2. What do managers do?
The changing roles of managers
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
3. The different roles of managers
• Entrepreneur
Decision- • Resource allocator
making • Disturbance handler
• Negotiator
• Planning
• Organizing • Monitor
• Leading Informati-
• Disseminator
onal
• Controlling • Spokesperson
• Leader
Inter-
• Figurehead
personal
• Liaison
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
4. The challenge of convergence
"the flow of content across multiple
media platforms, the cooperation
between multiple media
industries, and the migratory
behaviour of media audiences."
Henry Jenkins DeFlorz Professor of Humanities and the Founder and
Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT.
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
5. The challenge of convergence
cultural communicat corporate
Trends: forms ions systems ownership
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6. The challenge of convergence
Marketing job story telling
Levels: alliances description techniques
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
7. The converged newsroom
• Converged
newsroom can be
described as a
content
production
process which
generates
outputs
disregarding
news cycles, news
platforms and
distribution
systems
• This may include unified output by a unified team
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
8. The converged newsroom
Existing business models are no longer
viable
Changing requirements for skill sets
Changing requirements for organizational
structure
Changing market alignment
Changing profile of customers
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
9. So, what do managers do?..
• Entrepreneur
Decision- • Resource allocator
making • Disturbance handler
• Negotiator
• Planning
• Organizing • Monitor
• Leading Informati-
• Disseminator
onal
• Controlling • Spokesperson
• Leader
Inter-
• Figurehead
personal
• Liaison
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
10. But who are these people?..
Historical perspectives
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
11. But who are these people?
Background
Education
Media training
Demographics
Recruitment
Decision making
Success factors
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
12. But who are these people?
The tragedy of media
managers is that they
tend to get promoted
to managerial
positions because
they are “really good
reporters”.
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
13. Can “a really good reporter”
learn to …?
• Entrepreneur
Decision- • Resource allocator
making • Disturbance handler
• Negotiator
• Plan
• Organize • Monitor
• Lead Informati-
• Disseminator
onal
• Control • Spokesperson
• Leader
Inter-
• Figurehead
personal
• Liaison
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
14. Major schools of thought
Classical
Scientific management (Frederic Taylor)
Bureaucratic
(Administrative)
management
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15. Major schools of thought
Behavioral
Behavioral science
Human relations
(Douglas McGregor)
Theory of attitude
and attitude change
Management as the
facilitator of development.
Behaviorist vs. internalist position
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16. Major schools of thought
Contingency school
(Theory Y)
Arguably, an organic
organization is more
responsive to change and
has more chances of
survival in conditions of
high environmental
uncertainty.
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
17. 21st Century Approaches
The clash of "the managerial" manager
(economic rationalist) - theory X
• Emphasis on goal setting, processes, performance
measurement, output accountability;
… and "the quiet manager" (organic
manager) - theory Y
• Emphasis on education, buy-in, innovation, input
accountability.
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
18. 21st Century Approaches
Theory Z (Ouchi) …
• Emphasis on knowledge creation throughout the
organization
• + supervision and goal setting simultaneously with
employee self-direction
• + team approach
• + communicative, holistic approach
• + social guarantees
= Participative Management
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
19. Questions a media organization’s
manager must answer:
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21. Example:
Canadian public TV uses BitTorrent
to distribute a hit show
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22. Media organizations
Many typologies exist, we will approach them
from the media channel POV and business
model POV.
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
23. Business models
Historically:
Advertising only
Combination of advertising, subscription and
retail sales
Subscription only
Combination of sponsorship,
membership/subscription, grants/public funding
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
24. Enter participatory media
• Author /
audience model
The "free - • News
for profit" aggregator
axis model
• News agency
model
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
25. Enter participatory media
• Publisher
The model
"professional • Audience
media - ecosystem
participatory model
media" axis
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
26. Media Channels
Historically:
Books
Newspapers
Magazines
Radio
Television
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
27. Media Channels
Internet is the meeting place of convergent
media
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
28. Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
The NextNewsroom project
http://www.nextnewsroom.com/
29. Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
Chris O’Brien
www.mercurynews.com
30. Process
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
31. Looked outside the U.S. for
innovation
El Tiempo; Bogota, Columbia
Nordjyske Medier; Aalborg, Denmark
The Daily Telegraph; London, England
The Eleftheros Tipos; Athens, Greece
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
33. Integrated
Embrace all platforms
Go to where the audience is
Understand how audience consumes media
Shape journalism to fit those platforms
“Great journalism” looks different online
Different workflows
Separate but equal at Le Figaro
Superdesk at Daily Telegraph
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
34. Innovative
Last 150 years: static
Now: constant change
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35. Collaborative
Work with other groups
Disband and reform
Interact with different sectors
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
36. Adaptable
Assume everything will be constantly
reconfigured
No wires
Everything on wheels
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
37. Transparent
Hard to know where newsroom ends,
community begins
Community at the center
Physical transparency in spaces
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
38. New jobs
Data journalists
Media Conductors
Backpack journalists
Cybrarians
Content curators
Online Community managers
Etc…
Alex Gorelik, Ph. D. | Tweet me: @Doc_G_
Philosophic perspectivesFunctionalist (the Machine metaphor)Forms organizations take are both indispensable and inevitable, as dictated by:Resources;Size;Product;Market.Manager's functions:Planning;Controlling;Organizing;Staffing;Innovating.Positivist (the Agent metaphor)Employees are driven by recognized self-interest. Organization is the realized sum of vectors of self-interest.Manager's functions:Interpersonal;Informational;Decisional.
Wired.com harnesses readers to produce better contentWired.com has some of the most techno-savvy readers of any publication, and editor in chief Evan Hansen is not afraid to use them.As it turns out, the online publication has fostered symbiotic relationships with its blog readers in a variety of different ways, all of which have been beneficial both to Wired.com and to its sharp-minded readers.“You have the ability to reveal the story in progress, this sort of ‘process-is-content’ notion,” Hansen explained about blogging. “You reveal what you have, as it comes in, and then you invite the readers and the public to help you finish the story.”This method of reporting has improved blogging at Wired.com, particularly when Hansen and his colleagues have taken experimental risks that have become incredibly successful. Most prominent among these experiments is the Geekdad blog, which features posts from self-proclaimed “geek” dads and moms. The contributors submit one or two posts a week, typically about science or technology topics that appeal to parents and kids alike.Nintendo, NASA, and Legos are all fair game. Originally, the blog was run solely by Chris Anderson, but it became too much for one person to handle, so Anderson reached out to readers and asked whether any of them wanted to contribute.“He found some people who were very qualified to do it, and he took that chance,” Hansen said, “and it worked out.”“Worked out” is putting it mildly. Geekdad is now one of the most popular blogs on the site, and its contributors write posts for free — yes, free! — from all over the country. The blog’s unpaid editor, Ken Denmead, now has a book deal in the works as a direct result of the blog.As of April 15, 2009, Denmead has sent out a call for more contributors. If the past is any indication, he’s going to get responses from plenty of enthusiastic, knowledgeable participants — just the sort of people who fuel the content of Geekdad.As an editor who entrusts readers with blog content, Hansen laughed and said, “You’ve got to close your eyes a little bit and kind of just have faith that stuff that comes out is going to be in line with your brand and your sense of quality. It was a leap of faith, but it really turned out well. It’s an interesting and eclectic and, I think, very high quality publication now.”Hansen estimates that 20-25 percent of what gets blogged about at Wired.com either starts with or includes tips from readers. The site uses a feedback tool developed by Reddit specifically for Wired.com blogs that allows users to upload text and pictures and also assists with sorting the content offered by readers. When Cal Tech grad student Virgil Griffith introduced the Wikiscanner in 2007, the Threat Level blog at Wired.com asked readers to submit IP addresses of Wikipedia users who were editing the online encyclopedia to suit their own agenda.Using the Reddit tool to upload their findings to Threat Level, readers exposed hundreds of instances of corporate whitewashing on Wikipedia and then voted to determine the most appalling ones. In 2008, the project earned Wired.com a Knight-Batten award for innovation in journalism; Wired.com gave the $10,000 award to Wikiscanner creator Virgil Griffith.The kind of reader/blog interaction that changes journalism is, of course, only available on the Internet. Hansen emphasized that Wired.com has the advantage of being a stand-alone Web site with original content, as opposed to being an offshoot of a print publication. Although Conde Nast now owns both Wired magazine and Wired.com, the two publications remain separate in terms of staff and news stories.“The marriage back with the magazine has been very beneficial financially and otherwise,” Hansen said. “But, again, the structure here is that the Web site is considered to be its own business. We are very collaborative, and we share a brand, and we’re very respectful of the magazine…but we’re not the red-headed stepchild of a print publication.”While the magazine and the Web site have different modes of operation, Hansen observed that the fundamentals of journalism apply to both.“The most surprising thing is that the more we got into blogging, the more we realized it’s not all that different from ordinary news gathering,” he said. “The same rules apply in terms of accuracy, confirming information.”For the blogs, Hansen said the goal is not to be an aggregation site but rather to do original reporting.“Which means that you’ve got to pick up the phone,” he said. “You’ve got to talk to people. You’ve got to chase down facts and not just link to other people.”And, it seems, it also helps if you’re something of a risk-taker — with very smart readers.
Chicago’s Chi-City Daily News a nonproft explicitly to avoid the commercial pressures that Dougherty considered to be negatively shaping editorial priorities in traditional newsrooms. Dougherty incorporated the company, called PublicMedia, Inc., as an Illinois nonproft in 2005. Stephen Doig, the Knight Chair of Journalism at Arizona State University and a longtime advisor to Dougherty, provided advice on editorial and organizational structure and became one of the company’s frst board members. The organization’s seven-member board includes people with experience in journalism, business, social work, community organizing, design, and law. According to Dougherty and Doig, the board maintains a hands-off approach to the daily management of the organization. Dougherty originally wrote a business plan for the Daily News based on advice solicited from personal contacts and local experts in legal issues, marketing, and search engine optimization. Initially, he intended to raise thousands of dollars in seed money with a large portion of funds to be set aside to support dedicated servers. Then Dougherty realized that he could launch the project with a standard web-hosting plan that cost about $20 a month. He covered this cost himself and developed the site on his own time. The Tribune’s ethics code prevented him from launching the site while still working for the company, so he resigned during a round of layoffs. FundingAs of 2008, the Daily News was mostly grant-funded, with themajority of its budget coming from a $340,000, two-year grantfrom the Knight Foundation to recruit and train a volunteerreporter from each of several dozen Chicago neighborhoods.A few smaller grants, such as $5,000 received from theChicago Headline Club’s Watchdog Fund to investigate policemisconduct, are directed towards specifc efforts. The Daily News offers display advertisements on thesite, runs some Google text ads, and sometimes inserts local adsin email newsletters to users. At the time of writing (mid-2008),advertising on the site was sparse, featuring a local computerrepair shop, an eco-friendly boutique, a car dealership, anda dog-walking service, among other local businesses. Theadvertising system has the ability to pair advertising witharticles mentioning specifc areas and to run ads targeted toreaders who have entered a neighborhood in their profle. With fnancial support from a Knight News Challenge grant, which began in March 2007, the Daily News has been actively recruiting and training 70 residents as “volunteer grassroots journalists”17 with the aim of having at least one from every Chicago neighborhood.These neighborhood reporters write the bulk of the articles on the site, which are generally about local civic issues—changes in the school board, updates to the sewer system, a defcit in the health system—occasionally interspersed with local sports or arts news• Be more like a for-proft site—try to build audience for the site, adding some popular high-volume content to draw new readers in hopes that they will also take in the more serious reporting. • Be more like a community—build more active communities around neighborhoods or themes covered by the publication, through partnerships with local organizations like schools or community centers. • Be more like a news agency—focus energy on distributing the reporting in as many venues as possible.
The “Myth” of the manager
The “Myth” of the manager
Following closely on the heels of Norway, Canada's public broadcasting service is adopting DRM-free BitTorrent distribution for a major prime-time show.On March 24, CBC will use BitTorrent to distribute this year's broadcast of Canada's Next Great Prime Minister. This will make Canada the first country in North America to release high-quality, DRM-free copies of a prime-time show using the popular P2P file-sharing technology.(Credit: CBC)Canada's Next Great Prime Minister, an annual competition in which young adults propose ways to improve the country in hopes of winning 50,000 Canadian dollars, attracted more than 1 million viewers in 2007. While broadcast shows in the United States regularly reach more than 8 million viewers, for a Canadian broadcast program, 1 million is a huge success.Tessa Sproule, the CBC manager in charge of the show's digital outreach, is a regular reader of the BoingBoing blog, which earlier this month highlighted the use of BitTorrent by Norway's public broadcaster for one of its most popular shows. Sproule was inspired by the Norweigan experiment and pushed for something similar at CBC.While plenty of TV networks have experimented with offering shows online for free, it is CBC's use of DRM-free BitTorrent downloads that is the most interesting. Guinevere Orvis, one of the interactive producers on the show, told me that the motivation for this choice was their desire for the "show to be as accessible as possible, to as many Canadians as possible, in the format that they want it in." As for DRM, she said: "I think DRM is dead, even if a lot of broadcasters don't realize it." She added that "if it's bad for the consumers, it's bad for the company."Michael Geist, a copyright guru and law professor at the University of Ottawa, hailed CBC's move, writing on his blog that "this development is important not only because it shows that Canada's public broadcaster is increasingly willing to experiment with alternative forms of distribution, but also because it may help crystallize the net neutrality issue in Canada."Rogers Cable, one of Canada's largest Internet providers, has adopted Comcast-style BitTorrent filtering, so CBC's use of the technology is sure to heat up the debate.CBC is conducting the entire BitTorrent effort in-house. The show will be encoded into multiple formats (including an iPod-friendly version), Orvis said, and the BitTorrent server will be running on a CBC server.The BitTorrent version will be available for download to anyone in the world, which is a significant change from previous online TV efforts. The iPlayer platform made by England's BBC is only available to consumers with U.K. network addresses. Similarly, Hulu, the joint effort between Fox and NBC, blocks Net users who are outside the United States. Orvis told me that BitTorrent made the global distribution possible, as it meant that Canadian taxpayers were not subsidizing the cost of delivery to foreign viewers.Sadly, here in the U.S., TV networks are nowhere nearly as enlightened. NBC and Fox have some of their shows available for free via low-quality streams online. Comedy Central, seemingly tired of sending take-down letters to YouTube, made its entire archive of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report available online, via low-quality, free streams. Even PBS provides streams for some of its content.The only way for U.S. consumers to download high-quality shows is, unfortunately, via iTunes, which charges $1.99 for a DRM-locked copy of the show. Linux users need not apply.Of course, Net users can always turn to BitTorrent for DRM-free, high-quality downloads. It's is easy to use--easier than iTunes in many cases--and offers a wider selection. However, it remains, for now, illegal.When will U.S. broadcasters get a clue, ditch DRM, ditch iTunes, and adopt BitTorrent?
The BackgroundI'll try to summarize things as quickly as possible, but it's all rather complicated so bear with me! Also keep in mind that I heard about this the same way a lot of people did - Digg, YouTube, Google, and some scattered mainstream Media coverage - so there may be holes in the story.Around January 16th 2008 some part of a back-alley online community titled Anonymous (aptly named because it is composed only of nameless members - they have no pseudonyms, aliases, or digital identities) decided that they were frustrated with the way The Church of Scientology has handled itself as an organization. They decided to try to do something about this frustration and pulled out the digital battle drums - which I assume involved a post on their community's site announcing the problems with Scientology and looking to see if anyone wanted to help do something about it.On January 21st someone uploaded a video to YouTube which ominously listed Anonymous' complaints and announced an Internet led "war" on the Church of Scientology (note the 2 million + views). Because Anonymous is anonymous I can't even try to guess how many people were involved at this point, but apparently it was enough to cause a decent amount of online buzz.The message was spread through various channels of the Internet - YouTube, Digg, online community forums, etc. They also got a blip or two on the mainstream media radar. The interesting part is that efforts weren't being organized by "leaders" - they were being organized completely via anonymous individuals using a public wiki, meaning anyone could change anything (much like you see on Wikipedia).Over the next few weeks members of Anonymous began to harass Scientology and continued to make the occasional "press release". More importantly, though, vloggers, bloggers, and countless other individuals gave their two cents through response videos on YouTube, comments on Digg, and contributions to the blogosphere. Some supported the movement, some just felt it was going to be interesting to watch, and some condemned Anonymous as misguided "cyber-terrorists", unscrupulous, or simply boring; however it seemed their cause was resonating with people, generating attention, and even starting to be discussed outside of the Internet.At this point a few more Internet-focused mainstream media folks took notice and mentioned it in various segments. Known critics of the Church of Scientology like Mark Bunker also chimed in and offered advice and criticisms of the anonymous efforts. After listening to the Internet response and gaining support, the anonymous digital harassment changed to legal, more traditional methods. Someone else uploaded a video to YouTube announcing plans for international protests on February 10th.For me these "real life" protests, where 6000+ people protested in 70+ different cities around the world, are what pushed this whole debacle from "interesting to watch" to "what can we learn from this". This takes us to today, where another round of protests is being planned for March 15th.One of Anonymous' forums has a compiled list of links to local and national news coverage. I would definitely recommend watching some of the news reports if you want to learn more.Key Success FactorsThat's the story as I've seen it, so the question to ask now is how did they do it? How did a fairly small group of completely anonymous individuals manage to generate several million views worth of buzz on the internet? And finally, how did they actually bridge the gap and apply that buzz into real, physical world protests? Thinking about it may help inspire thoughts about where digital media is now, where it can go, and what would improve it.Google in the middleApril 10, 2009Three truths:1. Google is a middleman made of software. It's a very, very large middleman made of software. Think of what Goliath or the Cyclops or Godzilla would look like if they were made of software. That's Google.2. The middleman acts in the middleman's interest.3. The broader the span of the middleman's control over the exchanges that take place in a market, the greater the middleman's power and the lesser the power of the suppliers.For much of the first decade of the Web's existence, we were told that the Web, by efficiently connecting buyer and seller, or provider and user, would destroy middlemen. Middlemen were friction, and the Web was a friction-removing machine.We were misinformed. The Web didn't kill mediators. It made them stronger. The way a company makes big money on the Web is by skimming little bits of money off a huge number of transactions, with each click counting as a transaction. (Think trillions of transactions.) The reality of the web is hypermediation, and Google, with its search and search-ad monopolies, is the king of the hypermediators.Which brings us to everybody's favorite business: the news. Newspapers, or news syndicators like the Associated Press, bemoan the power of the middlemen, or aggregators, to get between them and their readers. They particularly bemoan the power of Google, because Google wields, by far, the greatest power. The editor of the Wall Street Journal, Robert Thomson, calls Google a "tapeworm." His boss, Rupert Murdoch, says Google is engaged in "stealing copyrights."Others see Thomson and Murdoch as hypocritical crybabies. To them, Google is the good guy, the benevolent middleman that fairly parcels out traffic, by the trillions of page views, to a multitude of hungry web sites. It's the mommy bird dropping little worm fragments into the mouths of all the baby birds. Scott Rosenberg points out that Google makes it simple for newspapers or any other site operators to opt out of its general search engine and all of its subsidiary search services, including Google News. "Participation in Google is voluntary," he writes. Yet no one opts out. Participation is not only voluntary but "is also pretty much universal, because of the benefits. When users are seeking what you have, it’s good to be found."Rosenberg is correct, but he misses, or chooses not to acknowledge, the larger point. When a middleman controls a market, the supplier has no real choice but to work with the middleman - even if the middleman makes it impossible for the supplier to make money. Given the choice, most people will choose to die of a slow wasting disease rather than to have their head blown off with a bazooka. But that doesn't mean that dying of a slow wasting disease is pleasant.As Tom Sleeexplains, Google's role as the dominant middleman in the digital content business resembles Wal-Mart's role as the dominant middleman in the consumer products business. Because of the vastness of Wal-Mart's market share, consumer goods companies have little choice but to sell their wares through the retailing giant, even if the retailing giant squeezes their profit margin to zilch. It's called leverage: Play by our rules, or die.Sometimes "voluntary" isn't really "voluntary."When it comes to Google and other aggregators, newspapers face a sort of prisoners' dilemma. If one of them escapes, their competitors will pick up the traffic they lose. But if all of them stay, none of them will ever get enough traffic to make sufficient money. So they all stay in the prison, occasionally yelling insults at their jailer through the bars on the door.None of this, by the way, should be taken as criticism of Google. Google is simply pursuing its own interests - those interests just happen to be very different from the interests of the news companies. What Google can, and should, be criticized for is its disingenuousness. In an official response to the recent criticism of its control over news-seeking traffic, Google rolled out one of its lawyers, who put on his happy face and wrote: "Users like me are sent from different Google sites to newspaper websites at a rate of more than a billion clicks per month. These clicks go to news publishers large and small, domestic and international - day and night. And once a reader is on the newspaper's site, we work hard to help them earn revenue. Our AdSense program pays out millions of dollars to newspapers that place ads on their sites."Wow. "A billion clicks." "Millions of dollars." Such big numbers. What Google doesn't mention is that the billions of clicks and the millions of ad dollars are so fragmented among so many thousands of sites that no one site earns enough to have a decent online business. Where the real money ends up is at the one point in the system where traffic is concentrated: the Google search engine. Google's overriding interest is to (a) maximize the amount and velocity of the traffic flowing through the web and (b) ensure that as large a percentage of that traffic as possible goes through its search engine and is exposed to its ads. One of the most important ways it accomplishes that goal is to promote the distribution of as much free content as possible through as many sites as possible on the web. For Google, any concentration of traffic at content sites is anathema; it would represent a shift of power from the middleman to the supplier. Google wants to keep that traffic fragmented. The suppliers of news have precisely the opposite goal.Take a look at the top topic on Google News right now:Look, in particular, at the number of stories on this topic that Google already has in its database: 11,264. That's a staggeringly large number. To Google, it's a beautiful number. To the 11,264 news sites competing for a measly little page view, and the infinitesimal fraction of a penny the view represents, it's death.As I've written before, the essential problem facing the online news business is oversupply. The cure isn't pretty. It requires, first, a massive reduction of production capacity - ie, the consolidation or disappearance of lots of news outlets. Second, and dependent on that reduction of production capacity, it requires news organizations to begin to impose controls on their content. By that, I don't mean preventing bloggers from posting fair-use snippets of articles. I mean curbing the rampant syndication, authorized or not, of full-text articles. Syndication makes sense when articles remain on the paper they were printed on. It doesn't make sense when articles float freely across the global web. (Take note, AP.)Once the news business reduces supply, it can begin to consolidate traffic, which in turn consolidates ad revenues and, not least, opens opportunities to charge subscription fees of one sort or another - opportunities that today, given the structure of the industry, seem impossible. With less supply, the supplier gains market power at the expense of the middleman.The fundamental problem facing the news business today does not lie in Google's search engine. It lies in the structure of the news business itself.http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/live-blogging-the-new-hampshire-debate/
Content economy•Own/control content•Syndicate/sell•Many copies•Monetized at the edge•Value created with content
Link economy•One copy, many links•Made open (searchable, linkable)•Monetized at the center•Links bring efficiencies: (Do what you do best, link to the rest)•Value created with links
Ready? Here's My Formula for Online News Success by Jay Rosen (Bio), October 17, 2007Tagged: aggregation, blogging, news, newsroom, ONA, reportingI am at the Online News Association annual meeting in Toronto. Listening to some of the speakers at the J-Lab's workshop, puzzling through the success of some sites and the failure of others, and putting together what I have learned from four years of doing PressThink, the emerging model I see would combine...√ High quality aggregation within a strong editorial focus. (Like the Huffington Post nationally, or Twin Cities Daily Planet locally.)√ Blogging platform with the best posts filtered to the front page. (Like Daily Kos)√ Original reporting with hybrid strength: amateurs with pro support (training, production values, copy editing, editorial oversight, and traffic), pros with amateur support (like Regina Lynn; see also my Idea Lab post on beat reporting with a social network) and pros doing what pros have always done.√ Features with narrow comprehensiveness: everything about something. (Lisa Williams: "That is, a site with some Denver restaurants is OK; but a site with ALL Denver restaurants is better.")√ Forums that allow a previously atomized group--people sharing interests and problems--to connect and converse with each other.√ Crowdsourcing projects that gather information impossible to get any other way. (Like WNYC's efforts, or the News & Observer's speeding investigation.)√ Find, prepare and place online data sets that are "available" (but not easy to use), and of strong interest to a user public; let people access and interact with the information by framing it properly and providing the bigger narrative that the data is a part of. (See chicagocrime.org.)√ Reverse publishing: web-to-print, for the highest quality content generated online. (Read Dan Barkin: "Every day except Sunday, we take photos, forum comments, user-submitted school news, user-nominated volunteer stories and publish it on Page 2." See YourHub.)√ Absolute commitment to breaking news in the coverage area by any means necessary: pro, am, aggregation, blogging, crowdsourced.√ Geo-tagged information: organized so people can access it by location, or via a map.√ Headlines and summaries optimized for search; open archives and permalinks.√ Put-it-all-together key topic pages that combine... aggregation, original reporting, blog posts, data, forums and crowdsourced information on something big and of intense interest, like a bridge collapse.Like my coordinates for distributed journalism, these are the coordinates I see for the emerging model of a successful online news organization.