Columbia University’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has published its State of the News Media Report for 2006 (hat tip: James Joyner) and has detected six major trends:
- The new paradox of journalism is more outlets covering fewer stories.
- The species of newspaper that may be most threatened is the big-city metro paper that came to dominate in the latter part of the 20th century.
- At many old-media companies, though not all, the decades-long battle at the top between idealists and accountants is now over. (the “idealists†lost)
- That said, traditional media do appear to be moving toward technological innovation — finally .
- The new challengers to the old media, the aggregators, are also playing with limited time.
- The central economic question in journalism continues to be how long it will take online journalism to become a major economic engine, and if it will ever be as big as print or television.
I think the study misrepresents the structure of the newspaper industry a little bit. Even the big newspapers aren’t doing nearly as much reporting as they did 25 years ago—that’s being done through co-ops like the Associated Press. It’s not just bloggers that aren’t doing much actual reporting it’s the newspapers as well. In my view that means there’s another alternative: the AP can change its business model and go for the mass market. Journalists need to stop looking at bloggers as competitors and start looking at them as customers. I suspect there’s probably quite some number of bloggers that would subscribe to a very low-cost “wire serviceâ€.
There’s no chance that will happen until the owners of the service—big newspapers—are in a lot worse shape than they are now (otherwise they’ll undercut their own market).
But I do think that this report highlights the reality that the wholesale distribution model of the newspaper business is failing. To survive they’ll need to capitalize on their strengths and not rely on a gatekeeper role to save them.
It’s an interesting report—check it out.
“Journalists need to stop looking at bloggers as competitors and start looking at them as customers. I suspect there’s probably quite some number of bloggers that would subscribe to a very low-cost “wire serviceâ€.”
This is an excellent idea. AP and Reuters and the other wire services should create a package of services specifically tailored to bloggers and then market it directly to bloggers. They can also set up a some kind of feature to allow bloggers who subscribe to submit original reporting.
That’s exactly the kind of creative thinking I have in mind, phil.