Freelance Unbound

From the Twitterfeed:

#media140 question from audience: if journalism goes online what happens to needs of those citizens who not got web?

It’s an interesting (if slightly garbled) question, especially given yesterday’s story about people without web access being denied cheap rail fares. It seems around 25% of UK citizens don’t have web access at home, a figure that’s skewed to, broadly, the poor and the elderly. 
So – is it a real problem if the trend is for journalism to move online? 
I’d say no, actually. 
Bear in mind that we’re talking about the switch from printed journalism to online. And let’s face it, buying a newspaper is a minority interest. So much so that the French government has given French teenagers a free newspaper subscription in a (probably futile) bid to stop the decline of the industry. 
But even middle aged and older people don’t always buy a newspaper – or even pick up one of the freebies on offer in UK cities. 
Sure, the internet is gaining ground – especially when you look at the young and more tech-savvy. But does that mean those without web access are disenfranchised? 
Assuming they want to, it’s pretty obvious they can get all the media news they need from TV and radio. In fact, that’s where most people in the US, at least, get their news even now, according to a Pew Research Center survey. 
The whole question is based on a false notion – that the printed news media are more important in people’s lives than is really the case. 
Let’s face facts – newspapers are a niche industry, and they’re getting more marginal. They’re not unimportant. But they’re not the centre of the universe either. 
It’s a harder lesson for journalists to accept than for the public at large, I think…

Unsurprisingly, journalism bloggers have been keen to jump on the relaunched Evening Standard as a topic for posting. (Surprisingly, I got in quite early – normally I’m days or weeks behind the curve). 
I wrote that the Standard could go for a local news aggregation model in a bid to offer something different, and attractive, to readers.
FleetStreetBlues punts in with the notion that investigative journalism might be the Standard’s saving grace:

Why not completely scale back its general news coverage, relying more on wire copy for the stories that readers will already have seen or heard about elsewhere anyway, and put all its spare resources into investigative journalism?

It’s an interesting take. I’m a firm believer that no one is actually interested in the news anymore – a perhaps sad reflection on our shallow, trivia-obsessed society. (Or maybe just a sad reflection on me.) But also a reflection that there’s just too much of the stuff around. 
But the FleetStreetBlues crowd have at least partly recognised this. The idea that you’d just give up on general reporting and use the wires – like the freebies do, I imagine – is bold and sensible.
I have to say I find their suggestion that  “every day the newspaper vendor’s sandwich boards would be plastered with one jaw-dropping expose after another – so jaw-dropping that there and then readers would be willing to part with their 50p.” a little fanciful. 
(Actually, so do they. “Could it work? Probably not”, they admit, cheerfully.)
But the idea that you should stop doing the things you’ve done for decades and think of doing something differently is key to making the modern news media work.

…and I feel as if I’ve lost a limb. Something is clearly wrong with this picture. Repeat: it’s only software, it’s only software…
[And there are actually other search engines. Who’d have thought?]

Yesterday I posted about how news wouldn’t be the selling point for the new-look Evening Standard, unless perhaps it was a real engagement with local news.
Obviously, Recovering Journalist Mark Potts takes a much more incisive and in-depth look at such issues – and his latest post is particularly relevant. 
In it he suggests local news aggregation could be key to giving newspapers a stronger position in their community.

“I’m still waiting for the first big newspaper site to take a serious crack at aggregating all the local news and information it can find, regardless of source, and establishing itself as the expert on all things local … it’s a lot cheaper than putting more reporters on the street. 

If the Evening Standard becomes a kind of portal for local news sources – bloggers, community newsletters, pictures, videos etc – it could use its sizeable distribution infrastructure to get that news to hundreds of thousands of commuters who might then have another reason to pick up a copy. 
As Recovering Journalist says, there is no magic bullet to save newspapers. But if the Standard is looking for fresh ideas, it could do worse than take the risk.

Like many Londoners – or at least near-Londoners – I picked up a gratis copy of the Evening Standard (now rebranded the London Evening Standard) out of curiosity about how it could reinvent itself as a viable paid-for paper in a world where people [a] get their news for free, and up to date, from TV, radio and the web and [b] only really want to entertained for half an hour on the commute home. 
The Evening Standard is enjoying some publicity over its “Sorry” campaign (the former editor hates it) and its promise to bring readers more “good news” (likewise). 
Will this work? Despite ex-editor Veronica Wadley criticising the new editorial policy as resembling that of Soviet era Pravda, the Standard may be on to something. 
The new editor, Geordie Greig, used to edit the Tatler, so that says something about his priorities – he likes the social scene, apparently, though he’s a bit of an intellectual. And he’s hung out with gangsters. Which is nice. 
One clue about the Standard‘s new direction could be the big splash given to a piece by Tom Wolfe satirising financial excess. It reads well, and is in a different league to the usual free evening paper trivia. 
The acid test will be whether Londoners are really hungry for a more upscale and substantial entertainment vehicle than they’ve already got – and whether they’ll make the effort to seek it out and pay for it. Both The London Paper and London Lite are pretty thin, but you have to work hard not to pick one up in the capital. 
Crucially, Greig was quoted in a Guardian profile as not really being in tune with celeb culture:

“I don’t think I’d be very good at Heat, though. It wouldn’t excite me. You have to get a buzz, or it doesn’t work. But, you know, fantastic candyfloss.”

If it’s that kind of candyfloss that London commuters really want on the tube home, the Standard may be in trouble. But if it has at least learned the lesson that commuters prefer entertainment to run-of-the-mill news, that’s something. 
So is there no room for news in, well, a newspaper? 
Not if it’s just the same old rehashed stories you’ve seen or heard ever since the Today programme (or any radio news bulletin) at 7am. And I’m not sure I want to read serious in-depth analysis while I’m strap-hanging on the underground. 
The one thing it might do is report real London news. Not the national government agenda – though obviously the UK government is in London. But local capital news that you don’t get to see otherwise. 
But that’s tough to do. It requires resources, for one thing, which is something the print media is finding it can’t afford right now. And when it comes to real-time reporting, digital media are much better placed to handle breaking news or events.
When I wanted to follow the London Mayoral election last year, for example, I was out of town, and without a TV. The BBC web site, exemplary though it is in many respects, didn’t seem to have live, or even frequent, coverage. But there was a microblog reporting the latest developments from the count – a triumph of new media over old.
The website? Almost unbelievably, it was www.thelondonpaper.com. Yes, a Twitter-style feed from the trashy London freebie was the only source of up-to-the-minute political reporting I could find that night. 
Lessons for the Evening Standard? You might as well try something truly different – the same old, same old really isn’t going to work anymore.

I poked fun at my local Surrey & Hants News recently for its slightly random headlines, but sometimes local papers get it just right. 

This one made me smile – it’s punning and jokey, but tells you all you really need to know…

Interesting piece on Journalism.co.uk on the FIPP World Magazine Congress. Condé Nast International chairman (or CEO, depending on which story or paragraph you read) Jonathan Newhouse believes print has a bright future.

“To those who believe that paper and print will disappear, I’ve only one word to pronounce – nonsense,” said Newhouse.

It is true that the whole “print is dead” meme is taken more or less seriously by those in publishing really depending on what type of print they’re involved with. 
Glossy magazine publishers are probably safer in believing it isn’t – the whole experience of the glossies is about the, well, glossiness. It’s difficult for a web site to have that quality, at least yet. 
But in my sector, that doesn’t hold true. Business to business titles are dropping like flies, because they simply don’t have a compelling reason to be distributed on paper. And it’s far cheaper to put them online. Sure, the income drops substantially, but then the costs do too. As they usually rely on free distribution (or rather “controlled circulation”), that’s a lot of saving. 
National newspapers occupy an awkward middle ground. The last journalist who scoffed at my print is dead mantra worked at the Daily Star, but I’m not sure the national news media can afford to be complacent. 
Their main problem is that, while a lot of people still like to have a paper, or some printed matter, to read on the bus or on a tea break, if the numbers fall below a certain point, it just becomes uneconomic to print it. 
We can see the results in London and other cities around the UK. Thousands of people read a paper on their commute – but it’s the Metro or one of the two London evening freesheets rather than the paid-for press these days.
These papers are largely cuttings jobs and must cost a lot less to run than their paid-for counterparts. (UPDATE: Though The London Paper‘s latest financial results show it has a long way to go before it’s profitable. It’s quite possible we’ll see attrition in the consumer freebies before this recession’s out.)
Newhouse does go on to acknowledge the importance of a digital presence for all magazines, and he seems to believe that the transition to digital will work via electronic readers, maybe like the Kindle (which others have cited as a possible saviour for newspapers).
But would you pay £325 for a device to let you read the Daily Star on the train? Even if does eventually become available in the UK. 
And what about the financial model – would people subscribe to a paper on a Kindle? Would they buy individual copies each day?
I suspect that the core problem of print publishing – the ability to publish digitally for free and the unwillingness to pay money to consume it – will affect digital readers as much as, or more than, printed papers, especially as I imagine it’ll be difficult to wall off e-readers from free online content.
As we know, free online content drives out paid-for content whenever it’s available. A bit like bad money driving out good…

I posted earlier about my run-in with the Centre for Journalism at the University of Kent. 
I had commented on a blog post by professor Tim Luckhurst on the need for journalists (particularly students) always to use the phone and nothing but the phone when sourcing stories.
In the comments to his blog, I argued his underlying argument was somewhat flawed – he disagreed robustly. He’s also paid me a visit here, to say much the same thing. 
Aside from the specific argument though, the whole storm in a teacup has raised some interesting questions about how old media and academia see the web. 
The Centre for Journalism web site is, on the face of it, a high-tech marvel. It’s been created in Drupal – which readers of this blog will know is something I’m quite interested in. And while it’s aimed primarily at journalism students at the university, its content is open to a wider audience. You have to go through a registration process in order to comment on existing posts, but once you’ve done so you are allowed to upload your own blog posts. Great stuff.
The problem came when I had registered. About 20 minutes later the author posted a reply that criticised me for not using my real name:

“we blog by name at the Centre for Journalism, so please drop the cover of anonymity and argue your case in person”

Oh. OK. Well, I did poke around and discover that rule a bit later, but actually the site doesn’t mention that in the sign-up procedure. Which is kind of dumb. (As soon as I pointed this out, it was rectified, mind, which is good going for a university web site.)
But seriously – what does that mean?  I could easily have registered with my real name (Simon Clarke – it’s no great secret), but no one is actually aware of it online. My web identity – which is my real identity in the blogging world – is Freelance Unbound, obviously. And while I don’t have a massive readership, it has a certain traction on the web that my ‘real’ name doesn’t. It is, in effect, my brand. 
As for the whole accusation of anonymity – well. It’s simple enough for readers of the comment to click through to this blog and find out all about me – even emailing me with whatever comments or questions they like. And they’d get an email back from my ‘real’, ie personal, email address.  
Only at the Centre for Journalism, of course, it doesn’t work like that. 
Its blog comments don’t allow readers to post a link to their own site, or even their email address – which means that anyone wanting to find out a bit more about commentators are stuck. It’s a policy that undermines the entire premise of the web – its interactivity – and instead treats its visitors like passive consumers. Yes, you can comment, but you can’t build up a relationship with other readers. 
Or you can – but it has to be all conducted at the university’s web site. It’s a bit like they’re saying the internet’s a great party, but you can only enjoy it here. If someone else wants to host the party, we won’t let anyone we know have an invitation. (Though tellingly, his comment on this blog gets him a nice link to his web site. Which doubtless many readers will want to click through to.)
The tenor of the post and its response to comments also underline the fact that this isn’t the web as we know it. Sure, Luckhurst can defend his position robustly – it’s his blog. But his argument is that he was addressing a particular issue to do with students, and that I (or anyone else) shouldn’t have broadened the debate in that way.
But this is an open blog post, making sweeping statements about how journalism should and should not be conducted. It even invites comments. But if the only comments that are acceptable are ones that agree with the post, it kind of makes the whole idea of online debate redundant. 
My take is that if you want to communicate a point of teaching to students and make sure they only get that message, try a group email. Or, for heaven’s sake, turn off the comments to the post. It’s easy enough to do. 
The great thing about the web is that it’s a great leveller. Anyone can be a content producer and a publisher. And the web’s inbuilt interconnectivity make it easier than it’s ever been to develop an audience and, more importantly, to create a network of readers and contributors. 
Old media and, it seems, academia, still just don’t get that…

Out of curiosity, I just went back to Technorati for the first time, probably, since I registered there. 
Kind of gratifyingly, I find I am now ranked at 2,476,024 in the universe of blogs. Well, in the universe of Technorati-registered or otherwise noted blogs. I don’t actually know the difference, strictly speaking. 
Eagle-eyed readers with a keen memory and geeky tendencies may remember I started out with a ranking of 4,770,814 in late Fenruary. This is clearly fantastic news, and I will be celebrating hard at Chinawhite this very evening. (You know, if it’s actually open and they let me in).
What does this meteoric rise mean? I have no idea. But the numbers don’t lie. Oh no…

This fascinating piece in Slate from early this year describes how newspaper publishers were actually ahead of the curve when it came to trying to handle the impact of digital media. 
One publisher, Knight Ridder, even tried out its own digital distribution service in 1980, though you had to buy a pricey digital terminal to read the content.
So what went wrong? 
The analysis argues that newspapers quickly ditched the idea of proprietary, “walled-garden”-type content platforms such as AOL and moved on to the open web pretty early.
The crucial problem lay simply in their attitude. They didn’t “get” the web. 

From the beginning, newspapers sought to invent the Web in their own image by repurposing the copy, values, and temperament found in their ink-and-paper editions. Despite being early arrivals, despite having spent millions on manpower and hardware, despite all the animations, links, videos, databases, and other software tricks found on their sites, every newspaper Web site is instantly identifiable as a newspaper Web site. By succeeding, they failed to invent the Web.

As a result, all the talented, web savvy staff who could have reinvented the newspaper model got disillusioned and left to start up the real, innovative web-based companies that have been at the root of the current media upheaval.
It’s an interesting take and worth a read. Personally, I agree with the analysis – print media has been reasonably quick off the mark going on to the web, but when it’s got there the typical reaction is – “so, what do we do now?” (which is usually more of the same).
HT: Paul Bradshaw (eventually, after I followed some links from this Twitter post)