Ethan Zuckerman on Bads News For News

Ethan Zuckerman makes a strong case that traditional journalism — newspaper news — has been propped up by irrationally high prices for advertising simply because there was not a/ a reliable way to measure its results or b/ viable alternatives. The advent of online advertising may spell the end of news as we know it:

[from …My heart’s in Accra » Is ad-supported journalism viable in a pay-for-performance age?]

[…]

Here’s my concern. If I’m right and print advertising costs are fundamentally irrational, then it’s possible that the way we’ve built media in the United States can’t survive a transition to a more rational market. That would be bad. Newspapers aren’t just businesses - they serve a critical function in a democratic society, informing citizens so they can make intelligent voting decisions, lobby their elected representatives on issues of their concern and hold political and business powers accountable.

What if the idea that commercial enterprises should carry out the public interest function of journalism is built on a fundamentally broken model? What if advertising worked pretty well as a way of subsidizing public interest journalism only so long as advertisers didn’t understand the effectiveness of their ads? Putting aside all the other reasons why commercial journalism may be flawed - the tendency of newspapers and television channels to seek readers by publishing “edutainment” rather than investigation, the worry that papers will hesitate to publish stories that might embarrass advertisers - what if ad supported journalism is only viable in a world where we radically overvalue the worth of ads?

That would be a bad thing. Seth Godin argues that there may be lots we’re willing to either throw away from the local newspaper or have covered by new online providers, but we need to ensure that there’s still a way to engage in serious investigative journalism: “I worry about the quality of a democracy when the the state government or the local government can do what it wants without intelligent coverage. I worry about the abuse of power when the only thing a corrupt official needs to worry about is the TV news. I worry about the quality of legislation when there isn’t a passionate, unbiased reporter there to explain it to us.”

Godin believes that we’ll find another way to provide for this coverage. “Maybe it’s a public good, a non profit function. Maybe a philanthropist puts up money for prizes. Maybe the Woodward and Bernstein of 2017 make so much money from breaking a story that it leads to a whole new generation of journalists.”

Maybe. I wouldn’t count on it. My friends who are engaged in online projects to conduct “difficult journalism” - the sort of investigative reporting Godin is talking about, as well as international coverage, are worried about revenue models. We get support from the foundation community, but foundations can’t provide support forever, and all would like to know when we’re going to be able to work without their support.

We’re all looking at models that include some advertising support. What if the model that brough us Upton Sinclair and Woodward and Bernstein - impression advertising - can’t bring us into the future because it’s based on uneven distribution of information and bad math?

Despite Zuckerman’s paean to Bernstein et al, it’s not so clear that journalism has led to such wonderful results, pre-web. Jay Rosen dove into this deeply earlier this week (see Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press), making the case that traditional journalism has acted as a damper on open social discourse, determining who who could be heard. In essence, they failed in providing a true forum for open discourse. This is one of Benkler’s strongest arguments in The Wealth of Networks, as well.

Nonetheless, there are certainly aspects of news gathering and reportage that we would like to conserve, and Zuckerman’s analysis is dead on.

How can we have deep news if online advertising won’t or can’t support it? It will require a different approach.

No surprise: I’ll bet it will come from a communitarian model, like blogging and other social phenomena on the web. Could be a mix of advertising, philantrophy, tax loopholes, and sponsorship (a la NPR), but it won’t be old school newspapers relocated to the web.