Today I was saddened to hear the long-awaited announcement
that tomorrow one of our local newspapers will be ceasing operations. The
Rocky Mountain News is two months from its 150th anniversary and has won a
Pulitzer Prize for journalism four times – an accomplishment shared by very few
newspapers in the world. And other awards stack up behind the
Pulitzers.
Now it would be easy to ask why I, an internet media guy,
wouldn’t see this as another validation that online is the future. And,
isn’t this failure just another example of an industry that has not remained
competitive and deserves to go extinct? Well, it’s just not that
simple. The internet, and internet media, has been an explosive success
because it has enabled the sharing of information across society with an
efficacy and speed that boggles the mind. We can learn a great deal about
almost anything in seconds, which has redefined business, education,
government, global trade, culture, health care, and even how we interact as
human beings. But, the internet does not create the content.
People are the authors of everything we share online.
Teachers share their lessons. Analysts share their expertise.
Scientists share their research. Musicians share their songs. And
journalists share their news stories, photos and commentaries. The
internet has not offered any substitute for this wealth of knowledge, yet it
seems to have put into jeopardy the business models that feed some of these
authors, journalists in particular. At its most lofty, journalism is
chartered with reflecting every side of an issue as truthfully as possible.
Thomas Carlyle’s “Fourth Estate” has been a cornerstone of a free and open
society, and has been particularly important in American history.
So what difference does this make to those of us in digital
media? Each and every one of us in the business can attribute our revenue
and our paycheck to the media budgets of the advertisers that pay to get their
message in front of consumers. Consumers want content. Compelling
content. Entertaining content. Useful content. It’s the
content that draws traffic that drives ad revenue. And one of the
earliest and most successful sources of content on the web is news.
Journalism. Obviously, we’ve evolved from headlines on CompuServe to
tweets and blogs from “citizen journalists”, but we collectively depend heavily
on the news, weather, entertainment and sports reporting from
professionals. Professionals who have failed to morph their business
model in a sustainable way, but continue to blindly feed the model that is
their Brutus. Walter Isaacson provides an excellent analysis and a
provocative proposal in his recent Time Magazine article.
We have heard in the last few days that television seems to
be surviving quite nicely, thank you very much. And that’s true – kudos
to the ability of that industry to remain relevant. But newspapers are
the most entrenched source for local issues and the most connected with their
communities. Newspapers at every level provide an enormous amount of
quality content that drives a lot of revenue to our industry. If we fail
to recognize the need to nourish and grow quality content, then we’ll find
ourselves struggling for relevance as well. How successful would an
internet be if comprised solely of advertising??
I grew up on a Midwestern river which fueled the growth of towns large and small and supports fish and wildlife as well as agriculture and recreation. As commerce up and down that river grew, the Army Corps of Engineers decided to make the channel deeper and straighter in an attempt to facilitate large shipping barges. This well-intended move to efficiency and effectiveness turned the meandering river into a fast-flowing “ditch” that has become too treacherous for many swimmers and boaters, and eliminated some of the shallower pools and eddies that were home to all kinds of creatures. The need of the people living along the river to exploit this natural resource for commercial gain has eaten away at the real value it brings. What a self-defeating tragedy it would be if the internet ad industry followed suit and drove quality content providers such as professional journalists out of business.
- Scott Nelson
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