Janet Coats on The Church Of Journalism Is Dying

Jessica DaSilva writes about the growing sense of mortality in the journalistic trenches, as more and more journalists begin to realize that a way of life is coming to a fairly abrupt end, and they will have to find other work, or dedicate themselves a drastically revised version of journalism. She relates a talk by the Tampa Tribune Editor-in-Chief, Janet Coats:

[from “It’s worth fighting for”]

[...]

She compared newspapers to the music industry. Having increased access to music has undermined the corporate giants of the music industry. They are not making money, but demand is just as high if not higher than it ever has been.

That’s how the news is, she said. There is a high demand for it, but with abundant access to it, it’s time to rethink how we can carve out a niche. Her idea? Hyperlocal journalism.

[... Hmmm, maybe, but I don't know if hyperlocalism will grow from old school journalism. More likely to come from hyperlocal interest groups, like local food movements, or the music scene. The future of hyperlocal is hypersocial.]

Now there will be more of an emphasis on the hyperlocal and giving the community news about itself. If they want national news, they have several national news sources to get it. Instead, the Trib should be used to give the community something they can’t get from the NY Times or WaPo. Give them their news.

Through most of this meeting, I just wanted to shout, “Amen!” and “You go girl!” because Janet understands what’s up. She can see the trend in the industry: Innovate or obliterate. She stressed more than several times that if newspapers don’t change then NEWSPAPERS WILL DIE.

It’s hard, she admitted. Sometimes she feels temptation to get out of this business and join PricewaterhouseCoopers where she can have a decent salary and lifestyle. But then she thinks of the role of a news organization, and she knows she could never do that.

“This is who I am,” Janet said. “If you asked me who I am, I would first respond that I’m a journalist - probably before I even said I’m a mother.”

Janet believes in the news industry. She believes in holding government, media and the public accountable. And she knows there is not another job that makes such a huge difference and weilds [sic: wields] such power. News organizations offer society so much, and that is why she cannot take another job - because journalism is her calling, and she knows there is nothing else she could ever imagine herself doing.

“It’s worth fighting for,” Janet said.

Out of all her quoteable [sic: quotable] moments, those were the words that stuck with me. It was that powerful statement that conveyed the hope, faith and prayers of all journalists worldwide. That maybe this industry can’t be demolished because of its importance and that maybe our love and passion for it could be enough to keep it running.

Well, it’s going to take more than love and passion. That love and passion must move us to find solutions to keep our industry, our jobs and our identities alive and well. Still, it’s going to take passionate people like Janet Coats to figure it out.

Journalists will have to sink or swim in the new watershed, not where they started out. Some may be able to dedicate themselves to a lifestyle business for little money and scant career options but most won't. Some will transition to social media, and leaving the center behind, moving out to the edge where there is no safety net other than your personal relationships and reputation, but most will not. Some may redefine the local newspaper into something tied to our collective rediscovery of the local, but most can't see that, since they haven't yet figured out what hyperlocal means.

So it will pass, the mass print media model at the regional level. Local radio is gone, consumed by an industrial model that controls hundreds of stations with a bank of computers and a few dozen DJs. Local television is increasingly being dissolved in the same way. And regional news is going in the same fashion.

I disagree that it's worth fighting for: fighting for what? Massness is falling just as fast as people can stream onto the web and get away from industrial scale one:many publishing. It's like listening to fishermen talking about their right to pull unlimited fish from the sea, their 'way of life' threatened by our growing awareness of its unsustainability, and what will we do now that we can't fish any more?

We will see a seriously downsized national press continue on for some time, perhaps decades, getting slimmer, shorter, smaller, but still managing to keep the interest of a shrinking class of graying intellectuals and business executives. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal will be around -- increasingly online, but in print as well -- for a long time to come. Even papers in major cities will find it hard to stay afloat, and soon cities like Tampa, Cincinnati, and Des Moines may have no traditional papers at all, with local folks choosing to live hyperlocal online (note that I didn't say read, but live), reading free giveaway papers on the metro, or buying USA Today at the newsstand.

I predict a surge in hyperlocal writing and connecting -- I stop short of referring to it as 'news' or 'journalism' -- linked with various aspects of living locally. Since these various threads may not be mutually supportive, they won't add up to anything like the strange combination of things that we have in the modern newspaper, with its funnies, horoscopes, national news, local sports, classifieds, Sunday supplements, food coupons. I believe that hyperlocal = hypersocial and not just news within some zipcode, it will not just be 'about' people, it will be the means through which people connect locally, a social medium, not a news medium.

There may be other aspects of localism that justify a hyperlocal reportage (the sort of things I wave my hand at in The Rise Of Localism: Three Meals Away From A Revolution, at my /Ambivalence blog), but these will not feel anything like journalism. It will be more like the Whole Earth Catalog or a documentary movie. Most will not transition to that, most will move into other lines of work, and look back to the time they were journalists, before they moved into other lines of work, perhaps sadly, perhaps wistfully, but looking back; not into the future.

Comments

[knackeredhack]

Stowe

I agree it is hard to see hyperlocalism emerging from old school journalism. My own interest in local activism always seemed eccentric in the context of the international news environment in which I worked. As you observe, such activism produces its own journalism, and both as an editor and consumer of such content I have frequently discovered in it an eloquence that is lacking in the professional product.

Tim

[Daniel]

I've been arguing since 2005 that the economics of hyperlocal print journalism simply don't work for a daily metro newspaper. Hyperlocal coverage reverses the metro business model (economies of scale via averaging by massness) and -- setting aside for now the lack of readership interest in other communities' hyperlocal ANYTHING -- it promises nothing but higher cost for lower return.

To me this is an obvious flaw, so why are metro newspapers so committed to the hyperlocal model? Lack of ideas. They understand they can't win a competition with the NYT or the other big dailies for national/international, so they assume their only choice is to compete where they can beat these other papers. Only, in most cases, they're not really competing against other papers -- they're competing against other, more naturally hyperlocal, free media.

So it's a race to the bottom.

Mainstream news orgs are failing to bridge this transition because they can't figure out what their remaining readers want from a daily newspaper (My answer: They still want an intelligent, organized, prioritized orientation to the world) and can't imagine that the online future isn't just a digital version of their old print business model.

The new online business model for sustainable journalism will involve multiple revenue streams, tools that add value to information, and a switch from service to advertiser to service to consumer.

Citizens and journalists shouldn't care about saving newspapers per se. They should care about creating a sustainable model for meaningful journalism. This is unlikely to emerge until the old mass media dinosaurs, with their addiction to immoral monopoly profiteering, collapse. The world needs more content than ever before, and I suspect we'll create an economy that will support that demand.

Eventually. After a traumatic crash.

[Shafqat]

The first step: forget about the dead-tree media. Instead of focusing on the "newspaper" while also maintaining an online presence, drop the newspaper and focus only on your online brand. Of course, all the previous comments about hyperlocal, social communities, diversifying revenue streams etc apply. But until news organizations stop living in the past and abandon their traditional 'newspaper first' model, I don't see much long term viability.

[Dennis McDonald]

I like the quote "The future of hyperlocal is hypersocial." But "hypersocial" only works if the content is perceived as honest and sincere, and sincerity can't be bought.

[Wenalway]

Hey, it's yet another person who misses the point entirely. Gosh, there seem to be a lot of those in the blogosphere!

Jessica DaSilva did not write "about the growing sense of mortality in the journalistic trenches," despite what you want to believe. She's an intern who simply parroted the gibberish of a clueless manager in the hope of winning some brownie points.

Next time, get some facts, then write. Maybe you won't look quite so foolish.

[Stowe Boyd]

Wenalway - Hey, bro, try decaf next time. If you don't like what I write, go somewhere else.

Shafqat - Sure, I agree.

Daniel - Yes, I agree completely.