fix journalism a conversation about journalism’s future

As most of you know there’s an interesting debate about using an iNews/iTunes model of journalism to in fact save journalism. A lot of the main ideaists are talking about it as a business model while Shirky is the leader in why it’s a bad idea. I posit that iNews (or uNews as I’m calling it) is a good way to improve journalism more generally.

Jeff Jarvis and many others, including our blog, discuss the scenario for news and how to improve journalism. Citing local news, public journalism, citizen journalism and other regular entrants into the conversation.

With a micropayment system, we can move the onous of profit from the product: newspapers, a website, etc. onto the elements of that product: content. When the basic elements of content become the product there is need to improve to stay afloat. Consider any product with competition that does not meet or exceed its companions in the market. Do they succeed?  Not really.

With a system where readers pay directly for the content, journalists suddenly must compete against each other and themselves. Journalists have always had trouble guaging the success of their work with readers. In a micropayment system we will easily discover what jives and what does not.

What information is worth paying for and what information is not? A micropayment system allows us to try things because we’ll have motivation to try things. Certain story forms, topics or news outlets will quickly realize what needs improvement and what should stay the same.

If The New York Times makes the most money, it’ll give incentive for other places to be as good as them. Or we may find out the NYT is not so great afterall.

Similarly, citizen journalists may enter the picture and be able to make money as well. They will finally have an incentive to do journalism and again, to do it well.

People say journalism is a “public good” well guess what, we pay for public goods. The only difference between a public good and a private good is profit. Public goods are created at a loss or break even. Journalism has always profitted, therefore it is a private good.

You must pay for an ambulance to pick you up and a fire truck to put out your house through taxes and actual fees. Usually those are paid by insurance but we don’t have journalism insurance.

So as my roommate once said, “let’s do it at each other’s throats.” A competitive journalism is a more successful journalism than the stagnant, crashing journalism we have now.