Mar 13 2009
United, Journalists May Stand
Yes, the title of this post paraphrases the title of an article by one David Carr, the NYT writer rapidly becoming the favourite whipping-boy of the pro-web, anti-paywall crowd.
But I’m not here to pan paywalls. I did that already. Steve Yelvington did it again the other day, with much panache. Jeff Jarvis kindly emitted the appropriate edict against Carr’s cartel confabulations.
No, I write today to start a plan to harness all the journalistic talent left lying idly about as mainstream media organizations begin to crumble.
I counted at least 520 media layoffs in Toronto and GTA in the last 10 months. I predicted it will get worse – which doesn’t exactly make me a skilled futurist, since the surprise will be if it doesn’t get worse. In addition, there are scores of j-students filtering their way through the system right now, who just may have squandered all that tuition money.
I say we organize and start a new media company. Nimble, debt-free, unsullied by corporate concerns, online-only, web-centric, dedicated to journalistic principles, tightly focused on one geographic area. Our prime goal will be to utterly dominate the local web space of our local communities.
The cost? Nothing but time. Because we go online-only and web-centric right from the start, our only overhead cost is hosting.
I’m willing to dedicate my time and web skills to the cause. Anybody have any ideas on how to organize?
9 Responses to “United, Journalists May Stand”
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United, Journalists May Stand http://bit.ly/rSQEI
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Utterly dominating the market for an online informational product is very difficult, since the barriers to entry are so low. Anyway, why do you need to make that your prime goal? Most markets have plenty of room for multiple major players.
Speaking of which, here in Toronto we already have the popular Torontoist and blogTO. How would your new venture differ?
I completely agree with your idea. However, in all the kerfuffle over the end of mainstream media organizations I think an something that is missed is the fact that the notion of what constitutes news has changed (although you touch on it with your point about being, “… tightly focused on one geographic area.”)
A few months back I wrote a post titled, “Why are print newspapers dying?” As with most of my posts, it has a lot more questions than answers, but in it I wrote, “… I would argue that one of the things that has changed is who calls the shots in determining what is news. The editorial aspect of “news” is vanishing. Users are their own editors, particularly with aggregator tools like Google Reader that allow a user to, in a manner of speaking, design his or her own newspaper in terms of content and, to a limited degree, even the look of it.”
A worrying part of the Internet’s multiple ways to communicate, and reflective of contemporary politics, is a tendency to talk amongst ourselves – preach to the choir, so to speak. We choose to hear the voices and topics we like, and ignore the others or dismiss them as irrelevant.
So, being locally focused will be important but won’t be enough. Will you be left? Right? Focused on the environment? Business? What the character of the new media company is will be hugely important as far as getting an audience. Equally important will be what it is not. Local won’t be enough. (I suppose this is what would traditionally be called editorial position but, if so, it’s position on steroids.)
There are political junkies out there and there are people who couldn’t care less about politics. There are people who take to technology news like crack, and there are others indifferent to it. Culture is big for some, for others not at all. How narrow a niche will a media company need to be to develop an audience large enough to make it successful?
And how do you deliver news in a world that is less interested in objective reporting than in having their established opinions echoed back to them?
@Rohan The major difference is that it wouldn’t be blogs. At least, not just blogs. Real reporting by real journalists. For money.
@Bill Reporters have biases like anyone else and I would encourage them to expose them as much as possible. I would not try to rein that in or control that.
Then again, I don’t presume I would have any kind of lead editorial role in this project. If there are not people more capable than myself to take on that role, we won’t get off the ground.
@RohanSJ @writelife finally got around to answering comments on my blog. Sorry 4 delay: United, Journalists May Stand http://bit.ly/rSQEI
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
I’m down; I’ve been trying to find like-minded people in Oregon for such a venture.
Tim, the blog format is incidental. I don’t subscribe to either the Torontoist or blogTO feeds, but I do read some of their stories individually. It would be easy for each of them to add a front page / table of contents to their websites. It would be more work for them to maintain, but if you entered their space that would be an appropriate response.
You’d pay your journalists (”for money”)? So much for the low costs you claimed. Unless you won’t pay them enough to live on, in which case you’ll be in the same territory as Torontoist and blogTO (I don’t know whether they pay their contributors or not, but if they do I doubt that it’s very much).
As for “real reporting by real journalists”, I know of one Torontoist contributor who also writes for the National Post. I see no loss of quality there.
I do realize that you’re talking about much wider local coverage than Torontoist and blogTO have, but there’s no reason why they can’t just expand their coverage. They won’t do it now because the Toronto Star and other local established media companies make their stories available for free online, but if the Star etc. all stopped publishing, they could step up to fill the void. As might you and others. You have no natural advantage: yes, there are lots of journalists on the market right now, but there’s no particular reason for them to prefer your company over another.
@timburden P.S. for those wondering what I’m talking about: http://bit.ly/rSQEI
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
United, Journalists May Stand
http://tinyurl.com/cr2dnt
This comment was originally posted on Twitter