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13 Oct 09

What The Future Will Look Like For Journalists | paidContent

Jim Spanfeller has a pretty rosy take on why journalists (if not newspapers) will persevere into the uncertain future.

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journalism newspaper crisis Jim Spanfeller scoops

Stories will still develop over time and across many specific installments of reporting. But the idea of a “scoop” having great value is gone. In an internet-enabled world, a scoop lasts for only a very fleeting period of time. The real value is the insight about that scoop.
It will also be important to present raw data well. “Give me your thoughts,” say the readers, but let me see the data as well. Give me a chance to disagree with your theories and commentary. For this to happen, the institution supporting and paying the journalist will have to collect or buy the appropriate data and present it in a way that is both easy to understand and work with.

Strib to hold back some content

Commentary by Doug Fisher about the Minneapolis Star Tribune's decision earlier this year to hold back some content as print exclusives.

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print-exclusive Nancy Barnes Minneapolis Star Tribune Doug Fisher scoops

For instance, if the Strib has that great investigative project fronted Monday morning, chances are drivetime radio is going to rewrite it; the TVs will have it on their morning shows, etc. Blogs will - no, may, since there won't be links -- comment on it. Will this drive traffic to "the paper" or satiate most people's information needs?
Will the AP still honor the request if the local TV rewrites the essence of the story and posts it online?
2 more annotations...
- Will the pick up a paper and maybe decide they need a subscription (winning situation, but I think, doubtful), wait to see it later (neutral), or become po'd and learn that they probably can do without it and not come back (losing proposition)?
- So will more of us buy a paper if there is 'paper only' news? I doubt it. How will we know?

Online scoops

This American Journalism Review story from 2006 looks at the evolving nature of scoops and exclusives.

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print-exclusive American Journalism Review Donna Shaw Jonathan Dube Rusty Coats Byron Grandy scoops

It decided to run the exclusive first on its Web site (denverpost.com) on July 13 instead of waiting until the next morning's paper.

It's not so long ago that such a decision would have been deemed heresy. The Post, traditionalists would have exclaimed, had foolishly "scooped itself."
It's also a reminder that the definitions of "scoop" and "exclusive" are evolving in the era of convergence. The Internet makes it much more dicey to hold a news story until your next edition; chances are greater than ever that someone will beat you to it. So investigative, enterprise and project stories have become the primary exclusives to be held for the print version.
8 more annotations...
- "My definition of a scoop has changed in the sense of how long you think you have a story exclusively," he says. "If you have a story for an hour, you need to make the most of that hour."
- Felisa Cardona, the reporter who wrote the story. "I think he felt like, 'We're going to have this because of my tip, and nobody else is going to have it except us until tomorrow.'.. But I just feel like everybody knows we got the story first."
- Says Jonathan Dube, a vice president of the Online News Association and publisher of CyberJournalist.net: "In this day and age, it would be foolish for any newspaper company to just think of itself as a 'newspaper' company and not a media company. The notion that a company like the Denver Post could 'scoop' itself is ridiculous and narrow-minded."
- "If we were in a more competitive market, we would certainly put that online" first, Fine says. "I wonder if most people, because they're in one-newspaper markets, are, like we are, still putting 99 percent on the Web but still holding their best scoops, their best enterprise, for the paper," she adds. "It's because we still want the paper to be valuable, because the paper still pays the bills at most of our publications."
- Rusty Coats, general manager of TBO.com, says his marching orders are to place a story on the "first available platform." If a story breaks at, say, 2 p.m., it goes out first on the Web site, then on television at 4:30 p.m. and 5 p.m., and the newspaper gets it the next day.
- "Online breaking stories are very iterative — you print what you know when you know it and then you add to it," Coats says. "The things that make print wonderful are enterprise and analysis and depth."
- But ultimately, he says, journalists need to remember that it's the consumers who are in control, going to whatever news sources will give them the information they want. "I think to try to slow that down is impossible," Grandy says.
- "As journalists, we're kind of a curmudgeonly group," he says. "Some react to change very well... But around the country you'll find a handful of the 'over my dead body' types" when it comes to posting scoops.