What are you trying that’s new?
Clay Shirky urged newspapers to experiment more, in a bit he wrote about the future for newspapers — on a “blog forum” (?!) at Britannica.com:
… good journalism needs to be subsidized in order to thrive. There is no obvious reason, however, that those subsidies have to continue to come from Bloomingdale’s and BellSouth; what journalism needs now is not nostalgia but experimentation. It’s time to get on with the essential task of trying everything we can think of to create effective new models of reporting, ones that take the existing capabilities of the Internet for granted.
What struck me was Shirky’s use of the word reporting. Not products, or features, or content. REPORTING.
Effective new models of it. Models that take advantage of the “existing capabilities of the Internet.”
That’s key, isn’t it? The Internet is already developed. What’s it best at doing? What are its native characteristics and strengths? That’s how an enterprising journalist needs to think today.
And the model for reporting — that means not only getting the reporting done, but also getting it paid for.
(Link via Journerdism.)
I agree wholeheartedly in experimenting with reporting and storyforms. However, I think we need to emphasize planning and evaluation just as much as creativity. If we are going to sort out all of this reporting/structure/delivery mess, we need to develop criteria for assessing success/failure. And these criteria need to be established before gathering content.
Journalism isn’t like manufacturing clotheshangers, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use metrics to be more efficient and practical. Convincing the bean counters to allocate funds for in-depth reporting and new gear is much easier when you have a rational argument to justifying expenses.
April 8, 2008 at 9:20 amLen Witt at Kennesaw has an experiment starting this year called Representative Journalism. See more here.
Probably won’t replace major dailies, but might provide another avenue for good reporting.
April 8, 2008 at 9:29 am@Dave: I agree, assessment measures are really important. If only the newsroom would talk about what they hope to achieve with a strategy — e.g., online video — and how to measure that, and when, then they would be able to look at their progress in six months, say, and decide whether to continue, adjust, or quit doing it.
When people do not bother to set up a method to assess results, they end up throwing spaghetti at the wall forever. Not very practical, from a business standpoint.
April 8, 2008 at 1:20 pm