|
November 2, 2009
As we know, the newsprint newspaper business model, as based on advertising, is fatally wounded because we are moving to an online world with the screen is gradually replacing ink-on-paper. Hence the declining circulation of print editions of newspapers.
Will print editions will become the supplement to the online editions and web journalism? Though the digital path is the one to take if local journalism is to survive and thrive in future, new for-profit models for supporting this work have not developed beyond erecting paywalls.
What we know is that big newspapers, big magazines, big radio and TV are industrial age creatures. Some will persist in the new age that is coming upon us. But they will need to adapt to the new networked environment, where everybody can contribute.That environment is new.
If the old, tottering media equate control with value, then that value needs questioning. Currently, though newspapers add their own content, they largely act as filters for news agencies, such as AP, Reuters, AFP and the like. Newspapers sort information rather than generate it. Secondly, modern popular journalism, is increasingly dominated by a celebrity-obsessed agenda and often reports serious issues as if they are entertainment. Thirdly, the content that will probably go behind Murdoch's pay walls are sport, page 3 girls, the commentary of celebrity journalists plus other stuff wrapped in a package called quality journalism.
So it looks as if corporate media doesn’t do much of value. They are mostly about control and gatekeeping, even though newspapers no longer own journalism.
Former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie and Columbia journalism prof Michael Schudson in their Reconstruction of American Journalism say:
Journalists leaving newspapers have started online local news sites in many cities and towns. Others have started nonprofit local investigative reporting projects and community news services at nearby universities, as well as national and statewide nonprofit investigative reporting organizations. Still others are working with local residents to produce neighborhood news blogs. Newspapers themselves are collaborating with other news media, including some of the startups and bloggers, to supplement their smaller reporting staffs. The ranks of news gatherers now include not only newsroom staffers but also freelancers, university faculty and students, bloggers and citizens armed with smart phones….
A new online world is in formation --a network--and a new era of journalism. If there is no crisis of journalism, there is one of the legacy mainstream media.
What is forming is the shift from creating sites that people come to to creating platforms that enable communities to share what they know and need to know, with journalists contributing value – reporting, editing, aggregation, curation-- to the network. As this European Commission report says:
During the first development phase of the Internet, most content was still produced and distributed in line with the old, rather centralised, broadcasting model. Today's Internet contains more and more content generated by individuals or groups of individuals. Some contains more and more content generated by individuals or groups of individuals. Some consider this trend of user generated/created content to be one of the most essential elements of what is called the "Web 2.0"...
They go on to say that:
If a great part of amateur content which is shared online corresponds to a growing need of being creative and keeping in touch with one's community, another part of amateur content is being developed by authors with more continuous and serious aspirations whose aim is to achieve a reputation. It is in particular this last group that contributes directly to the increase of global knowledge,culture and creation.
I've no idea how this is taking shape economically I've no idea, but it is happening.
|
"I've no idea how this is taking shape economically"
There won't be a single economic model. Chunks of it will follow the gift economy model, which you already see when some bit of amateur video goes viral. The value is social and cultural, not monetary.
It will be interesting to see what the paywalls achieve. Not so much whether they rescue traditional media, but whether paywalling will change anything outside the paywall.
For example what will Poison Pen and Loon Pond do if trollumnists go behind a wall?