Revolution, not evolution and “Print on Demand”
Mark Potts in his “Recovering Journalist” blog charts changes in the news industry and recently blogged about changes at Gazette Communications in Iowa. His post Inventing the Future In Iowa lays out some interesting ideas taken from the Gazette’s “multipart blueprint” for change. I particularly liked a piece Potts quotes stating:
Our industry seems to be clinging to Darwin’s theory of evolution, hoping that gradual adaptation to changing environment will be enough to help us survive. That works in biology, but in today’s disruptive business world, survival of the fittest is a matter of revolution, not evolution.
I had a brainstorm while reading this. I will preface this brainstorm with the disclaimer that I really do not know enough about the costs involved in printing and the cost to waste ratios with newspapers to make a really scientific claim, however, I am thinking about a “print on demand” model! You select the days you want to receive the print version of the paper, put your request in 24 hours in advance and VIOLA, you get your paper the days you want it. Or even further…you request the SECTIONS you want. I realize this would drastically change the way advertisements work or don’t work, but it’s a thought anyway. I am sure someone else has put the idea out there as well. But that’s my two cents. Everyone else can throw their new model in the ring, why can’t I?
Throw in the towel?
Does this mean I can quit now? The New York Times opines on graduate degrees. Why didn’t they tell me this before I got halfway through. Sigh.
The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors.
In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.
Makes me nervous…
US Senate panel to look at future of newspapers
According to the Boston Globe:
Senator John F. Kerry will hold hearings in Washington next week on the financial problems facing the newspaper industry, as dwindling advertising dollars push many US papers to the brink of closure.
While I do not want to see the newspaper industry come crashing down around us while we stand wringing our hands, this government involvement makes me nervous. Restructuring newspapers as non-profits, however, could have many well-received benefits. It is an interesting time indeed.
Voices of reason
“I keep saying to my friends . . . in the business, I wish you guys
would figure it out and then we would be able to figure out just what
we need to do,” said Lorraine Branham, dean of Syracuse University’s
S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
That comes from an article on Syracuse.com. I tend to lean more towards the side of J Schools LEADING the way, not waiting for the industry, which has shown it does not know what to do next, to create a new business model. I have always thought that the new successful ideas would emerge from colleges and universities, not existing/failing businesses. But as always, no one ever listens to the children.
Reflections – of the way things used to be
After viewing the Stewart v. Cramer interview and having time to reflect on what went down, I have some comments.
One of the big things I heard and valued, was Stewart calling Cramer out for his “doe-eyed” consumption of whatever he was told by CEOs and other big business people. Cramer even says he knew he was being lied too. Way to look out for your viewers Cramer. You’ve won my loyalty. COME ON!
Stewart does what we should all be doing. Holding people accountable. I have to wonder, what was Cramer getting in return for his towing of the party line?
Stewart was a spot on journalist. I have never though of him as anything less. He is smart and witty and while his show is satirical, it hits at what is really going on. His montage of clips outing lies and hypocrisy are brilliant. His remarks and commentary are much more thoughtful than what the mainstream media puts out on a day-to-day basis with their showcase models, I mean “hosts.” I would be surprised if most “news hosts” were able to pass a 6th grade civics test.
We need the Jon Stewart School of Reporting. We need more reporters challenging each other to hold each other accountable. CNBC knows their place as a “trusted” source of financial information and I have to wonder what kind of investigating may crop up as a result of this. Will Cramer still have a job? I am sure Stewart thought of these things as this unfolded and I feel his handling of the whole thing was brilliant. A fine, fine moment in his career and a fine, fine moment for me as a longtime fan of the man.
As a student of journalism and former professional in the field, I can not stomach mainstream television media. I watch Stewart on Hulu, I listen to NPR. The Daily Show and NPR, the “fake” news and the “real” news have a lot more in common with each other than they do with their television counterparts.
Stewart, I love you more now than I ever have. Bravo.
And the Moment of Zen?! Martha Stewart says Jon Stewart does what Twittering does? What in the hell does that mean? Cramer’s appearance on her show the day of the Daily Show event was just perfect. And not to be totally one-sided here, I do give Cramer credit for appearing on TDS when the other ranting loon did not.
Stewart! Stewart! Stewart!
Why is a comedian, an admitted “fake news show” anchor, the only journalist in America to have seriously questioned the media’s role in the self-selving corporate fraud that has cost millions of citizens their homes, their savings, their jobs and their pensions?
TMP’s take on the Stewart v. Cramer showdown.
More models and I don’t mean the skinny kind on a runway
Businessweek’s Rick Wartzman makes a bold statement regarding the end of print:
As a guy who loves to go out and pick up the three newspapers that land on my front lawn every morning, I’m sorry to say it’s inescapable: The Web needs to be embraced much more fully than most papers have done. This means no more tentative, halfway initiatives. Dead-tree editions must immediately yield to all-Internet operations. The presses need to stop forever, with the delivery trucks shunted off to the scrapyard.
I agree in the sense that industry officials need to stop with the wavering and make a decision. Some of the problems I see develop during this transition period in the industry come from an attempt to be everything to everyone. Warztman goes on to recount his conversation with the current editor of the L.A. Times, Russ Stanton, during which he painted a hypothetical web-only picture for the publication. That picture included cutting the reporting staff to 150 with another 125 out-of-the-newsroom staff members working on advertising and marketing.
But in chatting with him, it became clear that 150 troops could do a decent job of writing about (and videotaping, too) their own backyard. (How exactly you define “backyard” is another matter.) They could cover local sports, area business, and entertainment. Most significant, the paper could indeed maintain at least something of a watchdog function, holding L.A. politicians and institutions accountable.
Hyperlocal? Could the future of current industry giants be local sports and high school happenings? It seems to be a much talked about consideration. Warztman went on to say the scenario would then be audiences would receive national and international news through links to partnering organizations.
But not to fear, even though Warztman is advocating newspapers jump on the web-only bandwagon, Stanton didn’t think that would happen anytime soon for the west coast publication.
Of course, It already exists
Twoogle is taken, I should have known. See the end of my previous post if you’re confused.
Social Networking Wars?
Slate.com has an interesting article about Twitter as the “new Google” on their site. 
In a recent blog post, John Borthwick, one of Twitter’s investors, explained the value of such a service. Imagine that you’re waiting in line for coffee, and you overhear some people talking about a plane landing on the Hudson. When you go back to your desk, you search Google—and come up with nothing. “The day of the incident there was nothing on the topic to be found on Google,” Borthwick writes. “The same holds for any topical issues—lipstick on a pig?—for real-time questions, real-time branding analysis, tracking a new product launch. On pretty much any subject if you want to know what’s happening now, search.twitter.com will come up with a superior result set.”
I honestly had not considered Twitter as a search engine until I recently began looking at the “What’s on Twitter now” list. The Slate reporter 
Farhad Manjoo, disagrees with Borthwick. He says the immediate results on Twitter after something like the Mumbai attacks was nothing more than a muddled mess of incoherent, 140-character blurbs.So is there a threat to Facebook and Google? I doubt it. I see mergers in the future.
