The Future of Journalism Online

twitter writes "The slide in newspaper subscriptions continues for obvious reasons: convenience, variety, depth, cost and user control are all in favor of pull media. The BBC is wondering what this will ultimately mean for journalism. One interesting issue is brought up: 'papers like France's Libération [have] traditionally shunned advertising it deemed politically compromising and relied on its cover price for its income.' Even they see that internet distribution is the answer, but the BBC worries about the details." From the article: "The International Herald Tribune now sees itself as a media organisation rather than just a paper; their website features video stories and has taken the step of charging for premium content. 'Good journalism costs money and so we are trying to see what we can do to make sure we can continue to grow and support the business,' said Meredith Artley, director of digital development at the International Herald Tribune. "

Comments

inevitable...

[MollyB]

Hasn't this has been on the horizon since NBC started broadcasting in color? This is the slowest death of a particular medium since radio was supposedly doomed.

I think some people like to read something they can fold, is light and cheap. (Eco-/.er's: I'm thinking recycled paper) and best of all, doesn't need to be charged or plugged in.

Nope, didn't read tfa.

Re:inevitable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, post-consumer recycled paper isn't significantly more eco-friendly than "virgin" paper. Point by point, all the supposed advantages simply don't stack up.

Destruction of forests: the pulp used in newspaper stock isn't tearing down old growth hardwood rainforests. It comes from tree farms with quick growing conifers. Tree farms are a much better source for the application, as the straight rows of similar sized trees allow for a significant increase in the efficiency of automated harvesting and processing. While tree farms may not be as environmentally beneficial as old growth virgin forests, nature generally gets its chance to do its thing for the vast majority of the time. And the land used in these forests is almost universally land that had been clearcut in order to plant farms, only to find that the local climate and soil conditions are not suited to crop growth. And while, yes, the acreage of old growth coverage is steadily declining, the total acreage of forested areas in the united states has been fairly consistently increasing since about the 1920's. The vast majority of this land is tree forests, with a very small minority (probably less than the amount of virgin forest being clearcut) being naturalized plantations.

Pollution from paper mills: Recycling post-consumer paper actually causes more local water pollution than making paper from virgin stock. Bleaching the various dyes out and removing the adhesives used in many post-consumer recycled paper requires harsher chemicals than bleaching virgin softwood pulp. Recycling pre-consumer trimmings from a factory floor DOES have an environmental benefit here as there is generally less dye and other chemical additives that have to be removed from the pulp.

Energy Savings: Numbers have been thrown out by many pro-recycling concerns that paint a net gain from recycling, but these almost universally include pre-consumer recycling and generally include the energy required to harvest the raw wood from forests but do not include the energy costs of collecting old paper and taking it to the recycling plant. Sending trucks out to each and every house to pick up old newspapers actually consumes more energy than the highly industrialized large scale harvesting of farm grown softwoods. True, there may be some reduction in the amount of garbage collection needed, but this does not balance out as it is much more difficult to efficiently manage separate fleets of garbage and recycling trucks to manage at peak efficiency with the varying waste and recycling levels found in most municipalities. Basically, the garbage trucks are not coming back completely full, meaning they have to drive more miles per amount of waste collected. Pre-consumer recycling DOES come out ahead in the collection department. Simply because the individual pickups are larger and of a much more consistent size, allowing for much more efficiency in the fleet. One quick test to see if recycling uses less energy is in the cost of recycled products. Recycled paper products, particularly 100% post-consumer recycled paper, cost much more than the equivalent virgin product. This means it costs more to produce recycled products, and a large portion of that cost is in energy costs required to collect and process the post-consumer content. And this is even considering that most curbside pickup is either paid for directly by the resident or through the municipality providing the pickup and therefore recycling is already subsidized by taxes. The energy economics can be further elucidated with recycling center drop-off points. These shift the burden of transportation primarily on the person bringing in the wastes, yet recycling centers do not pay for paper recycling dropped off. Some recycling centers even charge for paper drop off or are subsidized by the community. Aluminum cans, however, are paid a decent premium at drop off. This is because the energy costs required to reduce bauxite ore to metallic aluminum are far greater than the energ

It's a matter of trust...

[Amigan]

Blogosphere is known and acknowledged to present specific points of view. Newspapers have lost a lot of trust with readership because they have chosen to present the news that they want - rather than just reporting the facts. The blogosphere has rattled their cage considerably with all its opinions, and newspapers feel that they have to responds in kind.

When sources used are questionable (unnamed or fictitious), corrections don't occur on bad facts, people start to question the value of newspapers. The on-line versions are going to have to compete in the 24x7 world, and actually improve their standards of reporting if they want to compete with the blogosphere.

jerry

Re:It's a matter of trust...

[s20451]

Newspapers have lost a lot of trust with readership because they have chosen to present the news that they want - rather than just reporting the facts.

This made me laugh. Have you ever read a political blog? They spend half their time shouting that the mainstream media is biased and ineffective, and the other half quoting MSM articles that happen to flatter their preconceptions.

The death of the mainstream media is hugely exaggerated. There is very little "news" that percolates from the blogosphere, compared to traditional, full-time, employed journalists.

its that pesky market again

[Anonymous Coward]

undermining perfectly legitimate global media corporations and denying shareholders their money. sent in the swat teams!

there will always be a market for the cheap shoddy sensationalist celeb obsessed claptrap you get in tabloids because 90% of the population are morons.

everybody else can think for themselves and can make do with reading news agregation sites (like /.) with a pinch of salt.

Screw the broadsheets anyway, they've been nosediving downhill like all media outlets. I bought 'the independent' for the 1st time in ages whilst waiting for my aunt at her hospital appointment, it had a 2 page spread on "i'm a celebrity, get me out of here". threw it in the bin. ffs if a significant percentage of the readership is interesting in that pile of drivel then the rest of the paper must be aimed at the mentally subnormal too.

Digital Paper

[GodInHell]

Personally, I've been waiting for a more convinient way of recieving my newspaper for awhile now. Slices of cut up tree are a waste of space (and trees) but as a medium for spreading information, it's worked for centuries. The promise of digital paper is that I won't have to trust that my newspaper boy will deliver my paper before I leave for school/work (it has yet to happen for me) or pay a marked-up price at the coffee shop on my way in. I'd rather just sigh in frustration and dig through the political leanings of site like drugde than pay for access to the NYT's editorials and deeper content.

But I would be thrilled if I could simply plug my newspaper into my computer every morning, grab the newest issue, and read it on the train, at lunch, when I'm waiting for meetings to start, in class when I'm doing that instead of working, generally when I have a moment. That's the promise of digital paper, and I really hope the news paper guys pick up on it as fast as they can.

I believe (as in a hope or aspiration which I have not verified with evidence or research) that there is still a market for the thoughtful and thorough reporting one recieves from a newspaper which cannot be found on the evening news shows. There is a cultural advantadge in sharing root sources of information which we can all reference, rather than squabling over which version of the news is more Republican or Democrat leaning - this is the traditional role of the newspaper. "Did you see the front page today?" "I know, person Y did X." Check CNN, FOX, and ABC news, they almost never focus on the same stories.. and even when they do, the treatment is often so different that you wouldn't recognize one from the other. For example, as I write this, Fox is pushing the death of James Kim, CNN is running a Pinnochet story, and ABC.. well they're confusedly running a rolling banner which includes everything from Pinnochet to Anna Nicole's baby, with no mention of mr Kim. So, where is the common social icon, the idea we take away together of what happened today that mattered? That's important.. that's what a strong and vibrant local newspaper gives to a community, around which a sense of unity can gather. This kind of seperate news for seperate audiences approaches we have now leads to division and a lack of focus in the social conciousness.

At least that's this hack's opinnion.

-GiH

You don't need to.

[khasim]

Nope, didn't read tfa.

You don't need to. It's no different from the thousand other stories just like this.

And the answer hasn't changed yet. The newspapers are losing their readers because the newspapers are abandoning their readers. Real journalism is dying at the newspapers. It's dying on the television news programs. The only show that still has some in depth and insightful research is The Daily Show. How pathetic is that?

This isn't about getting on the web with video clips.

This is about digging for the facts and presenting them in context. If you have to offend some government official, so be it. We'll respect you more for that than if you just regurgitate their press releases. The concept of being paid for "work" involves you doing some actual "work". When some part time policy hobbyist knows more than your political reporters, you have a problem.

Another behemoth grapples with the Internet

[postbigbang]

They're all online media companies now. And this is where they fail: not asking their own journalists, rather than the sales department, about what they should do in the midst of declining sales, stodgy offerings, and peek-a-boo online subcriptions. The guys out in the trenches get it, it's the exec on the golf course that are having trouble making shots while eyes become increasingly glued to monitors, mobile PDAs, and other life in the post-paper era.

The IHT is that silly paper at the conceirge desk at the hotel in Singapore, the airline lounge, and other places abroad. If you look at their advertisers, you can tell their audience. Apparently, execs now get their news-- real news-- from places like RSS and Atom feeds. Fancy that.

'Good journalism costs money" not!

[Anonymous Coward]

what costs is cronyism, nepotism and patronism

corporations don't care

Print journalism is bunk because of television

[Toby The Economist]

Who cares? Print journalism is bunk because of television. There's no award for "best investigative sentence" - which is what modern newspapers have been reduced to, with a very, very few exceptions (IHT and The Economist).

Modern print journalism, like television, is a source of disinformation.

Disinformation is information which leads you to *think* you are informed but actually leads you away from being *truly informed*.

News is defined as *functional information*. Almost everything in a newspaper is NOT news. It fills up your time, fills up your brain, and leads you to think you're being informed when actually you're being filled up with irrelevent, contextless, useless knowledge.

Most of the major issues in our lives are not news-worthy - in the sense of being *newspaper* news worthy; and those which are *cannot* be dealt with in the space and attention span commanded by a newspaper column. The very attempt to do so entirely distorts the reality of the problem and this itself is part of the disinformation.

We need to loose television. We won't, and that's why we're screwed.

Not resubscribing to my paper

[j-schoolgeek]

My newspaper subscription is ending, and I've decided not to resubscribe, in large part because of the subscription cost. My paper costs $180 for the year. I decided that if I want print versions of news, I can subscribe to Time or Newsweek for a fraction of the cost. No, it's not daily, but I think it's often more insightful.