A few episodes in news make me think of the article not as the goal of journalism but as a value-added luxury or as a byproduct of the process.
* See the amazing Brian Stelter covering the Joplin tornado and begging his desk at The Times to turn his tweets into a story because he had neither the connectivity nor the time to do it in the field and, besides, he was too busy doing something more precious: reporting. (It’s a great post, a look at a journalist remaking his craft. Highly recommended for journalists and journalism students particularly.) (And aren’t you proud of me for not drawing the obvious and embarrassing comparison to Times editor Bill Keller’s Luddite trolling about Twitter even as his man in Twitter, Stelter, proves what a valuable tool it is?)
* In Canada’s recent election, Postmedia (where—disclosure—I am an advisor) had its reporters on the bus do nothing but reporting, putting up posts and photos and videos and snippets as they went, keeping coverage going all day, maximizing their value in the field. Back at HQ, a “twin” would turn that into a narrative — as blog posts — when appropriate. At the end of the day, the twin would also turn out a story for print, though everything had pretty much been done earlier; this was more an editing than a writing task. I asked my Postmedia friends what had to be done to turn the posts into an article. Mostly, they said, it meant adding background paragraphs (those great space-wasters that can now be rethought of as links to regularly updated background wikis, don’t you think?).
* At South by Southwest, the Guardian’s folks talked about their steller live-blogging. Ian Katz, the deputy editor, said that live-blogging — devoting someone to a story all day — was expensive. I said that writing articles is also expensive. He agreed. There’s the choice: Some news events (should we still be calling them stories?) are better told in process. Some need summing up as articles. That is an extra service to readers. A luxury, perhaps.
* Of course, I need to point to Andy Carvin’s tweeting and retweeting of the Arab Spring. He adds tremendous journalistic value: finding the nodes and networks of reliable witnesses; questioning and vetting what they say; debunking rumors; adding perspective and context; assigning his audience tasks (translating, verifying a photos’ location); even training witnesses and audiences (telling them what it really means to confirm a fact). What he does never results in an article.
* I’ve been talking with some people about concepts for reorganizing news organizations around digital and I keep calling on John Paton’s goal to keep in the field and maximize the two things that add value — reporting and sales — and to make everything else more efficient through consolidation or outsourcing. As I was talking to someone else about this, it occurred to me that in some — not all — cases, not only editing and packaging but even writing could be done elsewhere, as Postmedia did in its election experiment. I’m not talking about complex stories from beat people who understand topics and need to write what they report from their earned understanding. I’m talking about covering an event or a meeting, for example. The coverage can come from a reporter and in some cases from witnesses’ cameras and quotes. The story can be written elsewhere by someone who can add value by compiling perspectives and facts from many witnesses and sources. It harkens back to the days of newspaper rewritemen (I was one).
Carry this to the extreme — that’s my specialty — and we see witnesses everywhere, some of them reporters, some people who happen to be at a news event before reporters arrive (and now we can reach them via Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare….), some who may be participants but are sharing photos and facts via Twitter. Already on the web, we see others — bloggers — turn these distributed snippets into narratives: posts, stories, articles.
The bigger question all this raises is when and whether we need articles. Oh, we still do. Articles can make it easy to catch up on a complex story; they make for easier reading than a string of disjointed facts; they pull together strands of a story and add perspective. Articles are wonderful. But they are no longer necessary for every event. They were a necessary form for newspapers and news shows but not the free flow, the never-starting, never-ending stream of digital. Sometimes, a quick update is sufficient; other times a collection of videos can do the trick. Other times, articles are good.
I’ve been yammering on for a few years about how news is a process more than a product. These episodes help focus what that kind of journalism will look like — and what the skills of the journalist should be.
The accepted wisdom of journalism and its schools was that storytelling was our real job, our high calling, our real art. Ain’t necessarily so. The accepted wisdom of blogging has been that now any of us can do everything: report and write, producing text and audio and video and graphics and packaging and distributing it all. But I also see specialization returning with some people reporting, others packaging. Can we agree to a new accepted wisdom: that the most precious resource in news is reporting and so maximizing the acquisition of facts and answers is what we need?
So what is an article? An article can be a byproduct of the process. When digital comes first and print last, then the article is something you need to put together to fill the paper; it’s not the goal of the entire process. The process is the goal of the process: keeping the public constantly informed.
An article can be a luxury. When a story is complex and has been growing and changing, it is a great service to tie that into a cogent and concise narrative. But is that always necessary? Is it always the best way to inform? Can we always afford the time it takes to produce articles? Is writing articles the best use of scarce reporting resources?
In a do-what-you-do-best-and-link-to-the-rest ecosystem, if someone else has written a good article (or background wiki) isn’t it often more efficient to link than to write? Isn’t it more valuable to add reporting, filling in missing facts or correcting mistakes or adding perspectives, than to rewrite what someone else has already written?
We write articles for many reasons: because the form demands it, because we want the bylines and ego gratification, because we are competitive, because we had to. Now we should write articles when necessary.
This new structure changes not only the skills but likely the character of the journalist. These days when I see young journalists talk only about their passion to write and tell stories, I worry for them that they will find fewer jobs and less of a calling. But when I hear journalists say that their passion is to report, to dig up facts, to serve and inform the community by all means possible, I feel better. When I hear a journalist talk about collaboration with that community as the highest art, then I get happy.
Let the record show that I am not declaring the article useless or dead. Just optional.
: Seconds after I posted this to Twitter, Chad Catacchio said that by the time the article is written, its’ not news, it’s history (albeit the fabled first draft).
: If you came to this post via Mathew Ingram’s response, please note that I adamantly disagree with his characterization of what I say. See my comment under Facebook comments at the end of his post.
: LATER: Jonathan Glick has a smart take on this notion, arguing that nuggets of news will be delivered as nuggets, freeing journalists to write analyses, adding their value, without the burden of conveying the latest.
There is nothing sacred about the article for the transmission of news. It is a logical way of packaging information for a daily print run of a newspaper and a useful format around which to sell display advertising. It has survived into the Internet age for reasons of tradition and the absence of better formats. We have come to accept it as a fundamental atom of news communication, but it’s not. Given faster, easier alternatives, the article no longer makes sense to mobile users for consuming news.News will go one way, into the stream as scannable updates, and analysis will go the other, toward a new long-form business model for writers. I believe it will be a happy divorce.
I like his take except for this notion that journalism will be defined by length. I find “long-form” to be often used in a rather self-indulgent way: I want to write a lot, it says, and I want you to read it all. Now I know that’s now what Glick is saying; he’s saying that one must have a lot to say, a lot to add. But I think we need another way to describe that than by the inch, for I’m sure we’ve all known too many writers who like to write more than inform.
: Amy Gahran has a very nice piece — not just because she agrees with me — whose subhed begins:
he cutting room floor of journalism is a sad place: all those facts, interviews, asides, anecdotes, context, insights, and media gathered during reporting which, while relevant and interesting, just doesn’t fit comfortably into the narrative flow or length/time limits of the finished story.This doesn’t merely represent wasted time and reporting effort. Many of those scraps are missed opportunities to engage readers and gain search visibility or links…
Well-said. She argues that we need to look at assembling news the way we play with Legos and we need CMSes that will do that (Storify is a start).
Byproduct, it seems to me, has connotations of waste or unwantedness, which I’m not certain is valid for all long form journalism. Many people value this type of journalism (ex. ProPublica).
Ironically, this is how Time Magazine functioned for years – reporters in the field gathering information and then the writers in NY creating the articles. The value (I think) is in the articles, in the processing, in the bringing intelligence and analysis to the flow of raw data. Without adding intelligence to raw data, you are often unable to see the forest for the trees. And that can be a danger. Momentary events can often be blown way out of proportion without a contextual understanding. We react to emotions rather than to a larger reality. Decontextualized ‘news’ is, to my mind, very risky without some greater understanding of a story. This requires education, it requires time, and it requires a commitment to educate your readers and viewers, as opposed to ‘informing’ them. There is little value to ‘information’ if you don’t really understand what it all means, which increasingly, I fear, we don’t.
Excellent. As Jay points out, the article is a product of the production cycle anyway. We’ve just assumed that it’s the way you present news. Now, it’s mostly olds. I like the use of the word “article” in this context. I’ve used the word “story.”
It goes without saying that the ability to edit, curate and weave together facts and pieces information is a key skill for any journalist in 2011. Pick your platform of choice and get to know the technology behind it — it’s benefits and limitations — but get to grabbing information, find ways to make sense of it and get it in front of the public.
The examples you have highlighted not only speak to your thoughts from a few years back on how the topic is really the building block of journalism and where value needs to be added — not the article — but also journalists doing their job as they always have.
“The quest to keep the public constantly informed” used to revolve around filling a notebook and pulling out the pieces into an article which was edited and published. In the case of Brian Stelter and others you mention, a digital, real-time notebook replaced the pen and paper and editors where left to do what they have always done.
On sports coverage this has been going for a while.
You have the minute by minute stream for the live part.
And you have the article to summarize and contextualize. I find this model really useful but frankly, once the event is over the experience of reading the article is much superior… like having a well cooked dish.
as a reader, totally agree with the food analogy. I found this article thru twitter which I love not just for the range of info I can get – and humour – following the royal wedding tweets while watching was a scream – but more for the links to well-written articles but, Twitter does not give the pleasure in reading that you get from a great article.
The Guardian news blogs are listed at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog A key feature is one can switch on ‘update automatically’ and leave a blog running in a small window showing the time of the latest post, so that one can easily see when there is a fresh post added.
The recent NHS on http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/blog/2011/may/26/nhs-reforms-live-blog is a good example as it reported news as it broke from a speech by Nick Clegg [11.38 am].
This is an exciting group of thoughts, Jeff. I hate to be a wet blanket, but as an Editor whose staff is told to write a certain number of articles each day, I wonder how this model works with ad-supported and thus presumably pageview measured text publishing.
Working on a treatise on the link economy — leading to research in it — as we speak. Start here: Look at Facebook.
As both a vivid online news reader and a journalism graduate (working in PR now, though), I’m not sure if I can fully agree. Maybe it’s just a matter of wording or language: What exactly defines an “article”, or asked in a different way, wouldn’t many blog posts qualify as “articles” and could be used with more or less editing in “classic” media as well?
In my own news consumption, I use Twitter for instance to a large degree as a pointer to longer, in-depth pieces – be it blog posts, news articles or other type of stories. Of course, during bigger events like elections, crises or the Eurovision Song Contest I follow “live coverage” on Twitter and other channels (and contribute if I feel I have something to say.)
Nonetheless, if it’s something truly newsworthy (in my mind), I alway return to the wrap-up on one platform or the other. In that respect, an article for me is definitely no luxury – if it’s a byproduct of the process of gathering and evaluating information, I can live with that for sure.
And, as stated above, I would consider myself a digital native – I guess many people who have not yet fully arrived on the Web (or Web 2.0), might not even notice the news chunks published before that have formed the story they are reading. Maybe that’s a bit different in 5 years, though.
It’s not so different from the classic rewrite desk: Reporters phoning in details to someone who will craft a story..
Two buts:
1. Sooner or later, someone will have to buy an ad. That usually resides with the article. If you don’t have to make a living at it, say you’re retired or a starving artist or you have a day job, you could build robust coverage of your community through Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. If you want revenue, you have to have a “point of purchase.” Fortunately, Twitter is good at click-throughs. Andy Carvin is brilliant; live critical thinking is just what the live web needs. He’s the Perry White of Twitter. It’s remarkable to watch how he turns the first exclamations of “My God, that’s gunfire” into useful information. And I’m inspired to replicate it locally, on smaller stories. But he doesn’t have to sell ads. (He does, however, promote donations to NPR in his Twitter feed.)
2. If you can’t copyright the facts, you don’t own the facts, and you have a hard time selling them. Can you sell your stream, or someone else’s stream, if your brand is good enough? A paid subscription to your Twitter feed is as unlikely as ads in your feed. The article is what you own and can sell, if it’s good enough. A compelling Michael Lewis or Mark Bowden narrative is golden, something no one else can chop up and sell. All they can do is link to it and say, “Just go. Read it. You must.”
Isn’t this the point of http://storify.com/ ?
The problem with these esoteric discussions is that they are internally focused and that’s precisely the kind of thinking that got us into trouble in the first place.
It’s rare when the discussions are externally focused, i.e. customers. We can argue forever about what news, information and value added are, but we won’t determine any of it. Our customers will, and they could care less about whether news is byproduct of the process.
Only when we know what they want will we be able to develop a viable business model. The efforts to reach out with cafes, bloggers and community engagement initiatives are nice, but let’s face it, they are neither definitive nor quantitative.
It is crucial to find out what customers and potential customers really want (readers and especially advertisers). More importantly, the industry must determine, with reasonable accuracy, what those needs will be in the future.
I hate to oversimplify the issue, but it all starts with and builds upon Marketing 101; that is determine the needs of the market, then develop products to meet those needs.
Objective news reporting can be done in the moment, but can be even more objective with the benefit of hindsight.
Blogging implies self-editing. Tweets aren’t usually written by one person then edited by someone separated from the emotion of the event.
We all saw how ridiculous the Gulf War television coverage was with reporters shouting as Scud missiles flashed behind them. Anderson Cooper reported while being attacked; hardly objective reporting, but certainly timely and emotional.
Timely news is important, but time lends objectivity, something news is quickly losing. Ken Burns once said he’d never do a documentary about anything that happened less than ten years ago. Even ten years is too short a time to have any meaningful or deep perspective on a subject within the greater context of history.
Bloggers/micro bloggers will always outflank more traditional reporters in speed, but few have really questioned their objectivity or accuracy compared to newspaper reports.
Jeff: There’s a big distinction between knowing what is going on and understanding what is happening. The newspaper that you foresee is the newspixel. Here I am sure you are right. There will be an ongoing framework that provides the background, updated slowly and full of links, and the ongoing rolling feeds. We will still need reporters who are accountable for the quality and reliability of what is provided, guides to that part of the information torrent. But in this world the newspaper ‘article’ belongs to the analogue era where an industry lay between the events and the publics.
But in addition to the worlds of reporting news that you are brilliant on, there are other needs. I think what is happening in Iran after the Arab Spring could be hugely influential, I am baffled by the large number of Republican candidates in the US who seem to be semi-deranged but might become president, I’m aware that if they can tackle corruption India could be the most dynamic democracy in the world by far, I am bewildered by what Germany and France think they are up to with the Euro. All these stories will influence my life and that’s before I get to Scotland’s challenge to the existence of the UK where I live and the Turkish elections (where one of my closest friends lives) and the revolution of the younger generation that has taken off in Spain. I cannot follow all these stories live or in a rolling format. I’d not have time to breathe. I want an overview update that makes sense of them for me, that summarises the lines of force and the balance of processes and gives me a view. I don’t want a ‘neutral’ report by the way, I want a honest analysis.
Then there are the stories that need investigation. Remember, the biggest story of our time, the financial crash. Surely that called for an article or two to warn us, as well as a facebook page, or rather a facebook page with an article saying why it needed to be followed!
http://livingstories.googlelabs.com/
curious why this didn’t seem to get any traction…or did it?
strikes me as quite amenable to jeff’s thesis (not a perfect 1-to-1 fit as presented, but with the code in hand could be bashed into shape).
Background is a space-waster? You, sir, are an idiot!!!!
And you, sir, are a sweetheart, indeed.
I’m not sure why I should respond civilly but… Background is important but it can now be a link, you see, and save space for more content of current value. That is one of the benefits the link brings.
People don’t have time to read for pleasure anymore. Jeff is simply pointing to a common web reporting practice and you’re being rude.
Hi Jeff, Great post. My quibble is that I don’t think people enjoy great writing any less than they used to, so I would think Journalism students would want to pursue the two activities equally, and neither live-reporting nor writing should be consolidated or outsourced. I agree live reporting – e.g. via social networks – is hugely important and challenging (and personally as a news consumer, I absolutely love it), but it lacks conciseness. If William Strunk and others are correct in that readers crave excellent (read concise) “vigorous writing”, then it seems to me article writing will always be as important as live-reporting.
Eric Boutilier
Thanks for this post. Your examples are great and I agree with Terry Heaton that using “article” instead of “story” clears up the explanation.
I’ve been working with storify.com so I can have my student reporters use it to report for Chicagotalks.org. I don’t see my students getting exposure in practice or in theory to “do-what-you-do-best-and-link-to-the-rest” ecosystem, much less being asked to come up with ways to report using what I guess I’d call the consciousness stream that social media and all of our keitai – handheld tools – are allowing all kinds of people to produce. Nice work.
[...] tornado in Missouri, media theorist and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has written a post about how the “article” or traditional news story may no longer be necessary. With so much real-time reporting via social networks, he says, the standard news article has [...]
I wonder if this kind of live reporting is the short tail, perhaps the shortest tail possible. Is there still a long tail?
[...] tornado in Missouri, media theorist and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has written a post about how the “article” or traditional news story may no longer be necessary. With so much real-time reporting via social networks, he argues that the standard news article has [...]
[...] The article as luxury or byproduct « BuzzMachine [...]
[...] not hard to see where Jeff Jarvis is coming from, when he argues that the article is now the defacto luxury or byproduct of news production. Because everything gets broadcast in bits and pieces as events unfold using whatever platform [...]
While I am not a journalist, I find it interesting that a journalist would write an online article about articles being a luxury or byproduct. As more noise than knowledge gets generated daily on the internet, I am becoming more inclined to look to “traditional” news outlets, including those in the alternative press, to sort through the crap. Also, I was so dismayed by the way the writers at Huffpost were treated that I rarely read Huffpost anymore. Journalism is not marketing. Hello! Is anyone listening?
It’s nice to see someone who understands the disconnect between free content and labor, rather than the typical blind consumption of free information.
But to Jeff’s point, if the whole world saw an event live, does a news organization need to rehash what everyone already knows in long-form text? Maybe not. But in the end the story needs to be monetized by eyes on ads or through a subscription fee. In a larger sense, the “noise” factor – the speedy dissemination of word-of-mouth news via social networks and amateur blogs – devalues the long form news article because the masses may not bother to read it once it’s been written, edited, and delivered.
I tend to agree with both Mathew Ingram and you, and I’m scratching my head because I still do with many of the ideas on both your posts.
I do, however, have a quarrel with your headline. I don’t think articles are a luxury. I also don’t think anyone said Twitter was a replacement for journalism, as his headline implied.
But I do think we need more articles, as Ingram wrote, (and in whatever form they might come — as a Storify post, for instance) and that we shouldn’t waste resources churning stories that don’t add value, as you’ve so eloquently stated.
So why is there a disagreement?
P.S. I’m posting a version of this comment on his blog.
Luxury is not a bad word. As I said in my comment to Mathew, I want to raise the standard for when and why we do articles and what value they add. In a time of scarce resource, they should be treated as a luxury, done for good reason and done well. Wine is a luxury. And a necessity.
I think Jeff and I agree about far more than we disagree — I regret that my headline has implied more of a chasm between our views than really exists.
Mr. Jarvis and Mr. Ingram disagree to agree. Over wine, perhaps. Now a question: How critical to the future of news is a provocative headline?
Jeff, great look at journalism by digital/social media. I wonder if a couple of vital core values/roles haven’t gone missing in action as media moves to digital? For example:
- fact-checking – eg recent AZ shooting and NPR misstep; stunting by badvocates fooling AP on several stories.
- correcting the record: so much happens, so fast that corrections are almost irrelevant and certainly without impact or visibility.
- objectivity: blurring between news stories and opinion pieces in every media
- context, perspective: seems to me this at risk in digital reporting? articles, as you say are a luxury, but also a necessity for context, perspective
- editorial oversight: there is great value in the role of editor and gatekeeper which self-publishing doesn’t often enable
- curation: I think journalists are struggling with the role of curation in the new media; and they’re not trained for it.
Training for journalists, just like PR people in the digital age is going to require brand new approaches, and fast. So far educators aren’t keeping up with the speed of digital. There are not many Renaissance Reporters who can do it all – write, report, edit, shoot pics and video, post to web, program, publish, market, sell and more – and still produce high quality product.
All of a sudden we DO need specialists. They’re just different specialties. Yet I hope we don’t lose some of the most important pieces in the product puzzle.
Don’t get me wrong. I love digital/social media but sometimes the patchwork quilt of news bits is just babble. And, we certainly don’t need more babble!
Thanks again for a thoughtful post!
> I wonder if a couple of vital core values/roles haven’t gone missing in action as media moves to digital? For example:
…
>- objectivity: blurring between news stories and opinion pieces in every media
The media was never all that objective. In fact, even the pretense of objectivity is fairly recent.
It’s an interesting thesis. And you seem to recognize exceptions to the argument. But I think the idea of whether an article must bring value to what has already been reported live via blogging and twitter misses an important point: there isn’t one single audience out there. There never will be. Long form writing and blogging, and everything in-between, will be absorbed by different audiences at different times, with different levels of interest in the story. Twitter can be captivating, but it’s an inefficient means of catching up on a story.
I’m not sure if one form of reporting can live without the other.
“But I think the idea of whether an article must bring value to what has already been reported live via blogging and twitter misses an important point: there isn’t one single audience out there”
This is the key point and I wonder if Jeff is mistakenly assuming that all media consumers his own voracious appetite for information.
Thinking of my own media habits, there are times when I obsessively follow a story and it’s true that often the article can seem superfluous. Other times I ignore all the Tweets and blog posts, either because I’m busy or the story doesn’t matter that much to me. In those cases, the article is essential.
I do think, though, that Jeff is absolutely right to signal that the article is no longer the given end product of all journalism.
Maybe it makes sense to think of the article as fulfilling that role that used to belong to newsweeklies. At their best, a newsweekly add context and perspective to a story. At a minimum, they were a good way to catch up on stories that you had ignored over the week.
[...] Jeff Jarvis afferma che l’esperienza di Stelter è l’evidenza di come l’articolo sia spesso un lusso o un prodotto giornalistico complementare: il live blogging diventa una risorsa e un modo per riuscire a raccontare in tempo reale un particolare evento. La condivisione dell’informazione che si instaura tra redazione e giornalista, inviato o reporter, assicura la possibilità per riconsiderare il processo di creazione delle notizie. Non in tutti i casi, certo, afferma Jarvis. Tuttavia l’articolo appare sempre più come il prodotto finale di un’integrazione di molteplici fonti informative, elaborato da più giornalisti, quelli di redazione e quelli che si occupano direttamente del reporting. [...]
[...] BuzzmachineJeff Jarvis looks at recent demonstrations of live news coverage, such as Brian Stelter’s tweets from Joplin, Mo., and Andy Carvin’s tweets documenting the Arab Spring, and wonders whether they show that articles are sometimes “a value-added luxury” or… Read more Share this: Tweet this! [...]
[...] toimintaympäristö kuin broadcast- tai printtimaailma. Hyvä esimerkki tästä on Jeff Jarvisin blogissaan esittämä huomio: journalismin vanha perusyksikkö, artikeli, on verkkojournalismissa oikeastaan journalistisen [...]
Jeff, this is right on. The “article” is a construct, and now only one vehicle among many options. We can no longer assume the end product of information gathering (in journalism, “reporting”). Unfortunately (in all fields, not just journalism) we mostly do. For 15+ years of the web/internet age, we’ve only grafted familiar old products onto new media (“articles” posted on web sites, “reports” offered as PDF downloads, etc.). Your post correctly challenges that practice. Thanks. I added a snippet on it here http://digitalinfo.org/snippets/3/ Hopefully it does your post justice.
Thank you for the interesting article. I’m always intrigued when someone takes a snapshot of the industry and provides a way out, or up, or through to viability. The problem is, it is only a snapshot. Three years ago, no one was using Twitter. Three years from now, what other platform will present itself to give us the digital content that everybody says they want (but no one seems willing to pay for).
And that is the problem. Throughout your article, while you made excellent points, it doesn’t speak to the economics of the industry. Yeah, Brian Stelter had interesting tweets from Joplin, but someone had to pay to send him there. Perhaps someone already on the ground there could have provided those little snippets of timely information, but someone else didn’t, Brian did, and someone paid to send him there. How does that news organization make money off those Tweets? I’m with Brian Cubbison on that. If all you are doing is linking to other places, the viewer is not lingering on YOUR page, which is where, hopefully, you have sold ads. If you have nothing on your page that will cause people to stay there (article, story, etc.) then you can’t sell it. If you can’t sell it, you can’t afford to send anyone to Joplin.
Yes – this is the problem with live tweeting an event all day. At the end of the day, is there data to support the value? If you’re tweeting from the courtroom all day, you’ve been indirectly marketing your end-of-the-day work product.
But can you tell me how many people simply read your feed without visiting your site to read the full story, or without watching your news cast or hearing your report in the air? You’ve given away your news, sentence by sentence, all day. This is a live eye on the news gathering process, rather than a finished product. Are your info tweets interspersed with ad tweets? “I’m leaving court for lunch at Mike’s Lunch Truck now!”
This is an excellent conversation because a lot of people in the news industry will adopt a tool simply because they can, but with little regard as to whether it can be monetized. Frankly I like the idea of tweeting from the field to provide an offsite writer or producer with live info. A radio reporter can have the actual broadcast running in an earbud as he/she gathers info, but it absolutely must be contributed to a monetizeable product. Otherwise, the reporter is simply generating pageviews for Twitter or Facebook, which does no one any good.
“* See the amazing Brian Stelter covering the Joplin tornado and begging his desk at The Times to turn his tweets into a story because he had neither the connectivity nor the time to do it in the field and, besides, he was too busy doing something more precious: reporting. (It’s a great post, a look at a journalist remaking his craft. Highly recommended for journalists and journalism students particularly.)”
newspapers used to have people who made sense of intermittent reports. they were called rewrite men (always male in those days).
rewrite was an important function – you might have several reporters on a scene, calling ini news bits as they happen. and the person at the office wove them into a coherent story. rewrite people knew their cities, knew how to spell, and knew what was news and what wasn’t. a bunch of raggedly assembled tweets is a poor substitute.
incidentally, a “value-added luxury” sounds like an oxymoron – if it adds value, it’s not a luxury.
[...] to a similar view but spun a different conclusion. Noting some of the same forces at work, Jarvis carries this to the extreme and describes “the article as luxury or byproduct.” Many of his readers took this to [...]
[...] BuzzMachine: “The article as luxury or byproduct” Posted in: Advertising, Branding & Marketing, Gaming & Social Media, Media & Publishing, Web & Technology About the author of this article, Emma Hutchings: Emma Hutchings is a daily contributor to PSFK. Emma is a Film Studies graduate, freelance writer, movie reviewer and blogger from the UK. Her favorite topics are gadgets, tech, art, design, tv & film. more…. $(document).ready(function() { $('#twitter_reactions').twitter_reactions("http://www.psfk.com/2011/06/the-future-of-news-is-the-article-an-archaic-luxury.html/"); $('#twitter_count').twitter_count("http://www.psfk.com/2011/06/the-future-of-news-is-the-article-an-archaic-luxury.html/"); }); [...]
[...] BuzzMachine: “The article as luxury or byproduct” Posted in: Advertising, Branding & Marketing, Gaming & Social Media, Media & Publishing, Web & Technology About the author of this article, Emma Hutchings: Emma Hutchings is a daily contributor to PSFK. Emma is a Film Studies graduate, freelance writer, movie reviewer and blogger from the UK. Her favorite topics are gadgets, tech, art, design, tv & film. more…. $(document).ready(function() { $('#twitter_reactions').twitter_reactions("http://www.psfk.com/2011/06/the-future-of-news-is-the-article-an-archaic-luxury.html/"); $('#twitter_count').twitter_count("http://www.psfk.com/2011/06/the-future-of-news-is-the-article-an-archaic-luxury.html/"); }); [...]
[...] post has generated some spirited debate on journalism blogs, including Jeff Jarvis questioning if traditional news articles might be a luxury in the Internet age and Michael Ingram’s response to Jarvis, “No, Twitter is Not a [...]
[...] sostiene che l’ articolo diventerà un lusso o un sottoprodotto di una parte importante del processo che io immagino sia il live-tweeting o il live-blogging. Ma [...]
[...] « The article as luxury or byproduct [...]
[...] day later, Jeff Jarvis cited a number of examples of real-time news coverage that are leading him, as he put it, to “think of the article not as [...]
[...] j-prof Jeff Jarvis used Stelter’s Twitter reporting to argue that the article is no longer the core journalistic product, but a byproduct of the journalistic [...]
[...] Jeff Jarvis, who argues that “the most precious resource in news is reporting,” Glick argues that “the news” should be given away for free, as a loss leader [...]
[...] I’ve managed to piss off some who think I’m killing the article (I’m not; instead I’m raising the bar, arguing that articles need a reason to exist and [...]
[...] are being urged to “show their work” and make the process of reporting a public activity. Are there ways to make the practices and products of humanities research interesting to [...]
Jeff, you have provoked an essential discussion here. Chances are, the solution lies someplace between “the article as value-added luxury” and “tweets are all you need”–and chances are you know that (but our business needs provocateurs right now).
You and others in this comment thread have emphasized repeatedly over the last few years that the most fundamental change the news business is experiencing is the [r]evolution from a one-way to a two- or multi-way conversation. The news consumer–”the people formerly known as the audience,” as your friend Jay Rosen puts it–is in control now, the luddites are told, so you’d better listen to them and take heed.
A couple of them have dared to poke their heads into this comment thread, and have been roundly ignored by the grownups. Up yonder a ways, Leigh Squires expressed a frustration common to users. No one here gave Leigh the time of day.
With that silence, you answered the question at the end of Leigh’s post: “Is anybody listening?”
Back to work:
[...] Jeff Jarvis, journaliste américain, professeur et auteur du livre “La Méthode Google” a publié sur son blog une note dans lequel il se demande si l’article journalistique tel qu’on le connait n’était pas voué à devenir un …. [...]
Jeff – Right subject to provoke, wrong conclusion. http://georgebrock.net/is-the-article-a-luxury-a-byproduct-disintegrating-or-simply-over/
Let’s get this straight. We need someone in the field collecting information, then we need an additional person back in the office, processing the raw data. Hmmm. Can’t help but think of those old movies where the reporters go charging to the phones. The technology has changed, but the process has not.
[...] has been a flurry of discussion surrounding the units of journalism. Jeff Jarvis posited that the “article” was merely a luxury (the time to read articles certainly is). Articles are wonderful. But they are no longer necessary [...]
[...] l’article serait désormais à ranger au rang des objets du web en voie de disparition. La thèse de Jarvis et ses implications sur le traitement de l’actualité par les [...]
[...] Jeff Jarvis’ Buzzmachine: The Article as Luxury or Byproduct [...]
[...] cred than I ever could, and I’m more than happy to defer to them in what Jeff Jarvis calls the “do-what-you-do-best-and-link-to-the-rest [...]
[...] interesting, often entertaining and more than occasionally grating. His May 28th blog post titled The article as luxury or byproduct reverberated across the media sphere – as provocative pieces are meant to, regardless of the [...]
[...] He will be disappointed to learn that we agree more than he wishes. Here is what I am really saying about the [...]
[...] He will be disappointed to learn that we agree more than he wishes. Here is what I am really saying about the [...]
[...] to a similar view but spun a different conclusion. Noting some of the same forces at work, Jarvis carries this to the extreme and describes “the article as luxury or byproduct.” Many of his readers took this to [...]
[...] interesting, often entertaining and more than occasionally grating. His 28 May blogpost titled « The article as luxury or byproduct » reverberated across the media sphere – as provocative pieces are meant to, regardless of the [...]
[...] cred than I ever could, and I’m more than happy to defer to them in what Jeff Jarvis calls the “do-what-you-do-best-and-link-to-the-rest ecosystem.” The point is that new tools [...]
[...] échanges passionnants qui se sont déployés autour du post de Jeff Jarvis cette semaine : “The article as luxury or byproduct (l’article considéré comme un luxe ou un [...]
[...] of storytelling that we have become familiar with in newspapers and other forms of media — should no longer be the default for every news event. In many cases, Jarvis said, the article or story should be seen as a “value-added luxury or [...]
[...] a recent blog post, Jeff Jarvis committed journalistic heresy, questioning the use and future of the article, the most common product of newspaper journalism. “An article can be a luxury,” he [...]
[...] He will be disappointed to learn that we agree more than he wishes. Here is what I am really saying about the [...]
[...] today on newspaper articles, which some like digital/social media commentator Jeff Jarvis has deemed mostly outmoded, and [...]
[...] He will be disappointed to learn that we agree more than he wishes. Here is what I am really saying about the [...]
[...] He will be disappointed to learn that we agree more than he wishes. Here is what I am really saying about the [...]
[...] He will be disappointed to learn that we agree more than he wishes. Here is what I am really saying about the [...]
[...] Another discussion carried over from the past couple of weeks: CUNY j-prof Jeff Jarvis’ post late last month describing the article as “luxury or byproduct” of the journalistic [...]
[...] Another discussion carried over from the past couple of weeks: CUNY j-prof Jeff Jarvis’ post late last month describing the article as “luxury or byproduct” of the journalistic [...]
[...] aqui passou batida, mas é bem interessanet: Jeff Jarvis, da Universidade de Nova York, discute o fim da matéria (no jargão jornalístico, como chamamos a [...]
[...] the importance of articles vs. live news coverage such as tweeting and blogging. It started with Jarvis’ post a few weeks ago suggesting that articles are sometimes… Read more Share this: [...]
[...] Digital Storytelling: Jeff Jarvis threw down a gauntlet to the newspaper industry some weeks back when he declared the article to be a luxury, or by-product of the journalistic process. John [...]
[...] A recent example, for me, is Frédéric Filloux’s critique earlier this month of a Jeff Jarvis blog post on the status of the article in [...]
[...] Digital Storytelling: Jeff Jarvis threw down a gauntlet to the newspaper industry some weeks back when he declared the article to be a luxury, or by-product of the journalistic process. John [...]
[...] – as is his custom – stirred a lively debate with a couple of recent pieces about the “death” of the article as the end product of the journalist’s job. In brief, he says that an article is too static [...]
[...] in journalism since before Web 2.0 had a name – stated in his blog, BuzzMachine, that: “A few episodes in news make me think of the article not as the goal of journalism but as a value-added luxury or as a [...]
[...] article аѕ a unit οf journalism wіth thе assumption thаt thе small inverted-pyramid article іѕ аƖƖ thеrе [...]
[...] in journalism since before Web 2.0 had a name – stated in his blog,BuzzMachine, that:”A few episodes in news make me think of the article not as the goal of journalism but as a value-added luxury or as a [...]
[...] He will be disappointed to learn that we agree more than he wishes. Here is what I am really saying about the article.First, far from denigrating the article, I want to elevate it. When I say the article [...]
[...] di minuto in minuto e non ha più senso impacchettare il classico, lungo articolo testuale che, come dice lo studioso Jeff Jarvis, è ormai diventato un vero e proprio lusso (richiede troppo tempo e risorse. E, poi, rischia di [...]
[...] place on the social web, turning ephemeral comments into enduring narratives. A story, Jeff Jarvis notes, can be the byproduct of the process of newsgathering — the [...]
[...] place on the social web, turning ephemeral comments into enduring narratives. A story, Jeff Jarvis notes, can be the byproduct of the process of newsgathering — the [...]
[...] Picture What’s wrong with the article, anyway? Jeff Jarvis explores this question in “The article as luxury or by-product.” This essay provoked lots of interesting reaction, such as from Matthew [...]
[...] its cycle of utility. (John Bethune has a good summary of some of the arguments, including those by Jeff Jarvis and Matthew [...]
[...] analyst and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has written about the idea that the story format is an antiquated model that no longer serves the purposes that real-time and digital media require, and there is a lot of [...]
[...] analyst and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has written about the idea that the story format is an antiquated model[6] that no longer serves the purposes that real-time and digital media require, and there is a lot [...]
[...] analyst and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has written in regards to the concept that the tale format is an antiquated model that now not serves the needs that real-time and digital media require, and there’s a lot of [...]
[...] din televiziune e încercarea continu? de a-?i g?si propria voce. Ceea ce afi?ezi, poate deveni lux, produs secundar sau element [...]
[...] Jarvis, ‘The article as luxury or byproduct’, Buzzmachine May 28, 2011 ‘There’s the choice: Some news events […] are better told in [...]
[...] Jarvis, ‘The article as luxury or byproduct’, Buzzmachine May 28, 2011 ‘There’s the choice: Some news events […] are better told in [...]
[...] fällt mir schwer, das zu schreiben, aber ärgerlicherweise hat Jeff Jarvis vermutlich mal wieder Recht. Der Artikel als journalistische Form ist heftig gealtert und sieht im Netzzeitalter allmählich [...]
[...] in journalism since before Web 2.0 had a name – stated in his blog, BuzzMachine, that: “A few episodes in news make me think of the article not as the goal of journalism but as a value-added luxury or as a [...]
[...] article by Jeff Jarvis did an excellent job of informing the reader about the possible directions that [...]
[...] We all know print journalism is a rapidly changing industry. Some even believe articles are nearing their way to completely being a thing of the past. One of those believers is Jeff Jarvis as he explains in his post on Buzz Machine. [...]
[...] Jarvis does not hate the article. He does not think that it should entirely go away, but he does see most of the articles written [...]
[...] a post on Buzz Machine, Jeff Jarvis makes his case for whether the article is needed in journalism. He [...]
[...] The Article as luxury or byproduct: [...]
[...] Jeff Jarvis and Jonathan Glick theorize about the future of news articles. Will they cease to exist in the presence of instantaneous news gathering through social media such as Twitter, Facebook and blog posts? Will news snippets become one thing and analysis left alone for the articles? [...]
[...] articles state that the way journalists report on news is changing. I agree with Glick’s conclusion that the [...]
[...] Jarvis implies on BuzzMachine that news articles are bound to die, and that we’ll be getting our news in snippets from [...]
[...] grown to accept, know and love this saying. And the process is what Jeff Jarvis says the article is about. Jarvis says the article is the goal of the process. “An article can [...]
[...] Jarvis’s article, tells it’s reader about the direction that journalism is currently [...]
[...] is something that I think both Jeff Jarvis and Jonathan Glick would agree with me on. The two writers recently wrote articles on the news [...]
[...] would argue against Jeff Jarvis’s view that the article is becoming a mere byproduct of reporting. The background and analysis is [...]
[...] examples stirred Jeff Jarvis to wonder either articles infrequently are usually byproducts. If we can wade in a stream, what’s a indicate of a wrap-up [...]
[...] I was reading the Wizard of the East, Jeff Jarvis, questioning the need for articles in the near future http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/05/28/the-article-as-luxury-or-byproduct/. [...]
[...] article a text by jeff jarvis made me think about the relation of events to news and to texts. it could be analysed as a relation [...]
[...] y la dispersión de gran parte del debate. Jeff Jarvis, lo que sugiere con picardía en “El artículo de lujo o como subproducto” , es analizar ejemplos de informes de Twitter y los blogs en ??vivo. ”Algunas noticias [...]
[...] http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/05/28/the-article-as-luxury-or-byproduct/ Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. Comments RSS feed [...]
[...] examples prompted Jeff Jarvis to wonder whether articles sometimes are just byproducts. If we can wade in the stream, what’s [...]
[...] That requires us to take time, not simply react (the darling of the 24/7 news cycle). There is an argument from some quarters, such as by Jeff Jarvis , that you can simply tweet and if wrong correct it later. The story is a process, not a product, [...]
Storify is a super cool app, but its impossible to clearly tell what it does from the website! They need better marketing messaging.
[...] says, news is a process now — a story may begin with a simple tweet or retweet of a fact, and then evolve into a traditional story; or it may begin as a tweet and turn into a blog post but neve… in the print edition. In many cases, while the reporter working on that blog post or story is [...]
[...] says, news is a process now — a story may begin with a simple tweet or retweet of a fact, and then evolve into a traditional story; or it may begin as a tweet and turn into a blog post but neve… in the print edition. In many cases, while the reporter working on that blog post or story is [...]
[...] says, news is a process now. A story may begin with a simple tweet or retweet of a fact, and then evolve into a traditional story; or it may begin as a tweet and turn into a blog post but never… in the print edition. In many cases, while the reporter working on that blog post or story is [...]
[...] Jarvis says, news is a process now. A story may begin with a simple tweet or retweet of a fact, and then evolve into a traditional story; or it may begin as a tweet and turn into a blog post but neve… in the print edition. In many cases, while the reporter working on that blog post or story is [...]
[...] says, news is a process now. A story may begin with a simple tweet or retweet of a fact, and then evolve into a traditional story; or it may begin as a tweet and turn into a blog post but never… in the print edition. In many cases, while the reporter working on that blog post or story is [...]
[...] says, news is a process now. A story may begin with a simple tweet or retweet of a fact, and then evolve into a traditional story; or it may begin as a tweet and turn into a blog post but never… in the print edition. In many cases, while the reporter working on that blog post or story is [...]
[...] says, news is a process now. A story may begin with a simple tweet or retweet of a fact, and then evolve into a traditional story; or it may begin as a tweet and turn into a blog post but never… in the print edition. In many cases, while the reporter working on that blog post or story is [...]
[...] says, news is a process now. A story may begin with a simple tweet or retweet of a fact, and then evolve into a traditional story; or it may begin as a tweet and turn into a blog post but never… in the print edition. In many cases, while the reporter working on that blog post or story is [...]
[...] Jarvis says, news is a process now. A story may begin with a simple tweet or retweet of a fact, and then evolve into a traditional story; or it may begin as a tweet and turn into a blog post but neve… in the print edition. In many cases, while the reporter working on that blog post or story is [...]
Jeff, News was always a process – but conducted only by journalists out of public sight before they published or broadcast. Now the process can be transparent, and accessed and contributed to by the audience.
Yes. And because news needn’t always be a product, its processness (sorry!) also becomes more apparent: not fitting neatly into the confines of a 20-inch (what’s that in metric?) story or a 3:00 story. We productized news because we had to. We don’t have to anymore.
[...] from Jeff Jarvis buzzmachine: The article as luxury or byproduct tweetmeme_url = 'http://currentbuzz.org/?p=4570';tweetmeme_source = 'drbarb';tweetmeme_style = 'compact'; If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it! [...]
[...] who, having been duly provoked, often do get a bit hot under the collar. After a thinking-out-loud post titled, “The Article as Luxury or Byproduct,” drew criticism, he later protested, in another [...]
[...] A Digital First journalist views a story as a process, not a product. [...]
[...] – “When digital comes first and print last, then the article is something you need to put together to fill the paper; it’s not the goal of the entire process. The process is the goal of the process: keeping the public constantly informed.” Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine.com [...]
[...] never write an actual story, but provide a steady stream of information. As Jeff Jarvis has noted, a story today is more a process than a product. Much of the news at a state Capitol – such as appointments, firings, resignations, reports, [...]
[...] A Digital First journalist views a story as a process, not a product. [...]