I. For-profit media organizations

I. For-profit media organizations must reinvent themselves to extend the role and values of journalism in interactive ways

If news and information form an ecosystem, the dominant species has been private media organizations. Their influence is waning, but it is still substantial. For their own well-being, they need to contribute to the overall vibrancy of their local news and information ecosystem. This requires creating opportunities for coordination, collaboration and co-creation of content.

It is unlikely that private media will fully restore their journalistic resources in the near future, if ever. Their best hope to expand their journalistic service is through networking. Many mainstream news organizations are leading the way by partnering with each other and with emerging media, both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. These affiliations need to be accelerated in both content and revenue generation.

Established media have infrastructure that start-ups lack. Start-ups may have entrepreneurial strengths that could benefit more traditional organizations.

Collaboration is vital. Ethical standards and values must be vigorously discussed and clearly articulated as old and new media operations work together.23

The public should be encouraged to participate in shaping the future of local journalism. News organizations should use interactive technology to enhance the transparency, openness and accountability of journalism.24

As they develop new revenue sources and funding models, established media need to make space for open and honest conversations about the ethical issues that are raised. Again, they would do well to bring their readers, viewers and listeners into these conversations.25

Established media should dedicate themselves to serving all parts of their communities. Their staffing and content should reflect the full breadth of the communities they serve. And, they should help create bridges among subcommunities.26

Private media organizations should have great urgency about developing new revenue strategies, as discussed below in this paper. Even with diminished profits, they should invest in research that informs their revenue and content strategies. They should re-invent their sales and marketing forces with an emphasis on selling access to audiences across platforms.

Wherever possible they should shift their cost structure to spend a greater percentage on research, revenue generation, content development, technology innovation and marketing. They should develop brand and marketing strategies that promote the importance of journalism and, specifically, the importance of the journalism they create. These messages must reach beyond their current customers.

Where appropriate, they should work with competitors, coordinating and collaborating across media. Industry associations should share insights and best practices. They should partner and cross-promote wherever possible.

A. Be digital first

For legacy media, the key to re-imaging journalism for a networked world is to be digital first. This is particularly hard for newspapers because so much of their revenue comes from their printed products. But it seems clear that a print-driven strategy gets in the way of implementing robust interactive strategies.

John Paton, CEO of the Journal Register Co., made this point in a keynote address to Editor & Publisher’s 2010 Interactive Media Conference: “I do not know why, but the number of editors, publishers, ad directors and circ (circulation) directors who do not get this is still very high. They act as if the last two decades are a phase.”

Paton added, “We spend 20 hours of a day producing a newspaper then shovel it onto the web. True, we update on the web sporadically, but essentially as an enhancement to print. And that is nothing like understanding that we are dealing with different mediums that have different strengths and different audience expectations.”27

Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, has said that online journalism is struggling to adapt to the format of the web. Social media constantly invite people to interact with content and with each other. With a news story on the web, there is nothing for the reader to do until the end of the story. Even then, all the reader can do is comment. News publishers could utilize and monetize the same techniques of interactivity, including hyper-personalized news streams on various devices.28

In an interactive world, professional journalists should have an ethic around gaining public trust through public engagement.29 Professional journalists should leverage their knowledge and skills by helping citizens participate in the functions of journalism. Likewise, they should aggressively adopt the best practices for crowdsourcing and user-generated content. They should see consumers not as an audience, but as a community able to help create credible journalism.

Michele McLellan studied emerging news sites as a 2009/2010 Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow at the Missouri School of Journalism. She found a stark contrast in terms of community engagement between traditional and emerging media. “Community connectedness and diverse revenue streams are critical ingredients for success for non-profit news organizations,” she reported.

“I was struck by how different they (emerging media) sound from the ‘old traditionals’ like the newspaper newsrooms where I worked. We used to talk about serving the community. But with the advertising dollars flowing, we did not really depend on our communities and as a result, we did not always know them or reflect them effectively. So it’s refreshing and inspiring that the leaders of these ‘new traditionals’ see community engagement as a vital component of their future sustainability.”30

Having a mindset of “digital first” is essential to seeing and seizing the opportunities of improving local journalism with mobile technologies. It opens doors to the community interaction made possible by social media tools. And, it creates opportunities for covering some local stories for a global audience.

B. Invest to develop the digital capacity of news staffs

Traditional media newsrooms struggle with the lack of time, training and talent to deal with technology issues. A survey released by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) in January 2011 presented the challenge:

• More than half said they are spending more time on technology issues; one-fourth put the time at 9 to 12 hours or more a week.

• Six of 10 editors responding said they now spend fewer hours planning and discussing news coverage or working directly with their staffs.

• Only 15 percent said they have a deep and wide pool of staff members with digital knowledge; 51 percent said their newsrooms are thin on digital knowledge workers.

• Only 20 percent said their company has a strong internal training program on new technology.

• Six in 10 said they are learning on their own, away from the job.31

News organizations and industry associations must develop a greater sense of urgency about helping their people succeed in the digital media ecosystem. Failing to do so will mean that many established, capable journalists will not be able to keep up, but it also means the journalism industry will not attract and retain the digital natives who will be tomorrow’s leaders.

An example of the thinking that is necessary can be seen in an October 2010

report by the Society of Professional Journalists’ (SPJ) Digital Media Committee,

“Will SPJ Remain Relevant in the Digital Age?” The report made these recommendations to the Society:

• Bridge the divide between new and old media by aggregating and spotlighting high-quality journalism and facilitating communication among online start-ups and legacy media.

• Create a vibrant network for new media start-ups to share ideas online and in person.

• Become an advocate for expanding access to the Internet, news and information.

• Teach reporters to use powerful emerging technologies.

• Educate members and citizens in the basics of information-gathering and storytelling.

• Engage the public in a dialogue about the purpose, value and standards of journalism.

• Train new media start-ups in entrepreneurial journalism.

• Teach journalists and their managers the theories behind new media technologies.

• Ensure SPJ staff and leaders are hyper-literate in digital journalism trends and theories.

• Poll members to learn and address journalists’ needs and track the industry’s direction.32

C. Create regional and local news networks

Newspapers became local monopolies not because of their quality journalism or customer service; they became local monopolies because quality content is expensive to create, print and deliver. They could give advertisers reach and penetration to audiences within defined geographies. Over time, they mostly did not encroach on each other’s territories because they could not. They owned their markets.

Those days are gone. In the digital world, distribution is cheap, content is over abundant and everyone can join the competition. Network effects—the ability to gain critical mass among consumers—will determine who thrives and who dies.

Legacy media—print and broadcast, private and public—are better positioned than any others to nurture the local networked news ecosystem. They can create the interactive networks that connect those who want to create and distribute content.

Many competing legacy news organizations are finding ways to share content and coverage as a response to severe staffing cuts. Some are providing coverage cooperatively in ways they could no longer afford to do competitively, such as covering state government. Their initial discomfort toward collaboration is giving way to an emerging reality about the true nature of the competition they face.

As one editor commented, the competition is no longer the daily newspaper in a nearby town, “Our competitors are everybody else.” Another editor commented, “The question is: How can we remain competitors but also support one another at a time when we are looking for all the ways to extend our reach?”33

By sharing resources to report generic information, media organizations may be able to invest more in ferreting out stories that otherwise would go unreported. One possibility is that they will create new forms of content syndication that operate more like social networks. Scott Karp of Publish2, an online news aggregation and curation startup, argues:

Traditional syndication is based on a hub-and-spoke model, where a newswire middleman takes in content from many sources, combines it with original content, and redistributes it. This is an inefficient, obsolete model and will be replaced by a model that has proven wildly successful in the consumer world—the social network.

News organizations have already been forming direct distribution networks to route around the traditional newswire middleman. In 2011, these networks will evolve beyond ad hoc email distribution to become truly scalable in a way that only a Facebook-like platform can enable. News organizations will create a network of trusted sources, the equivalent of ‘friends,’ but where the relationships are based on distribution and the affiliation of editorial brands.34

D. Collaborate with local startups

Partnerships between legacy and emerging media outlets can benefit all parties, as evidenced by the Seattle Times’ local news partnerships mentioned above. Another noteworthy example of legacy media partnering with emerging media has surfaced in the broadcast arena. Comcast has promised to establish partner

ships between at least 5 of the 10 NBC television stations it would gain in acquiring NBC Universal. The arrangements would follow the model of an existing arrangement between the KNSD, the NBC-owned station in San Diego, and voiceofsandiego.org, which share content and cross promote each other’s websites.35

Some observers saw the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of the Comcast merger as a validation of these partnerships, at least in principle. Steve Waldman, a senior adviser to the chairman of the FCC, observed before the approval that innovative reporting is happening in the non-profit web sector, but very few outlets have yet developed sustainable business models. “Commercial media have distribution and money and gaps in their reporting, and the non-profits have strong specialties in reporting but weaknesses in distribution and revenue. So it seems like a perfect match,” said Waldman.36

The potential for established media to partner with startups seems clear, but it is happening slowly so far. Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab, says, “Legacy news outlets are not yet in the game.” In a report entitled “New Voices: What Works,” she said, “Projects that counted on partnerships with legacy news outlets ultimately found it best to go it alone as newsroom cutbacks left editors with no time to partner. Once launched, though, the New Voices projects found that partners came knocking.”37

The reality is that only a tiny fraction of the local news projects proposed to foundations can be funded. The unfunded projects are ideas that legacy media could incubate, if they saw themselves in this role. This is not easy to envision in a resource-starved environment, but possibilities could emerge just by initiating the conversation.

E. Explore new ways to achieve diversity

In 1978, the American Society of News Editors challenged its members to achieve racial parity in news staffing. By 2000 or sooner, the makeup of news staffs should be as diverse as the community they serve. It did not happen.

In 2000, ASNE reaffirmed its goal. Its mission said, “To cover communities fully, to carry out their role in a democracy, and to succeed in the marketplace, the nation’s newsrooms must reflect the racial diversity of American society by 2025 or sooner. At a minimum, all newspapers should employ journalists of color and every newspaper should reflect the diversity of its community.”

Today ASNE concedes, “Over three decades, the annual survey has shown that while there has been progress, the racial diversity of newsrooms does not come close to the fast-growing diversity in the U.S. population as a whole.”38 In its 2011 diversity report, ASNE said newspaper newsroom employment increased very slightly from the previous year, but the percentage of minorities in newsrooms declined for the third year in a row. It rested at less than 13 percent.

ASNE president Milton Coleman said, “At a time when the U.S. Census shows that minorities are 36 percent of the population, newsrooms are going in the opposite direction. This is an accuracy and credibility issue for our newsrooms.”39

In light of the interactivity that is possible with digital communications technology, legacy news organizations need to rethink how they can enhance diversity efforts to better serve all parts of their communities:

• In addition to increasing efforts to diversify their own staffs, mainstream media can diversify their coverage through content sharing and capacity building with local ethnic media and emerging media.

• Mainstream media associations such as ASNE should partner with organizations such as New America Media and Unity: Journalists of Color to create programs that enable people and communities to be better informed and to have their own media voices.

• Legacy news organizations could work with journalism schools to develop digital media/news literacy programs to help youth, ethnic minorities and immigrants have the tools, skills and understanding to communicate effectively.

• Mainstream media could also utilize 2010 Census information to better understand and to report on the diversity of communities and to help parts of the community to connect with each other more effectively.

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