News vs. Journalism, Part Two

This post is the final installment in the news vs. journalism series. Last week Cody gave you the overview of news vs. journalism. Today, I’ll discuss how the role of journalism will change in the future. For the news industry to stay afloat it’s imperative to establish a new model for journalism.

We know what journalism is, and why it matters. We also know that journalism isn’t the only source for news content. Let’s start by separating the terms ‘news-gathering’ and journalism. By pulling these linked terms apart we can lay the groundwork for a new model.

• News-gathering – the process of gathering publication-ready news content from outside sources.
• Journalism – the practice of professionally investigating news, giving it context, and conveying it to readers with a fair and balanced perspective.

News-Gathering

News-gathering is a more passive process than journalism, and it’s all about efficiently publishing news-content received from outside sources. It provides content when the skills of a professional journalist won’t add much to a straight-forward news item.

As Cody mentioned, instead of re-writing press releases, newspapers can publish press releases directly with a blurb of context. This restructuring saves newspapers money by bypassing an extra step in the publishing process and ultimately reconfigures the journalist’s role.

Another important way for news organizations to gather news is through user-generated content. Through reader contributions and user-created content, news organizations can allow the public to participate while reaping the benefits of their knowledge. To safeguard against libelous submissions and unjustified rants an editor would filter the content to adhere to updated models of journalistic standards. Vital to this process is providing the public with easy-to-use tools to submit content. Readers are able to report on many local news stories, including traffic accidents, minor sporting events, community events, potholes, dilapidated buildings, etc.

If news-gathering is no longer part of journalism, then what will journalism become? It will have to present readers with substantive stories that news-gathering does not have the technical ability to produce. Since news-gathering will become a way for newspapers to get by with fewer journalists, journalists will have to find new ways to produce and transmit their craft.

Journalism

Once news-gathering is subtracted from journalism, journalism itself must adapt appropriately. This adaptation may come in several forms.

• Sponsored Journalism: Non-media organizations will hire their own journalists. They may require the media to pay for the right to syndicate the content, or make it freely available to any media who care to publish it. For example, the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog organization, may have an in-house journalist who goes to Capitol Hill and digs up information about campaign finance misgivings. Once the journalist finds something worth writing about they can either publish their story exclusively through their sponsoring organization or sell it to news organizations.

• Journalism Co-ops: Journalists in the future will form cooperatives and essentially become their own assignment editors. For example, a group of laid-off Times Union journalists would band together and produce journalistic pieces of local relevance. Once they produced a news piece they could then sell the content to any local paper(s). This is a way for the journalist to have freedom to produce what they want but also freedom to name their own price based on how good their story is.

Over at Mengel Musing’s, Amy really gets into the ethics of sponsored journalism. She dissects a New York Times article about how the Los Angeles Kings have hired their own sports journalist to follow them around and get coverage of the team out to the media. As Amy mentioned, the ethics are questionable but the move could save many media outlets time, resources and ultimately money. I’ll hold off on passing judgment until we see the type of content that they produce.

Regardless of the new framework for journalism, journalists will still be employed by the media, only in smaller numbers. Even a local paper, or a hyper-local blog, will need to create locally relevant, unique content.

News organization as Curator

Proposing a new model of journalism ultimately calls into question the role of the media.

News organizations need to adapt and learn their new role in information dissemination. Their best bet to maintain relevancy is becoming curators of the news. The news organization of the future may become merely an aggregator of content, delivering readers independently produced items and news stories. This potential new role will allow them more flexibility in transmitting content that may not have made the paper in the past. The newspaper of the future will have to be dynamic, constantly adapting to technological change and reader preference. The path to that leads through redefining journalism, as an industry and as a craft.

News vs. Journalism

It’s the business of the media to turn news into money. Journalism is a profession that investigates and reports the news according to certain standards (ideally). There is no alternative to journalism for creating many of the best kinds of news content. No one is going to dig as deep or spend as much time investigating and reporting as a professional journalist. Journalism has tremendous value, and we should all hope it never goes away, but journalism is not the only source of news.

Journalism is effectively a resource that the media use to create news content. Today, it’s a resource that is being limited and reduced by cost-cutting measures. How the media spend that resource becomes very important.

A lot of news is delivered to the media from outside sources. Event announcements, press releases, and so forth, come rolling in day after day. Much of this content makes it into the paper. It’s not journalism, but it is news, and it does help to inform the public. Journalists spend a lot of time essentially re-writing this content, in an attempt to apply the same journalistic standards that make real reporting so valuable.

One could ask whether understaffed newsrooms can still afford to re-write this kind of content, and whether there is even any real value in doing so. A press release published with a blurb of context from an editor would be a fair and honest presentation of this kind of content.

There are other sources of news that are largely unexploited by the traditional media. User-generated content, twitter, blogs, and even other media (content sharing) are potential sources of news content. These alternative sources of news shouldn’t be seen as competitors of journalism, but as complements that can free up this valuable resource to create the kind of content that can’t be found anywhere else.

Journalism is one of the reasons we still need the media. Because of its watchdog role and the insight and perspective offered by beat reporters, journalism is truly important. It’s too important a resource to waste on re-writing press releases or covering mundane topics. If the media can take advantage of other sources of news, including user generated content, press releases, even content sharing, they can use their journalists to create the original, unique, and valuable content that will keep them relevant in the future.

Buyouts Planned in New York Times Newsroom

 

The New York Times announced yesterday that they would be buying out 100 newsroom positions and possibly laying off more if buyouts fail. This is big news at The Times but not very shocking. Over the past year Times employees have taken a 5% pay cut while advertising revenue has steadily deteriorated. In 2008 The Times cut 100 positions in its newsroom; included in that were 15 – 20 journalists, though The Times would not confirm the number.

In a note to his staff, Times executive editor said “I won’t pretend that these staff cuts will not add to the burdens of journalists whose responsibilities have grown faster than their compensation…like you, I yearn for the day when we can do our jobs without looking over our shoulders for economic thunderstorms.”

Instead of mourning the loss of 100 positions at The New York Times we should ask how the role of the journalist is changing in the twenty-first century newsroom. Are they as important to newspapers as they were in the past? This week Cody and I will explore how journalists and newsrooms alike need to adapt in order to survive the harsh economic realities facing the news industry.

Tina Brown, Editor of The Daily Beast, on Journalism

Here’s a clip of Tina Brown, Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Beast.com, talking with Gideon Yago of The Media Project, an IFC production, about the future of journalism. She refers to this period of media transition as a sort-of industrial revolution, and I completely agree with her. So much is changing in the industry and while at the moment it is in flux, the final product will, hopefully, result in more nuanced journalism. New news-gathering techniques and the increasing ability of consumers to produce their own news will result in more news content; the question remains though, will the final news product be better?

This is where the ‘professional’ media and citizen journalism intersect. As we see right now, there are many competing voices in the media, often coming from people not directly employed by a media company. Ms. Brown thinks that the new media landscape will result in better journalism but unless a model is devised allowing the most reputable journalistic voices to succeed and get paid, journalism will continue to waver between a credible new source and subjective noise. 

Next week I’ll explore the current definition of journalism and offer my thoughts on how that definition needs to evolve. Until then though, check out this video clip and ponder what journalism is and will be in the future. 

The End of the Line

For years we’ve seen -30-’s at the end of press releases. Most PR pros insert -30- (or some variation of it) at the close of every release they write. For most of us it’s habit… kind of like signing our name at the bottom of a letter.

Over the years, a few people have asked me where the -30– came from, but honestly, no one really knows where it originated. According to Wikipedia there are several possibilities, dating all the way back to the days when stories were written in longhand.

However, –30– became much more useful when organizations started transmitting news releases primarily via fax. Often times, pages at the end of the transmission got lost due to either hardware or paper problems, or the simple act of moving printed pages from one desk to another.

When a reporter or editor received a faxed press release, they needed to know that they had all of the material necessary to assemble a news story. Over time, –30– became the standard mechanism for signaling the end of original content. If a media recipient saw one at the end of a release, they knew they had the full document in hand.

Over time, technology has decreased the chances of material disappearing from the end of a document, so many press release writers have dropped the -30-. However, even though hardware malfunctions are less common, there’s always the potential for user error. Hosting a story online involves cutting and pasting, and it’s easy to accidentally miss some text. A simple -30- at the end of the document will let your reader know they’ve seen all of the material you released.

As I mentioned earlier, there are a few alternatives to -30-: some writers insert ###‘s or –END-’s. Dash thirty dash is still the most commonly used conclusion indicator, and I’d suggest using it over the other options.

Some press release writers have gotten creative and inserted their website in its place. Here’s a great example from SUNY Canton. This practice allows authors to direct traffic to their web site without mentioning it in the body of their release. This is a particularly effective strategy for those times when you don’t have room for a boilerplate at the end of your release.

Although it’s not as important as it once was, signaling the end of your press release with a -30- still serves a purpose. I’d recommend sticking with it. If you want to get a little more use out of the last line of your release, try using -www.mywebsite.com- instead. Either way, you’ll effectively convey to the reader that the above release is complete, while adding a nice, traditional, professional touch.

You can think of -30- as the “happily ever after” at the end of a fairy tale. As soon as we see it we know the story’s over, and we can walk away happily. The end.