You can see some of his and their work at

http://journalism.berkeley.edu/faculty/henry/

The whole newspaper vs. new media topic is a fascinating one. Do not get me started.

Also: “I can’t help but fear a future, increasingly barren of skilled journalists, in which Google “news” searches turn up not news, but the latest snarky rants from basement bloggers, fake news reports from government officials and PR cleverly peddled in the guise of journalism by advertisers wishing only to sell, sell, sell.”
In what way is that already not the case, never mind Google? Who needs basement bloggers when you have Fox News? Why is it I get more relevant news about the US from the international english press than our media oligopoly?

For the last ten years they have blamed everything for their eroding market share, now the axe is actually falling on the workers. The same reporters who coldly inform everyone that progress marches on and they need to retrain to be relevant (from autoworkers of the 70’s to computer programmers of the 00’s) now seem incapable of practicing what they preach.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Here is a news flash, 100 years from now, the news will still be a commodity irregardless of whether current traditional media companies survive. Maybe it is time to bring in new talent to run these companies as the current crop can’t seem to make the necessary adjustments to be successful in today’s marketplace for news.

One day, when I was at Columbia, I meet the University President and I congratulated him for the brilliant Faculty…

He gave me a great lesson when he said:

The secret of any great university, Mr. Giner, is not the Faculty but the quality of the students. If you don’t get the best students you will never hire the best professors.

Well… I hope that Berkeley is not an exception, but it´s hard to believe that brilliant students can have teachers that produce this kind of stuff.

John: I don’t have any answers to what the business model is for sustaining the good and necessary journalism that you and I want to see. I agree that this is everyone’s to worry about.

But my reply would be: read what he says (http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=12617) . Douglas McLennan, editor, ArtsJournal.com, reacting at Romenesko to Neil Henry’s column and to that right-on, Neil, sue-the-bastards letter I linked to earlier, puts it all very well (http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=12616)

…Look at the digital operations of most newspapers. While they say they’re working on it, their investment has been far behind the curve, and virtually every meaningful innovation in the digital delivery of news and building of usership has been made outside the newspaper industry. Most newspaper websites are dull, confusing and difficult to read, violating long-established principles of reader usability. At a time when social networking sites are showing how to build massive loyal communities, news organizations’ interactivity is rudimentary at best. Companies like Google have raised digital advertising to an art, making it easy for advertisers to find the customers they want. Where have newspapers been? Asleep, while Craigslist and a host of other competitors have eaten their lunch.

Newspapers started out with enormous advantages going into the digital age (remember “content is King”?) and have squandered it while others innovated. To take even one small example: there isn’t a single newspaper that has figured out a really usable way online to find out what’s going on tonight without lots of clicks and searching. So dozens of upstart online companies are finding a big audience. What a missed opportunity.

How many newspapers have reconfigured their staffing to reflect the new hybrid print/online reality? Why are high-paid editors and reporters uploading jpegs and podcasts when digital assistants ought to be doing the mechanical tasks? Fast-moving web companies have learned to move with audiences and make those audiences part of a community. Newspapers, for the most part, hold on to rigid models and jump on new tools (everybody blog now!) without understanding how those tools can be used.

…Google is an infrastructure, potentially the best friend any content producer has at the moment. Google sends floods of traffic around the internet in search of content its users want, presented in ways they can use it. Newspapers have always been about finding a readership and advertisers who want to reach those readers. There shouldn’t be a conflict here. Google is a reality. Any news organization that wants to make it in the new digital world better find a way to work with companies like Google and the next YouTube rather than thinking about “class-action suits.” Jeesh!

The giveaway for me in Neil Henry’s column is the sense that someone else should solve our problems because we are a public trust.

Google will next take over local retail advertising. So we need to get off our asses and build a competitor.

Except, she’s wrong about you all being computer scientists, so give it up. Actually, your true failing is as a businessman: good luck beating a well-done, FREE service.

Look, there is no such thing as a job in which you don’t need to innovate every once in a while, just as some of you did as that TV thing evolved. Railing against Google will get you as far as Detroit’s railing against Japan. Remember how that went down? Who’s #1 now?

Don’t you think it’s a problem if a company like google makes money directly and indirectly from news sources that it is either directly or indirectly threatening economically?

No. news.google.com provides a more powerful service in many ways to the local newspaper. Banning it would be like banning the automobile to preserve the buggy whip manufacturers. Or banning economical automobiles. You need to spend time on think how to go forward, not think about how evil the Internet is.

What are the new business models you’re proposing?

There are several quite successful now-online magazines and papers. Check out what they did.

Now they want consumers to subsidize their prideful and neglectful ways.

The First Amendment calls for freedom of the press, not a monopoly via barriers to entry.

It’s a big changing world out there and some classes (like mainstream journalists) are losing their previously privileged positons. Those that are talented and flexible will adapt and do well.

It is more than a little amusing that there are complaints and tsk tsks about the impact on journalism with a Thomson-Reuters combination or a Murdochian takeover of DJ but what seems like reflexive neutrality on what is going on in the business long term.

I don’t blame Google or Yahoo for being successful or excuse newspapers that aren’t monetizing their inherent and inherited monopoly on local. But when journalists — and I do think that still means something special — are hurting and aggregating publishers regard journalism as just another widget byte it’s clear that something is going to have to give. It is this bifurcation that is revolutionary and I think journalists and newspapers and anyone who depends on a free and flourishing press has to come to grips with it. That requires recognizing the phenomenon first.

What happens when there isn’t the structure to do enterprise? When institutional knowledge dies? When the public sees my take on the Supreme Court as valuable as Linda Greenhouse’s? When there isn’t anything unique to link to?

I think it is possible to take a macro view of all this without taking the bait when one argument overextends, or when lawsuits are threatened (thanks, Jay for that link. Sigh). I am worried about what may happen to journalism if its custodians fail, and I will take no consolation if it is their own damn fault. I lose either way.

I don’t understand why newspaper websites don’t make money. There are gazillions of ads, ads that pop up, ads that cover the content until you dismiss them ads in sidebars and ads in the articles themselves.

I think its because the organizations themselves are incredibly heavy. I would think that five well-connected and energetic people could cover and write up most of the news going on in the average-sized city: one for city politics, one for business, one for sports, one for entertainment and gossip and one utility infielder. Add a couple of interns to keep the Calendar of Events and sort incoming press releases and you’re there.

Instead, they spend a fortune on staff and newsprint to edit the incomming AP wire and give me their take on national and internaitonal stories. A take that is only slightly different from the take of a hundred other city newspapers.

How much money would the local rag save if they never ran another story on Iraq that didn’t have a local angle? I don’t want national politics or news from them either: I can get that at CNN and FoxNews. If they would just tend to their local business, they could downsize by an easy fifty percent and still give me more interesting content than they do now.

It’s the conceit of newspapers: we’re a big, important, “public trust”, so we must cover “all the news that’s fit to print.”

I say: “No you’re not. You’re my local newspaper. Shut up and tell me what is going on around here.”

And, get some competition already. If you have to, fund a start-up. A business without competition is clearly in the wrong business.

The trick - or rather as it stands in my case, the hope - is to go away and find someone to build a home-made version of Adify, DoubleClick, etc…

Arm yourself with that and, ideally, a recently made redundant newspaper ad salesman - there’s 100s of them about - and then go round every small business in the neighbourhood and ask them whether they want to carry on paying so many thousand pounds/dollars a month to Google and the like for their ranking - or else pay a fraction of that money per month to put their own banner ad on a popular local site that has its own exclusive content rolling across its pages.

My banner ad server was built by the mate of the guy I used to sit on a bus with; yes, http://www.twadservices.co.uk might be gawky, yes, it might not be very slick and, OK, so it’s named after my little lad, Tom - but it still tells Ady’s Skip Hire how many times his ad has been viewed and tells my Mrs when to invoice him.

And that’s all either of them ever need to know.