Traveling in Atlanta: Excited about Future Business Models

It’s been an interesting 24-hours and will continue to be so for the next ten or so days as I go between Atlanta and Miami. Right now I’m finally catching my breathe in a hotel room that can only be described as ‘dirty like the south.’

Last night I went to a talk about the future of the newsroom at U.C. Berkeley. It felt like a “typical” conversation that failed to talk about next steps. Perhaps it’s my naivet and youth – but I think at this day in age, if you ever gather a room of journalists together in a room it should be about “next steps.”

At one point there was a classic divide between young and old journalists. My friend Cyrus Farivar started it – wondering why these new rooms aren’t just being torn apart and built back from the ground up.

Again: I’m not blaming older journalists – and although the panelists (for the most part) scoffed citizen journalism, I am sure they see the value in the vigor of younger web-native journalists. The reason I call it a “typical” conversation is because there is a divide in the newsroom between those who just want to dive in head first and those who don’t. I don’t claim to know why they don’t – I’m obviously of the first half. But it is a divide I’ve noticed more and more. A side note to all this: I’m sending luck and wishes to friends at the San Jose Mercury News who recently found out there will be another round of layoffs. I have nothing but respect for the people I know there, one of whom was on the panel).

It’s something I talked about briefly with Chris Barr from Yahoo – who was on the same flight with me to Atlanta.

I was very excited to meet Hemant of Reporterist. We had some email exchanges recently and I think we are of a similar mindset. Essentially the newsroom can exist online and can exist in a dispersed nature.

I’m equally excited to read about Leonard Witt’s newest venture. We have talked about Representative Journalism before and I think its time is coming soon. I don’t know what it will look like. I get the feeling that either Leonard or TK or myself (if I’m able to get in the game) will be defining the space. The idea itself, of course, is nothing new. Bloggers have been using donations for as long as I can remember. But there isn’t an organized way to use that power of collective pocketbooks for journalism.

Thinking about during my flight to Atlanta I bought the latest Harvard Business Review because of one headline that caught my eye. Below are the first three paragraphs from it.

Here Comes the P2P Economy

“Peer-to-peer, or P2P, networks have thrown the media industry into turmoil. changing the flow of information from a one-to-many model (with newspaper publishers, Hollywood studios, and big music companies as the sources) to a many-to-many model (with blogs, YouTube, and file-sharing forums as the venues). The ability of individuals to both consume and create content – news, movies, and music – greatly threatens traditional players. Witness the struggles of established U.S. newspaper publishers – the share prices of the four largest have fallen between 10% and 50% during the generally rising market of the past three years – because of challenges from new media and advertising models, including P2P schemes.

A shock like the one that jolted the media is poised to strike other industries, perhaps more disruptively. It is already being felt in financial services. Start with the phenomenon of microcredit: the lending of small sums to, and then within, social groups at the village level in poor economies, with members collectively guaranteeing the bank’s loan. Combine that with the power of a global digital network, and a new model for banking begins to take shape.

Indeed, P2P finanical systems are set to reprise in the banking industry what has happened in media. Already, websites like Kiva,org, Propser.com, and LendingClub.com have extended microbanking to consumers in developed economies. In such systems, everyone is a tiny bank, making it easier to raise small amounts of capital among people who know – or at least, because of their social network, trust – one another.”

Good luck to Leonard on his experiment in Representative Journalism. I think the time has come for projects like this. I don’t know what shape it will take, but I am certain it will take some form. The only question that looms – are people willing to pay for good content? iTunes has proved there is a market for 99cent songs. Could the same be true for journalists? Are there 99cent investigations? I like to think that people still value good content enough to pay for it – online or otherwise. Perhaps these experiments will answer the question: Is technology the problem, or is it journalism?