This link has been bookmarked by 21 people . It was first bookmarked on 19 May 2009, by Max Novendstern.
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18 Sep 09
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09 Sep 09
Scott GittoesThe demise of the news business can be halted, but only if journalists commit to creating real value for consumers and become more involved in setting the course of their companies.\n
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17 Aug 09
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02 Jun 09
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31 May 09
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29 May 09
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24 May 09
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It is not just a matter of embracing uses of new technologies. Journalists today are often urged to change practice to embrace
crowd sourcing, to search specialty websites, social networks, blogs, and micro-blogs for story ideas, and to embrace in collaborative
journalism with their audiences. Although all of these provide useful new ways to find information, access knowledge, and
engage with readers, listeners, and viewers, the amount of value that they add and its monetization is highly debatable. The
primary reason is that those who are most highly interested in that information and knowledge are able to harvest it themselves
using increasingly common tools.
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23 May 09
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Journalists are not professionals with a unique base of knowledge such as professors or electricians. Consequently, the primary
economic value of journalism derives not from its own knowledge, but in distributing the knowledge of others. In this process
three fundamental functions and related skills have historically created economic value: Accessing sources, determining significance
of information, and conveying it effectively. -
To create economic value, journalists and news organizations historically relied on the exclusivity of their access to information
and sources, and their ability to provide immediacy in conveying information. The value of those elements has been stripped
away by contemporary communication developments. Today, ordinary adults can observe and report news, gather expert knowledge,
determine significance, add audio, photography, and video components, and publish this content far and wide (or at least to
their social network) with ease. And much of this is done for no pay.
Until journalists can redefine the value of their labor above this level, they deserve low pay.
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Across the news industry, processes and procedures for news gathering are guided by standardized news values, producing standardized
stories in standardized formats that are presented in standardized styles. The result is extraordinary sameness and minimal
differentiation.
It is clear that journalists do not want to be in the contemporary labor market, much less the highly competitive information
market. They prefer to justify the value they create in the moral philosophy terms of instrumental value. Most believe that
what they do is so intrinsically good and that they should be compensated to do it even if it doesn't produce revenue.
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Yule HeibelChristian Science Monitor opinion piece making the case that journalists aren't pulling their weight in creating value for readers/ consumers.
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Wages are compensation for value creation. And journalists simply aren't creating much value these days.
Until they come to grips with that issue, no amount of blogging, twittering, or micropayments is going to solve their failing business models.
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Picard then divides his piece into three parts:"Where does value come from?" and "What are journalists worth?" with "Adapt or Die" as conclusion.
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Robert G. Picard is a professor of media economics at Sweden's Jonkoping University, a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, and the author and editor of 23 books, including "The Economics and Financing of Media Companies." This essay is adapted from a lecture Professor Picard gave at Oxford. He blogs at http://themediabusiness.blogspot.com/
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Excellent must-read article.-
Moral philosophers differentiate intrinsic and instrumental value. Intrinsic value involves things that are good in and of
themselves, such as beauty, truth, and harmony. Instrumental value comes from things that facilitate action and achievement,
including awareness, belonging, and understanding. Journalism produces only instrumental value. It is important not in itself,
but because it enlightens the public, supports social interaction, and facilitates democracy. -
To comprehend journalistic value creation, we need to focus on the benefits it provides. Journalism creates functional, emotional,
and self-expressive benefits for consumers. Functional benefits include providing useful information and ideas. Emotional
benefits include a sense of belonging and community, reassurance and security, and escape. Self-expressive benefits are provided
when individuals identify with the publication's perspectives or opinions, or when they're empowered to express their own
ideas.
These benefits used to produce significant economic value. Not today. That's because producers and providers have less control
over the communication space than ever before. In the past, the difficulty and cost of operation, publication, and distribution
severely limited the number of content suppliers. This scarcity raised the economic value of content. That additional value
is gone today because a far wider range of sources of news and information exist.
The primary value that is created today comes from the basic underlying value of the labor of journalists. Unfortunately,
that value is now near zero.
- 5 more annotations...
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Moral philosophers differentiate intrinsic and instrumental value. Intrinsic value involves things that are good in and of
themselves, such as beauty, truth, and harmony. Instrumental value comes from things that facilitate action and achievement,
including awareness, belonging, and understanding. Journalism produces only instrumental value. It is important not in itself,
but because it enlightens the public, supports social interaction, and facilitates democracy. -
The total value is the value of content plus the value of advertising. However, advertisers don't care about journalism –
only the audience that it produces. Thus the real measure of journalistic value is value created by serving readers. -
The total value is the value of content plus the value of advertising. However, advertisers don't care about journalism –
only the audience that it produces. Thus the real measure of journalistic value is value created by serving readers. -
If value is to be created, journalists cannot continue to report merely in the traditional ways or merely re-report the news
that has appeared elsewhere. They must add something novel that creates value. They will have to start providing information
and knowledge that is not readily available elsewhere, in forms that are not available elsewhere, or in forms that are more
useable by and relevant to their audiences. -
One cannot expect newspaper readers to pay for page after page of stories from news agencies that were available online yesterday
and are in a thousand other papers today. Providing a food section that pales by comparison to the content of food magazines
or television cooking shows is not likely to create much value for readers. Neither are scores of disjointed, undigested short
news stories about events in far off places.
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Economic outcomes have traditionally held low priority for journalists. That's got to change.
Journalists are not professionals with a unique base of knowledge such as professors or electricians. Consequently, the primary
economic value of journalism derives not from its own knowledge, but in distributing the knowledge of others. -
To create economic value, journalists and news organizations historically relied on the exclusivity of their access to information
and sources, and their ability to provide immediacy in conveying information. The value of those elements has been stripped
away by contemporary communication developments. Today, ordinary adults can observe and report news, gather expert knowledge,
determine significance, add audio, photography, and video components, and publish this content far and wide (or at least to
their social network) with ease. And much of this is done for no pay.
Until journalists can redefine the value of their labor above this level, they deserve low pay.
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21 May 09
Ognjen StrpićWages are compensation for value creation. And journalists simply aren't creating much value these days.
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If value is to be created, journalists cannot continue to report merely in the traditional ways or merely re-report the news
that has appeared elsewhere. They must add something novel that creates value. They will have to start providing information
and knowledge that is not readily available elsewhere, in forms that are not available elsewhere, or in forms that are more
useable by and relevant to their audiences. -
Finding the rights means to create and protect value will require collaboration throughout news enterprises. It is not something
that journalists can leave to management. Journalists and managers alike will need to develop collaboration skills and create
social relations that make it possible. Journalists will also need to acquire entrepreneurial and innovation skills that makes
it possible for them to lead change rather than merely respond to it.
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Taryn .Moral philosophers differentiate intrinsic and instrumental value. Intrinsic value involves things that are good in and of themselves, such as beauty, truth, and harmony. Instrumental value comes from things that facilitate action and achievement, includi
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Today all this value is being severely challenged by technology that is "de-skilling" journalists. It is providing individuals
– without the support of a journalistic enterprise – the capabilities to access sources, to search through information and
determine its significance, and to convey it effectively. -
Well-paying employment requires that workers possess unique skills, abilities, and knowledge. It also requires that the labor
must be non-commoditized. Unfortunately, journalistic labor has become commoditized. Most journalists share the same skills
sets and the same approaches to stories, seek out the same sources, ask similar questions, and produce relatively similar
stories. - 2 more annotations...
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Before professionalism of journalism, many journalists not only wrote the news, but went to the streets to
distribute and sell it and few journalists had regular employment in the news and information business. Journalists and social
observers debated whether practicing journalism for a news entity was desirable. Even Karl Marx argued that "The first freedom
of the press consists in it not being a trade." -
Finding the rights means to create and protect value will require collaboration throughout news enterprises. It is not something
that journalists can leave to management. Journalists and managers alike will need to develop collaboration skills and create
social relations that make it possible. Journalists will also need to acquire entrepreneurial and innovation skills that makes
it possible for them to lead change rather than merely respond to it.
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20 May 09
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19 May 09
Max NovendsternWell-reasoned bullshit.
"Journalists are not professionals with a unique base of knowledge such as professors or electricians. Consequently, the primary economic value of journalism derives not from its own knowledge, but in distributing the knowledge of others. In this process three fundamental functions and related skills have historically created economic value: Accessing sources, determining significance of information, and conveying it effectively."
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