Innovation is not necessarily "the news"
“I just don’t see enough innovation. I see a lot of hand-wringing.” That’s what Lauren Rich Fine said about newspapers on Saturday at the American Copy Editors Society convention in Cleveland.
Fine is an advertising and publishing industry analyst at Merrill Lynch, so her job is watching the newspaper business — and telling investors which companies are worth investing in.
Some other on-target things that Fine said (by way of Doug Fisher, who teaches journalism at the University of South Carolina and who wrote a long report about Fine’s remarks, which I found by way of the Reinventing College Media blog) — all quotes copied from Doug’s excellent report –
If newspaper companies withhold their content from the Internet, or fail to create content for it, it does not follow that people will come back to the printed newspaper — there is plenty of citizen-generated content online. In other words, there is no dearth of content, so taking your marbles and leaving the game does not mean the game shuts down.
You can’t think of yourself as a once-a-day medium. I see a big cultural divide here…. I would argue it’s yours to lose because you should be doing it and doing it better than anyone else.
I think this goes to the same idea — lots of people have their own marbles now. If I come to your Web site and the latest update is not there, then I will go to some other Web site and find it. And the next time I want an update, where will I go first?
I see a little disconnect between that and this, however:
… what they want is more context, analysis and the fascinating stories they can’t get anywhere else because no one else has the resources to cover them … (Doug paraphrasing from Fine)
Again I’m struck by how the whole idea of multimedia and storytelling — narrative as opposed to reporting — often gets lost in these discussions.
The updates and current news are important. But news organizations have to be more pragmatic about a balance of resources. If you put your whole staff on updating and breaking news, you will NEVER have any context, or analysis, or fascinating stories!
Doug, paraphrasing again: The money will be made by what you surround the ads with.
Technorati tags: online journalism | newspapers | business
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