The future of journalism?

I love this Economist piece, as it sets me to thinking, so to pull out some bits here...

Link: Economist.com: The Future of Journalism.

Apr 21st 2005 | LONDON, NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition

Is Rupert Murdoch right to predict the end of newspapers as we now know them?

“I BELIEVE too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch with our readers,” Rupert Murdoch, the boss of News Corporation, one of the world's largest media companies, told the American Society of Newspaper Editors last week. No wonder that people, and in particular the young, are ditching their newspapers. Today's teens, twenty- and thirty-somethings “don't want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what's important,” Mr Murdoch said, “and they certainly don't want news presented as gospel.” And yet, he went on, “as an industry, many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably, complacent.”

OK, apologies for leaving the Murdoch quote in. Just hold your nose. I'm not leaving it in for authority, I'm leaving it in for effect.

The speech—astonishing not so much for what it said as for who said it—may go down in history as the day that the stodgy newspaper business officially woke up to the new realities of the internet age. Talking at times more like a pony-tailed, new-age technophile than a septuagenarian old-media god-like figure, Mr Murdoch said that news “providers” such as his own organisation had better get web-savvy, stop lecturing their audiences, “become places for conversation” and “destinations” where “bloggers” and “podcasters” congregate to “engage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions.” He also criticised editors and reporters who often “think their readers are stupid”.

Oooh. Here's a hot button topic for me. I can't stand the elements in the industry (speaking of all mass media, not just newspapers) that interpret "lowest common denominator" as "assuming our audience is stupid," which unfortunately can often be used as an argument for hiring someone who is not the brightest light in the forest, a journalist who knows how to memorize rules and management dictates well, marches in step, dress right, but whose "greatest asset" is that he or she will never run the risk of "thinking" beyond the assumed dumbed-down level of the audience.

Why do I keep going back to that Kurt Vonnegut story, "Harrison Bergeron"? The tyranny of the average? Must we ask dull questions at press conferences on the assumption that the majority of our audiences won't be able to follow more clever and critical questioning?

Since when does "lowest common denominator" equate itself to "leveling downward" like that Harrison Bergeron character, who must take tests in classes with a periodic sharp noise in his ears, so his brains won't give him undue advantage over his less sharp classmates?

Which gives me an excuse to post my favorite Thoreau quote again, here in the middle of things:

"Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? ... Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half-witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit."

And for ironic juxtaposition, let's return to Mr Murdoch.

Mr Murdoch's argument begins with the fact that newspapers worldwide have been—and seem destined to keep on—losing readers, and with them advertising revenue. In 1995-2003, says the World Association of Newspapers, circulation fell by 5% in America, 3% in Europe and 2% in Japan. In the 1960s, four out of five Americans read a paper every day; today only half do so. Philip Meyer, author of “The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age” (University of Missouri Press), says that if the trend continues, the last newspaper reader will recycle his final paper copy in April 2040.

Gotcha!

The decline of newspapers predates the internet. But the second—broadband—generation of the internet is not only accelerating it but is also changing the business in a way that the previous rivals to newspapers—radio and TV—never did. Older people, whom Mr Murdoch calls “digital immigrants”, may not have noticed, but young “digital natives” increasingly get their news from web portals such as Yahoo! or Google, and from newer web media such as blogs. Short for “web logs”, these are online journal entries of thoughts and web links that anybody can post. Whereas 56% of Americans haven't heard of blogs, and only 3% read them daily, among the young they are standard fare, with 44% of online Americans aged 18-29 reading them often, according to a poll by CNN/USA Today/Gallup.

[...]

It is tempting, but wrong, for the traditional mainstream media (which includes The Economist) to belittle this sort of thing. It is true, for instance, that the vast majority of blogs are not worth reading and, in fact, are not read (although the same is true of much in traditional newspapers). On the other hand, bloggers play an increasingly prominent part in the wider media drama—witness their role in America's presidential election last year. The most popular bloggers now get as much traffic individually as the opinion pages of most newspapers. Many bloggers are windbags, but some are world experts in their field. Matthew Hindman, a political scientist at Arizona State University, found that the top bloggers are more likely than top newspaper columnists to have gone to a top university, and far more likely to have an advanced degree, such as a doctorate.

[emphasis mine... thinking about the Thoreau quote, and also thinking: revenge of the Harrison Bergerons? Quick tangent: could you imagine this marketing tagline for one of the leading mass media outlets in the U.S.? "Go to XXXX for all your news. No one on our staff has an SAT score above the 75th percentile! We speak your language." Uh, yeah, I'd brag about that too, y'all.]

[...]

The tone in these new media is radically different. For today's digital natives, says Mr Gillmor, it is anathema to be lectured at. Instead, they expect to be informed as part of an online dialogue. They are at once less likely to write a traditional letter to the editor, and more likely to post a response on the web—and then to carry on the discussion. A letters page pre-selected by an editor makes no sense to them; spotting the best responses using the spontaneous voting systems of the internet does.

[...]

But it remains uncertain what mix of advertising revenue, tips and subscriptions will fund the news providers of the future, and how large a role today's providers will have. What is clear is that the control of news—what constitutes it, how to prioritise it and what is fact—is shifting subtly from being the sole purview of the news provider to the audience itself. Newspapers, Mr Murdoch implies, must learn to understand their role as providers of news independent of the old medium of distribution, the paper.

And with that thought, I gotta dig up a statistic I saw today on online advertising revenue vs old media. I had to grab it off Jeff Jarvis's BuzzMachine, looks like he took it off the AdAge print edition and dug up the numbers off some wire reports out today or thereabouts. ("Don't you just hate those print editions?" Tom Swift said disconnectedly)

Link: BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis.

: Ad Age reports this week (not online, damnit) that Google is beating the big boys:

:Yahoo and Google's total ad revenues this year could rival the combined prime-time ad revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC -- a stunning achievement for the companies and a watershed moment [read: tipping point -ed J.J.] for the Internet as an advertising medium.

In terms of revenue, Google's estimated $3 billion and Yahoo's $2.9 billion compare with $6.2 billion for the big nets' prime time. And their market cap is up with the big boys: Google is No. 2 behind Time Warner; Yahoo is No. five behind Disney and News Corp. as well.

"The results from Google and Yahoo combined with softness in traditional media, offer the strongest evidence yet of the dramatic changes occurring in the media and marketing landscape," Tony Mastin, analyst at William Blair & Co. wrote.

In terms of measured media spending, the Internet was already bigger than outdoor, TV syndication and national newspapers, according to TNS Media Intelligence.