OJR front page archive for September 2010
One lesson from Facebook and 'The Social Network': Ideas are worthless
September 30, 2010
Tomorrow's opening of 'The Social Network,' David Fincher's film about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook, provides me a hook to make another point about digital entrepreneurship.If you're interested in a review of the film, I direct you to Twitterer extraordinaire Roger Ebert's review. (He quite likes it.) And if you want a detailed look at Zuckerberg, minus screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's creative filter, check out Jose Antonio Vargas's profile in the New Yorker.
I want to focus on one element of Zuckerberg's story, one that reportedly fuels some of the drama within Fincher's film: the accusation that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from other Harvard students.
Hear me on this: In business, ideas are worthless.
That's right. Worthless. It's the execution of ideas which gives them value.
Got a great idea for a new website? Know a sure way to improve community news? Have a tool in your mind that could revolutionize the Web?
Great. But, really, you've got nothing.
Until you do something to make your idea reality, your ideas are of no worth to anyone, save for your personal entertainment. Hey, it's fun to daydream about all that wonderful stuff you could do (and buy!) on that future day when your idea is implemented and becomes a hit. But only fools live in daydreams.
In the real world, reward goes to those who implement ideas.
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Web Journalism's rules of tech engagement
September 27, 2010
For some time now I've been preaching the Real-Time Reporting gospel, harnessing not only social media but all tech to advance journalism.And while it, for me, is based on core journalistic values, it was clear that some folks were thinking that my message was an attempt to replace the way we did reporting.
So, that prompted me to whip up the rules I present at nearly every talk I give. This is a list of guidelines to remember when you engage with constantly-evolving Web Journalism.
These are the rules I work under:
Rule #1. Journalism first, technology second
Technology is, and will always be, changing. Our journalism core values do not. News judgment and ethics are key no matter if journalism is in the form of pixels or paper or whatever.
The point to all of this - printed word, Flash interactives, video documentaries, visualized data, social media, etc. - is not the tool. Let's be clear, the point is serving the community by helping inform citizens in a democratic society.
It's the people and their stories, not the databases and Twitter followers.
We use these powerful tools to help advance our journalism, not replace it. Got it? Good.
Rule #2. If your mom says tweets she loves you, check it out
This is basic Journalism 101 and it applies to old-school and new media alike. Whether you get an in-person tip or a Twitter message (it's okay to call it a tweet, y'all), it is not fact. It's the start of the reporting process, not the end of it.
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Focus on creating value for readers to build and retain an audience online
September 23, 2010
Where's the value in what you write?That's the question that should be running through your mind before you hit the "submit" button on your blog or article input form. And don't think about the value to you, as a writer, or to your editor or your sources or even to your publication.
What's the value of your work to your readers?
The more specific, the better. I've worked with many journalists who, when confronted with this question, retreat to platitudes about a "well informed public" or "keeping watch on public officials."
That's nice, but smart publishers don't think about their readers as a faceless collective - they see instead a collection of individuals, people who make decisions based upon their individual needs and circumstances.
I'm ultimately an optimist who believes that most people care about the communities and want to stay informed. But I'm also a realist who recognizes that individuals have demands on their time and attention. Kids need to be picked up from school. The roof needs repairs. Grocery money's running out before the next payday. How are we going to visit our family this year?
There as many different lists like that out there as there are individuals.
Before the Internet, people had few choices about where to get news: the daily newspaper, a handful of TV stations, maybe a local radio newscast or two. If you wanted to know about a niche topic, perhaps you subscribed to a magazine. So reporters could get away with unfocused coverage and retain an audience. Newton's first law of motion worked to a publisher's advantage then. Readers had a habit of going to one of their few choices, and tended to keep coming back.
With the Internet, readers have no need to be patient with stuff that doesn't meet their immediate needs. Other sources stand ready to inform, a quick mouse click away. That's changed people's reading and viewing habits. Newton's first law works against individual publishers now: readers are clicking around, and will tend to keep clicking, unless you provide some powerful source to stop them.
What are you going to offer that will make a reader stop surfing?
Where's the value in what you write?
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Real-time Web + journalism = Real-time reporting
September 20, 2010
The next phase of the Internet affecting journalism -- for better or worse -- is well underway.We started out with websites, then blogs, then the interactivity of Web 2.0. Now, we are in the era of the real-time Web.
Which, for us in journalism, means real-time reporting.
This next phase has the power to improve and advance our journalism, but also puts our core journalistic values to the test.
Twitter's original question, "What are you doing?" has evolved to "What's happening?" Social media has made telling people where you are, what you think, and what you see, common expressions on the Web -- again, for better or worse.
Yes, social media is routinely filled with TMI and, quite frankly, unless information. But it also has given the average person the ability to document and share newsworthy and historical events the moment they happen are happening.
Just look at a recent example, from a few weeks ago: A gunman walked into the Discovery Channel's headquarters, taking people hostage.
The real-time Web went to work with first-hand witnesses.
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Nobody's making money online - except the folks who are
September 16, 2010
Rafat Ali's right. The news industry is a lousy business now.Competition's cutting ad rates as technology flattens the industry, destroying economies of scale that once enabled news companies to profit by consolidating into national chains.
That one-two punch is keeping online content businesses from scaling to the point where they become lucrative options for investment capital, or enticing targets for corporate acquisition.
If you're an angel investor or venture capitalist, why should you consider the online news business? There are so many more lucrative places to invest your money. If you really want to be in the online space, look toward the technologists who are creating tools that can serve not only online news but other segments of the information industry, creating a path toward growth that might reward your initial investment.
The elimination of steeply progressive income and capital gains tax rates in the United States a generation ago changed Wall Street's focus from finding companies with long-term income stability to finding ones with immediate growth opportunity. (If the government's gonna take 70 percent of all you earn this year, you're more concerned with spreading your income across the ensuing years than making it all up front. But when tax rates are relatively flat across income levels - as they are in the U.S. now [PDF] - you want to get the money while you can.)
Without a clear path to scale, content-driven online news businesses can't show Wall Street the growth opportunity that investors demand. People keep trying to create national website networks, but as I wrote in my recent piece on Patch.com (also linked above), the economics of creating an online network are nowhere near the same as those of creating a national newspaper chain a generation ago.
Ali referenced Nick Denton's Gawker network as an exception, noting Denton's discipline in giving ailing or slowly growing sites a quick hook. But making those decisions require sharp management attention, and Gawker's network, while successful, certainly isn't challenging old media chains such as Gannett or Conde Nast in either income or earnings. Again, the lack of scale.
But take a closer look at what I just said. The Gawker network is successful in that, by all reports, it is making money for Denton and his partners. Look around the Internet, and you'll find thousands of privately-held websites that are making money for their owners. Or look within the portfolios of corporately-owned sites, and you'll find many that run in the black.
Which brings me (finally!) to my point: While the online news business might be lousy for investors and entrepreneurs looking for a major hit, it's providing a healthy living for many others whose ambitions aren't so grand.
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Online Journalism or Journalism Online? There is a difference
September 13, 2010
[Editor's note: Robert Hernandez of the USC Annenberg faculty will be posting frequent commentaries to OJR about online journalism this academic year.]I'm a journalist, first and foremost.
It doesn't matter the medium -- pixels or paper, airwaves or WiFi -- I want to produce it, distribute it, consume it and innovate it. Oh yeah, and I want to save it.
But the term "journalist" is a broad category that is only increasing in size, filled with diverse specialties and talents.
So, if I may, I'd like to be more specific: I'm a Web journalist.
No doubt you've heard of this term before, but recently I've notice a misinterpretation of the term.
Please allow me to clarify it.
When I first started my Web journalism career, a good friend and mentor pulled me aside and planted a concept that still guides me today: It's not Journalism Online, it's Online Journalism.
There's a lot of difference between the two, besides the rearranging words. To me it is simple and powerful.
Think of it this way: Art Online or Online Art.
Take a photo of Mona Lisa, one of the most famous works of art in the history of mankind. Get a nice, hi-res image of the painting and post it onto the Web.
The single image on the Internet brings this classical piece of art to millions of people who never will travel to Paris to see it first-hand.
That is Art Online.
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Could an e-book rental marketplace help news publishers find a new source of revenue?
September 10, 2010
Here's a question for which I haven't been able to find a satisfactory answer: Where can I rent e-books?The first few folks I asked snorted: Rent books? Why would you do that when you can get them for free from the local library?
My local library, like many around the country, offers an e-book program called Overdrive. But Overdrive offers a meager selection of books through my local library - and none of the recent releases I'm interested in reading.
Why not get the physical book from the library, then?
Well, for the same reasons that many others choose to buy an e-book over a physical copy: the convenience of the e-reader and the desire to avoid having to deal with a separate physical copy for each title.
Just because a book's available for sale doesn't mean my library has it available for me to borrow, either. Like in many communities around the country, my local library's slashed its operating hours due to government budget cuts. Libraries are acquiring fewer books. Even a well-stocked, fully-funded library might not have enough copies of a popular new release to accommodate all the local residents who want to read it.
Inventory and distribution issues shouldn't be problems for e-books. Want a copy of a new release right away? The server whips one up digitally and sends it your way. No waiting for the local branch to receive a copy and shelve it. No waiting lists behind other library patron who got there earlier.
As I see it, an e-book rental program could run in one of two ways: Along an iTunes model, where readers pay to download individual titles that remain "live" on their reader and available to read for a pre-set length of time... or, a Netflix model, where readers pay to download a set number of titles, that they can keep to read indefinitely. When the readers wants another title, they "give back" one of their current titles.
Either way would work for me, but the second model could provide some interesting opportunities for the news business.
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Translating research theory into a multilingual local news website
September 7, 2010
Facing City Hall in Alhambra, California, a predominantly Asian and Latino suburb just east of Los Angeles, a life-size bronze statue of a man sits holding a newspaper. A plaque says the statue is dedicated to the memory of Warner Jenkins, "Alhambra's beloved journalist/chronicler." That is the closest a journalist gets to Alhambra's City Hall most days. Local news coverage in the municipality of roughly 90,000 is severely lacking. What exists tends to be in Chinese or crime coverage in the area's larger dailies.USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, responding to the dearth of reporting on Alhambra and the challenge of creating a media outlet in an ethnically and linguistically diverse area, launched the Alhambra Project in 2008. Michael Parks, former director of the journalism school and former editor of the Los Angeles Times, and Sandra Ball-Rokeach, a communication researcher and director of the Metamorphosis Project, collaborated with support from the Annenberg Foundation. Parks was interested in investigating how local news coverage could better serve communities. Ball-Rokeach, whose research had previously found that the Alhambra area had one of the lowest levels of civic engagement in Los Angeles County, wanted to explore how creating a news product grounded in local needs could improve that level of engagement.
I joined the project in early summer of last year. As a journalist with a background in immigration reporting – and with a smattering of community organizing skills, including managing a Brooklyn farmer's market and running a small non-profit magazine – my assignment was to take the research ideas and help translate them into an online news source grounded in local needs.
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Take two: How Patch.com - or any national network of local news websites - might succeed
September 3, 2010
Last week, I wrote about my skepticism of Patch.com, based on my assumption that the economies of scale available to a national chain of local publications online were no longer enough to overcome to the inherent cost advantages enjoyed by locally-owned publications.Locally-owned publications don't have to generate enough income to support regional managers and national executives. And if they're boot-strapped, they don't have to pay back VC or investors, either. That gives a local start-up a huge cost advantage in what's become a brutal online publishing market.
If you're going to start an investor-funded national chain of local news websites, you're going to need to achieve some economies of scale that allow you to make enough extra income - as a chain - to overcome the cost advantage enjoyed by your locally-owned competitors. I dismissed several such ways that newspaper chains achieved that in the past, arguing that they'd been made irrelevant by the Internet. But a reader challenged me: Are there any economies of scale that could help make a national chain of local online news sites profitable?
Hey, I love a challenge. So here are two I thought of this week:
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What can journalism schools learn from watching the University of Colorado?
September 1, 2010
Last week, news reports hit that the University of Colorado at Boulder would close its journalism school. By the end of the afternoon, the story had morphed a bit - CU wouldn't be getting out of journalism education, but instead convening a commission to look at restructuring the school, putting its future as a separate entity in question.(By the way, does anyone have an explanation why several of the former Big Eight schools transpose their initials? How does the "University of Colorado" become CU? I digress....)
Colorado's earned harsh criticism for the way it handled this announcement. Students, alumni and community members can't rally around uncertainty. Yes, journalism education needs to evolve as the industry also must, in response to the economic disruption the Internet has brought to the field. But if Colorado administrators couldn't have offered a specific plan for the future of journalism education at their institution, I'd argue they'd have served their community better by opening up their decision-making process, instead of putting forth closing the school as their primary option. Why leave your students and faculty hanging like this, especially when none of them will be on the commission deciding the school's fate?
Still, every college and university that teaches journalism must be prepared to address some tough questions about the future of journalism education. For that, Colorado's not alone.
A personal note: I've had some experience with university restructuring, having served as one of five student members of a 23-member student/faculty/administration task force charged with revamping Northwestern University's undergraduate division back in 1988. Done right, this is tough work that stirs up conflict right away, but in the hope of securing long-term stability for an institution.
I see three huge challenges facing higher education today, challenges that aren't unique to any journalism school.
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