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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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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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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Journalists write stories. Most stories are intended to convey information. The strategic thinking that should be the next step — who needs this information, how might they act on it, how will they find it, how will they share it, how is it useful to them? — gets little attention in most newsrooms. This piece [...]

I apologize to any of our regular readers for being a horrible blogger. I’ve been swamped with completing school and have admittedly not thought much about journalism.

To make up for it, I’ll blog regularly while I’m at the Poynter Institute and when I return to Reno for the Newspaper Association of America News Challenge Fellowship.

For now, here is a presentation from Revenue 2.0 by Matt Mansfield

The “future of journalism” discussion usually gets framed in the context of editorial content. We ask questions like: “how can we better connect with readers?” “how can we use technology to build communities?” “how do we ingrain ourselves into the conversation of existing communities?” or “how do we become a vital part of readers’ lives?” Some [...]

Working for a newspaper in today’s economy is like being in an abusive relationship. It has its brilliant highs —  experimenting with new technologies, connecting with readers like never before, getting the story first and right, building lasting relationships with sources and colleagues and becoming the articulate, hard-hitting reporter you always knew you could be. [...]

This one is a bit longer but very awesome. Specifically check out the area starting at 9 minutes.

The video is of Nick Bilton, Design Integration Editor for The New York Times and the User Interface Specialist & Lead Researcher for The New York Times Research & Development Lab to the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference: