The inclusive model of journalism that is evolving online will demand more editors than the media world has ever seen. In effect, all journalists will become editors. They will learn to gather first-person accounts and combine them with expert insights to create a tapestry of information. They may then be called upon to tend and update those stories for years. Journalists will be at the vortex of an information swirl, and their ability to sort through and harmonize information from many sources will be their principal value.

These new rules will demand a different set of skills than the ones historically taught by journalism schools and demanded by professional editors. As we have noted in earlier essays, the role of the reporter will become less prominent in the value chain. In the past, reporters were taught to gather and sift through large amounts of information, discarding selectively as time and space limitations dictated. In the future, space limitations will be irrelevant. Every bit of information can be captured and archived forever. Time demands will both shrink and expand.

Deadlines Compress, but Stories Never Die

They’ll shrink because deadlines will be constant and unrelenting. Journalists will be under pressure to publish news in near real-time. This will demand new aggregation and organization skills. A single journalist will no longer be the funnel — or bottleneck, depending on how you view it — for news events. Ordinary citizens will deliver important news accounts as they happen. A journalist’s competitors will no longer be a handful of regional print and broadcast outlets but an army of interested stakeholders who, in many cases, are more knowledgeable about the topic than the reporter.

It will be futile for a news organization to compete with this kind of citizen firepower. The only rational strategy is to co-opt it. That means reporters must develop relationships with people closest to the story, create the means to capture their observations and perspectives and deliver them quickly. Reporters will become, in effect, editors supervising a loosely formed team of interested stringers.

On the back end, time frames will lengthen considerably as news stories become archives. The Wikipedia model is perhaps the best illustration of this. On Wikipedia, stories begin as a “stub” and grow to sometimes epic proportions. Journalists will no longer write just “the first draft of history,” but will help to shape an archival account of considerably more long-term value. In some cases, a journalist’s career may become tied to a single story that he or she tends and enriches over time.

Promise and Problems

This model has great potential but also great challenge. The loss of trust is a huge issue. While not everyone trusts the news media, they can at least be reasonably certain that professional editors are working in their best interest. The inclusive journalism model has no such guarantees. Anyone can publish anything he or she wishes online, so editors will be needed to arbitrate conflicting claims.

This will certainly require old-fashioned reporting techniques. When the facts can’t be discerned from field reports, it will still be up to the professional journalist to get on the phone and verify them. Readers will come to trust these professional truth-sayers, whether they be individual journalists or media institutions. That’s an important point. In the future, readers may make little distinction between The New York Times and an independent journalist as long as they believe they can trust the source. As Matt Drudge demonstrated a decade ago, trusted brands can emerge without the blessing of media institutions.

Disclosure Trumps Verification

News will increasingly be published without the rigorous fact-checking that information consumers have come to expect. This is a controversial issue, but all trends point to accuracy becoming less vital as a criteria for publication than it is today.

The reason is that published information is no longer archival. Online reports can be changed at any time, which means that the impact of incorrect information is greatly diminished. Today, publication is no longer an end but a beginning. Disclosure will become more important than confirmation. Readers will come to accept that not all the facts are confirmed as long as those shortcomings are disclosed.

The fit and finish that has been characteristic of print publications will diminish in importance. While this is a difficult idea for many editors to accept, the reality is that online information consumers are more tolerant of typos, grammatical errors and structural inconsistency than print readers (this blog is perhaps a good example!). While some media outlets will continue to take pride in delivering high quality finished product, many readers will accept a trade-off between perfection and timeliness. Top editors are already coming to accept this. Faced with staff cuts and the need to do more with less, major newspapers are discovering that they no longer need a dozen editors to touch every front-page story.

In short, journalists will need to significantly broaden their range of skills.. The journalist of the future will be a resourceful, online-savvy and relationship-driven aggregator of information with the ability to apply reportorial shoe-leather where needed. Deadlines will contract on the front end, but stories may live for years in a continually updated archive. The journalist will become part reporter, part editor and part librarian, playing a pivotal role in framing the stream of events and opinion for an audience that demands context.

Other posts in this series:

The Future of Journalism, Part I

The Future of Journalism, Part II

Implicit in the hand-wringing over the death of news organizations (one guest on last week’s Hobson & Holtz Report podcast wondered if PR professionals should even bother tracking newspaper coverage any more) is the concern that good journalism will vanish from the Earth. We’ve always argued that the problem with newspapers today isn’t that they have no value, it’s that they no longer have a sustainable business model. The need for good journalism hasn’t changed but good journalism needs to find new ways to support itself.

Check out two new resources in this area. Jeff Jarvis articulates a future for journalists in an exceptionally cogent summary of his recent work with the City University of New York’s New Business Models for News project. Jarvis sees tomorrow’s journalists as entrepreneurs who create business models around selling their services to those who will pay for them.

We like the analogy to people who work on Hollywood movies. Studios don’t employ legions of camera operators and set designers. They hire that talent as needed for a project. Everyone comes together and works for a few months and then the team breaks up and goes on to other things. Lots of people make their livings that way. Some of them do very well. That’s the way things work in a competitive, entrepreneurial environment.

The skills that journalists will need to survive in this decentralized market are very different from the skills they need today. For one thing, young journalists won’t be expected to spend a decade toiling away for pocket change while learning at the knee of some cranky city editor. They’ll be able to make a good living much faster if they have the smarts and skills to compete.

Political skills won’t matter for much because most journalists won’t work for big organizations. Journalists will succeed or fail based upon the quality of their work and their ability to sustain mutually beneficial relationships with multiple employers. Social skills will matter more than political ones. Self-promotion will be essential. There’ll be less time spent in pointless meetings and bitching about the boss at the local bar because, well, there is no boss any more. Journalists will reclaim vast amounts of time that are now spent on organizational bullshit. They’ll spend their time making money instead of covering their asses.

Risky Business

This future is going to look scary to some people because there’s no job security or benefits. But who’s got job security anywhere these days? And benefits plans are being hacked to pieces as businesses downsize. In the future, working for an organization isn’t going to have many advantages over independence. There will still be company jobs for those who prefer them, but a lot of energetic and resourceful journalists will find that life is better on the outside. It’s amazing how productive you can be when you discard all the overhead of working in a big organization. Trust us on that. We left corporate life four years ago and have managed to produce three books and maintain two active blogs while still making a decent living.

Most journalists we’ve talked to are fine with this idea except for one thing: The thought of selling advertising terrorizes them. They have reason to be nervous. Most journalists we know would be lousy salesman (we tried it for a year and hated every minute) so it’s likely that business models will emerge to manage the business details for them. We told you about one of them – GrowthSpur – back in August, and there no doubt will be many others. As news organizations collapse and journalism opportunities disperse out to a million topical blogs and hyperlocal foundries, new ventures will spring up that aggregate opportunities and provide a variety of other services ranging from promotion to ad sales to accounting.

Read Jarvis’ essay for an optimistic perspective on the future opportunities for journalists. No one is suggesting this transition will be easy, but it will result in a market that is vastly more efficient than the one we have known. Journalism schools today should be training their students in the skills of small business management. Those that continue to preach the virtues of working one’s way up through a newsroom hierarchy are doing their students a disservice. Perhaps J-schools will evolve to become subspecialties of colleges of business. That wouldn’t be a bad thing; just different.

Thriving in the Free Economy

To hear some new ideas about how organizations can profit from the emerging free economy, listen to this Churchill Club podcast titled The Free Economy: How Companies Make Money From Giving Things Away. The panel was moderated by Chris Anderson (left), whose new book,  Free: The Future of a Radical Price, paints a picture of economic change brought about by the availability of cheap digital distribution. Anderson hosts a panel of entrepreneurs who are making money with businesses that give away all or part of their services for nothing.

Bloomberg News is one of the few news operations that’s flourishing, and Knowledge@Wharton provides a glimpse of the editorial strategy that fuels its remarkable engine. Founded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 1982, the financially oriented global information network today produces more than 5,000 stories per day from 146 news bureaus in 72 countries. Its TV network reaches 310 million people and it is in the middle of turning around BusinessWeek, which it bought from McGraw-Hill for $1 in 2009.

Underlying the unique Bloomberg style is a 376-page style manual written by editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler (right). The most recent edition is the first that Bloomberg has made public (buy it on Amazon), and Wharton writes that it is a marvel of clarity and consistency. Some people might cringe at the manual’s many hard-and-fast guidelines, but consistency is a virtue when serving a time-pressed audience like equity traders. An excerpt:

Bloomberg stories should fulfill “The Five Fs” — that is, they must be First, Factual, Fastest, Final and take Future events into account. No story is complete if it doesn’t include “Five Easy Pieces” — information about the markets, the economy, government, politics and companies. The ideal lead is four paragraphs long and should always include a theme, a quotation, details and a nut paragraph that explains what is at stake. “Bloomberg News stories have a structure as immutable as the rules that govern sonnets and symphonies,” Winkler writes.

Whether you agree or not with Bloomberg’s style, there are tips in this article that could benefit any writer:

• Prefer short words to long ones
• Prefer specific terms to abstract one;
• Write the headline first;
• Avoid adverbs that are loaded with assertions, such as “lavishly” compensated or “stunningly” successful.

In many ways Bloomberg is the antithesis of The Wall Street Journal, which has long taken pride in the flourish it brings to its writing, and in particular its clever choice of adverbs. But we suppose both models can co-exist. The point is to have a distinctive style and stick to it.

The Knowledge@Wharton piece also explains Bloomberg’s controversial policy against the use of the word “but.” You’ll have to read to the end of the piece to understand that one, though.

Investors Pledge to Revive Philly Newspapers

There’s good news in Philadelphia, where a group of six investors has agreed to buy the Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com from a investment firm that has owned the news operations for the past two years. The investors, led by South Jersey businessmen Lewis Katz and George E. Norcross III, say they’re excited about growing the franchise, are committed to retaining current management and will not interfere in editorial affairs.

The bad news is that the group paid only $55 million for the media properties. That’s a little more than one-tenth the price that Brian P. Tierney paid when he acquired the properties from McClatchy for $515 million in 2006. Outsell analyst Ken Doctor is quoted in the story saying that the 90% valuation decline isn’t unusual. Most newspapers have lost that much value over the past decade.

The investors are talking a good game, at least. Katz, who was an investigative journalist at one point, said they’re investing in the community as well as in the business. “Cynicism or no, we put a lot of our money in this,” he said. “There was [sic] a lot safer places at my age to put money than in a news organization. You know what? This is my way of coming home.”

Rethinking the Paywall

Although fewer than a quarter of the U.S.’s 1,350 newspapers have built paywalls, the number of publishers who are experimenting with metered access is rising. Bulldog Reporter says more than 300 papers have adopted paywalls so far and the industry is hoping that their early success could be the harbinger of a turnaround. Nearly 20,000 people have signed up to pay $1.99 a week for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the report says, and Gannett plans to expand paywalls from six test markets to all 80 of its small-market newspapers by the end of the year. That move, combined with circulation pricing increases, could add $100 million in annual profit, says the report, citing a company statement.

Writing on GigaOm, Mathew Ingram suggests another approach: Instead of putting up barriers to keep people from reading your content, how about building incentives to attract them instead? Ingram calls it the “velvet rope” strategy: Find creative ways to reward readers for getting involved with your product and they will respond by giving you money for special features and events. “Would you rather have a relationship with an outlet that is always asking you for money, or with one that sees you as a partner and gives you membership benefits that sometimes involve having you pay for things?” Ingram asks. It’s a good point, but Ingram’s post is a bit short on ideas about how to monetize this kumbaya. His argument seems to take it on faith that loyal readers will support a publisher they believe in. Unfortunately, there aren’t many examples of that approach working. Even NPR has to take government money to stay afloat.

Miscellany

Forbes has posted a heat map showing the most influential news outlets in the country and where they’re influential. The map uses data provided by URL-shortening service bit.ly to overlay geographic data on information about content that is shared most often. Darker states signify places where content is shared more actively and presumably read more often. You can also drill down and see which stories generate the most activity. Not surprisingly, newspaper influence  tends to be localized while broadcast networks have national reach. The map at right shows where Fox News is most popular. Incidentally, if you’ve ever wondered how bit.ly makes money, it’s by selling data just like this.

Last week we reported on the sudden shutdown of the Laurel (Miss.) Leader-Call. Thanks to comments from some alert readers, we’ve learned that Laurel won’t be newspaperless for long. Emmerich Newspapers says it will start a thrice-weekly newspaper to replace the Leader-Call and that the first edition will publish this Sunday. What’s more, Emmerich says it has hired the defunct newspaper’s entire staff and will probably throw in free donuts on Fridays. Emmerich publishes 25 community newspapers, primarily in Mississippi, and is very well-liked in Laurel these days.

We got an e-mail from a startup called Zypages that has an interesting twist on classified advertising. The service creates websites from flyers and product sheets uploaded by advertisers, using a cell phone number as the URL. “Most small contractors and service providers do not have web sites – but they all have mobile phones,” explained CEO Raymond Kasbarian in an e-mail. “Over 50% of the printed classified ads in our weekly newspapers out here list a phone but not a web site. By using the number listed in the classified add, a customer can get valuable information before calling.” Go to the website and click the “Examples” button to see how it works.

Bloomberg News is one of the few news operations that’s flourishing, and Knowledge@Wharton provides a glimpse of the editorial strategy that fuels its remarkable engine. Founded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 1982, the financially oriented global information network today produces more than 5,000 stories per day from 146 news bureaus in 72 countries. Its TV network reaches 310 million people and it is in the middle of turning around BusinessWeek, which it bought from McGraw-Hill for $1 in 2009.
Underlying the unique Bloomberg style is a 376-page style manual written by editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler (right). The most recent edition is the first that Bloomberg has made public (buy it on Amazon), and Wharton writes that it is a marvel of clarity and consistency. Some people might cringe at the manual’s many hard-and-fast guidelines, but consistency is a virtue when serving a time-pressed audience like equity traders. An excerpt:

Bloomberg stories should fulfill “The Five Fs” — that is, they must be First, Factual, Fastest, Final and take Future events into account. No story is complete if it doesn’t include “Five Easy Pieces” — information about the markets, the economy, government, politics and companies. The ideal lead is four paragraphs long and should always include a theme, a quotation, details and a nut paragraph that explains what is at stake. “Bloomberg News stories have a structure as immutable as the rules that govern sonnets and symphonies,” Winkler writes.

Whether you agree or not with Bloomberg’s style, there are tips in this article that could benefit any writer:

• Prefer short words to long ones
• Prefer specific terms to abstract one;
• Write the headline first;
• Avoid adverbs that are loaded with assertions, such as “lavishly” compensated or “stunningly” successful.

In many ways Bloomberg is the antithesis of The Wall Street Journal, which has long taken pride in the flourish it brings to its writing, and in particular its clever choice of adverbs. But we suppose both models can co-exist. The point is to have a distinctive style and stick to it.
The Knowledge@Wharton piece also explains Bloomberg’s controversial policy against the use of the word “but.” You’ll have to read to the end of the piece to understand that one, though.

Investors Pledge to Revive Philly Newspapers

There’s good news in Philadelphia, where a group of six investors has agreed to buy the Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com from a investment firm that has owned the news operations for the past two years. The investors, led by South Jersey businessmen Lewis Katz and George E. Norcross III, say they’re excited about growing the franchise, are committed to retaining current management and will not interfere in editorial affairs.
The bad news is that the group paid only $55 million for the media properties. That’s a little more than one-tenth the price that Brian P. Tierney paid when he acquired the properties from McClatchy for $515 million in 2006. Outsell analyst Ken Doctor is quoted in the story saying that the 90% valuation decline isn’t unusual. Most newspapers have lost that much value over the past decade.
The investors are talking a good game, at least. Katz, who was an investigative journalist at one point, said they’re investing in the community as well as in the business. “Cynicism or no, we put a lot of our money in this,” he said. “There was [sic] a lot safer places at my age to put money than in a news organization. You know what? This is my way of coming home.”

Rethinking the Paywall

Although fewer than a quarter of the U.S.’s 1,350 newspapers have built paywalls, the number of publishers who are experimenting with metered access is rising. Bulldog Reporter says more than 300 papers have adopted paywalls so far and the industry is hoping that their early success could be the harbinger of a turnaround. Nearly 20,000 people have signed up to pay $1.99 a week for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the report says, and Gannett plans to expand paywalls from six test markets to all 80 of its small-market newspapers by the end of the year. That move, combined with circulation pricing increases, could add $100 million in annual profit, says the report, citing a company statement.
Writing on GigaOm, Mathew Ingram suggests another approach: Instead of putting up barriers to keep people from reading your content, how about building incentives to attract them instead? Ingram calls it the “velvet rope” strategy: Find creative ways to reward readers for getting involved with your product and they will respond by giving you money for special features and events. “Would you rather have a relationship with an outlet that is always asking you for money, or with one that sees you as a partner and gives you membership benefits that sometimes involve having you pay for things?” Ingram asks. It’s a good point, but Ingram’s post is a bit short on ideas about how to monetize this kumbaya. His argument seems to take it on faith that loyal readers will support a publisher they believe in. Unfortunately, there aren’t many examples of that approach working. Even NPR has to take government money to stay afloat.

Miscellany

Forbes has posted a heat map showing the most influential news outlets in the country and where they’re influential. The map uses data provided by URL-shortening service bit.ly to overlay geographic data on information about content that is shared most often. Darker states signify places where content is shared more actively and presumably read more often. You can also drill down and see which stories generate the most activity. Not surprisingly, newspaper influence  tends to be localized while broadcast networks have national reach. The map at right shows where Fox News is most popular. Incidentally, if you’ve ever wondered how bit.ly makes money, it’s by selling data just like this.

Last week we reported on the sudden shutdown of the Laurel (Miss.) Leader-Call. Thanks to comments from some alert readers, we’ve learned that Laurel won’t be newspaperless for long. Emmerich Newspapers says it will start a thrice-weekly newspaper to replace the Leader-Call and that the first edition will publish this Sunday. What’s more, Emmerich says it has hired the defunct newspaper’s entire staff and will probably throw in free donuts on Fridays. Emmerich publishes 25 community newspapers, primarily in Mississippi, and is very well-liked in Laurel these days.

We got an e-mail from a startup called Zypages that has an interesting twist on classified advertising. The service creates websites from flyers and product sheets uploaded by advertisers, using a cell phone number as the URL. “Most small contractors and service providers do not have web sites – but they all have mobile phones,” explained CEO Raymond Kasbarian in an e-mail. “Over 50% of the printed classified ads in our weekly newspapers out here list a phone but not a web site. By using the number listed in the classified add, a customer can get valuable information before calling.” Go to the website and click the “Examples” button to see how it works.