Writing in The New York Times, Timothy Egan invokes the spirit of Thomas Jefferson in an impassioned plea for continuation of the status quo in the newspaper business. His argument is more eloquent than most, but it’s predicated on two shaky assumptions.

The first is that newspaper readership is higher today than ever. Egan calls this the “great paradox,” and it would be if the numbers existed in a vacuum. It’s true that newspapers’ total audience is growing, but the real question is relative to what? This blog gets a lot more readers online than it would if it were copied and distributed on street corners, but is that an inherent measure of value? The growth of the Web and the emergence of high-quality search engines are a tide that lifts all boats, but that doesn’t make the boats themselves any more valuable. You can turn around this logic: There are some 20 million active blogs today that didn’t exist five years ago. Facebook traffic drawfs that of all major newspapers combined. Does that make blogs and Facebook a more useful resource than The New York Times?

Fewer Jobs, But Not Fewer Journalists

The second assumption is that journalism jobs are going away and with them, professional journalism. Egan cites Huffington Post, a favorite mainstream media whipping post because it pays its contributors so little. “We could be left with a national snark brigade, sniping at the remaining dailies in their pajamas, never rubbing shoulders with a cop, a defense attorney or a distressed family in a Red Cross shelter after a flood,” he moans.

Well, he’s got one thing right: in the future there will be fewer salaried staff positions at big media institutions. But it’s stretch to say there will be fewer professional journalists.

Huffington Post lists 30 editors on its masthead. We can assume that some of those people are getting paid. While it’s true that staff jobs are declining, there is a model for the future of journalism careers. It’s called freelancing. Lots of professional journalists make a perfectly good living today writing for multiple clients. Some of those clients are businesses and others are media organizations. The corporate work generally pays better, and that supplements the more interesting “pure” journalism work. Many of the best journalists in the US long ago left their staff positions in order to go solo. Most freelancers I know prefer the flexibility and freedom that the lifestyle provides. And most magazines couldn’t survive without their services.

Lots of industries work this way. The accounting profession has a few mega-firms and thousands of individual practitioners. Doctors can choose to work for a medical group or hang out their own shingle. Many independent consultants provide specialized services that their clients can’t get from big organizations. These people make good livings without working a staff job. Freelancers create good journalism without working for media organizations.

A Cleansing Process

The Internet is in the process of cleaning inefficiency out of the media business. To demonstrate the waste of the current media model, search for coverage of any major news story on Google News. Chances are you’ll find more than 100 stories about the same topic, each reported by a different organization. Every day across the US, hundreds of reporters, editors, copy editors and layout artists duplicate each other’s efforts producing the same stories about the same topics. This duplication of effort was necessary when the only way to reach readers was on a printed page. It isn’t necessary any more.

Why are there over 100 journalists at every Presidential press conference, political convention, World Series game and Olympic event when five could report the facts equally well? Is it conceivable that a smaller number of national media organizations could do the work more efficiently by pooling resources for the big events and farming out the color stories and sidebars to a network of freelancers? Could journalists make a decent living selling these services? I think so.

The destruction of newspapers is creating pain and heartbreak for the people who are losing their jobs. Our heart goes out to them. But this process is part of a necessary cleansing process, one that will force many journalists to re-evaluate their strengths and seek new sources of income. This will ultimately bring efficiency to a market that is shedding a legacy of waste and duplicated effort. Read Chris Jennewein’s upbeat piece on SensibleTalk.com about why it’s a great time to be a journalist for inspiration.

Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell must be relieved to be back on familiar territory in the real estate business. He’s just put the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower up for sale as well as Los Angeles Times property in historic Times Mirror Square. Technically, Zell says he’s only seeking ways to maximize the value of the properties, but it’s hard to imagine that his options would include making the investment required to redevelop the buildings for the long term. He’s putting them up for sale and potentially buying another year of life for his highly leveraged company. The Wall Street Journal quotes sources estimating the two properties could fetch $385 million.

So the man who said he was going to shake up the Tribune by challenging conventional thinking and breaking the mold is now going back to what he knows best: selling real estate. That kind of vision has got to inspire the troops, especially in the wake of major layoffs at two Tribune papers this week. Edward Padgett has Zell’s memo to employees urging them to keep their eye on the ball and not speculate about what’s up with the property sales.

Assume that more layoffs are on the way shortly. Edward Padgett has the text of a memo from Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller to his staff setting the stage for major cost cuts. We can assume there won’t be a lot of joy around the barbeque at LAT employee picnics this weekend.

The Atlantic has a Q&A with Tribune Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams in which he doesn’t come off sounding nearly as goofy as his memos make him out to be. Still, his comments are short on the kind of breakthrough insight that the Tribune probably needs right now.

In Other Layoff News…

• Gannett Co. is looking to cut 150 employees from the Detroit Free Press and the rival Detroit News. That’s about 7.5% of the total workforce, according to Gannett Blog. Management is hoping to make the cuts through buyouts rather than layoffs, but hasn’t ruled out the latter. Detroit is a joint operating agreement town, meaning that the two competing papers belong to the same corporate parent. That’s how bad the advertising climate is. (via Fading to Black)
• We noted yesterday that when the new round of layoffs at the Hartford Courant are complete, the news staff will have been reduced from 400 to 175, or 55%. That’s not the worst of it, though. Alan Mutter calculates following a small layoff just announced at the San Jose Mercury News, its staff will have been cut 63%. Commenters say that estimate might actually be on the low side.

The Future Takes Shape

Veteran journalists might scoff at the joint effort by MySpace and NBC to recruit citizen journalists to cover the upcoming political conventions, but we think it’s an innovative idea. Someone with a lot of talent but without a lot of connections is going to have the chance to gain a national audience for a few days this summer based solely on his or her creativity and hard work. And what the heck is wrong with that?

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Add the San Diego Union-Tribune to the growing list of newspapers that are republishing the best content submitted by users in print. The paper has launched a social network for residents of San Diego county. It’s got all the usual Facebook-like stuff, but editors will be monitoring the discussions and publishing good material in the company’s community weeklies.

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for information and some of the promise and challenge that presents. The NPR example is great.
Speaking of citizen journalism, the Guardian has been reporting on a conference about the future of journalism. Caitlin Fitzsimmons blogs a panel about how news organizations are tapping into crowds

Miscellany

Online Journalism blog has the first in a series of planned stories about semantic journalism. Nicolas Kayser-Bril kicks things off with a plain-English explanation of the semantic Web. Basically, if machines could do a better job of interpreting information, it would make all our lives a lot easier. And the Death Watch editor could catch another hour or two of sleep.

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We have intentionally avoided commenting on the pissing match between the Associated Press and a group of self-righteous bloggers over fair use of AP copy. We tend to side with the bloggers, but we think the AP also has a point. If you’re late to the party or haven’t been following it closely, Editors Weblog has done the legwork for you. This timeline of the dispute is full of links to relevant detail and covers the big issues succinctly.

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Alan Mutter has created the Default-O-Matic, a tool that rates the likelihood that various large newspaper companies will default on their debt. Journal Register Co., whose stock is almost literally not worth the paper it’s printed on, leads the funeral procession, while Washington Post Co. is the healthiest overall. Read this post if you want a quick tutorial on what “default” means. It’s more involved than we thought.

And Finally

LA Times Pressman Edward Padgett shares this gem: “A recent study conducted by Harvard University found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study by the American Medical Association found that Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol per year. This means, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon!” Have a nice weekend everyone.

Perhaps hoping that no one would notice bad news if it was released on a post-Memorial Day Friday afternoon, the Newspaper Association of America quietly reported that advertising sales by US newspapers fell a record 14% in the first quarter, with real estate and recruitment ads both shrinking 35%. The results are worse than even the most pessimistic skeptics predicted and may indicate that the industry has entered an irreversible death spiral.

BusinessWeek’s Jon Fine thinks the unthinkable: one or more major metro dailies will go under within the next 18 months. It isn’t such an outrageous idea. Rising newsprint and gasoline prices are layering more burdens on top of an already troubled industry that distributes its product by truck. Some publishers have seriously floated the idea of cutting out unprofitable Monday and Tuesday editions. MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton recently estimated that 19 of the top 50 US newspapers are losing money.

If more than a third of top US titles are losing money, then the spiral has probably begun. The only way to stop it is to cut deeply and painfully, with staff cuts of 40% or more and a primary focus on online delivery.

However, that’s not likely to happen. Businesses in trouble rarely have the stomach or the investor support for substantive change. Instead, they do what all of them are doing today: cut 5% to 10% here and there until they slowly bleed to death. I outlined this scenario in my 2006 essay on the collapse of newspapers and the reinvention of journalism:

Newspapers will be forced to lay off staff in order to maintain margins. Cuts in services will lead to cuts in editorial coverage, making papers less relevant to subscribers. As circulation declines, advertising rates will have to come down to remain competitive. This will put more pressure on margins, leading to more layoffs, more cost cuts, more circulation declines and more pressure on margins. Once this spiral begins, it will accelerate with breathtaking speed.

If you look at Alan Mutter’s analysis of the McClatchy layoffs, you can see how this scenario could play out. In Mutter’s view, the cuts won’t even cover a quarter of McClatchy’s revenue shortfall. That means more cuts will have to be made, further hobbling the capacity for its papers to produce a quality product. Reader attrition continues. And so on and so on.

Each of these trends is playing out right now, only a lot faster than I predicted. The longer publishers fiddle with hiring freezes and redesigns, the longer they put off the tough decisions that could still save some of them. Unfortunately, for the majority of US newspapers, it’s already too late.

Big Changes in Store at the LA Times?

Speculation has swirled for a few weeks that Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller won’t last the summer, but now the rumors are getting louder. After losing out in an attempt to undermine his own editor last week, Hiller now looks vulnerable, and there are reports that he could be gone as early as July. The changes could also be accompanied by deep cuts in the LA Times editorial staff. We’ve heard up to 19% of the newsroom could be let go, though no decision has been made yet. The LA Times was one of the papers recently singled out by Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell and COO Randy Michaels for poor journalist productivity.

And Finally…

CNN reports on a Yahoo employee who Twittered his layoff in February and gained an eager following. Ryan Kuder recently took a job from the hundreds of leads contributed by his Twitter followers . His story was covered on prominent blogs and has now jumped to mainstream media. All of which shows how one person can make a difference these days.

Moody’s Investors Service has joined the Greek chorus of financial watchdogs predicting more bad news for the newspaper industry. Analysts expect newspaper advertising revenue to drop 7% to 9% in 2008 and maybe slightly less in 2009, but only if the economy recovers next year. If it doesn’t, look out.

Most troubling is the decline in cash flow, defined as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). Over the past 10 years, EBITDA has fallen from 28% to 19% as a percentage of revenue, Moody’s said. Cost cuts aren’t keeping up with revenue declines, which is eroding EBITDA by more than 10% a year. That erosion comes at a terrible time because so many publishers are heavily leveraged with debt. Less cash means less money to pay creditors. Moody’s thinks deeper cuts will be needed in editorial operations, but “It will prove challenging to continually reduce editorial costs without impairing the core news product or employee morale.”

As if to accent the Moody’s forecast, E.W. Scripps Co. said newspaper revenues will fall 8% to 10% in the second half of 2008. The company is in the process of splitting itself in two.

Optimists See Growth, But Much of it is Free

The head of the World Association of Newspapers says reports of the industry’s demise are greatly exaggerated. Speaking to the World Editors Forum meeting in Göteborg, Sweden, CEO Timothy Balding cites statistics showing growth in Asia and South America that is outstripping declines in the US and Europe. Overall newspaper circulation is up over 3% internationally. A lot of that growth is coming from the expanding free-daily industry, however. Free papers now make up 23% of circulation in the EU and 8% in the US.

Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson comments on this trend, noting that it is another indication that information is becoming free. While any growth is good, the loss of paid subscribers presents big challenges to the economics of the newspaper industry, which are predicated on circulation lists.

Free isn’t necessarily good business in the US, though. The CEO of Metro International SA tells Bloomberg that it’s examining its options in the North American and European markets while looking to expand into 30 new markets. The world’s leading publisher of free dailies has struggled to reach profitability, although its market penetration has grown rapidly. Per Mikael Jensen says emerging economies look to have more promise at the moment.

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A study conducted by advocacy group Newspaper Works shows that Australian readers hold newspapers in high esteem. The survey of 1,010 people found that 90% of readers do nothing else when reading a newspaper as compared to the half who busy themselves with other things while the TV is on. Most perceive newspapers as “absorbing, dynamic and reputable,” and the online extensions only add to that credibility. (Via Editors Weblog).

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Finally, the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times tells Media Bistro that print isn’t going away in his lifetime. That said, Russ Stanton is honest about the challenges, noting that the substantial infrastructure cost of print is a liability. “Someone, somewhere is going to grow the revenue from online enough that it can support a newsroom of our size and talent. And when that happens, that’s when you can start, if you so choose, to pull the plug on the paper,” he says. He adds that citizen journalism is pretty intriguing.

Turnover Continues At the Top

Rupert Murdoch continues to put his own team into place at The Wall Street Journal. Deputy Managing Editor Bill Grueskin is the latest to go, leaving the paper for a post in the ivy-covered halls of academia. Grueskin’s departure comes just two months after Managing Editor Marcus Brauchli was unceremoniously shown the door.

Los Angeles Times Editorial Pages Editor James Newton will leave the paper to finish writing a book about Dwight Eisenhower. He had been in the job only 14 months. Newton’s memo to staffers made it clear that he wasn’t motivated by some pressing inner urge to tell the Eisenhower story. “[T]he paper still has challenges ahead. The publisher and I have discussed those difficulties, and he is entitled to an editorial page editor who shares his vision on how best to confront them,” he wrote. LA Observed has Newton’s farewell memo, as well as the obligatory bouquets of gratitude from Publisher David Hiller.

Thoughts on the New Journalism

Jeff Jarvis eloquently expresses an important point about the future of journalism in this essay on the ethics and culture of linking. The link is the currency of the blogosphere, of course, and the emerging culture of journalism is embedding links into news reporting process. In the old days, Jarvis notes, reporters would rather repeat all the legwork done by a competitor than acknowledge being beaten on a story. This led to tremendous duplication of effort. In the new model, though, journalists are learning to link to useful information and build upon it, creating a new and richer style of journalism.

Jarvis cites the experiment being conducted by a group of Ohio papers that are sharing stories between each other rather than processing them through the Associated Press. This means less rewriting, faster delivery and more genuine content. Says Jarvis: “[T]hey’re doing what they do best and linking to the rest and they are linking to original journalism: the new architecture at work.”

Meanwhile, the CEO of acquisitive MediaNews Group urges newspaper executives to “discard our arrogance.” Speaking to the World Newspaper Congress in Sweden William Dean Singleton says, “We’re going to have to quit writing and editing for each other and write and edit for that consumer out there.” He says half the chain’s profits will come from online sources by 2012. Singleton continues recent criticism by industry CEOs of the way newspaper journalism is done. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch recently said The Wall Street Journal has too much management overhead and Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell has also insulted his editors.

Layoff Log

 

• The Portland Press-Herald and MaineToday.com will cut up to 35 positions on top of the 27 jobs that were eliminated in March.
• Newsday has reportedly laid off 32 employees — half in operations management and half from Star Community Publishing. This follows a 120-person reduction in March. Publisher Timothy Knight said the move would “reduce management layers in operations, clarify roles and responsibilities, and speed decision-making.” The paper is awaiting transfer of ownership from Tribune Co. to Cablevision Systems Corp.

And Finally…

Simon Owns interviews journalist and Editor & Publisher columnist Steve Outing about a new venture he’s working on called Reinventing Classifieds. It’s a blog in which prominent publishing professionals contribute their insights on classified advertising and how the newspaper industry can recapture that business. At first glance, the content looks a little like Newspaper Death Watch – lots of bad news. But there hasn’t been much good news to report in the classified industry of late. There’s lots of up-to-date news and even a piece by design guru Roger Black. The site is tied to a project led by Future of News developer Christopher Ryan that’s attempting to build a distribute ad placement platform that newspapers could use to get a leg up on Craigslist.

The 15th World Editors Forum is going on in Göteborg, Sweden, and Editors Weblog is providing exhaustive coverage. A lot of the talk has been about the new, integrated newsroom and the reinvention of journalism. Here are some highlights.

• Two researchers discuss a study analyzing the five stages of news production and how journalism organizations are involving readers in each. Not surprisingly, most news outlets still don’t ask readers for much input until after the story is published, although a few are experimenting with early intervention. News editors still see their gatekeeper role as vital, the researchers say.
• Sweden’s Östersund Posten has launched a hyperlocal experiment involving 101 unpaid bloggers to write about community issues. Traffic is up 60% and so is advertiser interest, although no financial figures are cited.
• The CEO of Denmark’s Det Berlingske Officin, and editor-in-chief of Berlingske Tidende says journalists must give up their gatekeeper role and adapt to a new style of reporting that stresses reader participation and links. “The reader has broken the old circle of power,” says Lisbeth Knudsen.
• The managing editor of The Wall Street Journal’s wsj.com tells how an integrated approach to news reporting has helped double online traffic in the last year. Almar Latour says journalists are now encouraged to incorporate video, photos and informational graphics into their work. It hasn’t been easy to convince writers to put down the pen and pick up the camera, though. One tactic that’s helped has been the Most Popular List, a constantly updated report on the stories that are getting the most traffic. The list has generated healthy competition between reporters.
• The assistant managing editor of the UK’s Daily Telegraph tells how one-week training programs intended to help the newsroom adapt to multimedia have improved camaraderie and morale
• The editor-in-chief of Germany’s Tide sings the praises of citizen journalism as a cost-effective way to develop content, but warns that citizen “reporters” need to be trained that quality is as raw content. The paper has trained almost 200 ordinary folks, who now contribute an hour-and-a-half of video a day to the site, says Werner Eggert.
• The editor-in-chief of the national Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad tells how adding weekend editions and offering defecting readers the chance to switch to a smaller weekend-only package has doubled circulation. Erik Bjerager says the new editions are less newsy and more focused on Christian values.
• The Innovations International Media Consulting Group presents its annual survey and calls upon newspapers to be more innovative. It singles out several papers for praise, including The Spokesman Review of Spokane, WA, which has invited anyone in the community to attend its daily news meeting.
• The managing editor of India’s Mint business newspaper tells how his publication survived in a highly competitive market by making journalistic ethics a differentiator.
• The founder and editor-in-chief of Rue89.com tells of journalism without print and says that life is good. The French website combines professional journalism with blogger and reader input to create rich content at low cost. Many of the best stories have come from reader comments, says Pierre Haski.
• Svetlana Khoroshev, whose role at Russian business newspaper Delovoy Peterburg isn’t identified, says the print publication has managed to connect with the famously print-averse youth audience by incorporating content from a popular MySpace-like community and spreading word-of-mouth through entrepreneurs.
• The head of development at Norway’s VG Multimedia tells how the popular vg.no news website for adults was able to extend its appeal to the youth audience by launching a social network. Jo Christian Oterhals says Nettby.no now has 61% of the teen market, although the model hasn’t necessarily transplanted well to other countries.

Tim Lee writes in the Atlantic about the creeping economy of free. Content providers will increasingly find themselves under pressure from competitors who offer similar information at little or no cost. The challenge is to develop new business models around ancillary services. Chris Anderson of The Long Tail fame is big on this topic right now. Anyone involved in the media business should read his recent article in Wired about how the perceived value of content is moving toward its marginal cost, which is zero. That’s a problem for publishers whose business models are based upon charging for content. In Anderson’s view, content will quickly become free and content providers must find scarce resources to monetize, in the same way that book authors make most of their money from speaking gigs.

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Steve Outing, whose April Editor & Publisher column about canceling his newspaper subscription elicited howls of outrage from readers, comes back with a more constructive prescription for newspaper reinvention.  The gist of it is that newspapers need to deliver higher value services and charge for then, including services delivered entirely online or by e-mail.  People will pay for these products if it saves them time and provides value.

As provocative as Outing’s April column was, this one left us feeling a bit empty.  If you subscribe to the theory that information value is constantly attacked from below, then investing a lot of money in delivering a really cool paid online product seems very risky.  The idea of increasing prices for the print version is more interesting.  Magazine publishers seem to have the flexibility to adjust their cover prices based upon the perceived value of the content and many do quite well at that.  Newspapers, on the other hand, raise prices only reluctantly and always cite factors like increased costs rather than value to the reader.  Why do newspaper publishers debase the value of their products in this way?  Is there a possibility of turning around that thinking and asking customers to instead pay more for a better product?

The Washington Post’s voluntary staff reduction has cost it a lot of fine journalists but perhaps no loss is greater than that of Rob Curley, the Kansas wunderkind whom the Post recruited less than two years ago to lead its Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive division. Curley and at least five of his staff members are pulling up stakes and moving to Las Vegas to work on unspecified projects at the Las Vegas Sun.

Juan Antonio Giner aptly sums up the tragedy this is for the Post, which has long been one of the more progressive papers in its approach to new media. We can only speculate on Curley’s motives. In an entry on his blog last week, Curley paid homage to all the fine talent at the Post and the support he’s received, but notes, cryptically, “I probably wasn’t the best fit with the organization….In Las Vegas, our team has a chance to help shape an entire organization.” Perhaps they didn’t have the chance to do that in Washington.

The bio on the Washingtonpost Newsweek site sums up Curley’s accomplishments:

• Director of new media and convergence for the Naples Daily News and its sister publications along Florida’s Gulf Coast;
• Management positions in the interactive editorial operations for the Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World, during which time he gained national prominence as one of the first online editors chosen to lead a news organization’s entire print and broadcast news operations;
• Editor & Publisher named the Lawrence Journal-World as one the 10 newspapers in the United States that does “it right” in 2004. The Naples paper later received similar praise.

Washington’s loss in Las Vegas’ gain.

Time, Inc. Joins User Content Parade

Another publisher - this time a unit of venerable Time, Inc. - tries its hand at a print publication composed entirely of user-generated content. This Old House – renamed Your Old House for this experiment – is the product of “thousands of e-mails, letters, photos and projects since editor Scott Omelianuk’s first call for submissions in his December editor’s letter.” The magazine set up a website to accept content and promoted the initiative in broadcast and online. 8020 Publishing and the Hartford Courant are doing the same thing, perhaps indicating that editors are finally warming to the idea that their readers have something interesting to say. It isn’t easy, though. Editors say the quality of ideas contributed by readers is remarkably good, but the copy needs a lot of work.

Layoff Log

• The nonprofit St. Petersburg Times will try to cut staff through an early retirement incentive but might have to resort to layoffs later this year, according to a publisher’s memo. Attrition has reduced headcount from 1,500 to 1,300, but it still isn’t enough. The newspaper is also freezing wages for a year. (via Romenesko)
• Massachusetts-based SouthCoast Media Group has laid off five full-time and nine part-time employees. Like many news organizations that report on their own staff reductions, SouthCoastToday.com didn’t give any clue as to big this layoff is, other than to note that the move reduces employment by less than 5 percent. Quotes from the publisher demonstrate unrealistic optimism about to the future.

Let’s look at some recent stories about publishers who are reinventing traditional news operations and creating innovative new models. This is inspiring stuff.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on how startup 8020 Publishing is producing two beautiful magazines consisting almost entirely of reader-contributed content. Everywhere is a travel magazine and JPG is for photo enthusiasts. People vote on the work that others submit and the best stuff goes into print. Photographers get a check for $100 and a year’s subscription. Big money apparently isn’t needed: the contents of the April/May issue of JPG was culled from photos uploaded by 16,278 submitters.

What’s especially remarkable about the model is its efficiency. The two magazines are produced by a staff of just 19 people. Both titles are expected to be profitable within a year and the company is looking to expand into other markets. “Any human interest can become a magazine,” says Halsey Minor, the CNet founder whose VC firm owns 8020.

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The Hartford Courant has set up an online gathering place for citizens and is reverse-publishing in print. iTOWNS invites readers to submit news briefs, events, photos and videos to a website, with guidance from a local staff member. Every Sunday, selected content is published in six regional print editions. All the content comes from the community. “We reached over 3/4 of our ad goal before the first print edition was published. Amazingly we did all of this without a single new hire,” the Courant’s designer tells Charles Apple.

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The UK’s Press Gazette reports on ambitious plans at Guardian News & Media to overhaul its editorial operations. The company is merging the news staffs of The Guardian, The Observer and Guardian.co.uk in a platform-agnostic structure in which journalists working in specialty “pods” and feed stories to the appropriate department editors for publication in a variety of media. One radical concept: journalists will have the freedom to publish directly to their audiences on timely stories, without the intercession of an editor. Editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger says, “In the newspaper world, if a bomb goes off in Burma or there’s a flood in the Philippines, suddenly your story is taken down to two paragraphs. In this world the reporter isn’t going to have to hop around on foot to speak to [national news editor] Nick Hopkins – he can just publish it.”

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Writing on Publishing 2.0, Scott Karp praises a New York Times blogger for practicing good link journalism. The online story he cites is one on oil prices in Mike Nizza’s The Lede. Nizza effectively consolidates information from more than a dozen sources into a summary piece and then links to the source material like crazy. “The value for the reader here is enormous — not only do they get Times blogger Mike Nizza’s framing and perspective, they get links to all of this original reporting and analysis on this issue,” Karp writes. The link journalism model is an emerging form of reporting that makes the journalist as much filter as a reporter. As newspapers can get over their not-invented-here syndromes, they’ll come to understand the reader value this provides.

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The Society of Professional Journalists has embraced citizen media. The venerable organization recently launched three regional seminars to teach anyone who’s interested how to report the news. “There are quite a few bloggers, particularly in larger cities, who do work on a par with any journalist,” SPJ President Clint Brewer told Steve Johnson of the Chicago Tribune. Attendance at the $25-a-day sessions was underwhelming, Johnson reports, but the motivations of the attendees were an interesting mix of civic pride, activism and curiosity.

And Then There’s Also Denial, Distrust and Sneakiness

• USA Today publisher Al Neuharth whistles past the graveyard, trumpeting miniscule circulation gains by his paper and The Wall Street Journal as evidence of the health of the industry. “That’s why newspaper-oriented media companies have a bright future,” he says. For another take on the same circ figures, see our post from that day. Gannett closed yesterday at $29.25, nearly 70% off its five-year high. (via Editors Weblog)
• The UK’s Guardian asks ordinary citizens “How much do you trust the following [new organizations] to tell the truth?” and finds that faith in media has fallen sharply. Broadcast journalists from the country’s ITV commercial network have fallen the farthest, from 82% to 51% in five years. Trust in broadsheet papers is down 22% to 43%, and local outlets are trusted by just 18% of the population. Even the BBC is down. (via Editors Weblog)
• Meanwhile, Editor & Publisher reports on the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s decision to reclassify copies given away in exchange for advertising consideration as part of its new “verified” circulation class. The concern is that some publishers are using free or almost-free copies to plug holes in their circulation reports. The big newsweekly magazines are especially fond of this tactic.

And Finally…

Alan Mutter reports on a free-paper war breaking out in the most unlikely place: filthy-rich Palo Alto, CA. The new entrant is the Palo Alto Daily Post, launched by two founders of the Palo Alto Daily News, a freebie that they sold to Media News Group in 2005. Mutter notes that free newspapers tend to target urban commuters, which makes this leafy San Francisco bedroom community a strange place for a showdown of this kind. Palo Alto residents are more likely to be seen reading pecking at their BlackBerries while driving 70 mph than reading a newspaper, he says.

Last night I had the pleasure of moderating a panel on “The Future of Journalism,” featuring a group of reporters and former reports from the broadcast, print and online media. This panel was perhaps not representative of the media world these days, since all of the members are involved in digital initiatives of some sort at their organizations. But all come from conventional media backgrounds, and I found their optimism to be refreshing.

Panelists included Ted McEnroe, Director of Digital Media at New England Cable Network; Robin Lubbock, Director of New Media at WBUR radio; Howard Sholkin, Director of Communications & Marketing Programs at IDG Communications; and David Wallace, Managing Partner of Gamechange LLC and a professor at Emerson College.

All the panelists noted that newsrooms in their organizations were having some difficulty bridgingt the divide between the specialty journalist, who does one thing well, and the new journalist, who’s expected to work in multiple media with almost equal facility. Some veteran reporters simply haven’t been able to make the change, they noted, and their organizations are tolerating that fact. When journalists can’t make the transition to a new style of reporting, management is ultimately to blame, they said. Retraining is critical right now.

It was clear that the old walls that separated different kinds of media from each other are fallng. Robin Lubbock cited some recent stories by his radio station that demanded a visual component. In the past, the reporters would have had to do the best they could within the limitation of audio, but today they can post images on the website and send interested listeners there. This has added a wonderful new dimension to the craft of audio journalism and has energized the reporters, he said.

IDG’s Sholkin commented that the company has successfully transitioned from a print to a mostly online model in the US and that the new breed of journalist that’s entering the company is more flexible and adaptable than the print-only generation that preceded them. Today’s twentysomething reporters are only too willing to grab a camera or a video recorder if it’ll enhance the story.

The panel was also upbeat on the prospect for citizen contributions to the news reporting process. While acknowledging that mistakes were more likely in the still-undefined community journalism world, they applauded the trend toward involving readers in the newsgathering process. They were unanimous in the opinion that readers’ voices can only improve the quality of the final product.

Backpack Journalism

Several panelist also remarked on the emergence of the “backpack” journalist, who takes an assortment of devices into the field with which to capture a story. Notepads and tape recorders are no longer enough. Reporters must today be facile with any media. They also must be comfortable with communicating in short bursts. An example is the Wichita Eagle’s current coverage of a grisly murder trial via Twitter.

Editor & Publisher has a detailed special report on these mobile journalists or “mojos.” Using lots of examples, the magazine tells how some editors are dismantling the traditional newsroom and seding reporters out into the field to file from wherever they happen to be. A fully stocked backpack of gadgetry (which can run nearly $15,000) is essential, but when journalists have the tools, they become one-person news machines. “I have had days with five or six stories,” says Brian Howard of the Journal News in White Plains, N.Y.

These journos aren’t all kids, either. Most people quoted in the story are in their 30s and the man identified as the grandfather of mobile journalism is 63. Reading this story, you get the sense that change is happening.Good change.

Murdoch as Antidote

Rupert Murdoch is putting the finishing touches on his takeover of The Wall Street Journal with his the designation of Robert Thomson as managing editor. There wasn’t a word of opposition from the newspaper’s editorial independence committee, whose reason for existence becomes more questionable with every non-decision.

Simon Constable writes on TheStreet.com that Murdoch is injecting a healthy shot of competition into the fat and lazy US newspaper business. He contrasts the frantic competitiveness of the newspaper market in the UK, with its more than a dozen dailies, to the languid complacency of a US market defined by one-paper towns and government-sanctioned monopolies. No matter what you think of Murdoch, Constable says, the man is shaking things up and that can’t possibly be bad for an industry in crisis.

Not everyone agrees. Writing in Canada’s Financial Post, Editor Terence Corcoran rips into the Journal’s creeping left-wing bias, focusing in particular on new columnist Thomas Frank. Far from being a counterbalance to the Journal’s traditionally conservative editorial views, Frank is just a liberal ideologue spouting the tired old mantra of publications like The Nation, from whence he came, according to Corcoran. And Cameron blames Murdoch, whose left-wing leanings Cameron says are routinely injected into the editorial voice of the newspapers he acquires.

And Finally…

Seattle Times Executive Editor David Boardman gives his readers a forthright account of why his newspaper is laying off when circulation is actually growing. The problem isn’t that the paper is losing relevance, he explains. It’s that the business model doesn’t work any more. “Thanks in part to a Bay Area entrepreneur named Newmark and his free, online ‘craigslist,’ the bottom dropped out. In the past eight years, revenue from classifieds has fallen by two-thirds, and they now account for only 20 percent of total ad income.”

Boardman’s piece is refreshing. It’s direct and free of the “our combined print/online readership is bigger than ever” denial. He says newspapers need to find a new way to make money. So that’s what they’re going to do.

Your obedient editor is on cloud nine this morning, having been on hand in Fenway Park last night to witness a no-hitter by Red Sox lefty Jon Lester. It took 39 years of attendance at hundreds of games in New York, Boston and several other cities in North America, but the thrill was worth the wait. The achievement is particularly notable because 18 months ago Lester was undergoing chemotherapy. His remarkable recovery is a fairy tale of spirit and endurance and this couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

But on to the future of journalism.

Few journalists are better qualified to speak about that topic than Joshua Micah Marshall, founder of TalkingPointsMemo and recent winner of a prestigious George Polk Award for investigative journalism.

In a speech to a recent conference on the future of the Web, Marshall mourned the atmosphere of fear and denial that pervades mainstream media newsrooms and said journalists must prepare themselves to do their jobs very differently. He’s optimistic, though. Professional journalists have become too dependent on professional insiders who manufacture sound bites and offer convenient but predictable analysis. In contrast, the new journalism involves the community directly in the reporting, bringing journalists into close contact with their readers. TalkingPointsMemo actively invited readers into its award-winning work on the Alberto Gonzalez scandal and continues to solicit reader investigation and input for such tasks as building, “a better virtual list of politicians’ stances than anything tabulated by the traditional media or the White House.”

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Reading the perspective from overseas, it’s becoming clear that the UK is leading the US in understanding, adapting to and delivering upon the promise of a new kind of journalism. While many American newspaper editors wallow in self-pity, British editors are welcoming readers into the fold, rethinking the role of the investigative journalist and envisioning a brighter future. Editors Weblog interviews Emily Bell, editor-in-chief of guardian.co.uk. She sees bloggers as valuable overseers of journalist practice and believes that journalists must engage more actively with their readers. “The closer you are, the more authentic you are, and the more knowledgeable you can be, then the more purchase you have with the community that will come to you, tell you things and point to your work in certain areas. I think if you don’t have that, in the future as a journalist, you probably don’t have much of a future.”Bell believes newspapers will exist for the foreseeable future but may not be around in 15 years. She accepts this matter-of-factly. She’s optimistic about journalism’s future, even though she sees the profession entering an uneasy period where resources that were once available for investigative projects will be cut while a new model of reporting is still taking shape.Unfortunately, the guardian.co.uk still has to wrestle with the same business challenges as all other newspapers. Press Gazette cites recent comments by the Guardian’s head of editorial development that the site would need “’many millions’” more visitors to sustain the level of investment in journalism it currently makes.”

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Sean Dodson of The Guardian looks at community publishing and the risks of newspapers lending their brands to extremist bloggers. He cites the example of The Telegraph’s MyTelegraph portal, which plays host to many thoughtful blogs, but “is also inhabited by some very unsavoury characters, including a minority of active members of the far right, anti-abortionists, europhobes and members of an anti-feminist ‘men’s movement’. ” Dodson goes on to compare the community-policing model employed by The Telegraph to the gatekeeper role of papers like the Daily Mail, which pre-approves blog entries before posting. In contrast, The Telegraph lets readers flag unsavory material for editors to review manually. It’s clear that all newspapers (at least in the UK) are moving to open up their brands to reader commentary, but there are still no clear standards for policing these new communities (via Editors Weblog).

CEOs Not Suffering as Badly as Shareholders

Alan Mutter looks at CEO pay, which is always a favorite whipping post for disgruntled shareholders. Not surprisingly, a few sinners stand out. Most notable is Robert E. Jelenic, the former CEO of Journal Register Co. (JRC), whose compensation grew 333.2% to $6.3 million despite the company’s near-bankrupt condition this year in the wake of his leadership. Mutter notes that Jelenic’s golden parachute last year amounted to more than half the market value of JRC itself.

Other CEOs who got raises while their companies stumbled include Robert Dercherd of Belo and Mary E. Junck of Lee Enterprises. On the whole, Mutter says, CEO compensation declined 11.7% while shareholders collect