The Problem With Newspapers: Lack Of Innovation, Lack Of Engagement... And Lack Of Reporting

from the it-doesn't-look-pretty dept

And here we go again, with yet another post about the troubled business of the newspapers, but this time I've got three separate articles that, combined, give a pretty good explanation for why the newspaper business has been in trouble. Basically, the newspapers failed to innovate, they failed to engage with their communities -- and worst of all, they failed to actually do much reporting.

First up is Frank Rich's column on how the American mainstream press is on "suicide watch." He does a decent job describing the problem, in discussing the industry's fear (or outright disgust) towards any sort of innovation, while others did the innovating for them. He compares how the newspapers have acted to how the movie studios acted when TV first became popular.

But... then, he falls into the same old fallacy. Assuming that those who are talking about new models mean "citizen journalists" with no business model:

Reporting the news can be expensive. Some of it -- monitoring the local school board, say -- can and is being done by voluntary "citizen journalists" with time on their hands, integrity and a Web site. But we can't have serious opinions about America's role in combating the Taliban in Pakistan unless brave and knowledgeable correspondents (with security to protect them) tell us in real time what is actually going on there. We can't know what is happening behind closed doors at corrupt, hard-to-penetrate institutions in Washington or Wall Street unless teams of reporters armed with the appropriate technical expertise and assiduously developed contacts are digging night and day. Those reporters have to eat and pay rent, whether they work for print, a TV network, a Web operation or some new bottom-up news organism we can't yet imagine.

Indeed. But no one has ever said otherwise. No one has said that "unpaid" reporters will replace all of the paid ones. We're just saying that the paid reporters may end up doing their jobs in a different way and getting paid via other business models. And, Rich also seems to be underestimating the ability of the people who are already in those places to be a part of the journalism process -- not necessarily the core component of it, but certainly a part of it.

The second article worth reading is Robert Niles discussion of how the ruling in the 1995 lawsuit Stratton Okamont v. Prodigy scared newspapers away from engaging in online conversations. The ruling effectively found Prodigy liable for anonymous comments on its message board because it had hired a moderator for those boards. While the passage of the CDA the following year -- and specifically section 230 of the CDA granting safe harbors -- effectively erased that decision, "risk averse" newspaper feared to actually engage with readers in comments or forums for fear that it would suddenly make them liable for the content written by the community. Thus, they ignored their own communities and did little to really interact with them.

The final piece may be the most interesting. Walter Pincus talks about how so many newspaper reporters have stopped reporting and really started repeating the messages being handed to them. For all the talk of "investigative reporting," there's very little of that being done. Most reporting isn't reporting. It's not digging up the details and presenting an informed piece that gets at the facts. It's simply parroting what someone told them, and then perhaps presenting an alternate point of view (what Jay Rosen has referred to as "he said, she said" journalism) without any effort whatsoever to actually determine who's right. It's as if journalists have figured that "balanced" reporting is to present two sides to any story, and then leave it up to you to do the actual work. Pincus seems to be one of the first we've seen in this ongoing debate to make the point that we've been focusing on for a while: the newspapers aren't adding value.

Pincus also highlights another point that we've mentioned, but which is almost always ignored in these discussions: the big newspapers put themselves into massive debt over the past two decades. Many are still profitable, but not profitable enough to service the debt. And when they top that off by not innovating, not engaging with their community (which is their most valuable asset) and not actually doing real reporting, but just acting as stenographers, is it really any surprise the business is struggling?

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Insight Community Participation Directly Through Techdirt

from the making-it-more-accessible-than-ever dept

As you hopefully read in my last post about our new branding, Floor64 has separated out the Insight Community brand from the Techdirt blog. However, that doesn't mean the two won't still work together happily. In fact, we're also launching a new effort today, that will allow Insight Community cases to appear directly within Techdirt. You will see the first such integrated Insight Community case on the site in a short while.

Starting a Real Conversation, Rather Than Advertising

The idea here is similar to what we started last week with American Express sponsoring an Insight Community case concerning how small businesses are responding to the current financial crisis, the results of which are starting to appear on American Express' Open Forum blog. In situations like that, where we believe the wider Techdirt community would be intrigued by, and benefit from, the wider conversation, we'll be placing those cases directly on the Techdirt blog. Thus, a selection of Insight Community cases that are relevant to the Techdirt community will start appearing directly on the blog, allowing members to jump right in to respond (and for non-members to join up and participate).

This evolution fits in nicely as one of the many ways that the new Insight Community can be used by companies to generate insight and engage with the broader community. Integrating Insight Community cases into Techdirt is based on our strong belief about content and its relationship to advertising. Traditional, annoying, intrusive advertising is a market that won't last -- especially in economically troubled times. It's based on the false belief that there are still captive audiences.

While the online advertising market is still a big one, it's going to need to change. It's entirely focused on a one way push. Companies that buy advertising are pushing a message to an audience. The site is just the one-way pathway to get to that audience -- and that audience often doesn't care about the message being pushed. That's simply not that effective for the advertiser. And yes, before people point it out, we do include some advertising on Techdirt, though we think that the companies buying those ads could spend their money more effectively by actually engaging the community here.

Engage the Community, Reward the Community and Get Value Back

So, rather than focus on that one-way street of merely pushing "message" at an audience, we believe strongly that the concept of "advertising" needs to diminish, and in its place, the focus should be on providing good content that provides real value to all participants. That means not just viewing things as a one way street, but actually engaging the community of folks a company is trying to reach by getting back insight from them and then rewarding those in the community who provide that insight. This is much more of a win-win situation than advertising. It's about actually creating value -- about building an insightful discussion that everyone benefits from, and then making sure that those who participate can be rewarded both monetarily and through reputation, rather than just being seen as a "target" market.

Thus, rather than focusing on "advertising's" one way street to pushing a message on our community, we're asking companies who are interested in the Techdirt community to actually engage with them via the Insight Community, where not only can they start a real dialogue, they can learn from the community, gain valuable insights that can be used elsewhere, and reward the community for participating. That seems a lot more effective and valuable than "advertising." It's about good content and a real conversation where everyone benefits.

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