For me, this stuff hits about as close to home as anything could, so I'm going to spend a bit of space talking about it. And at the end, I'll also give you links to some of the news coverage of the report.
So, let me address a couple of the major trends that relate to the parts of the media world I care most about.
Who's Gonna Pay?
None of this is news, exactly, but it's becoming increasingly clear that the old economics of the news industry just aren't going to fly much longer. Print revenue is declining fast, and while online revenue continues to grow, it's still a long way from making up for the print losses.
More to the point, imagine that all of a publication's print readers move over to that pub's Web site. Right now, that would mean economic disaster. Even though the pub is getting the same attention from the same readers, and can offer a much greater degree of interaction with those readers, advertisers simply won't pay the same amount of money.
The Report suggests one solution might be a cable TV model, where ISPs and aggregators (Google?) would have to kick in some cash for access to the content. Similarly, in the UK, users have to cough up an annual licensing fee for their TV, which helps cover programming costs.
I'm not sure that would work online, and it would be a wrenching transition at best.
A New Era Of Blogging
The report says
Blogging is on the brink of a new phase that will probably include scandal, profitability for some, and a splintering into elites and non-elites over standards and ethics.
Maybe so, but I'm hoping that The Freditor gets no more than a brush of scandal and lots of profitability. Not sure we'll be part of the elite, though. We've got ethics, but no standards, whatever that means.
Seriously, the question for me is where do you draw the line between a blog and a "legitimate publication?" Who is a journalist and who is just spouting invective? I have decades of experience, but without backing from a big publishing company, is The Freditor a journalist? And even if I am, who's to say who isn't? I simply don't have an answer to this one.
Conventional Wisdom Of Online Journalism
The Report goes on to say that online journalism is still in search of a clear model. Well, for me, that's the whole point. Way back in 1996 I left my job as editor-in-chief of Electronic Entertianment magazine to try out this thing called the Web for many reasons. Sure, CNET stock options were one reason. But the real lure was the chance to help set the conventions of a new medium.
In print, the conventions have long been agreed upon by journalists and readers. There's not a lot of confusion over what constitutes a magazine cover or a table-of-contents, right? But what is a Web home page? Is it a cover? A front page? A TOC? If it's a TOC, what should be in it? After all, the concept of an "issue" has little meaning online. And what if the page primarily delivers audio or video?
Questions like these often make online life perplexing, but they're also an editorial opportunity the likes of which don't come along every century. We journalists may end up unemployed, but we'll have great stories to tell our grand-kids.
There's a lot more in the report, and I may return to it in the coming days. In the meantime, check it out for yourself, or see what the news media has to say about the report on the news media:
San Francisco Chronicle
Long Island NewsDay
Poynter Online
Chicago Tribune
USA Today
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