How is iPad Destroying the Future of Journalism??
Just to be sure I don’t forget:
The whole story about the newspapers being killed by digital technology is bullshit; what we witness now is the beginning of a huge press disintermediation process, where big corporations are being pulled out from their “middleman” role, letting for a while the writers to face directly their readers. Therefore, the corporations are desperate to keep the status quo, the writers are scared they won’t get paid, the readers feel lost in this new digital ocean. We’ve seen this before and we know the cure.
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I’ve come across this smart post, by Bradford Cross (via SmokingApples).
Unfortunately, the title is just a high-jacker (“Why the iPad is Destroying the Future of Journalism”), as far as the only guilt iPad may be hold responsible for, is:
The iPad is a delightful device, but it can’t salvage the existing model for journalism.
Let’s get over it, anyway, and consider the arguments.
To cut the long short, the issue described by Bradford is like this: hot digital startups, like Wired, dropped from 100.000 iPad dedicated copies distributed in June to 22.000 copies in late 2010. Digital newspapers’ customers prefer news syndication to news branded channels, while, alas, almost all news gatekeepers have already preferred the second. Unhappy end.
Bradford shows there are 3 main vectors a news should have:
The success of search, social, and design seem to indicate that the future of news products need Google-level relevance, Facebook-level social, and Apple-level design.
Given these 3 vectors, it becomes very tricky for news moguls to find a way to make money out of “journalism”: it should either be via ads or via some kind of pay-wall / distributed payment within social friends or cross networks, tasks proven to be at least impossible.
So far so good. Though this is a bit misleading.
Here’s why:
First and foremost: it’s not the journalism that suffers from news digital syndication, but big gatekeepers. On the contrary, journalism comes closer to what it should be, having access to thousands of simultaneous opinions, from both laymen and professionals. (I’m talking now journalism and reporting.) On the other hand, the more opinions and reports you have closer to a target, the more accurate your predictions on that target’s location are. Is NYT or WIRED enough for you to pinpoint the target? I have my doubts.
Second, it’s not the truth nor the essence of a news that suffers from this transformation process (from paper to digital news) but the capital. Money is leaving (or has already left) big news and media moguls for Google’s pockets and the likes. Exactly there.
Third, the relevance of the news content is no longer the gatekeeper’s concern, but ad serving company’s. Finding subject-relevant news will be like looking for the biggest star in the sky with your own eyes; if Google puts a specific profile-relevant content right before these eyes, that’d be relevant enough for the most of the readers.
Fourth: for journalists and authors to make money out of their work, we simply need to follow Google’s strategy: smallest money from biggest groups. Facebook, Twitter and others are already offering these groups. Make the title and the first 5 lines free, then charge a tenth of a cent for each opened article from each user. Collect money and analytics straight from Facebook, Twitter etc and pay the most read authors.
Have the political parties and companies directly and officially pay their writers. They have already been doing this for such a long time, anyway.
In the end, stop fooling around, it’s not the authors to be in peril, but the news corporations! It’s not a company that’s paying the writers, but the readers ! And sleepwalking backwards into your own future while ranting against it, well, it just isn’t it.
