Media Meltdown
The deathwatch for traditional media has reached full frenzy.
From ongoing “media is dying” posts on Twitter to the cover of this week’s Time magazine to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, concern about mainstream media grows. For a broad overview of issues and potential solutions, check out Battle Plans for Newspapers, published this week by the New York Times.
As a PR pro, of course, I’m sorting through what all this means for me and my clients. I’m concerned for the many talented journalists who face wrenching changes in both the near term and long term.
I’m confident that quality news organizations — premiere brands — will survive. Last October, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told a group of magazine editors that ultimately readers will turn to established, trusted brands as a way to cope with the “cesspool” (yes, that’s the word he used) of false information on the Internet.
But is there a sustainable business model?
Some experts think newspapers need to transition to a non-profit model, with endowments similar to colleges and universities. According to authors David Swensen and Michael Schmidt writing in the New York Times:
“Many newspapers will not weather the digital storm on their own. Only a handful of foundations and wealthy individuals have the money required to endow, and thereby preserve, our nation’s premier news-gathering organizations. Enlightened philanthropists must act now or watch a vital component of American democracy fade into irrelevance.”
Check out Pro Publica to see how this might work.
As major daily papers shed foreign bureaus to cut costs, a few Web-based entrepreneurial ventures are starting up. A much-watched development in January was the launch of www.globalpost.net, a Boston-based network of foreign correspondents. The new media company is committed to old-school values like ”intelligent, fair, and courageous on-site reporting and analysis from throughout the world and especially from those geographic areas that have been consistently ignored or underreported by the American news media.”
Global Post looks at making money — what a concept! — through 2.0 revenue streams like web advertising and a paid premium content service as well as good old-fashioned syndication. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Global Post has already signed a syndication deal with the New York Daily News. As many major newspapers slash costs by closing foreign bureaus, a network of reliable freelancers might be an attractive option.
A similar venture, also launched in January, is www.instantnews.com, “a news site that is set to challenge the dominance of the national and international press by taking them on at their own game, without the print and distribution overheads.” Instant News is launched by Mike Magee, a veteran online tech journalist who helped break the story about Dell laptops bursting into flames a few years ago.
Says Magee: “We will prove that journalism is not dead and that readers want strong journalism and not wishy-washy pap dictated to them by multiple vested interests.”
Magee’s got the right idea. I think there is a real appetite for the type of research and writing that can only be delivered by trained professionals, typically working as part of an organization with significant resources, connections — and clout that gets people to tell their side of complex, controversial story.
How that develops over the next few years is anyone’s guess.
