A New Journalism Model - News in a ‘Search Economy’

Arianna Huffington, along with NYU professor Jay Rosen and others, are causing a buzz today with their announcement of a new HuffFund to support investigative journalism with $1.75 million in contributions from The Huffington Post (HuffPo) and multi-billion-wielding The Atlantic Philanthropies. “This nonprofit Fund will produce a wide-range of investigative journalism created by both staff reporters and freelance writers,” HuffPo chief Arianna Huffington writes. She writes, further, that this is an attempt to preserve investigative journalism and the crucial role it plays in democracy “during this transitional period for the media.”

It’s good she puts it that way - that the support is during a transitional period. It’s easy to fear that going hand-out to foundations becomes the way those working in the field come to think of as the natural way of things. Others have laid out some of the dangers: Foundations want control; they have specific missions that may be in conflict with the purity of purpose required of investigative journalism; they can be quasi-governmental, slow-moving and bureaucratic. Yet, one could raise equally challenging views of investigative journalism that’s sponsored by commercial interests. It’s hard to find any really good investigative pieces about real estate in any newspaper, reliant as they are on real estate advertising. It’s easy to find reporters and editors who will tell of pieces being tempered for reasons they believe have to do with the need to not offend a sponsor (a.k.a. funder). The ability to continue great journalistic work has relied largely on the strength of character of those doing that work, and their bosses -- anyone from executives of TV networks to the families that run great newspapers. Today, perhaps, that will include the Arianna Huffingtons, Atlantic Philanthropies and Knight Foundations of the world. (An aside: I haven’t seen much discussion of the Medicis and other benefactors who have facilitated creation of some of the great art of our civilizations. Perhaps there’s an analogy there.)

Within the foundation-supported model, the most powerful news organizations will be one(s) that move toward self-sustainability. Mixed revenue models-- without the need to call on the generosity of benefactors -- are surely the best for a number of reasons I won’t get into deeply here, but include everything from creating offsetting revenue streams that bring in different types of cash flows (advertising, subscription, products, events, etc.) to not relying on any one benefactor, so that even if one or the other revenue stream dries up or drops out the core project(s) can continue. Jeff Jarvis writes that what can make this work is the one-percent rule that works in a “gift economy”: If one percent of consumers will support a project, the project can be sustained, as for NPR and Wikipedia. If the one-percent can, ultimately, sustain the journalism without foundation input or control, great. But it doesn’t have to be a gift economy. I’d argue that the one-percent rule is analogous to marketing -- one percent or fewer of people who see a marketing message will take action that justifies the marketing spend. And in this instance the product, itself, is its own marketing message. There is not a need for a separate marketing budget or PR spend (see Fred Wilson's recent Tweet on Twitter and Etsy getting on CBS TV without PR agencies).

And just as the need for short-term profit should not drive a company to destroy its core businesses, the need for ad revenue should not allow a journalistic enterprise to gut its ventures. The effects of that kind of thinking and acting is evident today. We’ve seen weather and sports and tech news blown out while simple coverage of community school boards and local politicians languishes.

The structure of newspapers has not been born of editorial need or service to the communities that consume them but rather commercial convenience. While separate sections for Local, National, International and Opinion may be driven by news decision and interest, one could equally imagine a newspaper where clearly delineated opinion about any given topic appears next to the relevant news story (much as is done with links and feeds digitally) or in which car news and financial news appears on the same page, rather than in separate ‘auto” and “personal finance” sections that serve advertisers of those types of content. Sections have been created and blossomed in those way to support advertisers in each of those verticals. In re-imagining the news business, let’s also free our thinking, as Rosen has done, from the need to have news be created solely by “professionals,” and also from the need to structure news sections and pages according to preconceived notions of what a reader is interested in.

In a “search economy,” people will find and assemble what they want on their Facebook and DailyMe and Netvibes and Instapaper and whatever other pages according to their interests. Those interests create a powerful profile, and “opt-ins” that give clues as to what those folks might be willing to support through contributions, purchases, ad viewing and more. That can then support the journalism they want and need, and, for those willing to tap it while serving them, make the news self-sustaining.

Explaining the Financial Crisis -- Not

My thoughts here.

Let a Thousands Cameras Bloom

Fox TV in Chicago emailed me (and a jillion others) today to say they're launching an experiment, to see what happens when you take live feeds from Fox cameras all over the U.S. and just slap them on a page. Upper right is a woman at a desk reading, and working on her computer, and talking to the camera a bit. On the page are myriad boxes from stations and cameras all over, dozens of cities and locales.

Later, I imagine, they'll add voting apps, maybe some social networking, perhaps even embedding. But for now, it's what they call a skunk works, and I see no harm in posting the link so they can get some feedback.

Newspapers' iPod Moment

Jeff Jarvis is asking for newspapers' "iPod moment" without fully describing what it is. Here's my response:

The iPod moment for newspapers will be when truly functional ePaper hits... color, touchscreen, wireless Internet built in, agnostic to standard, plays video, can work and read when not connected. A cross of the functionality of the iPhone, today's browsers and the TimesReader. It will be even more of a moment if that ePaper can also allow data entry for tagging and blogging, VOIP and so on. I dunno how many years.

Remember, people from MIT Media Lab and elsewhere imagined such a paper for the movie Minority Report. It was shown as USA Today in one scene on the train.

I agree with others, though, that it's coming incrementally. I can, today, do many of these things on my smartphone, and certainly on a laptop I carry most places.

Congdon Mainstreams Herself (to Oblivion?)

Amanda Congdon's "schtick" at RocketBoom was fun and offbeat and made you feel like you'd "discovered" her even if you were the 275,000th person to have viewed her video. Moving to ABC News, and then becoming a spokesperson for DuPont and American Express she's becoming, to my eye, just another "talent." She may do well. But what's different or original? Does she have a sustainable "brand"? How long can she last as someone doing the typical loud-voiced, mic-in-hand schilling for paying customers with no real personality or verve or anything that's uniquely her?

And this doesn't even confront the ethical issues Jeff Jarvis and Radar have explored, of being a journalist and a schill at the same time.

For CNN, Multiple Media, but Not on One Page

The new CNN.com design claims to show all of a story's media on one page. That's not quite true. It's showing all the media in multiple tabs on one page. But if I want to watch a video relevant to the moment's stop story, U.K. doctor-terrorists, I have to click off the text page and watch the video separately.

Maybe from a code perspective, this is all one page. But users aren't interested in code. They're interested in being able to watch a video while reading the story and maybe clicking on a map or even voting as they go. They're also interested – and this is missing from the CNN story page – in leaving comments. The more sophisticated ones are interested in tags, customizable RSS, submitting their own videos, and more. There are a few blogs shown, at least.

I wonder, too, if the linear, top down, approach will serve CNN well, instead of a wider screen approach. Do their stats not show, as most others' do these days, that people are on 1200+ pixels-wide and above screens, rather than 800?