipedia is farfrom a trusted source; although it’s thedefault encyclopedia on the Internet, it’sthe butt of many negative comments. Itdoes have advantages, however: While it

doesn’t stand up as a reference on its own,it’s a place to start for initial research that

links out to primary sources. It’sfree and often more extensive

than any single onlineencyclopedia.

So what of Wikinews?While it may score onaccuracy, in a fast-moving news marketwith a lot of established

players, will the modelwork as well as it has done

for reference information? Orwill it succumb to lack of speed

and reader trust?

> CAN A COMMERCIALBRAND BE TRUSTEDAS A NEWS ARBITER?One way or another, we trust commercialbrands with significant parts of our lives.We trust supermarkets to provide us withfood that is safe; we trust automakers toprovide us with cars that are roadworthy,and service centers to keep them that way;

we trust pharmaceutical companies tofoster our health; and we trust financialinstitutions (some more than others) tolook after our money.

As a Porter Novelli staffer recentlyasked, “Why not trust a brand to see andspeak the truth on our behalf? Is this thenew summit for a trusted brand?” Ofcourse we can’t expect consumer brands totake responsibility for verifying news fromthe Middle East, or from criminal courtsor even celebrity shenanigans. But brandsmay find it worthwhile to work atbecoming a source in their own area ofexpertise. For example, Microsoft earnedrespect in the highly critical developmentcommunity by hiring Robert Scoble as“technical evangelist” from 2003 to 2006.Scoble covered technical news via his blog,and despite assumptions, he wassometimes critical of Microsoft andsometimes praised competitors.

Could this be the simple formula in whichcommercial brands become trusted newssources? Respected expert(s) + privilegedaccess to information + branded platform +editorial freedom = credibility + respect.


In theory, journalists are accountable to readers: If they

report crap, readers will stop reading the publications they

write for, which is incentive enough for those publications to

avoid the crap. The problem is that readers out there want

crap. They want man bites dog, they want Match Ka Mujrim, they

want heroes and villains in their narratives, blacks and

whites, and so on. There’s no getting away from that. But such

readers are everywhere in the world, and tabloids will always

thrive. That is not the problem here. The problem is that here,

we have little else. In England and the U.S., you have the

tabloids, and you have the respectable press doing good, solid

journalism. —AMIT VARMA, IndiaUncut.com, named by Businessweek one of India’s 50

most influential people in 2009

SIGHTINGSfrom the

ZEITGEIST


TECHNOLOGY HAS always shaped thenews—both literally (through its deliveryformat) and via consumers’ expectationsand experience.

Through the 19th century and intothe early 20th, newspapers werethe only method for massdistribution of news: theprinted word with somegraphics, mostlyconsumed in silence athome. News was awritten narrative.

Then camenewsreels, whichdocumented events thathappened within reach of amovie camera. News becamepart of the collective entertainmentcontext of the movie theater. News was aspectacle in which seeing was believing.

Then came broadcast TV news, wherethe studio anchors became the centralfigures—reading items, describing footage,interviewing public figures. News joinedthe entertainment context of the living

room. News was events of the dayexplained in words and images

by trusted, familiar figures.

With the advent ofcable, satellite andInternet, broadcast newsmorphed into today’s24/7 sexy anchors,catchy graphics, sound

bites, live feeds, blogs andTwitter feeds. News is

whatever it takes to hold theattention of consumers who

(are presumed to) have a lowboredom threshold, a short attention spanand plenty of alternatives—including

constant news, photos, video andcommentary via multiple online andoffline channels.

> DOES TECHNOLOGYMAKE IT HARDER TO“CONTROL” THE NEWS?The yang of new technologies is the at-times chaotic, overwhelming torrent ofunfiltered news. In many cases there’scontent (X is happening) with no context(Y is the background to X). Gettingbreaking news online can be like drinkingfrom a fire hose.

The yin of new technologies is thatconsumers have unprecedented access tothe news and some measure of power tochange the news itself as a result. While it’snot always a good thing, it’s trulyrevolutionary in places where news is

HOW WILL TECHNOLOGY SHAPE THE NEW NEWS?

BIG QUESTION 5


tightly controlled. BBC World AffairsEditor John Simpson, who was on the planeto Tehran with Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979as he landed to seize power, gave aresounding and moving endorsement to thepotential of new media in 2009. Reportingfrom Tehran after the recent elections,Simpson said: “This is a revolution sparkedoff by ordinary people with mobile phones.It is the most extraordinary thing I haveever seen and I have covered manyrevolutions. They were all more ...traditional. But this time photos and videoscan go instantly on YouTube to be seen bymillions and Twitter and Facebook canallow the voices and thoughts of ordinaryIranians to be heard worldwide. It is themost remarkable thing.”

What’s more, Simpson and hiscolleagues decided to employ thetechnologies used by the citizen journalists:“The people don’t need broadcasters orreporters so much because they havemobile phones and can film themselves.We were at the demonstration on Saturdaywhen that poor girl was shot and thoughtit would be too difficult to film with even asmall camera. So we went round withmobile phones and left our cameramanbehind in the car. We got someextraordinary pictures on our mobiles, justlike the people of Iran have been doing.”

As professional news organizationsembrace consumer tools, the look and feelof some of their output have becomerougher around the edges and more likecitizen journalism. In a news environmentwhere celebrities and slick presentation arethe norm, along comes shaky and blurredvideo, crackly audio and occasional typos—now touches of authenticity.

> DOES TECHNOLOGYMAKE THE NEWSSHALLOW? Nobody doubts thatit’s better to have a well-educated societythan a poorly educated society. And few

would argue that it’s better to have a wellinformed society than a poorly informedsociety. The acid test of how well or badlyinformed people are is not how manyfactoids they can play back, but how wellthey can interrelate and make sense ofthem. In a media environment of tweetsand sound bites and news flashes, there’s arisk that consumers get only the content(headlines) without the context (the realstory and background details) that gives theheadlines meaning. That’s shallow news.

Just as it’s possible for people in an all-you-can-eat society to be overfed butundernourished, they can be deluged withnews but underinformed. While goodquality may be available, peoplelean toward easier, faster,cheaper options.

An eight-minute Flashpresentation called EPIC2014 succinctly pointed tothis risk of the new news.The presentation became aviral sensation on theInternet, sketching out afictional time line of evolving media from1989 to 2014. It posited a vast online webof information called EPIC (EvolvingPersonalized Information Construct),devised by Googlezon (Google +Amazon). At its best, EPIC is “a summaryof the world—deeper, broader and morenuanced than anything ever availablebefore ... but at its worst, and for toomany, EPIC is merely a collection oftrivia, much of it untrue.”

For consumers with the time and theinterest, technology offers multipleperspectives, the chance to dig deeper for

background information and to debateevents. But for many who don’t have thepatience, technology can become akaleidoscope of disconnected words andimages flitting by on the edge of awarenesson TVs, computer screens and mobiledevices. Gone are old-style focused sessionsof news-consuming via the TV ornewspaper. The emerging form is quicksessions of grazing multiple sources. Newsabout a military coup may jostle for attentionwith a text from a friend or a work e-mail ora Twitter update from Oprah. If Microsoft’sSurface technology catches on, we couldeven see tabletops in diners, hotels andwaiting rooms delivering content alongsidemenu options and interactive games.

For consumers seeking abroader, deeperunderstanding of news,technology is providing themeans to get it. By the sametoken, for consumers whoprefer to confirm what theyalready think, technology is

providing the means to avoidaccidental exposure to alternative views;they can hang out in their preferred mind-set compounds. As a Time Magazinewriter put it: “For many of us ...technology has actually lowered the oddsof bumping into inconvenient knowledge.... When I’m abroad these days and haveto go without my newspaper, I often turnto the most e-mailed stories on news Websites, which are generally opinion pieces(rather than news stories), from which Icherry-pick arguments or facts thatcomport with my pre-existing views.Reading this way, I rarely stray from thefamiliar and soothing.”


In principle, journalism should be in better shape than

ever. The core competence of journalists is to generate

attention. . . . There are today three business principles

for journalism: one that sells content to the audience (e.g.,

newsletters), one that sells the attention of the audience

(e.g., ad-based publications) and one that gets sponsorship

for delivering information to the audience without biasing

the message in favor of the sponsors (e.g., public service).

All three business models depend on one thing: loyal

attention from the audience. In order to draw loyal

attention from the audience, the journalist has to be loyal

to the audience. This is the difference between journalism

and PR. Public relations works on behalf of the source.

Journalism works on behalf of the audience. If journalism

loses the attention of the audience, it will not have

customers. It will not have advertisers. It will not have

sponsors. —DAVID NORDFORS, founding executive director of VINNOVA Stanford

Research Center of Innovation Journalism

SIGHTINGSfrom the

ZEITGEIST


YouTube is starting a Reporter’s Center, for which I’ve

revealed all of journalism’s secrets——which boils down to

how to cover a crisis and not get shot. The center goes live

in the wee hours Monday morning, and I’m looking forward to

seeing what colleagues in the news biz have done for it. You

can also see my video on my YouTube channel. Lemme know

what you think. —NICHOLAS KRISTOF, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and journalist,

New York Times’ On the Ground blog

SIGHTINGSfrom the

ZEITGEIST


IN CONCLUSION

THE ADVERTISING-BASED newsindustry model is destined to shrink evenmore over the coming years. For decades,advertisers have in effect been subsidizingnewsgathering and distribution in order toreach end users; now they can reach endusers at lower cost without relying on theaudience pull of the news. And consumersnow can get their news for free on theInternet or via ad-driven free-sheets, or atlow cost on cable TV.

This situation is at its most extreme inthe United States, where the newsindustry is almost entirely commerciallybased. It’s less drastic in countries wherebroadcasting is funded by the state, but

even then costs are an issue at a timewhen many countries are grappling withthe economic crisis and facing a spendingcrunch on health and welfare. Even incountries with state-funded broadcasting,the mainstream print news industry ispredominantly reliant on advertising.

The emergence of interactive tools andcitizen journalism has disrupted both thenews industry’s business model and itsrelevance. It’s an exciting developmentthat has become a major news story initself. However, the fact that virtuallyanybody can upload words, audio,pictures and video to the Internet makes ita free-for-all, which can all too easilybecome a supercharged rumor mill, anecho chamber with little primary reportingand no verification.

Ordinary news consumers may not beequipped or bothered to identify which

news sources can be trusted and whichcan’t. However, the contraction oftraditional news organizations means thatthere are plenty of trained reporters andjournalists looking for ways to apply theirskills. And in specialist areas, as the opensource coding movement has shown, thereare plenty of people willing to accumulateexperience and share it.

The potential “news ecosystem” that’sshaping up is one in which new newsbrands based on expertise and/orreputation can emerge. They may beindividuals, groups of individuals ororganizations. They won’t have the legacycosts of printing presses, pension schemes,big buildings to maintain and shareholdersto satisfy. They will have the expertiseand the credibility to source news storiesdirectly and/or verify contributed sources. They will have the authority tocontract their services to traditional news

organizations, to corporations andother organizations, or to marketthem directly. And they will havethe skills and the savvy to attract

the attention of people thatmatter to them, whetherit’s niche audiences or themass market.


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