Keep America At Work It is all about Jobs and Opportunity Volume 1 - 05 July 2016 - Subscriptions are Free
Does the publisher of your local newspaper deserve your trust? <SLAP!> Wake up. Of course, I don’t want this to happen and I don’t think it ever would. The platforms want to be technology companies, not content companies. Content, as we demonstrate every day, is a shitty business. I don’t want them to be in channel conflict. I don’t want that much power to both curate and distribute news concentrated in a few hands (and, no, they aren’t purposeful curators now; we in the audience and our content habits contribute to what is selected by their algorithms). And I want many, many voices to flourish.
Only when we reconceive of journalism as a service rather than as a factory that churns out a commodity we call content, only when we measure our value not by attention to what we make but instead by the positive impact we have in lives and communities, and only when we create business models that reward quality and value will we build that quality and value.
read day after day, are still struggling. Layoffs are constant, bankruptcies common, and storied local brands face uncertain futures. This has fueled low morale and heightened cynicism in many local newsrooms. In fact, when the subject turns to local news, we’re more likely to hear what isn’t possible than what is. Local can’t scale, critics say. Local sites can’t build large enough audiences to generate meaningful revenue. Local advertisers don’t get digital. Many think the local news opportunity is too small to be worth much effort.
The platforms could help by sending more attention and value to such quality journalism, but we fear that. So fine, let us help the platforms by sending them reliable signals of originality, qual- But this is no time for surrender. As ity, authority, trust, and value. Can we someone who has spent most of the get our act together to do that? past 20 years working in local digital news—the last two running Billy Penn, https://medium.com/whither-news/ a mobile news site in Philadelphia—I returning-scarcity-to-newssay now is the time to refocus on what bad83eda8045#.htjseis5i local can do instead of what it can’t, My point in this fantasy is only to illus- Editors Note: Look around you. If your and to build a new ecosystem on that trate the impact of our current business local newspaper publisher blindly pubfoundation. Now is the time to take models on the quality of what we do. lishes the latest unemployment propa- advantage of what makes local unique Ever more content. Ever more ganda, they are not telling you the instead of trying to follow the footsteps pageviews. Ever more ads. Ever more truth, and they know that. of a national business model that will clicks. Ever fewer pennies. Ever more never work for local. Now is the time So when you make investment decicrap. Ever less value and trust. That is sions, or hiring decisions and they turn for a local digital news revolution. the cycle we’re stuck in. out wrong, will our Federal Government For revolution to happen, it’s going to Yes, reach matters but less and less as make up your loss to you? take a major shift in how local journalan end and a business model in itself ists think and operate. Too many local and more and more as a feeder into a — news organizations—both legacies and God help me for saying this — funnel to FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS, local news startups—likely are already doomed by build stronger relationships not just a business model that is simultaneously organizations around the globe have around subscription but also around keeping them alive and dragging them been trying to make a go of it in the affinity, membership, service, and other new digital economy. And most, as we under. As Walt Kelly said: We have met models. the enemy, and it is us.
Along those lines…
Page Number: 1