December 12th, 2008
The Internet Killed the Newspaper, Not Journalism
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In a week when Pulitzer Prize expanded its eligibility to include online only news websites, Tribune Co (which owns Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times) filed for bankruptcy, and The New York Times Company announced its plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building to ease a potential cash flow squeeze, it isn’t surprising to see discussions about the death of the newspaper.
(Update: Ashish Sinha writes that the Indian newspapers are also in trouble.)
Clay Shirky at Boing Boing blames the newspapers for not seeing the writing on the wall –
By the turn of the century, anyone who didn’t understand that the business model for newspapers was a wasting asset was caught up in nothing other than willful ignorance, so secure in their faith in the permanence of their business that they assumed that those glaciers would politely swerve at the last minute, which minute is looking increasingly like now.
Virginia Heffernan in NYT asks journalists to embrace the change –
People who work in traditional media and entertainment ought either to concentrate on the antiquarian quality of their work, cultivating the exclusive audience of TV viewers or magazine readers that might pay for craftsmanship. Or they should imagine that they are 19 again: spending a day on Twitter (for instance). Then they should think about what content suits these new modes of distribution and could evolve in tandem with them. For old-media types, mental flexibility could be the No. 1 happiness secret we have been missing.
Mitch Joel warns that embracing the internet won’t save the newspapers –
The problem is, we’re probably kidding ourselves if we think that by embracing Twitter, Blogs and MySpace, that these two industries are going to be able to change much or find the record profits they were realizing in the days before the Internet changed everything we know about the news, journalism and how information spreads.
Finally, Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine argues that the internet killed the newspaper, not journalism –
(On) the question of whether there is a market demand - and a looming market failure - for quality journalism. I believe there is a demand, but then I’m a cockeyed American optimist and obnoxious internet populist.
Market failure? Well, that depends on how one defines the market and its players. What’s mortally wounded is old journalism and old models. There’s a market failure now in newspaper companies, not in journalism. They’re not the same thing.
Journalism isn’t dying… it’s changing.
What do you think? What should newspapers do? If you were running New York Times, what would you do?
Update: The Deal speculates on the possibility of Google Inc. buying out NYT while John Batelle argues that newspapers are best run as non-profit trusts and Google.org, not Google Inc., should buy it out –
I’ve argued in the past that we need new models for quality journalism, and that it’s the responsibility of companies like Google and Yahoo to help our culture get there. One might be to run our best journalistic enterprises as trusts, the way they do in the UK and elsewhere. There’s been a lot of speculation over the years that Google might buy the Times. I don’t think that’s a good idea. But if Google.org did, and then ran the paper as a trust, well, that’d buy a lot of brand burnish amongst a very important set of influential folks, just as massive privacy and monopoly issues are rearing their heads.
What should newspapers do?
- Allow journalists to do their jobs with serious, incisive reporting and not assume that success means a fatter bottom line and bonus checks for newspaper executives. Once that happens, it doesn’t matter if the news is on paper, online or a chappati. It is valuable and will be consumed.
- Not blame the internet for their own insipidity and complete lack of recognition of the fact that they no longer control how news is made or marketed.
- Read Athenae of First Draft and implement her advice.
Reply
@Maitri: You seem to be suggesting a non-profit model for newspapers, and it does seem that we are moving in that direction. However, the MBA in me continues to hopes that there’s a business model in news.
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