fix journalism a conversation about journalism’s future

iTunes of news

David Carr of The New York Times is possibly a genius. He discusses the idea of making an iTunes for distributing news and information (click here for Michael Hogan’s take). Wow, it’s about time.

For once, someone has a good idea and doesn’t even understand why or know it’s a good idea. Mr. Carr wanted to make a joke in order to discuss – you guessed it – the plight of the industry. Michael Hogan, of Vanity Fair, even went so far as to create a graphic for that idea (at left), then knocked it down, saying, “What an idea! Only trouble is, the kind of stuff Americans are willing to pay for could prove awfully disappointing to the world’s self-important reporters and editors.”

Of course people would only want guff and have no interest in anything substantive. Except for that fact that people are crying for substantive content and we won’t give it to them.

Let’s take Mr. Carr’s wonderful (old) idea and explain why it represents a particular breakthrough (for which, to Mr. Carr’s credit, he considered in the end of his column):

“Then again, a friend in the business sent me a link to an item in TechCrunch (yes, it was also free) that described a gadget that actually might work for newspapers.

“Expect a large screen iPod touch device to be released in the fall of ’09, with a 7 or 9 inch screen,” the item suggested.

The device would allow scanning of pages with a flick of the finger. It sounds promising for newspapers and magazines. Now all we need is a business model to go with it.”

The future of news is not a medium. The future of online is not words on paper or words on a computer screen. The future of news is content and information. What is news/journalism? Journalism is information via people, sources, words, interactivity, advertisements, images, sound, touch, emotion, texture, light, color.

What is the web? The web is a platform. Less than that, it is a system for rendering information/data. The web is not important. The web is not even a delivery system. The Internet is what’s important. The Internet is a layer of connections that allows information to proliferate the web. What does all that mean? It means the web is not the end of the Internet, it is simply one manifestation, one interpretation of the information on the Internet.

iTunes store is another system of interpreting information. iTunes is not the web, it is a system for recognizing musical data on the Internet and displaying it in a coherent, usable, profitable format.

Now consider iNews. iNews is a way of interpreting journalistic data. There is no web-based rendering in this idea. There is only information with endless filters in a coherent, usable, profitable format.

Now consider these mobile devices. Consider the iPod. These are more iterations of the Internet disconnected from the web.

Think of news. This is how news moves into the future. News becomes information independent of each other. Decentralized, personalized, niche news. News you carry around in your pocket (think cell phones but easier, better). These devices move the camera! The web is still a print platform on screen. iNews is not!

You know what’s even better? News is now a commodity. News makes a profit, not the lack of news – not the empty space of news. Now news sources are thrown together and people can pick what they like. Just like picking an artist or a studio, they know what is quality and what is not. They can test out new artists and new songs and find things they like. Then journalists find out what makes good journalism! Lather, rinse, repeat. Because then people BUY GOOD JOURNALISM and stop buying bad journalism. And bad journalism Dies and good journalism lives!