• george will
• journalism
• new media

I was going to write this as a comment to Rosa's post below about George Will and journalism in general, but it kept getting longer...so I thought it deserved a post.

The title of my original post was off the mark. In fact, the title doesn't really describe what I actually argued in that post. While I'd grant that Will is much more a "pundit" than a "journalist," the main point I was trying to make was that the bellyaching of newspapers regarding blogs is sometimes off the mark. The difference between blogs and newspapers is not that that newspapers are more accurate. The difference is that journalists have access - bloggers often do not (though, to be fair, Nate Silver now sits in the White House press room). Newspapers make mistakes too. Fine. I'm not concerned with that. I'm concerned with the position that "bloggers" or "amateurs" make mistakes and are therefore useless (Andrew Keen makes this accusation over and over in The Cult of the Amateur.) The issue between new and old media is not accuracy. It is access.

I'm more concerned with the whining that the "amateurs" are ruining the newspaper industry. As far as I can tell, newspapers forced to make budget cuts are cutting the very thing that sets them apart from electronic media - seasoned reporters. Maybe they have no choice. Maybe they just have to make cuts across the board. But it seems to me that this is the main asset of a news organization: the people who have access. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if those who make the business decisions see it this way.

This was recently a topic of debate in the Senate, where David Simon (writer of The Wire, and who I really do love) was his sanctimonious self. Simon wasn't wrong. With Simon, it's often delivery and not content that turns people off. He began his diatribe with a "plague on both their houses" remark aimed at bloggers and newspapers. Here's Simon's take:

high-end journalism – that which acquires essential information about our government and society in the first place — is a profession; it requires daily, full-time commitment by trained men and women who return to the same beats day in and day out until the best of them know everything with which a given institution is contending. For a relatively brief period in American history – no more than the last fifty years or so – a lot of smart and talented people were paid a living wage and benefits to challenge the unrestrained authority of our institutions and to hold those institutions to task. Modern newspaper reporting was the hardest and in some ways most gratifying job I ever had. I am offended to think that anyone, anywhere believes American institutions as insulated, self-preserving and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures and chief executives can be held to gathered facts by amateurs pursuing the task without compensation, training, or for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care to whom it is they are lying or from whom they are withholding information.

I very much agree with this take. I just wish that newspapers would recognize the problem and aim to remake themselves. There is a way to do this. We may not see it right now, but there is a way. Rather than blaming new media, or bloggers, or Craigslist, let's all get to work on figuring out how journalism needs to be remade for the current moment. Mark Cuban's thoughts on this topic are useful (I quoted this same passage in a recent post on my own blog):

"I don't care how Internet savvy you are or whether you're in ninth
grade or college, you're not going to read twenty-five pages of text
online. In newspapers, you read more pages, you read more words.
There's no way around it. But newspapers don't see their own value.
They just don't get it. So they do dumb-ass shit, like they can't
figure out who their customer is, they can't figure out what business
they're in. They have all these news-wire reports, these breaking
stories, but anyone who's Internet savvy knows that breaking stories,
sports events, all that stuff is available on the Internet thirty
seconds after it happens. The people who are in tune to wanting stuff
immediately are going to get it online. But when you read the New York
Times or you read the L.A. Times, you read the Chicago Trib or The
Dallas Morning News, when they break a story that is unique, not just
first, but unique, a story that you can't just pick up on the wire,
you have to read it. And if it's geared toward different demographics,
fine. Like, businesspeople have to read the New York Times business
section -- even though from personal experience I know they're wrong a
certain percentage of the time. You still have to read it, just in
case something clicks. Like for me. If I want to keep up with what's
going on in Dallas, I have to read the local paper. So newspapers
aren't dying; they're just undergoing an identity crisis. They don't
know who they want to be."

In a recent blog post, Cuban (entrepreneur that he is) also offered some free advice to newspapers. Pointing out that Amazon.com's greatest asset is that they have his credit card number on file, Cuban wonders why he still gets an envelope from the Dallas Morning News when it's time to make a payment. He then riffs on what newspapers might be able to do if they had a database of subscriber credit card numbers:

The quickest and easiest place to start would be by making sure that every time I went to DallasNews.com you knew that my credit card was on file and you offered me specials. Free or otherwise. If some local artist has a small or large hit, go to the label and try to license it and offer it for free to those of us who pay by card. I may not want “Jessica Simpson’s latest hit, free to EZPay Subscribers”. I might just download the soundtrack to the local musical that you helped sponsor, or a special track from a performer coming to the local performing arts center. Or what about the speech that an author gave at the local college ? Or the presentation at the local breakfast club ?

In fact, you should look at anything and everything digital that you can acquire and give away or sell to your subscribers. It costs you next to nothing to host and allow the downloads, but you are driving traffic, and immediately offering incremental value that isnt available elsewhere.

From there, its a question of imagination.

Want the super special Dallas Cowboys expanded 10 page draft section. $5.00, charged to your card. Get the weekly video blog for the Dallas Mavericks, delivered to your email box for only 29c per month, charged to your card annually. Want to get the indepth analysis of whats going on with High School Football, get the exclusive insight that only Joe Blow of the Morning News can offer for $2.95 per month, Delivered to your email, or get our special expanded print edition every saturday with indepth analysis and pictures of every high school football game with exclusive links to online video for only $9.95 per month during HS football season.

Cuban's suggestions do not necessarily address how to make use of newspapers' main asset - access. But this is the kind of thinking that I'd like to see in journalism circles. I'm so tired of the blame game.

This is just a long repetition of the argument I made in my first post, and it's a topic that deserves many long repetitions. I regret the title of my post. But I hope that it's now clearer that I'm very much in the corner of journalists (whether or not Will is included in that group). I just want some actual forward thinking about the topic of how to remake journalism.

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