Oldies are noobs: how to talk about the Internet without scaring the analog news set

What I expected to be an illuminating discussion in my print class turned into an Internet bash-a-thon that left Jack Nelson bemoaning the death of reporting and me surprised at the size of the generational and conceptual chasm.

Posted: 2007-03-01

Veteran investigative reporter and Pulitzer-prize winner Jack Nelson, 78, doesn't think the Internet is particularly a good thing.

"Who would read an eight-column article on the Web," he asked. "I wouldn't. You have to hold a paper in your hands."

What difference does it make whether it's dead-tree papers or online? "The Internet is killing news staffs," he said. "How many young people do you know read a paper?"

This is the old debate, rehashed again. I just don't get it. What is so scary about people reading their news on a screen, on a handheld iPhone or whatever next-gen technology comes out of the woodwork? I just want to give Nelson and his generation a big group hug and say "It's going to be okay--good content will survive."

Writing coach and print professor Bob Berger, also an LA Times vet said to Nelson apologetically, "Noah is a futurist."

Bollocks. Noah is a presentist. The revolution is over and done with. Every single student in my class admitted (shamefully!) that the Web is their primary news source. I'm no futurist, those who reject the Web as the status quo at this point are pastists.

What is so terrible about instantly updating, searchable, interconnected news sources, available to anyone from anywhere? Actually, it's my favorite thing ever and I want it all the time, thanks very much.

Go ahead, call me an upstart. Reverse the word order and you get startup.

There are really two issues: 1) what kind of reporting will big papers do, and 2) how will they make money?

1) Berger and many others have said that the LA Times' biggest failing is the lack of local coverage that drives readership. This strikes me as a fallacy. Hyperlocal coverage is something that the blogger, the small-timers and the unpaid, semi-paid DIY community can do and do well.

What the big papers need to focus on is coverage on the Internet that they can uniquely excel at: the kind of news that requires a national and international network of bureaus, reporters and money. If you try to copy what the bloggers and locals are good at and will do for free, you fail.

2) The revenue issue. Of course classifieds lose to Craigslist. Of course full-page Macy's ads lose to Google/YouTube. It's already happened. Major papers need to figure out a new, adaptive revenue model or they're actually going to go under, and then we're in for a really scary world: one with all the local arts and entertainment coverage we can handle, but nobody corresponding from Iraq, Rwanda or Washington, D.C. I don't know what the answer to this problem is, but my hunch is that it is a sociological/economic modeling failure, not one of news-focus.

The big picture: how can people from my generation, who, in the words of grad student Amanda Becker "can't remember life without the Internet," change our dialog with those for whom the 'net is still new, scary and unknown. At this point, we're just spinning our wheels about the terms of the debate, while real news is happening. Who cares how it gets read as long as it gets read?

Nelson left with the statement: "Now I'm worried for the future of news reporting. But just remember, you can't take a computer into the john with you."

With all due respect, we may not take it to the toilet with us, but ask anyone under 28 what is the first thing they read when they wake up and the last thing they check before going to sleep. (Hint: it's not fumbling with a broadsheet full of day-old news.)

Responses:

From Janine Kahn on March 1, 2007 at 6:55 PM

"...But just remember, you can't take a computer into the john with you..."

Ah, Mr. Nelson, some of us -have- taken our laptops to that porcelain throne.

From Robert Niles on March 2, 2007 at 2:49 PM

I don't want to remember some of the places I've taken my MacBook.... Yikes.

But Noah makes a strong point. The flavor of the year in the newspaper.com world is hyperlocal. If newspapers want to adopt distributed, reader-driven reporting techniques to support that, great. But if they are going to impose the old, newsroom-driven information gathering model on that, then Noah's right. The blogs are gonna kill them on operating expenses.

First rule of business competition ought to be... go where your competition ain't. Newspapers have not faced competition for so long that I doubt most have the ability to ever figure where there competition exists. See my article today for related comment.

From Ryan Rivera on March 13, 2007 at 2:15 AM

You never answered Nelson's rhetorical question: "Who would read an eight-column article on the Web?"

Sure, I turn to the web morning, noon, and night while the MacBook in my lap slowly burns me infertile, but as much as I can and do read, if a single story is much more than a few scrolls deep, god help me I'm clicking elsewhere. Probably to newer (or at least different) news.

In my experience, the computer screen isn't conducive to focusing in on one story for more than a few minutes, and I don't think it's just me. And what do I do if I find a longer story I want to read? Print it out, of course.

There's a reason the digital book never took off.

As a repository for news, breaking or otherwise, there's no place like the internet. But until there's a waterproof laptop I can take with me in the tub, the long form print stories Nelson alluded to need the printed page.

From Suzanne Batchelor on March 14, 2007 at 1:23 PM

I read long news and feature articles on the net all the time (multi-page, over 1000 words). If the article intrigues me, I read the whole thing, short or long, doesn't matter. These days I read them on a flat-panel screen, technology that is easier on the eye than the subtly flickering CRT screen. Were those formerly ubiquitous CRT screens a factor in the "write short" mandate? I've thought so, but now I'm not so sure. I'd like to read a good research report on the issue of who does and doesn't read long internet articles (and a definition of long). Is design a factor -- do well-placed photos and graphics boost text reading length?

From Noah Barron on March 14, 2007 at 9:51 PM

Fair enough. I guess we really are talking about a format issue at its core. I don't have a printer and read all my news on the Web. I think the NYT did a genius move by making us click page 2 rather than having infinite scrollers down the page, but really, at this point, it's just a question of good user interfaces, not an actual shortcoming of hypertext, as far as I'm concerned.

But then again, I'm a weirdo and do all my best thinking by having the interwebs mainlined to my brain all the time, so go figure.

From Jonathan Morgan on March 18, 2007 at 11:09 AM

I think some people do dislike computers and the Internet as a delivery mechanism for news, but I think for some old school journalists, comments like these are indicative of a deeper concern, and one that they seem to have a hard time putting into words.

Bloggers, even those who choose to vigorously report, are not always doing the same work and producing the same content and value that newspaper newsrooms produce.

Blogs have lower operating expenses than papers partly because there is no paper involved, but more because they don't have the people who put the news through processes designed to insure that the output is fair, accurate, and verified. These processes are expensive, they sometimes keep news from coming out, and they sometimes fail spectacularly, but they also make it far less likely that the journalism a newspaper newsroom produces will target the wrong people or ruin the wrong careers.

I am a fan of blogs enabling bloggers to get news out there quickly, and it is a fascinating (and most of the time effective) social experiment to let other bloggers verify information after it has been published, in the public sphere, for all to see.

But I also am a firm believer in doing everything you can to get the story right from the get-go, and newsrooms are communities of people who care not only about news, but also about working together to ensure the fairness and accuracy of the information they finally place into the public sphere.

News people say they just report the facts, but I think this considerably devalues what they do. Newspaper people do a lot of work to make sure that they understand the information they gather so they can accurately portray it to their readers. This production of fair, accurate news that you have carefully vetted before it is published is not cheap or easy, but I think it is important and valuable, especially in a democracy.

From talking with journalists, it sounds to me like many old news people are, at a base level, concerned that the new Internet press isn't producing this kind of rigorously verified news, and I know I personally am waiting to see something on the Internet that can produce well-crafted news as reliably as a newsroom, regardless of how it is published or formatted.