I’m very excited for this month’s Carnival of Jouralism hosted by Ryan Sholin, just after San Francisco’s own Bay to Breakers (a local Mardi Gras). To celebrate I have not one…. but TWO videos. I’m going crazy, I’m giving them away!!!!!
UPDATE: After the videos I’ll attempt to answer a question Ryan posed to the group: "What should news organizations stop doing, today, immediately, to make more time for innovation?"
The first video is Jonathan Dube who has a resume that should drop your jaw. The main reason I wanted to interview Jonathan was to get some info about two great resources for journalists: CyberJournalist.net, which he founded and the Online News Association where he is the current president. Both deserve your attention.
I love Cyber Journalist. If you like Romenesko, you should check CyberJ’s link blog. Instead of being up to date on the latest layoffs and snafu’s you’ll start hearing about the newest tech trends and media tools. And hey, you can put yourself on the unofficial list of J-bloggers.
The second interview is with Martin Moore, who I’ve crossed paths with but finally got to know a little better a few weeks ago when we both were in Vegas to accept the Knight News Challenge grants (quick shameless plug for Spot.Us). In the video Martin talks about what he won the grant for, why it’s important to journalism and what it’s like to work with Sir Tim Berners Lee, who invented something you’ve probably heard of.
So – for your viewing pleasure: Videos one and two.
And now for the thinking part of this post: What should news organizations stop doing, today, immediately, to make more time for innovation?
Stop buying Associated Press articles.
I know that’s a controversial one – but here’s how I see it.
- Associated Press has become its own news organization. It’s no longer looking out for newspapers, it’s trying to figure out how it, as an organization, is relevant on the web. That’s great and all – but for a newspaper, that means it’s second on the AP’s list of priorities.
- Nobody likes seeing the same AP stories on their newspaper. It makes your paper look cheap.
- They are called hyperlinks. They are blue. They are useful. Look Ma’ – here’s an AP story. And it didn’t cost me a thing to link to it!
Money spent on the AP could be money saved and then used for… Innovation!
I sometimes use the AP as an analogy to what I hope Spot.Us could be at a local level. I envision Spot.Us being a marketplace for local news stories and the finished products could be run by news organizations. The main differences being (a: local content means that at most only a small handful of news organizations would also run the same content (b. the content would be free to run for any news organization unless they wanted an exclusive on the story at which point they wouldn’t be paying Spot.Us – their money would go back to the community (their readers) – and the community would know the final story was essentially sponsored by X news organization.
As I see it: This would allow newspapers to run more original local content, save money and build serious brand loyalty. The AP does none of these.
Canceling an AP subscription could also save money if it resulted in a newspaper using less paper and ink, both of which are costly.
Dave, YouTube has pulled the interviews. :-/
Sometimes YouTube is a bit picky. If an embeded video isn’t working – the best bet is to click “menu” in the lower right hand corner and then copy and paste the URL to go directly to the video on YouTube. Usually – it’ll work there.
Dave, bold idea about papers pulling AP stories. I’ve got mixed feelings about it though.
It’s basically a business issue for the print side. Right now, a lot of people who still pay to subscribe to print papers use that as their primary news channel. And yes, we’re talking mainly about older folks at this point, so eventually this issue will, um, “die off.” But for now and for the next decade or two, we’ll still have a large share of print-focused subscribers.
Meanwhile news orgs have decimated their own staffs.
So if they don’t buy AP stories, where would most of them get international coverage? High-level national coverage? Virtually none of that would appear in the print edition. It matters less online, since there are many sources of that news online. But for print subscribers, it’s an issue.
At a lot of news orgs, even though they don’t get a ton of direct revenue from print subscribers, it’s an important metric they tout to advertisers, and it helps them keep their print ad rates up.
So if they were to pull AP content entirely, they might be sacrificing support for their print ad rates. And down goes your house of cards. If you don’t care whether the papers collapse entirely, then that’s no big deal. Personally, I think that would hurt a lot of communities, so I’d prefer a less drastic solution.
What I’d like to see would be for news orgs to do a lot more serious work to localize and elaborate upon AP stories. Right now they usually either don’t touch them at all (which I think is little better than running press releases) or they rework the lead to create a superficial local angle.
In other words, it would be great if they would use AP stories as a basic ingredient, not the whole damn pie.
And they sure as hell shouldn’t run unaltered (or barely altered) AP stories on their sites. That’s pointless.
Will mull this over more and blog it later. Good points you make.
– Amy
I long for days when a paper in a major U.S. city would be expected to have several correspondents of their own stationed in D.C., New York, Mexico City, and roving the country and abroad.
I agree with your argument against the HUGE reliance on wire that these dailies have sunk to. It is awful. For writers and readers and, it could be reasoned, our democracy, it is a nightmare.
But i don’t see these papers that have continuously sacked their newsrooms making that investment again. It seems, your model wouldn’t provide interested, linked-in reporters and editors that are accountable to the home communities they would be serving, either.
I love your model for (national) local news, but I don’t see how it would replace the real need that wires have sought to fill…
the flipside to this is the traffic that can be fueled by committed and timely syndication to AP stories. When I search for breaking stories I most often turn up the AP account on either the Mercury News or Huffington Post. The traffic likely pays for the AP sub and more.
Aside from timeliness, however, I feel little value is added. AP writethrus provide good background but it still takes a local presence and voice to add value and make the story complete. Congrats, btw on the Knight grant — Spot.us is an excellent idea!