The publishing business has always been about packaging content. Newspapers. Magazines. Newsletters

Errr… No. At least not all. Actually, it’s just a tiny minority of them that have always been about packaging content. The rest have long crossed over to a business model that had nothing to do with content and was all about selling people to advertisers and advertisements to people.

That is why newspapers are finding it hard to charge for content: they haven’t done it for so long they’ve forgotten how it’s done.

There are some noteable examples of publishers who are selling content. For instance, you have to buy games TM if you want to read it: there is no free online version. It is hard to judge how successful they are, since publisher Imagine Publishing does not release financial results, but the firm has been snatching up assets (including the Linux User & Developer magazine and website and car-magazine publisher Total 911 and its website) while others have been desperate to sell bits of their business in order to survive.

This does not mean that any newspaper would flourish if they shut down their websites or make web content more expensive than the print product (like the Newport Daily News has done). Since games TM is in the business of selling content, it makes it its job to produce top-notch quality content that people will want to pay for. But this is not the case with the majority of newspapers.

Publishers want to charge for content and newspaper publishers specifically want to charge for news. However, they are new to this business and yet many of them still behave like they know it all. It’s time they got told otherwise.

When you ask Google a question, it gives you the answers of potentially millions of people each of whom has some relevant information on the topic but not all of the relevant information. When you ask WolframAlpha a question, it gives you the potential answer of just one person who is immensely well informed and has the capacity to process all the relevant information. Google gives you the wisdom of the crowds and its answers represent the collective knowledge of a large group of people. WolframAlpha, which uses pre-categorised libraries of human knowledge, tells you how each individual person would be likely to answer your question, given the same information WolframAlpha has.

So now I’ve set up the stage for the main attraction. This is WolframAlpha’s definition of journalism:

I take this to be the likely answer to the question of what journalism is if you asked people who do not regularly think about it. In my experience, that is also often the answer from people who do regularly think about what journalism is. Even if they do not say it directly and even if they would not admit it when confronted, most people equate journalism with newspapers. Not TV, not radio, not news agencies.

So far, so not out of the ordinary. Using a narrow term for a much broader concept is something we do all the time. My problem in this case is that it spills over. For a year now I have been listening about a supposed crisis in journalism. There is no crisis in journalism. Journalism is doing very well from what I’m seeing. The business of making and selling newspapers is in crisis for reasons that have nothing to do with journalism. I’m not saying people should not be concerned about that crisis too, but the longer we continue to equate journalism with newspapers, the longer it will continue to be a hurdle for all other sorts of journalistic endeavour. Universities should focus on teaching journalism separately from teaching newspaper-making. Companies should focus on making journalism rather than making newspapers. It will be better for both journalists and newspapers.

thank you very much! What a great service from you.

I tend to rant a lot, so I thought I shouldn’t miss this opportunity to brag a little. But also, that whole episode made me once again think about how much closer journalism is to servicing customers (readers) than to creating a product (content). And although writing stories on demand, as it were, may not be the best/the only/the most viable possible future for journalism, I am growing ever more convinced that custom(isable) niche solutions will be an important part of it.

On the one hand this seems to indicate that journalism, as practiced by traditional (monolith) media, is indeed in a very good shape and it is just the business side of things that is giving media companies trouble. On the other, it may mean that the Pulitzer Prizes have become irrelevant and fail to recognise great journalism of the new type.

The NYT has featured rather prominently in my reviews of great innovative storytelling and that has already prompted me to note that this firm’s financial problems are unlikely the result of poor or outdated journalism. But that is not by itself reason enough to confirm the Pulitzer Prizes as journalism’s topmost honour.

So the question is open: should we still seek to reinvent journalism, or has it already been reinvented and just needs the financing side tweaked a bit?

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Image by onesevenone.

That people who consider themselves experts in the field can be so ignorant of the great strides the profession is making thanks to the internet is not new, neither is it really surprising that what they call journalism is actually not journalism.

As Cyra Master of the Atlantic puts it, (t)hose who say that news consumption on the Internet is, on balance, hurting journalism note the way the online experience is changing reader habits.

So the way information is created, presented, moved around and consumed has changed and that is bad for the information? That is almost as stupid as saying inventing the phone was bad for the transfer of news because it meant less business for post carriers.

This leads me to another thing that is very characteristic of a certain type of “influential journalists”: they tend to confuse the practice of journalism with the business of journalism. (I’m one of those who think the former is flourishing even though the latter is struggling to reinvent itself.) Here’s a noteable quote from the “hurts more” camp: (t)he Internet has (…) mortally wounded the financial structure of the news business. And: the cost to the business model (…) and the inability of the business model to monetize the Internet means that there is a disturbing net cost to newsgathering.

The fact that internet-bashers outnumber boosters by two to one may be a hint as to why the news industry is in such a bad shape, but even as they are in the majority detractors cannot help but acknowledge the inevitable: the internet has widened the circle of those participating in the (…) debate. And it will continue to do so.

National Journal also asked bloggers the same question. You can see their responses here, but I think you know what they said.

Mark Comerford

Mark Comerford established Europe’s first online newspaper in 1994 when he launched the website of Sweden’s biggest daily newspaper Aftonbladet.

He initially moved to Sweden in the early 1980s to work as a welder and a shipbuilder before moving to work in the digital world.

Since then he has spread his journalism knowledge across the globe teaching people from Africa to Britain how to get the best out of the Internet and digital technologies. He is a keen advocate of the notion that journalists should not be confined by what technology can currently offer, but rather make technology work for them. (Source: The Journalism Leaders Programme.)

In a Google Talk chat session Mark answered some questions about the future of newspapers and journalists.

D Damyanov: Do you believe newspapers will become obsolete and be entirely replaced by news websites?

M Comerford: No.

DD: Why not?

MC: Lol. OK. I think we will see a number of things happening to newspapers over the next few years, and maybe even quicker. A number of them will die as paper products. A number of them will migrate totally to the web. (And the fact that every household in the country [DD: the UK] will be guaranteed access to broadband Internet will accelerate and consolidate that change.) Some of them will become bi-weekly. Then there will be a two-tier series of papers. The free ones like Metro (which will probably be one of the few to continue making money) and top-level ones that come out on Saturday and will be analytical, deep, long and expensive. These will attract top-level advertisers and will be used as both an info service for the upper-class/educated etc and as a symbol in the same way watches are: “Look at me! I am discreetly telling you I belong to the wealthy and educated and influential, but not flashy.”

DD: So you mean paper will stay because it is tangible and can be easily used as a status symbol, unlike a digital publication?

MC: Yes. And that transition will be staggered, different speeds for the transition in different economic regions depending on a huge number of factors.

DD: Such as?

MC: Take China and South Africa. Both are new markets, both have seen an increase in newspaper launches, both have rising literacy levels. There will be an increase there but the cycle — new, grow, stagnate, die — will be much faster as there will be parallel growth in digital at the same time.

DD: Where do journalists fit into this picture? What is the future of the journalist ten or twenty years from now?

MC: There is a great future for journalists as story tellers/curators. There will be a load of new initiatives in regional and local digital-based products and they will need journalists.

DD: Yet right now it seems as though the industry does not need (or cannot afford) to have as many journalists?

MC: It is the monolith media that has structural and cyclical problems, not journalism per se. Though there is a problem in the perception traditional journalists have about what they do and what they are that needs to be addressed.

DD: If you were to explain it to them in one sentence what would it be?

MC: You’re fucked.

Can I use three sentences?

DD: Please do.

MC: Journalists are story builders. Those who build their stories best and understand that a story is a social object will survive.

DD: Will there be a third sentence?

MC: A social object implies that the story is a collaborative effort.

You can follow Mark’s updates on Twitter or find him in your favourite social network (he is markmedia in all of them). His blog is a great read.