My industry
I like to wrap up each year by looking at what I’ve written about here. To do it a little bit differently, I looked at three different measures of content: what was the best trafficked, what got the most engagement (email, conversation, social chatter) and what I ones I most want to follow up on.
Continue reading my 5 best trafficked, most interesting and other posts of 2012
When you first launch your venture or your organization or group or initiative, you might throw every waking moment you have at it. You log lots of hours, play many roles and simply aim to outlast any competitors. It’s a blind outpouring of time. You start by working longer.
In time, you get to know your needs, strengths and shortcomings better. You add support and focus your efforts. You do a lot of research and plenty of outreach to refine your work. You’re still logging long hours but it comes with greater savvy. You grow by working harder.
It’s here that efforts can go one of two ways. Many will grow in this way, by working hard and simply letting product and chance decide winners and losers. That can work, but the greater goal (and therefore the greater challenge) is to transition once again.
As 19th century French writer Emile Zola said: “The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without the work.”
You could begin innovating beyond your origins. You could partner or compete when best suited. You might know well your market differentiation, exploit it and grow it. You succeed by working smarter.
Another in a long tradition of academic looks at the news industry landed last week with considerable attention among the new media community.
The Post-Industrial Journalism report from NYU’s Clay Shirky, Columbia’s Emily Bell and CUNY’s Chris Anderson has been far better dissected, in greater detail, by the Nieman Lab’s Josh Benton, so I’ll leave it to him. (Kindly Technically Philly is briefly mentioned in the report as a leaner version of journalism purveyors of today)
Instead, I wanted to share my three biggest concerns about journalism academia, as I had shared with Anderson this summer following a conversation I was a part of with the three authors and others at Columbia.
Eleven University of Pennsylvania students pitched their media startup ideas at an Entrepreneurial Journalism Demo Night held in the Kelly Writers House last week. I was there by invitation of the class’s professor Sam Apple, whose reporting background stems from a stint experimenting with launching theFasterTimes.com.
The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper, covered the pitch night here, so I just wanted to share the 11 pitches I saw.
Continue reading 11 student media startup ideas: Upenn Entrepreneurial Journalism Demo Night
Today, the greatest competition for journalists isn’t other journalists. It’s the source itself.
But rather than face the continued loss of revenue to efforts outside of reporting or the looming collision of mission and audience, my industry is still focused as it always has been on besting others in their traditional ecosystem, not on preparing for the growing attention deficit online.
Continue reading Reporters: today, your competition isn’t other journalists, it’s the source itself
Content partnerships do not work, my colleague Sean Blanda posited last year.
From the very first conversations we’ve had that led to his post, I’ve wanted to prove this wrong. In truth, I do believe in the future, the expectations and roles will be sorted out, and content partnerships will be understood and successful.
But, for now, content partnerships still don’t work.
Continue reading When content partnerships (still) don’t work
Updated I gave a presentation similar to this theme to a pair of college classes recently, one of which resulted in these takeaways.
To have a news community ‘succeed,’ it needs to either be built around a mission or the mission needs to be built into its community.
That means, if, for the foreseeable future, a more competitive, newly web-based news and information environment best attracts audience by way of connecting a community to a mission, those best suited to succeed will have one.
Continue reading Either build the news site for the mission or build the mission for the news site
A functioning local news ecosystem, one that has mechanisms to ask tough questions and serve as a hub of a common set of facts for a region, seems to have some straightforward ingredients.
What traditionally drove a functioning modern news ecosystem (20th century)
What this might look like in the near future (and in some ways now)
So looking at your market, what is lacking? Set about serving that role.
Revenue models for local journalism are still quickly being siphoned off from prospective journalism creators of the future.
We’ve had no shortage of hand-wringing around the future of news in recent years. As I see it, simple access to news and information won’t be the problem of the future, since publishing keeps getting easier which adds to the number of sources (though creating the infrastructure to have a broad set of common facts locally might be. Still that’s another issue for another post).
Instead, I am far more concerned about the future of local journalism. (I am not talking about international war reporting or national politics, as those audiences can be relatively so large that I trust in niche players, like Propublica and the New York Times finding a foothold). Instead, I’m talking about state houses, city halls, niche communities and neighborhoods.
The loss (or failure to recreate) journalism in those places is my greatest fear for the future of asking tough questions and what professionally keeps me awake at night more than almost anything else.
