fix journalism a conversation about journalism’s future

About a year ago, I and many others suggested making an iTunes for newspapers but we see now that that might not be such a great idea considering the music industry and a million other blog posts about paying for stories.

iTunes also would prohibit the type of content possible and revenue potential considering Apple would become a distributor and the interface would be locked into Apple’s design.

So without a whole lot of predictions and turning myself into a fool, I’m going to say the iPad represents another platform or perhaps a more flexible mobile platform for news content.

If news companies are able to create their own reading/viewing environments for the iPad, then I think that’s a good thing.

Will it save journalism? Pft. No. But it opens up to yet another market and business model/revenue potential.
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In response to the previous post, Brian Duggan, Donica Mensing and I began an interesting disucssion via email. The question: Is advertising capable of being journalism ever?” Brian Duggan said: Ads provide objective information, yes, but to what degree? Does that baked potato in your Locals BBQ ad always look picturesque for every customer? Ask yourself [...]

A lot of people in the hardcore journalism world don’t think advertising is journalism (it’s threatening) and many people don’t believe advertising should be in journalism schools. But I think advertising is journalism and belongs in J-schools. Advertising can serve the same purposes and affect the same goals as journalism when done a certain way [...]

Has anyone asked you these questions lately?

1. What has happened in the “external” world that could affect the way we do business?
2. What challenges and threats do we face as an organization from the “external” world?
3. What are the opportunities we should be taking advantage of in order to: a. Make us more sustainable as an organization
   b. Help us be a better company?
4. What information do you have that you think is important to share with others in the Innovation Station group?
5. What are the important strengths of [your publication/branch/company]?
6. What weaknesses are preventing us from being a better organization?
7. Make some notes about what you think our vision, values and mission are as an organization.
8. What challenges have we failed to meet in the past two to three years and why have we failed to meet them?
9. What challenges have we met well in the past two to three years and what helped us to meet them?
10. What is the most important outcome that you would like to see emerging from Innovation Station? Why do you think it is so important?

My point is, anyone can innovate any time, anywhere. You can do it in small increments so no one will notice. A method I’ve heard here is that you innovate and change in small ways over a long period of time. At the end of your journey, everything is completely different but everyone thinks of it as something that needed to be done and they look back at the old way of doing things and scoff.

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I walked up to the imaginary doctor and interviewed him using my Evernote (btw, you need this if you’re a journalist, not just for iPhone) voice recorder. He told me Michael Jackson was in critical condition.

When I hit save on Evernote, it automatically uploaded the sound file to the web. Annie has access to my Evernote account and watched it load live, then saved it to her computer, briefly trimmed it down, uploaded it to SoundCloud.com (YouTube for audio) and Tweeted the sound clip embeded on the L.A. Times website with a nutgraf.

Total time for first breaking news report: 10 minutes

While I waited in the waiting room, the editor and I coordinated my and the L.A. Times tweets using a synced Tweetdeck (iPhone app + her desktop app). I tweeted extra details while the editor spread the word.

As people retweeted us, we retweeted them with #truth

People who lied (or abused the hash tag) were retweeted with #untruth so that people would ignore them and continue to retweet our reports.

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It irks me that our industry is currently having a debate about who the customer is; readers or advertisers. The above Harvard Business blog talks about finding out how people read, something I’ve been whining about for a year now. A very anthropological, anti-focus group approach is what he suggests. I’d agree. Annie points out that [...]

In imagination land, we’ll partner with Comma Coffee, a locally owned coffee shop in Carson City. We’ll go with the original idea, where Swift partners to put Nevada Appeal newspapers and a Nevada Appeal reporter in the coffee shop almost all day. We have Online Community Managers (OCMs), so let’s say it’s one of those people.

That reporter/OCM gathers news, talks to people, answers questions (even just common questions about town goings-ons), reports, moderates, etc. He/She is the community hub – the all-knowing journalist. But he/she is only the all-knowing journalist because of time spent with the community members. So really, the OCM is a facilitator between customers who buy coffee for breakfast and customers who buy at lunch.

Also, we buy one of those nice big flat screen TVs (about $1000 to $1600) and start selling advertisements on a rotating screen. As an incentive, it also includes specials in that coffee shop with nice food photography compliments of the ad staff. Nothing is better than a photo of a greasy croissant sandwich or steaming coffee when it comes to making point of purchase sales.

In addition to ads, let’s stick news headlines on that screen. Not unlike Las Vegas Sun’s billboards.

On top of that, if there’s breaking news using Twitter or Cover it Live (or other live tools) let’s put the Nevada Appeal’s Twitterfall on it too. People in the coffee shop could participate from their mobile phones or laptops and see it live.

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