In the snarkoff recently about my holding journalists to account for the state and fate of journalism, commenters asked with good reason where I say journalism will be done, how we’re doing to watch government, and where the money will come from. I don’t have answers to those questions; I have guesses, notions, wishes. All I know is that we must explore and experiment with many models to find and invent what will work (that’s why we held the New Business Models for News Summit at CUNY).
It’s fair to expect me to put forward scenarios for the future of news. In a sense, that’s all I ever do here, but there’s no one permalink summarizing my apparently endless prognostication. So here is a snapshot of – a strawman for – where I think particularly local news might go. What follows is just a long – I’m sorry – summary of what I’ve written here over time and an extension of the one model I think we need to expand coming out of the conference, where one lesson I took away is that news – on both the content and business side – will no longer be controlled by a single company but will be collaborative.
* The next generation of local (news) won’t be about news organizations but about their communities. News is just one of the community’s needs. It also needs elegant organization. News companies and networks can help provide that. The bigger goal is to provide platforms that enable communities to do what they want to do, share what they want to share, know what they need to know together. News will become a product of the community as much as it is a service to it.
* The local news organization inevitably will be smaller because it no longer holds a monopoly in a scarcity economy. I’ve been accused of celebrating that shrinkage at the summit. That’s an artless and deliberate mischaracterization of what I said. I lauded the courage of the people in the room to start from the ground up and figure out what they could afford – to at last be realistic. In a market the size of Philadelphia, based on feasible audience and ad revenue, rather than a 200-400-person newsroom, they came out with 35 people and the job descriptions were different: lots of content creators, few editors, and the addition of people to work with the community. That was a start.
* News will emerge from networks. As I said after the conference, no one believes that 35-person staff can cover Philadelphia as the 300-person newsroom did; they will have to collaborate with the community, with, we hope, a network of a thousand or thousands. Some people will freely contribute to the news network’s efforts, recording school-board meetings for podcasts, say. Some will be former staff journalists now on their own. Many people will operate independently, as Deb Galant does in New Jersey. Some will be bloggers. Some will be freelancers. Many will need to be paid or they won’t join.
What I hope emerges are small, local Glams that provide support to members of the networks – ad revenue, content, promotion, training – so they grow. This is the fabled and as yet unattained hyperlocal news network. That support will come from those new job descriptions (editorial and business) in new news organizations and from other companies that build platforms. It’s hard to be Deb and operate totally alone; I hope that once networks exist, they will enable and encourage more to start reporting and join in. And that, I hope, can expand journalism past the necessary limitations of the old newsroom. Journalism can grow. But first, we have to create the platforms and networks for local news that will help it grow.
* The heart of the work of local news organizations will be beats. Dogging a beat with reporting is the unique value a news organization can contribute to the press-sphere. Those beats will surely include local government but likely should not include areas that are not local, like science or movies. Beat reporters will not just be producing stories. They will open the process of news in blogs. They will work collaboratively with experts, bloggers, and people in the community (see: Jay Rosen’s beatblogging).
* Editing will change. Editors will become more curators, aggregators, organizers, educators. Their jobs will be less about controlling a flow than encouraging and improving creation.
* Some – only some – journalism will be supported by the public. I have high hopes for David Cohn’s Spot.us with readers supporting reporters’ stories. We all hope NPR and its model can prosper and grow (though at a local level, that will happen only if stations create strong local value). Who isn’t also rooting for ProPublica? I hope its model can extend investigative reporting to local markets with local foundation and public support. See Richard Perez-Pena’s report on some such efforts.
* Investigative journalism will continue from the news organization and from collaborative efforts (see Ft. Meyers with its data-based investigations and Team Watchdog). The fear I hear constantly is that investigative journalism will be the first form to die. That would be foolish and news organizations will learn that. In a link-and-search economy, you must create unique content with strong value to get attention and audience. Investigations matter more than ever; they will have greater audience and thus business benefit. Note well that investigative and public-supported journalism will amount to a small proportion of the total journalistic effort. But also note that the resource that goes to investigations in traditional newsrooms today is also tiny (I’d estimate less than 1 percent). The seed of much investigation will still come from beat reporting and now it will also come more often from the public; execution will come from reporters and in collaborative projects. There are also new tools for investigators, starting with data analysis. With strong beat reporting, collaborative projects, and some public support, investigations could grow. But we can never have enough.
* Do what you do best and link to the rest will be a foundation of the future architecture of news. This is a necessity of efficiency – no one can afford to waste resources on commodity news – but also a necessity of the link economy, for it is through others’ links that original journalism will get attention and audience and the opportunity for monetization through advertising. Linking to journalism at its source – rather than matching it or rewriting it, as we have done – will become an ethic, a moral imperative of the new journalism.
* Specialization will take over much of journalism. We’ll no longer all be doing the same things – commodifying news – but will stand out and contribute uniquely by covering a niche deeply. Local newspapers, I believe, must specialize in being local and serving local communities. But journalists can specialize in other areas and links will feed them with audience. I use Brian Stelter’s old CableNewser.com as an object lesson here – he could cover cable news with more depth than any trade publication. See also Ed Silverman’s Pharmalot, which covered the pharma industry for the Star-Ledger but should and will become the source for the industry worldwide (while still interesting locals in the industry).
* Reverse syndication presents one possible model for supporting deep, specialized reporting of broad interest by national news organizations. For example, The LA Times should do a brilliant job covering the entertainment industry and as other papers and magazines lose their LA bureaus and cancel old syndication deals, The Times should tell them all to send audience to its coverage (giving back a share of revenue generated as a result) or The Times may share that coverage on other sites with its ads attached to help pay for it. The same can be true of Washington coverage; that is what Politico has started. The same will happen with foreign bureau coverage (see The Time’s Baghdad bureau, which the paper often tells us costs $3 million a year – more traffic won’t fully support it but it could help; see also Charlie Sennott’s international startup). The old syndication model will die, for there’s no longer a market for the second copy of a story. And the wire-service model is in jeopardy, for it commodifies news and cuts links to the journalism at its source and is expensive. I think reverse syndication as well as new ways to share original journalism are worth exploring.
* News will find new forms past the article, which will include any media, wiki snapshots of knowledge, live reports, crowd reports, aggregation, curation, data bases, and other forms not yet created.
* News organizations will be disaggregated as many functions are split off or outsourced. They will jettison production and distribution, the nonjournalistic, nonsales departments that add up to 60 percent of a paper’s cost structure.
* News organizations won’t be the only companies involved in news. Just as journalism will be collaborative, so will sales and technology be. EveryBlock will organize data; Outside.in will organize geo content; Daylife will organize news; Publish2 will organize links; Digg will help the crowd curate; Clickable will help sell ads; Google will serve ads; YouTube and Brightcove will serve videos; and on and on. (Disclosure: I’m a partner at Daylife and board member at Publish2.)
* Revenue will still come from advertising. The best hope is to find ways to serve a new population of small advertisers who never could afford to use newspapers before along with some aggregation of audience for regional advertisers. See Fred Wilson’s prescription from the summit.
This is just one scenario for one slice of journalism. I also will talk about national and international coverage, collaborative tools, APIs and other new means of distribution, and more. I wonder how we can make journalism using a million phones recording and broadcasting video (around any nation’s censors) or Mechanical Turk (a thousand eyes digging into documents) or algorithms mining newly transparent government documents….
Note well that none of this is new. The essential functions of journalism – reporting, watching, sharing, answering, explaining – and its verities – factualness, completeness, fairness, timeliness, relevance – are eternal, but the means of performing them are multiplying magnificently. That is why I so enjoy teaching journalism, because we need no longer pick a medium and its tools for a career but can select them every time we need to tell a story – and because journalism is no longer about preservation (it never should have been) but is instead about change and growth.
Could journalism die? Yes, but I have faith and optimism that it will survive, evolve, and grow. I believe there will be a growing market demand for journalism; I know there is a growing need.
In the day – when I was starting in this business and covered him – the late Mayor Daley of Chicago used to respond to his critics saying, “What trees do they plant?” Say what you will about him, Hizzoner planted trees. This is my sapling. But that’s all it is. We need many, many scenarios and – far more important – we need people in the position to execute, experiment, adapt, invent, and share what they do … fast.
: LATER: See Seth Godin’s prescription for The New York Times: a curated network:
The Times has always used freelancers and stringers to report and contribute to the paper. But how many? Why doesn’t the paper have 10,000 stringers, each with a blog, each angling to be picked up by the central site? You wouldn’t have to pay much per story to build a semi-pro cadre of writers and reporters. When you organize the news (delivering unique perspectives to people who want to hear them) you influence the conversation.
“Revenue will still come from advertising.” No it won’t. Revenue will be need to be peer-to-peer, either from subscriptions or direct pay.
Online advertising will never escape the pay for performance hurdle, and that means CPMs of under $1 for anything not closely tied to ecommerce (ie search and classifieds).
Jeff,
Glad you are returned from writing (looking forward to reading WWGD, although most speculation now seems to be around WSOD – What Should Obama Do).
If we look at who/what is covered by most sources (from Daylife, for example), its mainly politicians. So it seems “news or maybe News primarily concerns itself with politics and government.
I am curious to get your take on how some of the following fit into the news-scape:
1. financial research/reporting – particularly paid services such as Bloomberg or Reuters.
2. Specialty verticals – for example industry verticals such as auto, realestate, health. Its seems the specialty verticals have thrived because they can deliver targeted audience/leads, etc
3. Classifieds – announcements about what is for sale. Are these just specialized ads or does this constitute news about pricing, etc
4, Data – from crime statistics to morning traffic – hook up and API and some terms of use to pretty much any data store and we have more data as news.
Reason I ask all this, is I have a feeling that often the definitions of news and journalism might be cast too narrowly. And this is a shame as it means newspapers have ceded ground in great potential businesses and are increasingly left with the bits that are hardest to monetize.
Finally, what might journalists do, if their employers dont adjust? I like to remember that folks like Mike Moritz at Sequoia started off reporting and leveraged their skills into none-too-shabby investing approach. He’s not the only journalist who parlayed curiosity, intellect and journalistic instincts, savvy investing.
[...] Jeff Jarvis, the journalist/academic who helped pioneer the concept of Networked Journalism spends a lot of his time picking fights and sparking ideas. Today he has attempted to put something positive up on a scenario for news. [...]
[...] round-up and sound predictions by Jeff Jarvis today in “A scenario for news” — and some good reasons not to be [...]
[...] Jarvis offers a pretty compelling scenario for news: * News organizations won’t be the only companies involved in news. Just as journalism will be [...]
Hi Jeff
You say:” This is just one scenario for one slice of journalism. I also will talk about national and international coverage, collaborative tools, APIs and other new means of distribution, and more”
I am curious, as always, about your thoughts regarding big international news agencies and their role in this fast-evolving landscape.
[...] changes are being predicted in journalism. Jeff Jarvis predicts changes even deeper than those predicted for academia. Editors will no longer [...]
“Many will need to be paid or they won’t join.”
“Some – only some – journalism will be supported by the public.”
I think this is where the rubber meets the road, folks.
Apropos of Tex’ comment above:
“Why doesn’t the paper have 10,000 stringers, each with a blog, each angling to be picked up by the central site? You wouldn’t have to pay much per story to build a semi-pro cadre of writers and reporters.”
So, these semi-pros will chase down stories and work their beats for peanuts? And how will they pay their bills?
I second the comments above about people being paid for their efforts. I have no problem with anything that Jeff says here, but where in these scenarios is the money going to be coming from to pay people? You can’t pay peanuts and expect the standard to be consistently high. You also need an extensive infrastructure that’s paid in order to support people coming in at the low end as well as paying for experience at the high end.
This all sounds good in the theory, but much of it now is vaporware.
Great summary Jeff. Hopefully will get to dip my toes back into this sooner or later (well, as a passion of interest, time permitting!). A reminder of the stuff you and others came up with at the norgs un-conference:
http://norgs.pbwiki.com/The+Norgs+Unconference+Statement+Of+Principles
Some overlap, but not much.
[...] BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » A scenario for news Great post from Jarvis on the future of news. (tags: msm) [...]
“Why doesn’t the paper have 10,000 stringers, each with a blog, each angling to be picked up by the central site? You wouldn’t have to pay much per story to build a semi-pro cadre of writers and reporters.”
Perhaps they will pay their bills by taking payoffs or favors or free trips, meals, drinks, whatever from the subjects they are writing about. Who would know? Who would be on the lookout? In fact, who would be checking the facts of these 10,000 people? Oh, of course, all those people on line, self-editing, self-correcting, like the ones who gave us Obama-is-a-Muslim-with-a-fake-birth-certificate. Somehow that got out there and millions believed it, no matter the self correction. Imagine if it got out there under the imprint of the New York Times.
[...] long post by Jeff Jarvis… It’s fair to expect me to put forward scenarios for the future of news. In [...]
I dunno, man. I’d hate to see editors reduced to indulgent cheerleaders. I’d hope the editor/writer relationship would still be regarded as vital.
[...] laat zijn licht schijnen over de toekomst van de journalistiek. Of zoals hij het aanduidt: “A scenario for news.” Jarvis is professor en directeur van de ‘interactieve journalistiek’ richting [...]
[...] or hyperlocal stuff ·Tagged General ultralocal or hyperlocal stuff Wonderful incisive post from Jeff Jarvis which pulls together his thinking on the future of local news, including the hyperlocal and [...]
Also, all these scenarios seems aimed at people who have nothing to do but surf the web all day. I’m supposed to learn about my local school board by listening to a podcast? Screw that. I want five tight paragraphs written by someone with more than half a brain, not a “local gadfly” who likes to go to meetings.
And yes, the less money you offer, the less talent you will draw to any project. I look forward to our new dark ages. I hope all those trips to Dubai and elsewhere were worth it, Jeff.
Hi Folks,
I’m a stringer in Southeast Asia and second the comments on the payment issue for the pro-ams. I get paid ok, but pounding a beat gets very demoralizing when you’re told for the 10th time, “your check’s in the mail, old boy.” I’ve also worked full time for traditional newspapers, and doubt whether the average Mum, Dad, college student or whoever would put up with the bullshit those of us who drank the Kool Aid of journalism in our misguided youths.
Mr. Hill raises an interesting question. What would be considered unethical behavior in the new frontier?
[...] after all the perspective-altering news last week about the economy, reading Jeff Jarvis’s essay on how to cure the ills of the news business was a bit of nostalgia for the good old days and [...]
Jeff is right. Gresham’s Law will govern new media, at least for a while: free journalism will drive out paid. Reporting that’s free will boom. Reporting that costs money will disappear. I’m not sure why Jeff favors that outcome, but I agree with him that it’s the most likely near-term scenario.
[...] A scenario for news | BuzzMachine – "The essential functions of journalism – reporting, watching, sharing, answering, explaining – and its verities – factualness, completeness, fairness, timeliness, relevance – are eternal, but the means of performing them are multiplying magnificently. That is why I so enjoy teaching journalism, because we need no longer pick a medium and its tools for a career but can select them every time we need to tell a story – and because journalism is no longer about preservation (it never should have been) but is instead about change and growth. [...]
[...] different angle on the stories – not a better one. Jeff Jarvis, the renowned media commentator has recently blogged about his thoughts on the future of local news, which seem to mirror my [...]
Horace,
It’s not a matter of favoring the outcome. It starts with recognizing the forces that are already (long) underway and then figuring out what to do about that, including seeing new opportunities.
[...] BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » A scenario for news Jeff Jarvis: "It’s fair to expect me to put forward scenarios for the future of news. In a sense, that’s all I ever do here, but there’s no one permalink summarizing my apparently endless prognostication. So here is a snapshot of – a strawman for – where I think particularly local news might go. What follows is just a long – I’m sorry – summary of what I’ve written here over time and an extension of the one model I think we need to expand coming out of the conference, where one lesson I took away is that news – on both the content and business side – will no longer be controlled by a single company but will be collaborative." (tags: news+biz journalism local business+models processes problems media+evolution tidbits+fodder) [...]
[...] Jeff pensa a partir das notícias locais: organizações jornalísticas cada vez menores, orquestrando informações emergentes de colaborações recebidas da própria comunidade, estimulando “beat reporters” – jornalistas que produzem as notícias a partir de processos abertos, em parceria com especialistas, blogueiros e a própria comunidade – e a colaboração, a investigação com suporte da opinião pública, além de estratégias de economia da linkagem. Vale a pena conferir o artigo na integra. [...]
[...] a topic I am very interested in. Yesterday he wrote a post summarizing his thoughts on where local news might go. These are the highlights for me: “The next generation of local (news) won’t be about news [...]
[...] few days back, he gathered many of those ideas into one post. It’s step-by-step instructions on one (informed) guy’s recipe for saving the business: [...]
I am a leader in a newsroom that in recent years as made great strides away from a very hidebound 1970s view of the journalists’ role to a more curator/facilitator/collaborator culture (granted, we don’t yet have full buy in.) I’ve not seen any of the same re-thinking or action on the business side of the operation.
As you note, these are not really new ideas. Many have been discussed in one way or another for at least a decade. Your readers will find this piece, written more than a decade ago, scary in its prescience.
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/521/442
An excerpt:
“With this in mind, facts and information can circulate without interference and without the journalist acting as a filter. He will have to give up part of the power he used to have – based on his competence as well as on his position. The role of the journalist is changing into a more central figure, a mediator. He directs traffic, explores, becomes a facilitator of discussions. His new power will depend on his ability to animate a group of people, to develop methods and means to enliven the community, to organize information-gathering and use with the participation of the members of the community.”
This was published in 1997.
Makes you wonder where we’d be today if this author and others with similar vision had been in positions of influence in some of our newspaper companies.
[...] embargo, Jeff Jarvis, como ya lo mencioné en una oportunidad, insiste en su propio modelo a la hora de delinear desde su propia trinchera una posible fórmula periodística del futuro, en [...]
[...] writes this a few days after Jeff Jarvis laid out a compelling, thoughtful and well-reasoned “scenario for news” that details new business models and delved a bit into the role journalists will play in this [...]
[...] after all the perspective-altering news last week about the economy, reading Jeff Jarvis’s essay on how to cure the ills of the news business was a bit of nostalgia for the good old days and [...]
[...] after all the perspective-altering news last week about the economy, reading Jeff Jarvis’s essay on how to cure the ills of the news business was a bit of nostalgia for the good old days and [...]
[...] het blog van Jeff Jarvis, die alles wat hij ooit zei over de toekomst van de journalistiek nog eens samenvat, realiseer ik me dat nu niets belangrijker is dan de vraag hoe de journalistiek crossmediaal wordt. [...]
[...] focused on broadcasting authoritative snapshots reflecting the community to an entrepreneurial “elegant organization” to: provide platforms that enable communities to do what they want to do, share what they want to [...]
[...] lead of some of the folks I’ve profiled and do something entrepreneurial. This is a time of enormous shifts in the media world, and interesting ventures will continue to emerge even as traditional models of journalism [...]
[...] Winer called my scenario for the future of (local) news a “nightmare,” which may be a bit strong but gets the [...]
[...] around it, there is a worthwhile exchange unfolding between Jeff Jarvis and Dave Winer (starts with Jeff here, Dave answers here, Jeff responds, Dave [...]
[...] Winer and Jeff Jarvis have been going back and forth about the future of news, arguing vocerferciously (and eloquently) about the place of user-generated content as a [...]
[...] a comment » A scenario for news – Prognosticating about the future of the news business on his BuzzMachine blog, industry guru Jeff [...]
[...] Antwort ist einfach: Einerseits fehlt es den Zeitungen an Erlösquellen im Internet (sie müssen also etwas tun!) und andererseits sind sie aufgrund des hohen Traffics, den ihre Seiten generieren, geradezu [...]
[...] A scenario for local news – Jeff Jarvis Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)More on the Democrat-Gazette Salary Freeze and Niche PublishingLess isn’t more at the AJCIconadddictionnewspapers vs. blogs [...]
[...] of this has major implications on how we create the “elegant organization” called for by Jeff Jarvis to create the information in the first instance with mulitple [...]
[...] winning http://www.fixmystreet.com – the place to report problems in your neighbourhood. Even news blogger Jeff Jarvis wants it so much he’s (be)moaning that he can’t get one in the USA! Thanks [...]
[...] ones journalists could start and it doesn’t look pretty. It may not be. I believe, as I said here, that many slices will make up a new pie: more focused news companies contributing journalism and [...]
[...] Quanto e come sono importanti le news e l’Instant Op-Ed ed avere un team di esperti opinionisti pronti a commentare ed a coinvolgere i [...]
[...] reinvented in his Buzz Machine blog. You may want to start off your readings with this blog post, “A scenario for news.” Read it for the openings for investigative reporting that may exist in these various [...]
[...] of the new models for journalism being touted (for instance, by Jeff Jarvis) don’t take into account the fact that professional journalists actually want to make a [...]
[...] Jarvis lists a variety of ways journalism must change, including the next generation of local news will be about communities, [...]
[...] what’s your idea, big guy? “I put forward one such scenario here and this is why I’m starting the New Business Models for News Project at CUNY. The challenge is [...]
[...] mehr Effizienz, vernetzter Arbeit bei geringeren Kosten und geringerem Risiko. Ich habe ein solches Szenario hier vorgestellt und starte deshalb auch das Projekt “Neue Geschäftsmodelle für News” an der City [...]
[...] Jarvis and many others, including our blog, discuss the scenario for news and how to improve journalism. Citing local news, public journalism, citizen journalism and other regular entrants into the [...]
[...] disaggregating the car so we can reaggregate it from many new suppliers. Many are working on new scenarios for news. I see huge opportunities in rethinking and remaking advertising from the ground up. Every one of [...]
[...] are however, fundamental laws. We just don’t know them all yet. The idea that you can delay, or should delay the transition [...]
[...] Jarvis in “A Scenario for News” asserts that, “Specialization will take over much of journalism. We’ll no longer all be [...]
[...] Jeff Jarvis of Blog Machine agrees, but also thinks that local news organizations will be smaller and that the “heart of the work of local news organizations will be beats.” These beats will have a local focus work with bloggers and people within the community. The people within the community will have a hand in creating the news, as they might be the ones who are eye-witnesses. Citizen journalists are prominent in the news today already, and with encouragement by local media they will continue to have a big role. [...]
[...] thought you knew. ‘New media’ is a bit counter-intuitive. Take the time to think about the new rules of the road. And, perhaps consider a hiatus from giving interviews until you can be a good sport [...]
[...] [...]
[...] Brandon Mendelson, Mark Potts, Alan Mutter, Steve Outing, Philip Meyer, Jane Stevens, Dan Vigil, Jeff Jarvis, Clay Shirky, my pal Paul Andrews, and ex-Microsoftie Michael [...]