The Future of News

If a business is sick, one of the best ways to restore its health is for it to be acquired by a larger, healthier company in the same business. Such an acquiring business would already know how to succeed in that business, and have the financial resources to invest the funds for a turnaround.

Of course, that’s too complicated for America’s geniuses in the U.S. Senate, who often demonstrate their ignorance while claiming they are the smartest people in the room. Case in point is a Senate Committee trying to reverse the recent FCC ruling that allowed the new owner of the Tribune company to own a broadcast station and daily paper in the same media market. This was not a random act by the FCC, but a measure to ensure that the struggling LA Times could find an interested, experienced buyer to save it.

The Senators’ rationale — concern about increasing concentration of media outlet ownership in fewer and fewer private hands — reveals their complete ignorance of the subject. Haven’t they ever heard of the Internet, which is spreading-out “ownership” of the news into more and more hands? Haven’t they noticed that corporate size seems to have little to do with success on the Internet as the wildly successful Drudgereport and TechCrunch have shown us? On the other hand, maybe we can be grateful to the Senators. Through regulation that prevents the healthy consolidation of outlets, they are killing-off Old Media outlets faster than they would die a natural death, clearing the way for superior New Media alternatives.

OK, Mr. Murdoch, we get it. We have now noticed that the only newspapers you own in the U.S. are based in the NY area — the NY Post, the Wall Street Journal, soon Long Island’s Newsday, and various local newspapers in the 5 boroughs and nearby suburbs. Within the NY area, your papers appeal to every segmentable newspaper audience there is — the upscale and the downscale, the national and the hyperlocal, general news and business news, the urban and the suburban. Why are you not interested in being in the newspaper business in the nation’s center of power, Washington, DC? Why were you not interested in acquiring the Tribune to compete in the major Chicago and Los Angeles markets? For that matter, why not Peoria?

Since Rupert Murdoch could not be reached for comment (mostly because I don’t have his phone number), let me offer some possibilities. First, he might believe there is business value in controlling the “national conversation” and he needs to wrest it away from the NY Times. Each night the Times coordinates these top stories with the Washington Post — stories which are then slavishly followed by the TV networks, metro dailies, and ultimately local TV stations. Second, he might believe that of the nation’s two biggest news centers, NY generates more of the type of news that consumers want that Modern Journalism elites have denied them. While DC provides government news, NY is a better supplier of news of business, fashion, arts, entertainment, sports — even of the sensational and bizarre. Third, he needs to have leverage over government officials who might envy his power and try to regulate-away his ability to expand. Controlling what the national conversation has to say about them should do the trick. So, start spreading the news — Murdoch wants to be king of the hill, top of the heap. And as for New York — if he can make it there, he’ll make it everywhere.

The magnitude of this week’s changes to the opinion pages of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal (WSJ) cannot be overstated. In their “Review & Outlook” section they speak of moving their Letters to the Editor page to the main editorial page in “hope this will encourage an even more spirited exchange of views with our readers, who have never been shy about disagreeing with us or our contributors.” They also give words of welcome to a new weekly column by Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas, who will “[add] a prominent left-of-center voice to the pages.” Sounds like they are going out of their way to show respect to those who do not necessarily share their views, doesn’t it?

This is a major departure from Modern Journalism, which tells its practitioners that they are providing “the truth” based on facts, leaving no room to respect alternative opinions. After all, if journalists are presenting the truth, those who disagree must be “wrong” — if not stupid, selfish, crazy, mean-spirited, unhinged, or downright evil. The NY Times is the “gold standard” of this genre. But, who would want to read a paper that does not respect their views? Based on the Times’ soft circulation numbers, the answer appears to be “fewer and fewer.” Perhaps Rupert Murdoch has been inspired by Aretha Franklin, and has concluded that all his readers are asking for is a little respect (just a little bit). (H/T: Garry Rains)

This week at Pajamas Media I explore whether “fair and balanced” news is a good idea or just sounds good. Why is it not found in history? Could it be because nobody ever really wanted it? And, why do we need middlemen-journalists to tell us what the “straight-down-the-middle” position is, and where to place the fulcrum to deliver “balance”? Wouldn’t we be better off listening to a multitude of voices competing in a freewheeling marketplace of ideas, then deciding for ourselves? Check it out at Pajamas Media.

The NY Times and its genuflecting, kneejerk-reacting followers on the Internet are in a tizzy that the Pentagon actually had the nerve to — brace yourself — defend its policies, and even put them in the best possible light. Oh, the horrors. Doesn’t the Pentagon know that if Old Media does not agree with their policies, they must simply and silently allow the mainstream outlets to complain until the public loses all confidence in its government?

Where did Old Media get this idea that government could not defend itself? Well, it sure wasn’t from Thomas Jefferson. In a letter to George Washington, he said “No government ought to be without censors, and where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth whether in religion, law or politics.” Note the word “defense” — exactly what Jefferson expected the government to do.

And, they sure could not have gotten the idea that government could not defend itself from the “father of modern journalism” himself, Walter Lippmann. He served on President Wilson’s Creel Committee, whose purpose was to influence public opinion toward supporting U.S. intervention in World War I. Incidentally, their tactics included fabrications and wire-tapping. (H/T: Terry Heaton)

No, this “bedrock principle” that government cannot defend itself came from a TV show — a 1971 CBS brodcast called “The Selling of the Pentagon” (H/T: Richard H. Reeb, Jr.). It delivered a no-holds-barred attack on the public relations practices of the Department of Defense, charging that the Pentagon had become a huge propaganda machine selling outmoded cold-war attitudes and sheer militarism to the American people in order to win their consent for military solutions to international problems. Some charged that CBS’ film slicing and editing had distorted and misrepresented the remarks of 2 Pentagon spokesmen. When CBS President Frank Stanton refused to provide an investigating Congressional Committee with outtakes, he became an instant hero among his fellow journalists, though not of a public that might want to know the truth. Perhaps it’s time for the people to ask journalists to defend their own policies.

Just after 4:30 a.m. today, the unmistakable signs of an earthquake moved my wife and me within seconds from cuddling in our bed to huddling under a doorframe. After 30 seconds of violent shake, rattle, but thankfully not roll, we were back in our bed with the question, “where can I find out what just happened?” Instinctively, I ran for my PC, where I found info within minutes from a seismic center and additional stories as minutes passed. Instinctively, my less New-Media-addicted wife reached for the TV remote. Perhaps if it were 30 years ago, instinctively we might have run to the curb to see what the newspaper had to say.

It’s just one real-life example of how inferior Old Media really is for fresh, breaking events. TV can’t report the story until they have time to seek facts and package it all up in a TV production — and even then you have to catch the right channel at the right time to get the few facts that most of us are interested in. In the case of an earthquake, these are things like how strong it was, how close we were to the epicenter, and whether it caused loss of life or property. Who needs a reporter to verify the facts when an online seismic center or news service can deliver completely accurate info within minutes? Who needs human interest stories like the one we saw on local TV — and I’m not making this up — where a woman claimed it damaged a spring on her trampoline? In an earthquake, the principles of journalism are simply irrelevant, and the lag time required in Old Media renders their news useless. There is a major media shake-up underway, and it is all the Internet’s fault.

As Dan Gillmor points out, Princeton University will be holding a conference called “The Future of News” May 14-15th. While my blog’s name may have finally nailed the venue, Dan, my panel-mate, seems to have nailed the panel’s description. Titled “The people formerly known as the audience,” the description speaks to collective filtering and production of news by amateurs. That’s pretty different from my forecast of a multitude of voices competing in a freewheeling marketplace of ideas, featuring many topic experts who are amateur journalists. Should be an interesting discussion.

Believe it or not, registration is FREE and comes with, not one, but two free lunches. Are they trying to tell us something about what online news in the future will be like? To register, contact the Center for Information Technology Policy’s Laura Cummings-Abdo (lcumming@princeton.edu) in the very near future.

Cory Bergman directs our attention to the “Going Local…in a New Direction” panel at the NAB conference, where TV stations are urged to take a broader view of their local websites, given this category’s flat to down growth. They are being encouraged to launch products outside their core competencies, such as local ad networks, content aggregators, and hyperlocal communities.

But, you know something’s wrong when they’re encouraging businesses to do something they instinctively know not to do — get outside of their “core competencies.” And the good news is that one of those options is not — it’s just a stretch. Who says local TV can’t do a good job handling hyperlocal news? They have reporters, equipment, and tech skills. And, as I’ve written many times, hyperlocal news done right should be even more interesting to viewers — it more directly affects their lives than metro level news, which was always a choice forced upon consumers by technology, not something consumers ever chose on their own. But, there’s an even better reason for local TV to pounce on hyperlocal — when networks have cut-out local broadcasters as unnecessary middlemen in the supply chain, and all media has converged on the Internet, they will be competing head-to-head against former newspapers, online. And the only original content left, with an Internet full of the same stories at metro, national, and international levels is hyperlocal news. Go hyperlocal, young man!

In the immortal lyrics of Martha and the Vandellas, “Got nowhere to run to, baby, Nowhere to hide.” The first Presidential Primary under the glare of the Internet is illuminating places we had never seen before, and penetrating spaces candidates previously thought were private. It started three months ago in South Carolina, when Bill Clinton implied that Obama was simply another black candidate, no more viable than Jesse Jackson, mistakenly thinking his words would not reach and alienate black voters. A few weeks later, a then-adviser to Obama called Hillary a “monster,” mistakenly thinking that her on-the-fly request for being “off the record” would be honored by a British journalist and, in any event, inaccessible to Americans. One week after that, the Internet gave us a glimpse of another previously private space, Obama’s church, where we watched the disturbing rantings of his minister.

Now we are learning the futility of candidates being candid, even at fundraisers in front of friendly donors, reporters, and bloggers. Mayhill Fowler decided that her responsibilities as a “citizen journalist” for Jay Rosen’s OffTheBus.net project superseded her support for Obama. But let’s be honest — implicit and explicit agreements to be “off the record” have always stunk to high hell. It is a form of collusion between reporter and reported at the expense of the public. So, take it away, Martha: “Everywhere I go, Your face I see, Every step I take, You take with me.” Something to keep in mind for candidates who can no longer shake the gaze of the public.

The latest fad in future of news speculation is that social computing will dramatically revolutionize the news process. We are being led to believe that news outlets and news sources will be interacting with each other in what Jeff Jarvis calls a “press-sphere,” working together quasi-cooperatively to refine and advance the news. Audiences will be transformed from news couch potatoes into news athletes, switching from passive observers to active participants via social computing tools and opportunities. And suddenly, news consumers will have a taste for the work of amateurs — amateurs in their topic areas and in their writing skills.

Pardon me for being anti-social from the social computing crowd, but I think we’re getting a little carried away. Yes, social computing will be big, but in an area I consider news, but few others do — news of family and friends,. This “small news” is provided through platforms like Facebook, MySpace, and various blogging services. Note that there are no amateurs here — the user-generated news on these sites is being provided by experts in their small world of news microcommunities.

But when it comes to “big news,” at the community level and higher, social computing will largely be a way to distribute news, not to create it. News distribution will not resemble Jeff Jarvis’ “me-sphere,” with individuals at the middle surrounded by news sources. Instead it will resemble a supply chain, much as it does today, with news sources on one end, news consumers on the other, and middlemen-media in the middle. What’s new is that these new news middlemen will have to do more than just serve as passive vessels simply passing on so-called “objective, disinterested reporting” to audiences that could not get this news anywhere else. Instead, the middlemen will have to earn their keep by adding value that sets them apart — e.g. expert opinion, superior aggregation of news stories for specific audiences, entertaining writing styles, and developing a community of like-minded readers. Like talk radio, where only a small percentage of listeners call-in and can impact a program’s content, only a small percentage of online news audiences will make comments that make a difference. Social computing in “big news” will be no big deal.

Will the Internet deliver on its promise to deliver historically unprecedented free speech — speech that will not be suppressed in any way by government? So far, so good, but trouble is brewing. The Internet is still in private hands, despite the many politicians and U.N. members who would like to place it under government control. It has also thus far escaped the threat posed by Net Neutrality legislation, an invitation to the government to regulate the Internet, and the first step down that steep and slippery slope toward chilled speech. If you don’t think placing government in a power position makes a difference, compare the cowardly, government-friendly, network TV evening news programs that are carried by companies requiring government issued and reissued broadcast licenses to the hot political talk on the unlicensed cable TV channels.

The new threat comes from a branch of government that no one thinks of as a branch of government — trial lawyers. In Britain last September, we learned that the mere threat of a lawsuit against the Internet Service Provider (ISP) of an offending blog was enough for the ISP to drop the blog from its servers. Now the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto brings to our attention a lawyer serving a burdensome subpoena on a New Hampshire mother of two blogger whose content might hurt his client’s cause. Make no mistake about it — trial lawyers can use the full force of the federal government to get their way, in this case chilling free speech. Another front has been added in America’s battle to realize the Internet’s unprecedented opportunities for free speech, and another chapter in America’s hate affair with lawyers.

Perfect irony has been achieved with the opening today of one of the most expensive museums ever built — the $450 million, 250,000 square foot, 7-story Newseum news museum in Washington, DC. More aptly named the “Newsoleum,” this titanic building dedicated to the greater glory of mainstream media was built over the last four years — just as the industry hit a New Media iceberg and threatened to take down with it the livelihoods of tens of thousands of souls.

The ability of the builders to capture the state of the industry in steel-and-glass is truly remarkable. It is overbuilt, mirroring an industry that is overstaffed. With a $20 entrance fee, it is expensive for visitors, who can choose free alternatives instead (surrounding museums). That’s the same situation today’s newspapers find themselves in, trying to survive in a world of free online news. Its success is premised on the false belief that the public is as impressed by mainstream media as mainstream journalists are, reflecting a similar disconnect between news outlets and their news consumers. It is often said that “pride comes before the fall.” Perhaps that should be etched into the side of the building as a fitting epitaph to a dying industry.

No one yet has solved the riddle that will guarantee the future of news: How does an online news outlet offer news that is free, attract a large audience, generate sufficient cashflow to produce original content, and make a profit — all at the same time. MySpace may have come up with the answer, as it moves rapidly to incorporate e-commerce into its pages, and essentially becomes an Internet retailer targeting young audiences, segmented by interest for added value to advertisers.

Wait a minute — since when is MySpace a “news outlet?” Since it began. Many of us hold the myopic view that news is new information about serious, government-oriented issues, that is written by journalists who insist their work is true and objective, and is delivered in a dull, authoritative style. How about instead we think of news simply as “new information about a subject of common interest that is shared within a community.” Any new information. Any subject of common interest. Any community. What’s the news that interests us most? News that most directly affects our lives. Which community most directly affects our lives? Family and friends. Voila! By providing news of family and friends, MySpace is filling the most important space there is in the news business. Still don’t believe MySpace is “news”? Who owns MySpace? Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Class dismissed.

In London tonight, a debate was held with the proposed motion “The growth of PR is threatening the integrity of the press.” Some whining journalists are lamenting the fact that most news stories are the result of PR firms and similar folks coming to them, rather than journalists wandering into their offices everyday going “la-dee-da, I wonder what important story I’ll pull out of thin air today?”

Do dinosaurs live in caves? Have these journalists not noticed that for decades there has been an enormous industry much larger than their own consisting of PR firms, think tanks, spokespeople, press offices, and other communications people? Have they ever considered that none of these institutions would even exist unless their organizations believed they could regularly influence what’s in the news? Have these journalists not noticed that their newspapers would be just about empty without these indispensable people regularly feeding them ideas for stories, every one of which reflects a news ax to grind?

But most importantly, why shouldn’t these institutions be trying to get their stories told? That’s called “free speech” and it is what America is all about (granted, this debate was in London). PR firms and others in the news-feeding business have gobs of “integrity” — they are transparently representing the interests of citizens who happen to believe in what they are pitching. Perhaps journalists who would question their right to do so ought to have their own “integrity” questioned. To my friends and colleagues in London, I’d like to propose this motion for the next debate: “Did the growth of journalism threaten the integrity of citizens’ freedom of speech?”

Today’s basic formula for running a successful business is do what you do best, and outsource the rest. So, if it’s true that CBS is in talks with CNN to outsource reporting, they must think they can’t compete in news gathering, but can with its news stars, like Katie Couric, right? That seems like a stretch given Katie Couric’s poor ratings vs. the other network anchors, and her lack of a passionate following compared to cable personalities like Bill O’Reilly, Jon Stewart, Anderson Cooper, and Keith Olbermann.

In fact, the only reasonable explanation for CBS’ interest in letting CNN handle their reporting is that they are running-out the clock until the end of network news. They plan to milk the remaining profits until all news moves to cable and the Internet, while getting the most possible value out of Couric’s expensive and unfortunate contract. As I have mentioned, CBS was never particularly interested in making money from network news anyway, but simply considered it a cost of doing business. It was a way to demonstrate good corporate citizenship by airing government-friendly programming, ensuring renewal of their profitable, government-issued broadcast licenses. But in the new, relatively unregulated world of new media, no government licenses are needed. Personalities like Katie Couric and Vanna White will compete head-to-head for CBS’ valuable air time, and whoever draws the biggest audience wins. The wheel of fortune is now slowing on network news, and ultimately it will land on “bankrupt.” (H/T: Bob McCarty)

On one of their excellent weekly podcasts on tech journalism, hosts David Strom and Paul Gillin elicited a profound quote from a guest. Venture capitalist Bill Frezza of Adams Capital Management said, “we are in the post-integrity age of journalism,” expressing his concern that in the new, online news environment, deep-pocketed advertisers can easily sway the published opinions of cash and attention-starved bloggers with just a little bit of advertising. This concern about advertisers influencing content is nothing new. It has been a rallying cry for a century among mainstream outlets, purportedly serving the noble cause of “journalistic independence,” but actually serving the much less noble cause of allowing journalists to write whatever they want to write.

But, it’s unfortunate that journalists have spent so much time worrying about how the private sector might distort their news, while ignoring the only news-distorter that concerned the founding fathers — the federal government. On a daily basis, journalists have been routinely cutting news-distorting deals with public figures, not in exchange for advertising, but in exchange for superior access for interviews. Even Tim Russert, admired by the press corps for his allegedly tough, adversarial journalism, testified under oath that all his conversations with government officials are presumed to be confidential, and he never reports anything unless given explicit permission in advance. Which is to say, it will be hard for American journalism to have a “post-integrity era” when they never had an “integrity era” that preceded it.

The only surprise between my list of the 5 best books on journalism and that of veteran newsman Roger Mudd is that we do have one book in common. Of course, he actually agrees with the book’s content, while I use it to illustrate to my students exactly what is wrong with the way journalists think in the “Future of News” class I teach at Washington University in St. Louis. I’m not kidding.

My 5 favorite books are: 1) A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell. Not a book on journalism at all, but one that explains the difference between left and right political ideology. No journalist should ever claim to be objective until they have read this book, and no journalist would ever think to make this claim after finishing it; 2) Liberty and the News by Walter Lippmann. This is the book whose wacky ideas started the “modern journalism” movement, unnecessarily causing our nation a century of suffering. Learn how a rough-and-tumble craft called “journalism” came to falsely present itself as a scientific profession that delivered singular truths using objective methods backed by a process of verification.

Continuing: 3) The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach & Tom Rosenstiel. This book that Mudd also included on his list is as close to modern journalism scripture as there is, yet somehow manages to present the field as a cult. The authors seem oblivious to their own contradictions, and leave the reader believing there is no such thing as truth, objectivity, or the discipline of verification; 4) Bias by Bernard Goldberg. This book by a former CBS reporter gave permission for all to believe that the media are biased, which all but journalists now do; and 5) The History of News from the Drum to the Satellite by Mitchell Stephens. While this book reveals its NYU professor-author to be a man with brilliant insights into news past, I’ve recently learned that he has abandoned writing books on news, and instead now writes about atheism. Perhaps the decline of Old Media has left him believing that there is no God. Funny, but it had convinced me that there was. (H/T: Garry Rains, Larry Hallas)

An innocent comment by Rupert Murdoch suggests a far from innocent future of news. In a speech at Georgetown University, he predicted that as a result of increased competition, news will be available even to those who traditionally could not afford it. The history of news clearly tells us the result when that happens — news goes “low class.” That is, a larger percentage of news content caters to the less cultured tastes of the downscale. It means less politics and business, and more sex. violence, crime, and human interest. More titillation, less deliberation. More sensationalism, less restrained-ism. More T&A, less S&P.

We first saw this phenomenon in the early 1800’s, when the efficiencies of new steam-engine-driven presses allowed papers to drop their prices from 14% of a daily farm worker’s wages to a penny. Papers began running all sorts of material appealing to emotion and prurient interests. This trend stalled at the turn of the century, when the upscale seized the news industry back from the excesses of Yellow Journalism, and rallied behind the New York Times, which featured “all the news that’s fit to print.” Shut out of the mainstream news business, the downscale over time found other media to satisfy their cravings, including supermarket tabloids and TV talk shows like Jerry Springer. But as all news converges onto the Internet, much of it free, the high- and low-brow will be side-by-side, just one mouse-click away. Many journalists will have to cover stories they previously thought were beneath them in ways they thought were beneath them. Once journalists fantasized about changing the world. Soon, many will be happy just to supply the world with fantasies. Oh, how the mighty will have fallen.

Borat, a journalist? Incredibly, a Federal judge said “yes,” ruling against the real world financial analyst who yelled “go away,” then ran away — all the way to court — from Borat’s attempted stranger-hug on a New York street. Judge Loretta Preska ruled that the clip was “newsworthy” and attempted “an ironic commentary of modern American culture.” BwaaHaaaHaaa! Hey, judge, that’s a good one!

While it should make citizens smile, the judge’s ruling was definitely not for the make benefit glorious nation of Journalism. If that video deserves the same First Amendment protections as journalism, what doesn’t? The ruling exposes the lie that there is any way to differentiate a “journalist” from anyone else. The fact is that “journalism” is a non-professional profession that lacks any of the hallmarks of a true profession, such as agreed-to codes of ethics and best practices, licensing procedures, governing bodies, and requirements for continuing education. That’s why the effort to secure passage of a federal shield law that allows journalists to avoid testifying under oath has been so difficult. But actually, that was the plan from America’s beginning. The Declaration of Independence granted each of us equal rights, and the First Amendment grants each of us the freedom to use a printing press — which is the correct interpretation of “freedom of the press,” written at a time before “the Press” as we know it even existed. If Thomas Jefferson were alive today and heard the Borat ruling, no doubt he’d yell “is nice!” and give Judge Preska a big Kazakhstan hug.

Ken Paulson, the editor and senior vice president of news for USA Today, visited the campus of Washington University in St. Louis today, and I had the opportunity to hear his presentation and challenge his thinking both from the floor and in a pleasant chat afterwards. What I saw was, unfortunately, what I expected — an intelligent, successful, handsome, and charming senior Old Media figure who still cannot see what is now obvious to most Americans. So, I was not surprised to find myself rolling my eyes minutes after his speech began after he completely missed the lede about the steep declines in newsroom staffs and ad revenues, and went on to present the three biggest issues in journalism today as too much news of celebrities, arrogance, and use of confidential sources.

As American journalism’s designated “turd in the punchbowl,” I dutifully came up to the mic at the end of his talk, pointed out newspapers’ desperate fortunes, the fact that 2/3 of Americans believe they are biased despite their claims of objectivity, the remarkably low 18% of Americans who find newspapers highly believable, and asked whether he thought false claims of objectivity might also be considered to be a problem. For good measure I asked if he felt that “objective” American news was a superior model to London’s lively, partisan papers, which engage in debates to ferret out the truth. In return for my thankless task, I heard the usual insistence that his paper plays things straight down the middle, that an argument could be made that papers are right-wing because of their right-wing corporate owners (he couldn’t mean the NY Times’ Sulzberger’s and the WashPost Graham’s, could he?), that the images of all institutions — not just journalism — were being hurt by a more cynical public, and that conservatives are not drawn to jobs in journalism because they like things as they are.

Immediately after the session ended, I was approached by USA Today’s friendly Circulation Director Mark Elliott, who seemed quite sincere when he told me that he agreed with me. Well, when you think about it, of course he would. With a landslide margin of the public believing the media are biased, you would almost have to be a journalist these days, even at a newspaper, to believe that they are not — much less an individual who worriedly monitored the weakening pulse of the industry’s declining circulations. In my brief, one-on-one chat with Mr. Paulson later, he remained a cheerleader for newspapers — their present and their future. “Maybe I’m being naive,” he helpfully offered. Said the unhelpful turd, “Yes…you are.”